🏖️ Let’s talk beach essentials | Down the Shore

On the Fourth of July, I packed a Styrofoam cooler with my beach essentials: cans of Mountain Dew and Coke Zero and carefully crafted turkey and cheese sandwiches. So clever, I thought: saving a bundle by only paying $3 for a disposable cooler.

Ah, hubris at its best.

So I put it in the car, drove from Philadelphia to North Wildwood, bought a bag of Sea Isle Ice from Wawa, and proudly packed it to the brim. After parking on the street (of course, not a much-closer parking lot, to save a few bucks), I walked the cooler the 0.6 miles to the beach, stopping often because I recently turned 35 and now my back hurts all the time.

Anyway, I finally made it to the beach, and when I plunked it down with an elongated and unnecessary sigh, it cracked. Snacks went everywhere. The ice evaporated into the sand.

It was at that point that I decided that a real cooler, with wheels and a handle for easy transport, is now at the top of my beach-essentials list.

Last week, we asked readers of this newsletter what they can’t live without when they visit the beach.

Bob Stokes, of Hatfield Pa., responded. And he included a doozy: “An electric flattop griddle for the preparation of family-style breakfast!”

“There is something to be said for the aroma of breakfast being cooked and mixed with the sea air,” Stokes said. “The pungent aroma blows in the early morning breezes up and down the Jersey shoreline. Most rental properties do not provide this appliance. Second to the griddle would be a sharp kitchen knife, which are also not found in most rental properties.”

But I want to hear from more of you wonderful readers. What else can’t you live without at the beach? What’s become your essential item? Send me your list by replying to this email, or find me on Twitter, and I will include the best offerings in a story to publish in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, some advice: Don’t skimp on the essentials.

— Tommy Rowan (🐦 Tweet me at @tommyrowan. 📧 Email me at downtheshore@inquirer.com)

🏨John Fetterman, Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who is vying to be the state’s U.S. senator, was called out by a conservative news site for bringing a taxpayer-funded security detail with him on a family vacation to Ocean City at the end of June.

🎰The Atlantic City casino workers union, Unite Here’s Local 54, reached tentative agreements with four casinos last week — Borgata Hotel & Casino, Harrah’s, Caesars, and Tropicana. And the Hard Rock casino reached agreement with Atlantic City’s main casino workers’ union on Saturday, completely removing any threat of a strike during the busy holiday weekend. A strike could have cost the first four casinos $2.6 million a day, the union, Local 54 of Unite, said here.

🎆A fireworks mishap on Monday shortened Sea Isle City’s Fourth of July celebration, planned from an ocean barge near the 50th Street beach. Good news is no one was hurt.

📜And Wildwood Crest Mayor Don Cabrera wants to appoint an official town historian. This person would maintain an artifact collection that would be housed in the local arts pavilion. Cabrera says the collection could include old municipal signs, fishing pier memorabilia, and chalk boards and desks from the old Philip Baker School.

👨‍🍳 Craig Laban picked six new restaurants in Wildwood and Cape May in part one of his annual Shore dining review. For part two, the restaurant critic’s coverage continues from Ocean City to LBI, where a wide range of places, from breakfast spots in Ventnor to old school Italian in Brigantine to Chilean street food and an oyster house in Beach Haven, feed the summer crowds.

🎾Spikeball, also called roundnet, is a popular beach game that continues to increase in popularity, so much so that Wildwood is hosting the Jersey Shore Spikefest on July 9 at Morey’s PigDog Beach Bar. The event will be held on the beach at the end of Mariners Landing Pier at Schellenger Avenue. Registration opens at 9 a.m. and games start at 9:30 a.m.

🦀 Seafood shacks: One of the best joys of a summer down the Shore is diving into an aluminum tin of fried clam strips or tipping down cold, briny oysters at a no-frills seafood shack. From Cape May to Point Pleasant, here are 11 of the best places to feast on fish — fried, grilled, steamed, or poached — down the Shore.

🍷 Wine tasting: And a friendly reminder to check out my guide to the best wineries at the Jersey Shore.

🍬And be sure to check out our look at how salt water taffy became a staple at the Jersey Shore.

Sandboni (noun). A machine, operated by municipal workers, that traverses the beaches along the Jersey Shore, typically consisting of a tractor pulling a contraption with metal tines that sweep the sand clean. We coined the term for the vehicle: the Shore’s “sandboni.”

At dusk, you can watch the sandboni flatten tons of sandcastles, and smudge out names and messages written by toes in the sand.

Congrats to Bernard Levinthal, who was first on the buzzer with the answer to last week’s trivia, with Elaine Shapiro Zamansky close behind. And to the handful of others who also knew that the Van Duyne family was the Jersey Shore brood responsible for building the fiberglass boats seen up and down the Jersey coast.

Here’s Bill Kent’s 1998 interview with Tom Van Duyne from the New York Times.

This week’s question: Ulysses S. Grant vacationed so often in this Jersey Shore town that he declared it the nation’s “summer capital” in 1869, starting a trend among sitting presidents (Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson).

And a few weeks after Garfield was shot at a Washington train station in July 1881, he was brought to this beachside town. Locals laid emergency rail tracks to guide Garfield’s train from the local station to the front door of his rented beachfront cottage, where he died 12 days later.

Which Jersey Shore destination was it?

A. Wildwood

B. Asbury Park

C. Cape May

D. Long Branch

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

Katie Keel Linso, who grew up on the Main Line but now lives in Boston (forgive her), sent in a lovely ode to her summers spent in Stone Harbor (and the first Rocky movie).

Evening walk on a sunset-lit Stone Harbor beach to the 96th Street movie theater, thrilled to see Rocky in 1977, slightly sunburned and probably too young for the movie by today’s standards. The sights and sounds of the Shore will never leave me. I finally got back recently, taking my Boston kids to visit Stone Harbor over 40 years later. Instead of a movie we had dinner at the Stone Harbor Burger Bar, on the site of the old movie theater. I tried to explain the nostalgia to my daughters, and thankfully they understood. Uncle Bill’s Pancakes where my parents met back in the ‘60s, drives by our rental house where so many family memories were made. It all came back to me, watching Rocky Balboa go in for one more round, the joy and innocence of being blissfully “down the Shore,” a walk to Hoy’s for some new flip flops, waiting in line at Springer’s for the same flavor of ice cream every time. Somehow that line winding around the block was never an inconvenience. And lastly running home on the beach, arms stretched over our heads singing “Gonna Fly Now.” Jersey Shore memories are with me forever.

📮 Send your Shore memory for a chance to be featured here, or tweet @amysrosenberg.

Thanks for reading this week. My colleague and friend Amy S. Rosenberg, The Inquirer’s resident Shore expert, will be back with you next week. See y’all on the boards.