A Site for Shore Eyes

Wildwood now wants to create a parking authority to oversee the possible construction of parking garages. With taxes out of control with no end in sight, additional debt just seems like a great idea at this time.

The mayor, possibly with trowel in hand, said the city will need more parking once the high-rise hotels (which most sane people seem to oppose) come into play. He said the city doesn’t have enough hotel rooms to support the new convention center, and that they face the prospect of losing some convention groups. This is old news, because the city has already lost one group – the firefighters who looked around and wondered what happened to all the motels.

Thinking along these lines is sort of like someone bumping off his parents, then demanding financial aid because he’s an orphan. Wildwood had more than enough motel rooms before condomania struck. The island was enjoying a resurgence after becoming the Doo-wop Capital of the World, because of the unprecedented number of sixties-era motels and other buildings. Motel owners thought about it, then decided to tear down the old structures and replace them with condos. Most of them made a bundle by doing so, especially since prospective buyers at the time thought the condo units were worth at least twice as much as they should have been.

Many of these new real estate moguls thought they would make out by buying condos and renting them out for thousands of dollars per week. Oops! They somehow forgot that Wildwood offered something for people not willing to spend vast amounts of money for a vacation, that is, something different from what was offered from Stone Harbor to Ocean City. So now many of the converted motels are operating just like motels, and fetching rates in line with those of motels. Over a hundred doo-wop motels disappeared forever. The Rio, a hundred-unit structure, went the way of the wrecking ball, along with the surrounding properties, and the lot has sat ugly for a few years now. CAFRA rejected the application for a 27-story hotel, pretty much saying, “Hey, this ain’t Atlantic City!”

If the kite flyers, many of whom stayed at the Rio for its convenience and camaraderie, find wind elsewhere, their East Coast Championships might also blow up or down the coast to a new locale. After all, this wasn’t the place of choice for the Wright Brothers.

The island will probably see high-rise hotels in the future, just as it saw an imitation pedestrian mall that destroyed the business district. The former business owners along Pacific Avenue were more than happy to have paid for the bricks given away free to residents who wanted them. The city then installed new silly-looking sidewalks, then the current sidewalks that aren’t quite as silly looking. The rocket ship street signs yielded to silly-looking palm tree street signs. The mayor claims his concrete company was excluded from participating in any of this.

You might wonder why the same characters keep getting elected in the city, when most people seem to reject the idea of high rises and other schemes. The answer is rather simple. Summer residents who own property are excluded from voting, but not from paying taxes. You would think they would have a say in how their tax dollars are spent, but they don’t. It seems logical that a person should only be allowed to register to vote in one location, but it also seems logical that exceptions should be made for local elections when a person owns property in that locale.

So now Wildwood has almost everything it needs, including giant beach balls. All it now lacks are the high rises, motels, and streets that don’t shake your teeth loose while driving around town. The city is also going to increase parking meter rates. Seems that all of those new condos required off-street parking, resulting in street parking spaces disappearing where rooming houses once stood.

NJ’s Governor Corzine wants to close many of the state parks, and many of the same people who voted for him are protesting. The proposed salt water fishing license requirement is sure to be another crowd pleaser. The state seems to have a real knack for promoting tourism, and the smoking ban in the casinos has already sent gamblers packing for the Pennsylvania parlors. Many out-of-towners will never revisit Atlantic City after the state closed the casinos due to budgetary problems a couple of years back. The escape toll is another delight for those returning to Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York. Yes, it’s mostly just a one-way thing. They let you in for free.

And how many have already vowed to never return to the Wildwoods? Some will always come back, living on memories, many based on now non-existent places. When the high rises come they may work, but they hardly represent the shore vacation sought by vacationers. Anyone who has been to Myrtle Beach knows the difference.

Ironically, the laughing gulls returned the day after I wrote my previous article. Well, some of them did, and then they disappeared when the bad weather set in. It’s possible they’ve taken refuge in a motel room, but it’s not that likely, because it’s hard to find a motel on the island these days.

Obviously, they operate on the calendar theory rather than the climate theory, or else they would have stayed in Myrtle Beach, or wherever it is they go for the winter. It’s supposed to be springtime here, but due to global warming, we’ve had rather cold weather this month. That’s what the global warming alarmists say – that the fact that global temperatures have dropped since 1998 proves that the Earth is warming.

All of our faucets in the house are hooked up backwards, I’ve discovered. When I open the spigots marked hot, hot water comes out, and cold water comes out of the ones marked cold. The thermostat is also on the blink, because when I increase the setting it gets warmer in the house. It’s apparent that neither the plumber nor the HVAC man (actually, he’s the same dude) is familiar with the global warming concept.

The higher than normal tides played a role in the disappearing seagulls, and even the herring gulls, who stayed through the winter after attending an Al Gore rant, headed for higher ground. Luckily, none of the seasonal gulls bothered building nests, which would have been washed away as soon as they were completed.

It’s also possible they were scared away by Debra’s stuff. A large, white thing, probably some type of plastic, lodged in the marsh grass during the high tide. I asked a friend what he thought it was, and he said it was Debra’s. I asked him who Debra was, and he said it was nobody. I mentioned again that he said it was Debra’s, and he agreed that it was, but insisted that it wasn’t a person. He said it was just Debra’s, you know, floating trash, like flotsam. I asked if he meant debris, and he said I could say it how ever I wanted, but it looked like Debra’s to him.

