Stolen Cape May ‘Diamonds’ Sunset Beach sign found in North Philly trash heap

It was right there on Cecil B. Moore Avenue, a diamond in the rough.

Sitting in a trash heap in a vacant lot near Temple University, the hulking sign promised a fanciful path from North Philly to Sunset Beach, to an awaiting treasure of Cape May “Diamonds” and a concrete ship.

It caught the attention of Jared Cohen, 21, a Temple senior from Virginia studying geography, urban studies and Japanese, who has never been to that place or seen those things.

He called his friend Henry Demyan, 17, to help haul it to safety and then did the only obvious thing: tweeted about it.

“I do tweet a lot about trash,” Cohen said.

But this was not just any trash.

As Cohen quickly learned, this trash was a stolen sign from way down at the bottom of the Jersey Shore, a sign pointing the way to the tip of the Cape May peninsula, to a place in Lower Township, N.J. known as Sunset Beach, home of a sometimes-controversial gift shop and a nightly flag ritual, where the ruins of a concrete ship are sinking into the Delaware Bay.

The sign had been on the side of Sunset Boulevard in Lower Township, about a mile or so from Sunset Beach, bolted to metal legs at the edge of two private properties whose owners had allowed the Humes, the family that has owned the Sunset Beach Gift Shop for decades, to place it there.

Somehow, it had made its way to North Philadelphia, which really seemed to blow the minds of the people in the Cape May Live Facebook group, where Lower Township resident Chris Collins, reposted Cohen’s tweets.

“To have it pop up there, is that bizarre?” said Sharon Bloom, a sister in the Hume family who was behind the register on Tuesday.

Last August, said Larry Hume, his brother noticed the sign had gone missing. Someone had unbolted it and carted it off, not an easy task for a sign 4 feet by 8 feet.

It was, many noted, stylishly and geometrically painted by Cape May artist Brian DeMusz, himself a legend in the greater Cape May community, increasing its value, or at least the desire to have it back in its native habitat.

There, for decades, you couldn’t miss it driving down Sunset Boulevard, and also, at that point, you almost without a doubt would reach Sunset Beach at Cape May Point with its so-called diamonds (actually quartz pebbles found on the beach) without the aid of the sign.

“It’s really the most outlandish thing,” Hume said by telephone Tuesday. “To see this sign that sat there for so many years leaning against a railing in a city neighborhood like that — it looks like it’s in perfect shape, like they didn’t even take it to destroy it.”

It did not surprise Cohen in the least, however. And he has a pretty good theory about how it ended up in a trash pile in North Philadelphia, near Temple University.

“A lot of people in the Cape May group were like how did it end up in North Philly,” Cohen said. “Considering the frat culture, I think this has to be a frat. They love stealing signs. They had a SEPTA bus sign. I’ve even heard stories, people would go and steal large signs. This is no surprise to me.”

Demyan and Cohen said they never considered keeping the sign, though they are a bit wistful, now that the dots are being connected all the way to the southern tip of New Jersey.

“I’ll be sad when they get it,” Demyan said. “It looks cool in my backyard.”

Meanwhile, people in Lower Township had something to say about North Philadelphia.

“Is there a garbage stoppage in Philly or is that just normal?” wondered Collins, the middleman.

Cohen noted that he’d never been to the Jersey Shore, and, as a transit geek, started plotting bus routes. The concrete sinking ship held out interest. Meanwhile, several people volunteered to go pick up the sign for Hume.

Hume said he’s making arrangements with someone who has a pickup truck to go get the sign, and Hume and Cohen had finally connected over text message by mid week. (Cohen said Wednesday Hume told him there would be a reward.)

A few people offered to show Cohen around the Shore, buy him dinner.

Hume, a guy often at the heart of controversy from his little sunset-kissed end of the earth, such as when he defied state orders and opened his gift shop during the lockdown, or vowed to continue playing God Bless America when people and teams were canceling Kate Smith over racist songs she sang, found his heart warmed by events.

“I feel like in a way he’s one of the good Samaritans and heroes in this small thing where a sign from Cape May Point ended up in Philadelphia,” he waxed expansively about Cohen. “Who knows why people do crazy things?”