My five-year-old grandson informed me this morning that he does not enjoy fishing. That’s how he said it. Not that he hates it or can’t stand it. He just doesn’t enjoy it. He has a funny speech impediment that his siblings all shared when they were small, something to do with the soft palette, and this makes everything he says just a little more fascinating, but also sometimes hard to parse.
I’d asked him to sit and speak with me, and we were discussing his summer thus far. He’d been to the beach, swam in his pool, and was enjoying his bike, but when I asked about fishing, he informed me that he does not enjoy it.
I also, do not enjoy fishing.
It’s not that I actively dislike it and it’s certainly a thrill to reel a fish in. I have had enjoyable times on land and in boats, trying to catch a fish and I have fond memories of those experiences. I just don’t enjoy it enough to think of ever doing it again. I’ll pass.
My grandson likes boats, though, he went on to say. He wanted to be clear on this point, presumably so he wasn’t left behind the next time his family went out. He explained that this is why his daddy had recently sold their fishing boat and bought a ski boat. He and his two sisters didn’t enjoy fishing, just his older brother. But they all like going out on the boat.
I’m not entirely sure what the precise difference is on these boats, but one is clearly designed for fishing while the other is for pulling people behind them at high speeds with incredible torque, so that the person behind the boat is able to pop out of the water and skim across the surface with the use of skis, wakeboards, or a tube. It’s a matter of power and shape, I understand, but also the ride.
When a rider falls while being pulled behind a boat, they look like someone tossed a Ken doll in the air, limbs all askew, spinning head over heels. When you fall at high speeds, the surface of the water becomes a solid and you skip across it like a stone. There’s nothing about it that looks fun to me. Instead, it looks like something dreamt up by some chiropractor to pay for their summer cottage on the Cape.
I don’t care much for boats, either, I’m afraid. I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s like standing in front of an industrial fan as someone squirts dirty hose water at you while the floor buckles beneath your feet. It’s incredibly dangerous, mostly because of the other boaters, but also because of the creatures that live in the sea and who are more than happy to take a bite out of you on the off chance you’re something they’d like to eat. Finally, there’s always the very real possibility of drowning, which is not something I’d like to experience. I don’t hate boats, I just don’t enjoy them in the same way that others do.
I do like sailboats, but most sailors I’ve met are odd ducks who enjoy owning a sailboat more than they like actually sailing one. They’re always working on it but never actually sailing it. The romance of it intrigues us all, but a precious few actually do anything about it on regular basis. It’s the Peloton of the boating world. They mostly collect dust.
The one thing I do actively hate are PWCs, or what are more commonly called Jet-Skis. PWC stands for Personal Water Craft, as Jet-Ski, and Sea-Doo are brand names. They’re the snowmobile of the sea, a menace to society, and should unquestionably be outlawed by the Geneva Convention and the ICC. It’s like giving an eight year old a double espresso and a kazoo and then letting them loose at a funeral.
Step Into Liquid
I’m not sure I get everyone’s endless fascination with water; being on it, near it, or in it. I buy being near water, I suppose, but I’m not sure it’s always all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve had a lovely time in the desert and the mountains and didn’t feel the need to constantly be surrounded by water. I really do enjoy where we live and am constantly amazed by the ocean and the marsh, but it’s not all a relaxing picnic. I’ll tell you all about the greenheads, mosquitoes, gnats, and black flies some other time.
I don’t like swimming pools. Not being in them or around them, especially if there are children involved. I’m full of anxiety that someone is going to certainly crack their skull open and their brains will spill out. There’s simply too much running and jumping for creatures with no real depth perception; ones who regularly run into things and fall down for no apparent reason. The whole thing just sounds like a bad idea. I have floated around in countless pools while on vacation in tropical locales and no one can be drinking that much cerveza without having to leave to use the restroom. Everyone is peeing in the pool and we all know it. If I need to cool down, I’ll get under an umbrella.
