Down the Shore

Going on vacation to the beach in New Jersey is largely pleasurable,

but with some reservations—if you can even get a reservation

By Mark Orwoll

AFTER I WRITE THIS, I am unlikely to get another invitation to the Ritz Paris. My true self will have been revealed in all its deeply proletarian ignominy. Here’s why.

I like the Jersey Shore.

Yep, the whole nine yards. The arcades and T-shirt shops (“Gym, Tan, Laundry!”), the amusement piers and $2 Happy Hour oysters, the rough surf and the constantly whistle-blowing lifeguards, the tomato-pie shops and the hordes of teens walking six abreast along the boardwalk. I love it all.

Fancy New Yorkers hear about this, and inevitably ask me, For God’s sake, man, why?! They want to know what I have against the Hamptons (even if only Hampton Bays) or Cape Cod or Nantucket or Watch Hill. Here’s my answer.

Because I don’t care. I like the Jersey Shore.

The Lay of the Land Beach

Trying to characterize the Jersey Shore in a single description is a failed enterprise before you even begin. There are as many kinds of shore towns as there are cars in the parking lot of the Jon Bon Jovi Rest Area off the Garden State Parkway (milepost 124). Ya gotcher suburban Spring Lake, the unofficial “Irish Riviera.” Ya gotcher Victorian-elegant Cape May, “the nation’s oldest seashore resort.” There’s the LGBTQ+-friendly Asbury Park, “making waves since 1871.” Then, creeping like a horseshoe crab up to the waterline only to die and frighten toddlers and old folks, we find Wildwood, whose motto is “Drunk and disorderly on the Skycoaster,” which was unwisely taken out of commission in October 2025.

Just kidding! It was November!

I grew up in Southern California, going to the pier at Huntington (shout-out to lifeguard station #3!), the Wedge at Newport, and the stony shores of Laguna. Perfect waves for surfing. Taco strips and red sauce on the boardwalk. Shooting the pier. I was not going to be much impressed by any other beach on earth, except possibly Waimea, Makaha, and the Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore. Other than that, pffft!

‘We’re saving money by going during Happy Hour. It’s not that hard to understand.’

But in college, like many of us, I was exposed to radical, unorthodox opinions. A young man, also named Mark, used to regale us with stories of Wildwood—the pretty girls, the cheap beer, the body surfing, the amusement rides. It all sounded so…magical. Granted, this was usually after three or four joints, when even a passing garbage truck seemed like a revelation from the Almighty.

But his stories had an impact. Wildwood. Even the name sounded cool. It was untamed and natural, just like me at age 20. Or so I thought.

After I moved to New York, my wife and I began going there with our pre-teen kids, along with my brother-in-law Jim and his young family. We stayed in cheap, crappy motels a block from the beach. They were so terrible that the toilets rocked from side to side when you sat on them. The living rooms had fold-out sofas (for the parents), the refrigerators had mold, the bedrooms had three beds smushed together (shove a passel of kids in there), and a family of five could barely cram in. Paradise!

Once we stayed at a Wildwood motel (the Dreadful Court Lodge, as I recall) that offered no breakfast. The motel next door (“Canadians Welcome!”) had chocolate and crumb donuts set out for their customers in the tiny lobby. My kids would casually walk over there, pretend to be guests, and return to our hovel with handfuls of pastries. I was mortified! I had set them on a life of perdition! Could a career of felony-grade larceny or politics be far behind?! I yelled at them to never, ever do it again! The donuts, by the way, were delicious.

After a long day of body surfing with the wives and kids, Jim and I would leave the families behind and go Happy Hour bar-hopping. We explained this to our wives by using economic logic. “We’re saving money by going during Happy Hour. It’s not that hard to understand.” Needless to say, when I returned to our crummy motel room, I stumbled inside hoping not to be noticed by Mrs. O. Fat chance.

A Wonderful World of Choices

One year, the wives decided that we should go upscale. No more Wildwood, with its tomato-pie shops, Kohrs ice cream stands, and hordes of rampaging boardwalk adolescents. No, no. Not for us. That year, we would go to Ocean City, NJ, “America’s Greatest Family Resort.”

The motto seems innocuous. Yeah, yeah, it’s great, yadda yadda. The problem was (and still is, in my opinion) that Methodist ministers founded the beachside settlement in 1879 as a “dry” town, where alcohol isn’t sold. Not on the boardwalk, not in the local restaurants, not in stores. Apparently, and I still find this hard to believe, this was done on purpose.

I ask you to picture Jim and me, a couple of handsome, virile young fathers standing on the Ocean City boardwalk at 5 p.m., worn out from body-surfing and boogie-boarding all day, our families tucked away safely in our semi-acceptable motel rooms. All we want is some $2 oysters and a couple of pitchers of beer. We don’t ask much.

What we DID ask, to the first dude who sauntered past us, was, “Hey man, where are the bars?”

Dude gaped at us. Swear to god, he gaped. “This is Ocean City,” he said. “It’s a dry town. You gotta go down to Avalon.”

Avalon. Ten miles south. In a car. Need I say we didn’t return to Ocean City the following year?

Sleazeside Heights. Not Judging!

Eventually, we traveled as our own solo family unit down the shore. We eventually focused on Seaside Heights. In the early 2000’s, The Jersey Shore reality-TV show on MTV was filmed there. You know, Snooki, JWOW, the Situation, et al. Classy, right? In 2012, Superstorm Sandy destroyed the over-ocean Casino Pier, leaving the Star Jet roller coaster barely poking above the surface of the rumbling ocean waters. Over Memorial Day weekend 2025, police arrested more than 70 adults and youths on charges of fighting, stabbing, and possibly littering. The entire boardwalk was closed down.

Seaside Heights is now our go-to beach destination.

Welcome to Seaside Heights! Summer fun starts here! The Star Jet roller coaster fell into the ocean during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. It almost seems like a metaphor. Source: Wikimedia Commons

We no longer book cheap motels with rocking-horse toilets. Instead, we rent overpriced airbnbs with dubious standards of cleanliness. But at least we can bring our dog, Penny. The waves are usually good; we’ll spend all day at the beach, eating sand-filled sandwiches, drinking warm sweet tea, and getting sun-burned. Ah, that’s the life for me.

Jim and his family don’t travel with us like in the old days when we would head out on a Happy Hour hunt every day at 5. But my kids are all adults now. I can go with them to Happy Hour. As long as I’m paying.

Look, I know there are drawbacks to Wildwood and Seaside Heights. But there’s one thing I can say in their favor:

At least they’re not Ocean City.

You can find older columns at markorwoll.substack.com