Awesome. One word. No meaning. At least, not here in the United States, where it's bandied about willy nilly to describe everything from the size of the known universe to a cheeseburger . However, it's a word that kept reverberating as I walked around this most american of cities.
Ocean City. New Jersey with it's Cotton Candy, Ferris Wheel, shooting galleries, hot dogs, pinball, boardwalk, beach front, family-run motels, gelato and surreys. Awesome. Freakin' awesome.
The sun shone steadily, and the Atlantic was an inviting temperature for the first morning arrivals to the beach, staking their claim with parasols, coolers and towels.
The beach front stores had already woken up . Books, beach clothes and bad food were all there for the taking, along with every garishly colored chotchke imaginable, and before I could drag myself back to the motel, I already had three books, a souvenir lighter for a friend, and a hankering for some early morning ice cream. Time to go.
The motel, The Trade Winds, is a family-run, accidentally retro affair, given it's age. Everything clean and simple. Everything works, including the pool in the parking lot.
It felt a lot like the beach town setting for "Jaws", but without the blood or the shark, and as a dry town , it keeps the "Family" in "Family Holiday", and clearly, families have been flocking here for a long time -the boardwalk boasts businesses that were established in 1888 , and by necessity, it has been divided into lanes for joggers. walkers, bikes, and surreys. Indeed by mid afternoon, just crossing from the beach to the street demanded rapid neck movement, or maybe eyes in the back of your head
So if for just one day (or longer) you want to forget the job, the diet and the heavy traffic, I think I know a place where the gelato, the pizza slice and the lungful of fresh atlantic air will knock 'em all right out of your head.
Ocean City, NJ, you rock (dude).
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