Neither, am I a fan of baths, hot tubs, or immersing myself in lakes, ponds, or even the ocean. Not anymore, anyway. I’m not entirely sure when or why this happened. It’s not a phobia, exactly. I just no longer enjoy it. I don’t like the shock of getting in or the discomfort of getting out, and I don’t like sitting around in a wet swimsuit, no matter what it’s made out of. I used to surf regularly, and would jump in a pool whenever I was near one. I’ve swam in countless lakes, oceans, creeks, and rivers. It was all fine. Over time, I simply lost interest. I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve done my time and I’m good.
I’ve never enjoyed a hot tub. They might as well be a Petri dish filled with deadly bacteria, and always felt a bit raunchy. Why is that supposed to be a sexy thing? What are people doing in there? Strangers will get in one together. That’s seriously just taking a bath together without the soap but with a good chance of coming away with some sort of yeast infection. I’ll pass.
Ponds and lakes are scumming and squishy. There are places that have worms in the water that crawl up your penis and eat their way to your brain, or something like that. The ocean is okay to a point, but it’s often shockingly cold, which I don’t find bracing. It just makes me angry. Plus there’s always something brushing past your leg or pinching your toes, not to mention the stinging jellyfish.
I’m not even going to get into how inconceivably massive it is, or much life is in there. It’s like swimming in a massive aquarium, one that includes sharks. Plus the ocean will kill you the moment you’re not paying attention, even if you know what you’re doing. It’s like wrestling a friendly grizzly bear. One wrong move or a break in focus, and that’s a wrap for your ass.
Sea Bugs
One of the reasons people come to my little part of the world is the crustaceans—namely crab and lobster. Our crabs are Blue Claws, what some people call Maryland Crabs. They are native to the area and if I really wanted to I could probably go catch dinner right now. For lobster, I’d need a boat and assorted gear, but you can catch crabs from a dock with a $6 trap if the conditions are right.
I don’t really care for either.
I’m fine with lobster meat as a concept, but for the cost of it, it’s completely wasted on me. You’re better off serving me chicken. The way people drown lobster in butter makes me think they’re not all that fond of it either. If you dunk just about anything in melted butter, it’s going to taste pretty decent. I suspect what people like about eating lobster is the near carnal ferocity of tearing them apart and eating them with your bare hands. It’s one of the more animalistic things we do at a dinner table, even in a fine restaurant. I also think that diners like that it’s a luxurious delicacy. It makes them feel special. You often see people who are trying to impress the table order an enormous lobster, which is utter madness. That’s just a tough, old bird. What you really want are the smallest lobsters allowed by law. They’re going to be tender and sweet. Bigger is not always better.
One thing I’ll never understand is the Lobster Roll, which is really a New England thing but they sell them here too. I’d heard about them for years before I finally had one and at first I thought I was being punk’d. It’s essentially lobster meat, usually mixed with a little mayo, celery salt, lemon juice, and pepper, then served on a hot dog roll. I shit you not. A fucking hot dog roll. Not some artisanal bit of bakery either. We’re talking ballpark frank material. The one I had was nothing more than lobster meat cooked on a flat top and shoved into a roll and handed to me for $20. I still can’t believe anyone makes a fuss about this. It’s an enormous sea bug on a bun. People go mad for them, like it’s some gourmet shit.
I feel a little better about crab meat. I like a good crab cake now and then, and it’s nice in soup and pasta, but I don’t see why anyone would put it on top of a perfectly good steak. That’s like putting salmon on your ribeye. Pick a lane, I say. Fuck all this surf and turf nonsense. I’m convinced this was the brainchild of some restauranteur who discovered he could sell two high-priced dishes at once for an astronomical fee to assuage some dork’s ego. It’s too much of everything.
I’ll eat crab here and there, but I have zero interest in picking the meat from their pointy dead bodies. It’s not like I’d sit there and eat it if you picked them for me, either. It’s like eating peanuts out of the shell. Presumably, the effort is half the fun. This is one thing I wish I enjoyed more because I recognize the communal activity and the fact that you can’t eat crabs in a hurry. It requires time and patience. No one eats a bushel of crabs quickly, and the Old Bay seasoning is so salty that you are forced to wash it down with buckets of ice cold beer. I see why people like it. I just don’t.
