Getaways: Old-fashioned promenade
Scents of taffy, caramel corn lead the way back to childhood
By Leslie Garisto Pfaff
Coastal Living magazine
(Coastal Living
) -- At 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning, New Jersey's Ocean City boardwalk is humming. Bikes and surreys, their striped awnings fluttering, coax a percussive tune out of the weathered boards.
In the center aisle, joggers add a determined backbeat. And at Browns, which has served beachside breakfast and lunch for almost three decades, the clank of silverware mingles with the conversational buzz of patrons lining up for homemade doughnuts.
A few steps east, grass-covered dunes give way to a broad swath of Atlantic beach. A handful of early risers are shaking out blankets. As the day progresses, throngs of bathers will jostle for towel space.
But the real action will remain on the boardwalk. For more than a century, the elevated walkway has functioned as Ocean City's 2.5-mile-long heart and soul. It draws some 2 million visitors a year to this former Methodist camp meeting site at the southern end of the New Jersey shore.
What separates this boardwalk from others isn't just the absence of alcohol (the town has been dry since its founding in 1879), but also a pervasive sense of timelessness. The Spanish-style buildings that house many of the amusements still gleam beneath terra-cotta barrel-tile roofs. Nary an off-color T-shirt offends delicate sensibilities. Block out the 21st-century beachwear and visitors could be walking straight into 1950.
From 5 a.m. to noon in the summer, the boardwalk is open to cyclists. They, along with walkers and joggers, come to revive the old-fashioned art of the promenade. Many head to Browns at the northern end, stopping along the way for freshly squeezed lemonade at open-air stalls.
Even the food has a vintage feel. Mack & Manco, the boardwalk's ubiquitous pizza purveyor, sold its first "tomato pie" in 1956. The red-and-white storefronts of Johnson's Popcorn haven't changed much in 60 years. Their fragrant, warm caramel corn, served heaping in red-and-white tubs, announces itself blocks away.
For sheer nostalgia, nothing beats Shriver's, the venerable taffy shop that has challenged dental work since 1898. Behind its stained-glass facade, ceiling fans stir the mingling aromas of fudge, taffy, and chocolate. At the back of the store, kids and grown-ups alike stare through a plate-glass window at great slabs of ivory-colored taffy on the mechanical puller.
Of course, the boardwalk offers more than gustatory pleasures. At Tee-Time miniature golf, duffers struggle to outwit a polka-dot octopus and Fred Flintstone's foot-powered jalopy. A family with three young boys rounds the eighth hole and comes upon a clown astride a churning windmill. "Oh, cool!" the youngsters shout, in voices generally reserved for the latest video game release.
As afternoon fades into evening, crowds gather at Oves Seafood Restaurant. Behind the counter, Tom Oves greets customers and hoists plates piled high with the evening's seafood special. Tom grew up in Ocean City and opened the restaurant 34 years ago. "Maybe it's because this is a dry town," he says, "but you couldn't get a nicer bunch of folks."
That's evident after dark, when the crowds swell and the boardwalk glitters. At the 1929-vintage Music Pier, concertgoers gather in the colonnaded portico overlooking the surf.
From there, it's a leisurely meander to Gillian's Wonderland, the 40-year-old amusement pier at the the boardwalk's northeastern bend. The 138-foot Ferris wheel sparkles tall against the night sky.
At its apex, riders are caught suspended; then, with a jerk, they descend, to calliope music and the aroma of caramel corn. Happily disoriented, they walk out into the summer night.
Copyright 2005
COASTAL LIVING Magazine. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
