💌 A Wildwood Crest motel love story | Down the Shore

At the Shore, the big stuff, the deep thoughts, can hit you hard, like an unexpected wave. Will it knock you down? Or will you ride it in for a thrill? Or maybe, you will dive straight through the waves, as I usually do, for the needed chill down. And perspective. The Shore’s a place where the loss of loved ones who’ve been there in years past can feel especially painful, but where their memories are ever-present. It’s a place to find a deeper appreciation of one’s surroundings, whether that means family or planet Earth.

It’s also a place where love can catch a wave and take that long ride to shore. This week, I wrote about the love story of Alethea and Paul Pawlowski, with photography by David Maialetti.

Paul and Alethea’s families run side-by-side motels in Wildwood Crest — in Alethea’s case, for multiple generations. They didn’t meet walking down the beach at sunset, though. They were both too busy changing sheets and taking reservations at their respective motels, the V.I.P. and the Compass. Those common bonds proved strong.

Alethea and Paul married and now have an adorable daughter, Juliana, whom they call “Little Miss 6500,” as in the block of Atlantic Avenue that both motels both occupy.

Lini Kadaba writes that religion at ocean’s edge can also be felt deeply, whether it’s holding “Devotion by the Ocean,” or taking jet skis to be blessed. People here have a lot of blessings to count just being able to gather their families in such a beautiful place. I try to remember that all year round.

My own favorite service at the beach is the annual Tashlich ceremony held on the first afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s a ritual where Jews will cast their sins symbolically into a flowing body of water in the form of bread crumbs, and while I grew up going to the lovely Roslyn Duck Pond on Long Island for this, there’s nothing quite as thrilling as doing so at the edge of the ocean. It’s quite something.

How do you get people at the Shore to keep the faith? Bless their boats.

And read the lovely Wildwood Crest motel love story.

📮 Do you have a life event or milestone that you felt more deeply down the Shore? Let me know by replying to this email.

🌊 Water’s warmed up into the 70s, so luxuriate while you can.

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— Amy S. Rosenberg (🐦 Tweet me at @amysrosenberg. 📷 Follow me on Insta at @amyrosenberg. 📧 Email me at downtheshore@inquirer.com)

🍕 Caper solved. Tony’s Baltimore Grill is a full-time beat this summer. The Atlantic City joint reports its pilfered outdoor furniture has been returned, no questions asked.

🐢 Terrapin Station. Turtle nesting season is over, and the Margate Terrapin Rescue, one of many such groups, reports its volunteers rescued 80 terrapins on the Margate causeway.

🌎 Sunny day blues. Frank Kummer reports on distressing predictions of sunny day flooding down the Shore.

🕰️ Lobster by Lobster. Don’t miss Jason Nark’s Day in the Life of the Lobster House in Cape May.

🎸Did Snooki and Little Steven help save the earth while trolling Mehmet Oz? Will Bunch ponders.

⛱️ Strathmere is changing.

👩‍🚒Brigantine to Ukraine. Maria Montone Polillo, who has been sending donated supplies to Ukraine, posted pictures of uniforms donated by the Brigantine Fire Department now being used by firefighters in Ukraine.

🍻 ‘Nards for a cause. Take the kids to Maynard’s in Margate on Friday, Aug. 5, from 6 to 10 p.m. to benefit the Magical Mila Foundation, raising awareness for nononcological Neurofibromatosis, established by Jessica and Dan Roomberg in memory of their daughter Mila. Fox 29′s Mike Jerrick will be there, along with music, auctions, and kids’ activities.

⛱️ Take a beach break by hiring the beach breakers, who come to you on the beach and play with your kids.

🐠 Phish and Co. So much Phish stuff to coincide with three days of Atlantic City Beach concerts. There’s Federal Donuts jam-band-inspired pop-up at the Hay Day Coffee lot on New York Avenue; after parties at Tennessee Avenue Beer Hall, including Uncle Ebenezer, Dead Reckoning, This Old Engine and Touch of Grey; and pre-shows at the always awesome Biergarten on the Boardwalk.