The Boardwalk
New Jersey isn’t the only place to have a boardwalk, but we were the first and have been doing it the longest. The Atlantic City Boardwalk opened in 1870, just ten years after the end of the Civil War. It was the year the JD Rockefeller started Standard Oil. The US population was all of 38 million people, and we had just let the state of Georgia back into the Union, finally dissolving the last of the Confederacy. The country was booming and Atlantic City was hopping, so we built an elevated wooden sidewalk at the beach. You could argue it was the first mall. There were shops and hotels, bawdy houses and casinos, bars and carnival games. The well heeled and peasants alike would walk the boards in the clean, salt air and marvel at it all.
Ironically, the boardwalk wasn’t originally designed as a pedestrian causeway, but as a solution to a grating problem. Business owners were tired of people tracking sand into their hotels and places of business, so a train conductor by the name of Alexander Boardman conceived of a seasonal eight foot wide wooden sidewalk as a barrier between the beach and the businesses. It grew from there.
It’s a bit different today, but maybe not so much. Imagine you took away all the well-dressed people with money and class, then replaced them with the dregs of society, hired foreign, seasonal workers to operate all the businesses, and you trafficked mostly in gaudy t-shirts, funnel cakes, pizza, ice cream, and carnival games. There would still be casinos but there would be nothing classy about them. Just a bunch of degenerate slobs hunched over slot machines, smoking in the dark—with a sunny beach and sparkling ocean just outside.
My favorite boardwalk to hate on is the Wildwood Boardwalk, which is massive at 2.5 miles long, but still less than half the length of Atlantic City’s. Despite the city crumbling around it, Atlantic City still draws a certain amount of people with means, whereas Wildwood does not. It’s the playground of the poor and disenfranchised, and it shows.
Nowhere have you seen such a display of bad taste and borderline criminal fashion choices than you’ll see on any day of the summer while taking a stroll on the Wildwood Boardwalk. It’s truly spectacular. It’s like hanging out at a Greyhound Bus terminal in Toledo at 3am, only no one is wearing any clothes, it’s broad daylight, and most of them are oddly sober. I’m not saying it’s not fascinating, but it’s more like paying to go inside the freak show tent at the carnival. You’re gonna see some shit you can’t unsee and it’s unlikely you’ll come away pleased with your decision or your opinion of humanity.
A lot of locals in New Jersey like to “walk the boards” with their families on Easter. Others will take their kids to the amusement parks and waterslides once or twice a year, but it’s mostly just one huge tourist trap full of tasteless merch and hateful food. If you get tired of the boardwalk, you can always go the beach—it’s just a half mile away across sand that is only slightly cooler than the surface of the sun.
Fireworks
I’m not anti-fireworks. I don’t have any terrorized pets or belief that setting them off should be criminalized. If I could sit on my porch and watch them, I probably would. What I’m not going to do is fight a crowd and struggle to park, all just to stand on a beach or in a park and look up at something I’ve already seen a hundred times before. It’s really just not all that impressive, to be quite honest.
The technology certainly is and I don’t know how they do it or why they don’t blow themselves up, but we know what they look like, and how they sound. There are no real surprises when it comes to fireworks. Just a question of how long they’ll go on. Honestly, I wouldn’t cross the street for that.They won’t let you turn your back porch light on if the turtles are nesting, but you can carpet bomb the sky any time you like.
The Beach
I like the beach. I truly do. I appreciate the power and majesty of the ocean, and on a hot summer day, there’s almost always a nice breeze and you can put your feet in the water (this, I will do). I enjoy packing light and spending 4-5 hours reading, listening to music, sometimes a ballgame—and snoozing. I bring along a beach chair, a thermos of ice water, a small bag with my lunch and beach stuff, and a beach umbrella. I don’t always use, or even bring the umbrella, but they can be quite handy when you want to get out of the sun. Your own personal oasis. The best part about the beach, I’ve learned from my wife, is that there’s nothing else to do. You’re doing it. Lie back and enjoy the nothingness.
