Theory #1: Wildwood is like Miami Beach

20Jun08

Here’s the first of the many theories that will eventually make their way onto this little website. But in reality it’s just a shameless plug for my first published piece as a professional writer. Thank you to Claire Madigan for the assignment.

I’m not sure where the Copacabana stuff came from….

In researching the story, I was struck by how much Wildwood has maintained its character as the “popular” (read: lower middle-class) beach. Sometime after the ’60s, though, the charm of this group waned–instead of packing doo-wop clubs, they were just downing six-packs and getting into fights. Any progress Wildwood makes on going upscale is likely to happen in a similar sort of way to what’s gone on in my old NYC neighborhood of the Lower East Side, where all the expensive restaurants and red-velvet clubs haven’t been able to scrub the grit off the area’s storied streets. It reminded me of another Time Out New York piece I read a few months ago about a map showing the number of LES bars… in 1882. Wildwood could use a nice beach bar or two and a restaurant that doesn’t specialize in fried fish or carbo-loading, but no matter what happens, it will never turn into Avalon or Cape May. And that’s a good thing.

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