Is the Jersey Shore ours? Yours? Nobody’s?

VENTNOR, N.J. — People sometimes arrive at the Jersey Shore like they’re expecting something more akin to a swimming pool, or the pool club they left behind in the burbs.

Seaweed, ew.

Flies! Can we get a schedule on when they will be biting?

Whoa, what is that thing that nipped at my toe?

Are all these shells on the beach an indication that something’s ... wrong?

Sometimes, the surprise of the ocean’s whim is more sublime.

For those disciplined enough to look up from their phones while sitting on the beach, or adventurous enough to be paddling out in the ocean, or kayaking, there can be the unexpected joy of a glimpse of dolphins swimming by, playing.

But did you notice?

With all the talk during the winter season about the coming wind turbine farms and whether they had any connection to a disturbing run of washed-up dead whales, about what a horizon is supposed to look like, about whether those wind turbine farms will spoil that view, I couldn’t help but think about more fundamental questions: Who is entitled to that view? What are those with that view, as a matter of property ownership, entitled to? What is the imagined future of the Jersey Shore?

Whose Jersey Shore is this?

Last summer, the Shore felt like it was becoming out of reach for all but the rich. Traditional working- and middle-class towns like Ventnor and Sea Isle bloated with new construction and upscale stores, all but pricing out longtime residents and visitors. Inflation and gas prices didn’t help.

Facebook groups were flooded with people who’d newly bought into towns, drowning out the locals who’d long considered the towns theirs, loaned out for the summer. The upscaling only reinforced the racial, ethnic, and economic homogeneity of so much of the Shore.

I watched a video created by Atlantic Shores, one of two companies planning wind energy farms, that projects how hundreds of wind turbines, ranging from 856 to 1000 feet high, will appear to people sitting on the beach from Long Beach Island down to Stone Harbor.

Frankly, I was surprised at just how visible they will be, but only on those days clear enough to see, which Atlantic Shores estimates at one day in four or five. (Another worry on those clear days: At sunrise, the turbines may briefly appear dark against the sky, especially from the Atlantic County beaches.) Atlantic Shores has proposed some alternatives to help with this.

I’ve thought long and hard about whether I would care, and asked a lot of people I know.

Would it outright spoil the view, send property values plummeting?

Would we feel liberated at the onset of alternative energy, or have a feeling in the pits of our stomachs that we had done something irrevocably wrong?

» READ MORE: Wind turbines and whale deaths spark conspiracy theories

Would the greater good that comes from alternative clean energy outweigh the impact of seeing the wind turbines at work?

After all, if you’re looking at the ocean nearly every day, walking the beach or boardwalk all year, like the locals, you know that the idea of a pristine horizon is more fantasy than not. There are other people, banner planes, beach replenishment rigs, piers, ships, clouds, and personal moods that all get in the way. Would a view of the wind farms every fourth or fifth day be terrible or thrilling?

Would it affect one of my most enjoyable beach rituals, taking my dog out on the beach (in the off-season!) and hitting a tennis ball to her during a trippy beach sunset?

My dog’s joy and stamina, the splashing in a cold ocean, that always-different sky, the music in my ears, it just fills me up with the essential stuff of life.

The biggest threat to that joy, though, is not a view of wind turbines in the distance.

It’s that many people, not to mention municipal ordinances, do not tolerate your (or my) dog’s off-leash, off-season joy. They see it as a threat to their own beach rituals of walking without the possibility of a dog getting in their way. There was an incident recently in Ventnor where someone accused another person’s dog of biting her. A very rare occurrence, but it sparked all the anti-dog sentiment.

One recent weekend, Ventnor police parked their SUV on the boardwalk with a flashing sign reminding people that dogs, e-bikes, and smoking were all prohibited on the boardwalk. A reminder, too, about who really gets the final say.

In other places, dogs run happily after their owners on waterfront promenades, unleashed even. The idea that an off-season beach is not an appropriate, let alone joyful and well-deserved, place for an unleashed dog is ingrained in Jersey Shore culture, just like the idea that the existing view of the horizon must be preserved for the people who own property or who lie on the beach and stare at it.

Is that truly the only way to look at it?