With summer's last call, nostalgia and cold beer at Sea Isle's iconic Springfield Inn

The long white building at 43rd Street and Pleasure Avenue in Sea Isle City is not the place you go to see and be seen. It's not the place for trendy cocktails or haute cuisine.

The Springfield Inn is, however, the place where the bartenders who've been handing you Miller Lites every summer since you were old enough to drink them ask how the kids are doing. It's the place to join a sing-along with your favorite cover band, the spot where you people-watch on the Promenade with a plastic cup in your hand.

"It's the place where people can forget everything else," said Missy Light Dougherty, a second-generation bartender, who's worked at the Springfield for over 20 years. "People work very hard for their vacations, and when they're there, they forget what's going on in the outside world. It's very joyful."

The Springfield opened 45 years ago, when Joe Bisciotti bought a restaurant that he eventually turned into a beach bar; for a time, his family lived in a house attached to it. His three daughters took over after Bisciotti's death in 1995. This summer, nine family members still poured drinks, cooked food, ordered liquor, booked bands, and managed payroll.

Customer nostalgia typically runs high on Labor Day weekend, but perhaps even more so this year. The Springfield's future is uncertain — redevelopment plans have been approved that would allow the building to be razed and replaced with a bar, restaurant, and condominiums, but the family has not decided if or when those plans might go forward. (They have already booked entertainment for next summer, though.)

The bar was packed Saturday, even before the sun had gone down. Crowd favorites the Juliano Brothers sang "Thunder Road" inside. Outside at the Carousel bar, a group of longtime friends said they hoped the drinks they raised would not be their last.

"They better not tear this down," said Kate Moran, 55, of Thornton.

For Bill Connelly, the Springfield has meant summer for most of his 58 years. When he was young, he came for the Rage Band, and he and his girlfriend, Lori, loved it when the band covered Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love."

"We made that our wedding song," said Connelly. It made them think of happy times in Sea Isle.

Many of the people at the bar on Saturday had a story of what the place had meant to them.

Nancy Shea's son got married there: "The way they decorated it, you'd never know it was the Springfield," said Shea, 52, who lives just outside Sea Isle in South Seaville.

Shea's sister-in-law Maggie Farley, 56, said the place "just feels like home. It's on the beach, it's fun. We're here all the time."

The low ceilings, red barstools, even the grungy beach-bar bathrooms — they mean something to people, reminders of their week at the Shore or the time they bought their kid a drink on her 21st birthday.

Even before Jeff Cooney married into the Bisciotti family, he knew the Springfield, where his parents would go on Wednesdays for Irish night. Now that he's spent years helping his wife, Betsy, and sisters-in-law Terry Eidenberg and Joanne Bisciotti run the place on summer weekends, he understands its appeal even more.

"I think people go there because it hasn't changed at all," said Cooney, who works in finance for Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com. "They stuck with a business model that worked for them. The bartenders know you, and they know what you're drinking."

Running a business that keeps you at work until 3 a.m. most nights and requires that all your money be made over half the year is not easy. When the Springfield is open — from when temperatures start to warm in April until they cool in October — every wedding invitation must be turned down, every child's sporting event goes unwitnessed. It's about family and tradition, Cooney said.

Dougherty is one of four families who have had at least two generations work for the Springfield. Her father, George Light, was a fixture at the bar for 38 years. Light, who retired a few years ago, began working for Joe Bisciotti the summer after he sold his own bar in Sea Isle — then the Dolphin, now Shenanigans.

Light remembers when Joe Bisciotti, a singer himself, always had a microphone and several places to plug it in stationed around the place. He loved that, the way it made people feel.

"All of us sang — we passed the mic from bartender to bartender," Light said. "We'd all do the chorus, and if we recognized a customer and they were a regular and could carry a tune, they'd get the mic, too. The place is just so comfortable."

With the Springfield's next chapter still unknown, Dougherty has fielded her share of questions and misty-eyed customers this summer.

"That just makes you appreciate the moments a little bit more," she said. "We're celebrating what the Springfield means to people, and what it will continue to mean to them."