After noisy election, find some 'quiet' at the Jersey shore

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - It's been suggested that one panacea for the stressful election season we've collectively survived may be to just sit down and be quiet.

So perhaps never has a seemingly irrelevant confection of an event like the annual Ocean City Quiet Festival been more, well, relevant.

For more than two decades, the festival has subtly suggested that after a busy summer season of noise, traffic, and beach days, people in the resort actively seek out a moment to just sit one out. And maybe take a nap.

And this year, after the frenzy of the election season, and as an added bonus at Thursday's "opening ceremonies" - which included a lot of yawning after a few hushed poetry readings and a brief wind chime concert - the two dozen or so participants were awarded special certificates for having survived the 2016 presidential campaign.

"We've just been through a long, long, long, aggravating election," said Mark Soifer, Ocean City's former public relations guru. "And one of the main purposes of this festival has always been to help people relax.

"But this year especially, I think people really need to take a breather . . . have some time for quiet reflection after what we've all been through," said Soifer, who in his former job as the city's public relations director never missed an opportunity to take a seemingly trivial publicity event and try to turn it into a real occasion.

So Soifer, who retired this year, came back to preside - in a park at Ninth Street and Asbury Avenue named for him - over the event, which he created in the 1990s.

"In the summer and fall, a place like Ocean City is just go, go, go. . . . It never stops. There's event after event and an endless stream of things to do here," Soifer said. "I came up with the idea of the Quiet Festival to counter that . . . so people could just slow down the pace a little, just enjoy some peace and quiet. Maybe read a poem or take a nap."

The event is always geared around quiet activities - kite flying, soap bubble blowing, paper airplane folding and flying.

And on Thursday, the event continued with a round of "quiet and visual" poetry presented by Soifer, a published poet, and finished with the odd activity of "leaf squeezing" - in which leaves and tree seed pods, specifically from maple trees, are thrown into the air ... quietly. People were encouraged to quietly snap their fingers instead of clapping throughout the event.

Though the free festival will take a break Friday in honor of Veterans Day, it will continue Saturday with a Quiet Pet Challenge competition. It begins at 10 a.m. at the Ocean City Community Center at 17th Street and Simpson Avenue, and will include a Quiet Pet Contest for mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, turtles, rabbits, ferrets, birds, chickens, and any other relatively quiet animals. There will also be a Tortoise and Hare Race, and participants are welcome to bring their favorite teddy bears to show off, Soifer said.

In the event billed as "the semi-exciting" Snore at the Shore, contestants on Saturday will also be able to sit in recliners and demonstrate their quiet snoring techniques.

Soifer said Thursday that he never dreamed of the noisy and emotionally draining election season of "mind-boggling statements" and the "avalanche of repetitive and nasty TV advertisements" that went with it when he created the Quiet Festival so many years ago.

"It was unsettling . . . aggravating," Soifer said of the 2016 campaign. "I think people really do need to stop and slow down now and take some time for quiet reflection and have some fun."

That's what Elaine Jarvis, 63, of Ocean City, a retired schoolteacher, said she was doing at the Quiet Festival on Thursday.

"I haven't left the house since the election," Jarvis said. "I haven't been able to wrap my head around the idea of a Trump presidency. So this is kind of taking my mind off it for the moment, and it feels good to get out and see that life is going on."

Debbie Slater, 47, of Somers Point, said she is OK with a Trump presidency, but still needs time to relax after "all the nonstop rhetoric."

"I had no idea they were going to talk about the election today. It was kind of funny . . . and on point. But I think everybody is tired of talking about it now," Slater said, yawning.

Contact Jacqueline L. Urgo at 609-652-8382 or jurgo@phillynews.com @JacquelineUrgo