seaside heights
we were gettin' ready to go on va-ca when my sweetie saw this pictorial in the village voice of seaside heights, nj, the jersey shore town complete w/boardwalk 'n' amusement park where she usedta go as a kid. who'd a thunk it'd still be happenin' 25 yrs down the road? we went and hung out for an afternoon w/my big sis, then went back during the week so we could shoot pics of the sun setting / rising (altho it wound up being overcast), as well as the boardwalk and twin (!) amusement parks by night, eat softshell crab sammitches and slices of pizza the size of yr forearm, hear the carnie barkers' pitches (the newer park was mostly staffed by bored teenagers but as you got closer to the old pier, the shtick factor got higher), watch fireworks on the beach, and stick our feet in the freezing-ass atlantic. it were awesome.
posted by stashdauber at 4:54 AM
3 Comments:
gotta love that "schtick factor"
the barkers have goin'...
'tis truly a lost art the younger cats don't seem to vibe with as much. the jersey shore in the summertime when you're young... it don't get no better.
my best pal j. and i ran (under his management) an auntie anne's pretzel stand on the boardwalk in wildwood, nj in the summer of 2000.
with 16+ hour work days, zero sleep, and an varying stages of intoxication in our off hours... we went loony and slept in the rear of the store when we could. the rest of the time we spent bribing the rollar coaster operators with free pretzels to ride us for no cost on the 'ole loop-d-loop.
my job duties occasionally involved barkin' it up in the crowd swell and handin' out the freebie samples (when i wasn't busy sweatin' it up next to the 600 degree ovens i was working.)
i was timid at times, but once i got into the groove of my barkspiel, you could hear me on every beach from asbury park to cape may. it was fun - and loud.
"boardwalk andy" could always put pretzel-buyin' asses in the seats...
glad you dug your trip.
yeah, and a far cry from the lawn guyland beaches where i grew up, where you got (at best) a shitty snackbar more befitting a drive-in movie than a beach
summertime blues indeed
thought about ya when i saw the geek, who's now a bored kid wearing a diving helmet while ppl shoot paintballs at him
i did win my sweetie a stuffed animal shooting water into a clown's head, tho
reading and re-reading this really has me fired up to throw down some jersey shore spiel/recolecto of my own.
have a lot great mems from those years spent shoreside. hell, even fell in love with my wife to be while waiting in the rain for the roller coaster to reopen (them old wooden ones go just a few seconds faster when the rails get freshly sprinkled. we always dug that.)
the impending release of the oven-bun and the distance between our shore rental pad and the midwife/birth center makes me too nervous so i scissored the trip this summer.
all i truly want this time o' year is giant boardwalk slices with ricotta and broccoli, double scoop waffle cones, flounder with a squirt of lemon, ice cold lemonade with lots o' ice, a sunset on the bay, and go-carts.
sigh...
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