Excellent analysis here from Michael Smerconish. As longtime readers of this blog know, I am passionate about the Jersey shore and have often offered class-based analysis of “the shore (as we Jerseyans call it) here at the blog. Here is what I wrote back in 2008:
Last night we ventured out of our cozy middle-class haven and headed south to Wildwood. The change could not have been more striking. Wildwood became a vacation resort roughly around the same time as Ocean City, but its appeal has always been to a more ethnic, working class crowd. In fact, it is not unusual to hear long-time Ocean City vacationers make subtle and derogatory comments about how they never visit Wildwood.
Wildwood is known as the Jersey shore’s “doo wop” or “honky tonk” center. It is filled with 60s style beach hotels complete with fake palm trees, aqua doors, and pink roofs. The boardwalk has its share of t-shirt stands, body piercing shops, arcades, games of chance, and places where you can buy sausage and pepper sandwiches or fried Snickers. (My wife claims that the Hot Spot Restaurant, owned by Greek immigrants, has the best gyros she has ever tasted). With two large amusement piers filled with rides, there is an active youth culture here. The people on the Wildwood boardwalk have more color in their faces than those in Ocean City. Last night I heard at least five different languages being spoken by the strollers I passed. There is a vibrancy and life in Wildwood that is missing in Ocean City. It is far more representative of American life.
I have been reflecting today on what this all means. My grandparents always came to Wildwood because of the large Italian population that vacationed there in the post-war years. (There is also, for reasons still unclear to me, a very large group of French Canadians who come to Wildwood every summer). Yet most of my grandparent’s children and grandchildren have decided to vacation in places more like Ocean City. There is certainly something to be said here about both the class dimensions of the Jersey shore and, more generally, the relationship between social class and where a family, over the course of generations, tends to spend their vacations.
Watch: