To the Editor:
Could someone please inform those in charge of the tourist locations on the Wildwood island (and, I’m sure, everywhere else that’s a vacation spot in New Jersey) that it’s not progressive, or even forward-thinking, to allow aggressive, pushy visitors (and, sadly, also sometimes locals, too) to blatantly flaunt the rules, and just kowtow to them, and remove the rule to accommodate their bratty disrespect.
I could provide many examples of this. I have been visiting this island for 40 years, and, years ago, all of the following things now tolerated – sometimes even encouraged – were against the rules (and, more importantly, the rules disallowing them were actually enforced!): allowing dogs on the beaches (during the summer season), on the boardwalk and in stores, allowing bikers to weave in and out of crowds recklessly on the boardwalk at all hours and, in my opinion, most egregiously, allowing ball-play by the shoreline on the beach.
I like dogs as much as the next person, but not when their owners allow their leashes to loosen as I’m approaching them on the boardwalk, and for the dog to nearly jump up on me, with the owners merely offering, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly.” Nor do I care for looking up from the book I’m reading on a quiet afternoon on the beach to see a dog charging toward me, unleashed.
Nor do I think it’s appropriate to have to share the already-cramped space of a small boardwalk shop with two dogs in strollers as their loud, obnoxious owners lazily stroll the aisles of the store, totally ignoring the dogs until they start loudly barking.
I can’t fathom why Wildwood hangs so many signs along the boardwalk path – not to mention announces the alleged “rules” of etiquette just about every 15 minutes on the speakers – about when bikers have to remove themselves from the boards, only not to ever enforce this rule at all. I see them whizzing by the police presence constantly, and nothing is ever said to them, after 12 or 1 or whatever time they pretend they’re supposed to remove themselves by – even as they do so (on regular AND electric bikes) as the boardwalk gets increasingly busier at dinnertime and later.
Today, the beach wasn’t very busy, and yet, directly in front of where I set up, a group of adolescents drifted to conduct a football game. I moved – both back and to the right, to take myself out of the path of their game, or the potential trajectory of their football. And yet, not five minutes later, their football landed 2 feet from my own feet.
The one who fetched it grumbled an apology, but I was livid, and told him off. If New Jersey leadership cared at all about tourists – and not just about money – they would 1) enforce the “rules” that actually used to be rules, and didn’t need air-quotes around them, and 2) institute a “quiet zone” on the beach so people who just want to read or relax and listen to the ocean, or maybe even take a nap, don’t need to constantly keep one eye out for unleashed dogs charging at them or immature, attention-seeking fools following them around to have an audience for their meaningless – and should be illegal – ball play.
But, then again, I guess when every other shop on the boardwalk is proudly touting marijuana and other illicit items, right as what used to be their core-targeted tourist, a family with young children, walks by, we have slipped further than anyone will ever admit – and maybe too far from which to recover.
Natalie McDevitt, Reading, Pa.
