WILDWOOD – Michelle Rutkowski, originally from a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, remembers stepping onto the Wildwoods boardwalk for the first time. Today, she dedicates her life to this place; she’s here every single day in the summer organizing, unloading cargo trucks, and making sure the ship sails smoothly at her boardwalk stores. But that first trip in 1987, with sights, sounds, and smells she had never encountered before, set the stage for what would become a retail empire.
“The boardwalk was loud and energetic, like me. I didn’t fit the bill in my small town for what a good girl should be. The boardwalk showed me a place where that was okay,” she told Do the Shore on a hot June afternoon, as she prepareD for the chaos of Barefoot Country Music Festival.
Michelle owns a series of retail stores along the boardwalk – Boardwalk’s Best, 5 Mile Marketplace, and Elby’s Variety Store – that cater to families. She has worked the boardwalk long enough to see it phase through trend cycles. That means smaller trends that come and go quickly, like the current Labubu fad, and larger ones, like changes in the socioeconomic groups attracted to the island.
She said that Wildwood was a drinking place in the 1980s. “It was money for nothing and chicks for free, everybody was here to party,” she said.
It pivoted in the early 2000s to a more family-friendly image. It’s swinging back, in some ways, to a party town thanks to juggernauts like Barefoot Country Music Festival that live large in visitors’ minds. That’s on top of new drinking spots on the boardwalk, including Honky Tonk Saloon and PigDog.
But Michelle, through it all, wants families to feel welcomed. She makes sure that all of her stores are clean and open, with well-organized shelves and affordable basics like sunscreen, diapers, aloe, and flip flops.
“When families come into your store, sometimes you’re saving their day. Their kid just peed his pants, the wife is fighting with her husband because ‘who paid for the parking?’ I love taking some of the tension out of their day. Those beautiful moments and memories really add up,” she said.
Michelle’s family first laid roots on the boardwalk for economic opportunity, which came first in the form of boardwalk arcade games. She remembers getting a card on her 15th birthday with two messages from her mom and dad. The first: “Congrats, just one more year until you can drive.” The second: “Ten hours a day, seven a week = $5000 at the family business.”
Her family put her to work right away. And she really worked those 70-hour weeks, all summer long, for many years. Her family operated boardwalk games like Gary’s Balloons and Titanic Frisbee at giant arcades like the now-defunct Greyhound Games, and Gambit in North Wildwood.
Most of Michelle’s summers were filled with a fear that, no matter how successful her businesses were, her leases would not get renewed.
“We were tenants our whole lives, we were year-to-year every year. It’s a tenuous way to live. You’re bearing your soul, working 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. for three months, and you don’t know! If the landlord gets a better deal, you’re out, and that’s business.”
Ironically, it took a tragedy for Michelle and her family to break the cycle. COVID, despite the illness and death, brought a slam-packed summer to the Wildwoods. 2020 and 2021 were back-to-back record-breaking years. It gave Michelle and other boardwalk business owners nearby enough cash to buy out their landlords.
“All of us who lived 30 years as tenants had the power to become our own landlords. Our dreams came true, really,” she said.
COVID brought other woes, of course. The pandemic spiked property values, which means higher taxes and cost of living for locals. Cape May County had the largest increase in average property values out of anywhere on the East Coast. Michelle worries that the newly-high costs of shore living will prevent future generations from living and working here. Will businesses be able to house workers when rent is as much as LA or New York?
Michelle worries about these things, but on the whole, shore living is breezy and joyful. She gestured to the boardwalk, flush with human and avian life, and said that there’s nowhere she would rather be.
“Bring your kids here, your family here. A lot of the talk about crime, about this being an unsafe place, it isn’t true. Come here, walk the boards. Come see it for yourself,” she said.
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at 609-886-8600 ext. 156
Michelle’s Picks at 5-Mile Marketplace
