ANd then my calendar dinged and i saw that today is SUMMER SOLSTICE!!!!!!! Soooo Happy Solstice to all. According to the
Celtic Calendar (I'm sure you all have one hanging in the kitchen) today is the first day of summer (all your crops should be in by now) and it is the LONGEST DAY of the year. Doesn't that seem like it should be the middle of something? You work your way up to a point and it is down hill after that. Well the Farmers Almanac seems to thing so since they are asking the question , "Is this the beginning of summer, or Mid-Summer's eve????? Heavy questions, and I'm not wading into those waters.
Now if you are from New Jersey (we know who you are) and have lived "Down the Shore" you know this is all bunk. Summer at the shore starts Easter Sunday, and ends Thanksgiving Sunday. What??? you didn't know Thanksgiving was on Sunday????
That is "Tourist Season". They show up with pockets bulging with cash, just waiting to have it syphoned off into poor shore folks investment accounts. It is also the season that many locals avoid the beaches. Not just because of the BENNIES (if your from the NJ Shore you know what this means), but also because we are all working. YES Working at making your visit to our paradise fun and enjoyable. AND profitable for us.
YEars ago when i was a kid, Tourist Season was from Memorial Day
to Labor Day. Both were big celebrations along the Jersey Coast. We would mourn on Memorial Day and party on Labor Day. BUT then the Casino Boys started showing up and wanted year round tourism. Gambling, Floor Shows, Lounge Acts, Elder Fleecing. Atlantic CIty was transformed almost over night from a sleepy little shore ghetto with a crumbling boardwalk and decrepit hotels, to a one block wide mecca of gambling, glitz, and gaudy bad taste, bordered by the crumbling boardwalk on one side and the ghetto on the other side.
Ah yes, summer in Jersey. The Garden State Parkway (park being the descriptive word) at a crawl, or even standstill, all 10 lanes of it, for miles and miles on Friday night or Sunday afternoon. THe smell of over heated coolant in the air. Vehicles enshrouded by clouds of steam. Picnics and volley ball games being organized in the grassy median. Ah yes, Summer in Jersey.
Years ago the state tourism commission was looking for a new slogan, a tag line for the state.
Something that encompassed the entire state. A phrase that would really stick in the "out of staters" mind and draw them ( and their bulging wallets) back to Jersey for syphoning. If any of you have ever lived in a tourist area you know how locals can develop a sarcastic little edge to their speech. Tourists may not catch it, but other locals hear it loud and clear. Needless to say many of the tag line suggestions were not even considered. Phrases like "Bennies Go Home", "Save a beach, Bury a Shoebee today", and "Yes I'm a local, No i don't give directions" were eliminated early in the competition.Im not sure what happened to my slogan. It was short, to the point, and easy to understand. It could have limited the traffic jams on the GSP, raised revenue, held down the budgets of the small shore towns. All with a simple Jersianna thought put into words.
WELCOME TO NEW JERSEY, GIVE US YOUR WALLET AND GET THE HELL OUT
Grenville
8 comments:
I love the sarcastic signs. One of the more common ones here in the mountains is "Don't move here!"
Great post, funny to ! Yup summer here in Ontario Canada as well, hot & humid heat advisory as well, temps have been recorded in the 100s WOOWEE ! thats a scorcher ! Stay cool we are and have a great day !
That last line had me laughing out loud. I used to live in a seaside town. My Dad would always say, "Well, it's lovely to see them come (the tourists), but it's even lovelier to see them go." Having been a tourist I can see both sides of the equation.
You brought back memories, Grenville. In 1956/57 my husband was the official photographer for the city of Cape May ... not much money but (since we didn't meet until 1958) he was single and the perks were all in bikinis !!
Yep, I'm a tourist heading to the Jersey shore in a few short hours =)Your posts always make me laugh!!
We used to celebrate Midsummer on the longest day but they changed that to the first weekend after instead. So tomorrow starts our biggest (beside Christmas) holiday of the year.
But I can't say summer even really started here yet :-) But we reached over 71F today so I think it might have arrived even if it will turn already tomorrow again towards cooler and rainy weather.
Have a great day!
Christer.
Living in a tourist town I fully understand the love/hate relationship with all those visitors. The season here has stretched a little bit too, but not quite as far as New Jersey. Something about that snow that starts falling in October..... Today may officially be the first day of summer, but in my book it's the start of a downhill slide into the darkness of winter--but that's another story.
Even here, summer begins before summer begins. Winter does the same and also keeps going after it's supposed to end. I think our spring and fall seasons last about three hours each.
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