In the early and late parts of the season, what we call our shoulder seasons, it’s quite civilized and lovely. The gulls laugh and the dolphins play. Occasionally you’ll see an osprey hunt or a pelican glide by. Banner planes drone by advertising ice cold $2 beers, luxury real estate, and personal injury attorneys. The roar of the ocean acts as an enormous white noise machine, allowing you to almost believe you’re the only one there. You can enjoy the beach in your own little bubble.
The summer season, in this part of the world, unofficially runs from Memorial Day (May 25) to Labor Day (Sept 7), but doesn’t really kick into gear until after July 4th. This is when all the kids are out of school and the beach towns are packed to the gills. This is also when most of the businesses need to make all their money. There’s a lot of pressure for the weather to be nice and for the beach towns to be packed. They basically need to make their year in a two month sprint.
This is when I find it rather intolerable.
There is a horrible trend I’ve observed, which is the attempt to reserve space on the beach in advance of some later time when you might feel like using it, but denying it to others until you do. It’s not the most selfish thing I’ve seen humans do, but it’s up there. You see this at resort hotels where families will take over a section of lounge chairs early in the morning, so that it’s available to them whenever they come back down hours later. It’s the snotty rich kid telling you that he’s claimed “all these.” For this, I would consider feeding people to lions once more.
You used to see this on the beach occasionally, a few empty chairs set out by people staying nearby, but now the wealthy are paying local beach services to set up for them. They don’t even do it themselves. They just roll on down whenever they feel like it to find a little pavilion with beach chairs all set up for them, then someone comes and cleans up their mess after they leave. They don’t have to carry anything or worry about any of it. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do in their multi-million dollar beach house, but this is a public beach and there are no reservations here.
What I want to do is fold up the chairs, take down the tent, then put it all in a neat pile up near the dunes. If you’re not minding it, you don’t have any control over it. I think we should treat unattended furniture on the beach like we do unattended luggage at the airport. Immediately remove it, then consider whether or not to incinerate it.
It’s not just the setting up early, it’s the staking out of an enormous section of the beach with large tents, which they often don’t actually use, but sit in the sun or down near the water and use the tent as their own little living area. This is not just despicable but undemocratic. It’s class warfare by those who think they deserve more than everyone else. They call it “beach spread” and it doesn’t end there.
My annoyances at the beach are legion. I’m fine with the sand, the sun, and the ocean. I don’t even mind the gulls. What I can’t stand are the people. Rich, entitled assholes who are clueless and self-involved. There are a lot of them. Of course, if there weren’t, the entire region would be destitute since tourism is what drives the economy at the shore. There is hardly any other industry, just a little commercial fishing, so I’m not suggesting we discourage tourism, just that their behavior could use some improvement, possibly with the aid of a sharp stick and a bad temper.
Unlike social conservatives, I do not expect everyone to manage their affairs according to my little peccadillos, but once you start infringing on my pursuit of happiness, that’s a different business altogether. Most of my annoyances are purely personal and do not affect the happiness of others. You may wander the boardwalks, dine on lobster rolls, and make a nuisance of yourself in general, as long as you leave me out of it, and that is mostly the way it is. People are free to pursue endless nonsense and I am free to abstain.
This is part of the trouble of living in paradise. You imagine that you would see the best in people, being as they are on vacation and trying to enjoy themselves, and there was a time when I thought of tourists as happy, if not delusional, idiots—clueless but harmless. Something has changed, and not for the better.
I blame social media, mostly. There is tremendous pressure on people to “have a good time.” They are all vacation-maxxing, trying to squeeze every last ounce of joy out of their overpriced outing, or die trying. It’s exhausting to watch people try so hard to enjoy themselves. They’re a fish out of water and yet working so hard to convince everyone that they enjoy gasping for air. It’s too much of everything all at once and if anything goes wrong, they lose their shit. Just angry and sunburned and eating overpriced seafood they don’t particularly care for, throwing money at everything in a feeble attempt to find joy.
I don’t care for it.