Rumor has it that about a thousand laughing gulls are considering bidding on one of the condos due to be auctioned off next month. They amassed considerable wealth during their stay in Myrtle Beach, and hope the condo developer will accept bits of pizza crust and popcorn, both of which could become valuable if the national forced ethanol project continues. They insist that pizza crust will become scarce, or at least more expensive, due to the wheat shortage, and that popcorn is more efficient than unpopped corn in making ethanol. As of this writing, neither of the claims has been verified, but it sounds as logical as anything the government can come up with.

They also recently attended a council meeting in Wildwood proper, and their attempt at convincing the mayor that both pizza crust and popcorn have been used successfully as aggregate substitutes in concrete was met with raucous laughter. My alert research assistant just informed me that she attended the meeting and no one laughed at the gulls’ suggestion. She said the raucous laughter actually occurred during the presentation, because that’s the gulls’ only way of communicating.

A contingent of herring gulls challenged the claims, strutting indignantly across the table while pointing out that neither pizza crust nor popcorn contained any significant structural properties. They added that as far as they knew, they could be used as substitutes for Styrofoam peanuts, but had to be used rather quickly, especially in the case of the pizza crusts. They did, however, state that broken clamshells had been used in the past in concrete, and that they were sitting on a massive pile of them, just waiting for the right opportunity to come along. This actually was met by raucous laughter, and created quite a flap. When the other gulls finally quieted down, the mayor said that he was well aware of the structural properties of broken clamshells. He further pointed out that concrete on the island was only expected to last a few years before being replaced.

Council tabled the matter and moved on to more important business. One of the members suggested replacing the goal posts at the local athletic field with custom-made goal posts that looked like skate egg cases. A resident pointed out that to do so would probably cause an increase in injuries when players tried to run through the goal posts. Another councilman said there was no porpoise to the silly-looking palm tree street signs, and suggested adding a dolphin. That was voted down, and a discussion ensued concerning renaming Susquehanna Avenue to Bobby Rydell Boulevard, because it’s easier to spell, especially if you use the Blvd abbreviation. A council member pointed out that they should first consider renaming Youngs Avenue to Olds Avenue, because the present name wore out about sixty years ago. He also wanted to correct the spelling of Taylor Avenue to Tailor Avenue. One of the residents wanted to know what they were getting for their ever-increasing tax dollars. The mayor stated that they were considering a giant flashing sign across Rio Grande Avenue that reads, “Watch the Tram Car Please!” A motel owner asked why they had Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Avenues, but no Indian Avenue. The mayor pointed out that there’s already an Indian Trail running from Route 9 to Delsea Drive, albeit that it isn’t actually on the island.

They adjourned after failing to come up with a suitable location for more giant beach balls, which are currently taking up space in an undisclosed location. One of the citizens suggested where the beach balls could be forcibly placed, but the suggestion was ignored.

The seagulls did what many citizens have wanted to do for a long time. They left their calling cards on the seats and on the floor.

While awaiting the return of the laughing gulls for the summer season I watched some National Geographic specials and also read some news headlines on the internet. They all pertained, in one way or another, to how life began in some primordial soup, mmm-m, mmm-m good!

I think their theories are a bunch of hogwash, although I’ve failed in finding either hogwash or primordial soup in any of the stores. Campbell’s says they haven’t carried any of the latter for millions of years.

We now know that Martians once grew peaches, or at least that’s what I got from the story. Scientists have somehow linked some microscopic fibers in peach fuzz to Martians, because both the Earth and Mars either have or may have once had, salt deposits. This theory makes a lot of sense if you happen to be a crack addict, and I suspect that most scientists fit this category, or maybe they’re still using LSD. I think that’s called, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” research, and I can see how that could readily lead to Martians growing peaches in Georgia.

This proves, at least in my mind, that your typical Martian had hair, which explains their keen interest in fuzzy fruit. So far, they’ve found no evidence of orchards on Mars, but the various rovers they’ve sent up there haven’t figured out how to gain entrance to the vast underground cities likely to exist there.

But enough of that – let’s get back to the primordial soup, which also makes quite a bit of sense, when you really think about it with an enhanced mind. It all started with a bunch of minerals floating around, growing tired of having no self mobility. They decided to join forces and become amoebas and parameciums. For a few thousand years, or maybe millions of years, they enjoyed dividing and multiplying. Eventually, they wondered if maybe there weren’t more to life than simple mathematics, so they started solving complex equations, which they called algae bra (I don’t know where the second word came from), later shortened to algebra.

While solving for an unknown, an amoeba and paramecium got stuck together and when they divided one of the terms they evolved to a pair of brine shrimp, but it wouldn’t be until the 1950’s, during the advent of comic book advertising, that they became known as sea monkeys. This in itself seems to prove that monkeys didn’t evolve from sea monkeys.

During the early, formative years, they enjoyed complete freedom, with no natural or unnatural predators. It would be millions of years before they figured out how to make predators, but when they reached that stage they became the only food source of the more evolved creatures they created, such as guppies and black mollies.

My research assistant just asked me what amoebas and parameciums ate, and what brine shrimp ate, if there wasn’t anything to eat? No one ever asked me that before, and I’m not really certain when Flintstones vitamins first came on the scene, so I’m going to have to do some more research before I finish this. For life to begin, wouldn’t the life have to have some source of nourishment? None of this is making much sense now.

Okay, here we go. The laughing gulls evolved from eggs. I’m quite certain of that, because I’ve seen it happen. The eggs evolved from the laughing gulls, because I’ve seen that also. I’m not sure which came first, but it may have been the chicken. Or the egg. Who cares?

I do know that the gulls will be back soon, and they laugh at everything, including bad jokes and bad stories. I hope they read this.

Meantime, I think I’ll go back to reading the Bible. It’s making a lot more sense now.