🐟 Vernick at the Shore. Chef Greg Vernick’s Vernick Fish brings weeklong (11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Aug. 8 to 12) lunch pop-ups outside at Steve & Cookie’s. And if any of you go to the $1,000-a-head benefit dinner at Cookie Till’s farm Aug. 13, let me know how it was.

🎨 Boardwalk art show is in Ocean City, and on the Music Pier, the “Art of Surfing Festival.”

📚 Beach read. Local author Laura Quinn has published Thicker Than Water, a historical romance set in Cape May and Wildwood at the onset of World War I. Read my interview with Laura here. And find signed copies at the Wildwood Historical Society at 3907 Pacific Ave. Patrick Rapa’s best August books are here.

Meet-your-neighbor tide. (noun). The experience of setting up your beach stuff in the morning at low tide, and having to continually move back closer to everyone else as the tide comes in.

Uh oh, better be prepared to keep moving closer to those other people as it’s a meet-your-neighbor tide again today.

Pro tip: The app Tides Near Me is a game changer. Here’s my 2008 story from Sea Isle about the Meet-Your-Neighbor Tide.

Marisa Rosenthal answered first with the correct answer to what Shore town lost its first 10 blocks in the storm of 1914 to 1916. As anyone who’s been to the beautiful 11th Street at southern tip of Absecon Island knows, it’s Longport.

A lot of South Cape May guesses, which refers to what my colleague Tommy Rowan called the Jersey Shore’s Atlantis, an entire section of Victorian beachfront homes that was swallowed up by a series of storms.

This week’s question::

The legendary Red Klotz, whose Washington Generals were perennial losers against the Harlem Globetrotters, was a familiar figure at pickup games at these Shore basketball courts into his 80s.

🏀 Which courts were they? Street and town required.

📮 If you think you know the answer, email me here, and first one will get a shout out.

Colin Stewart, 24, a former Strathmere lifeguard who now has his own production company, Five Tribe Cinema, has been live streaming the South Jersey Lifeguard races this summer on his YouTube channel.

Two of them, the Bill Howarth Women’s Lifeguard Invitational on Aug. 10 in Ventnor, and the South Jersey Championships in Longport on Aug. 12, will be broadcast as one-hour packages in the fall on NBC Sports Philadelphia as well as on YouTube.

How did you start out? We started in 2020 with the Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association, when parents weren’t allowed to come to the races [because of the pandemic]. They asked, could you bring a camera? We brought a drone. People seemed to like this coverage, so we thought, we have all the gear to do it, why don’t we do a lifeguard race?

They pose similar issues for spectators. It’s the same problems as with the Schuylkill. You’re standing on a beach, perpendicular to the racecourse. You only see the start, you only see the finish.

You’re filming the parts of the race almost nobody sees. We have two or three drones out there, one doing wide angle, one dropping in on different views and crews. We get really far down the course. Competitors love it for the coaching aspect. Last year, we got a lot of the flag turns.

Your mom is Suzé DiPietro, who did entertainment and pr for the Trump casinos. What was that like? She told horror story after horror story. She liked the rock and roll part of it.

Mary Conway Dean, who now lives in Oregon, sent this vivid memory of an Avalon gone by.

I had 8 siblings and it took two cars to get us down the shore from Villanova. As soon as we got closer to Avalon, we would roll down the windows to see which brother or sister would smell the salty ocean air first! Parking the car, we would run on the hot sand and jump in the ocean. It was free back in the 50s and 60s. Once we got sufficiently exhausted, we would be given a quarter and run up to the boardwalk for goodies. One of us inevitably got a big splinter because we were barefoot. The old boardwalk was splinter worthy! Great memories, salt water taffy, salt water air and salt water in your hair. It doesn’t get any better than that.

📮 Send me your Shore memory before summer ends for a chance to be featured.

See you next week, when it will be … mid-August, just about. 😮