{"id":4798,"date":"2019-08-26T01:47:45","date_gmt":"2019-08-25T23:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4798"},"modified":"2022-10-24T19:24:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T17:24:39","slug":"the-boardwalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4798","title":{"rendered":"The Boardwalk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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courtesy of Tripsavvy.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the mornings, Burke and I ride our bikes down the\nboardwalk. It\u2019s early, after she\u2019s done teaching (online) and I decide to abandon\nwork for the brisk salty air and the feel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s going to be hot later, really hot, and so I want to enjoy\nthe boardwalk in the cool morning. The sun will have come up an hour or two\nbefore, so the air is warming up when we hop our bikes. A lady in a hoodie and\na pair of shorts is walking a grumpy dog, and we pedal up the road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People drive slowly at the Jersey shore. This is probably\nbecause of bikes and kids and people crossing the street. It\u2019s also due to the\nfeel at the shore, which forces you whether you like it or not, to slow down, enjoy,\nand be passively nice to those around you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When stand up to pedal our way up the ramp to the boardwalk\nand once that minor exertion is done, we are on the flat boards. Everything\nelse is gravy. The bikes people rent or buy down the shore, and the bikes by\nfar most often seen are called \u2018cruisers.\u2019 No gears, no handbrakes. Many of\nthem have a basket. Some of them have a Ken doll attached to the back as a passenger.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing like the Jersey boardwalk in the morning. The heat and cold are saut\u00e9ing a mist off the ocean. The beach is vast and cool and quiet. The boards rock under our bikes. There are people doing the same no matter if we go at 6 or 7 or 8 am. We pass all of the places that will be packed later. Morey\u2019s Pier, Hot Spot, Ed\u2019s, dozens of shops, water parks, amusement parks, stands for every junk food one can imagine, Hot Spot #4 (haven\u2019t seen 2 or 3). The only places doing business are the Dunkin\u2019 Donuts and the diners. Otherwise, the gates are down, the places recouping and recharging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We make it to the end of the boardwalk and our bikes hit the\npavement. Grassy hills and dunes keep the ocean out of sight now. We lock the\nbikes up and walk up a light hill. We hit the ocean fast and the dolphins are\nout in droves. Some kids are torturing a dead horseshoe crab. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the way back after our breakfast burritos, the boardwalk\nis a little more awake. The gates are halfway up, there are more people. Kids are\npointing at the water rides, their parents are looking at the coffee shop. We enjoy\nthe relative quiet. In the afternoon we go to the beach and drink our Orange\nJulius just like everyone else. In the late afternoon, we sleep.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the evening we head back to meet my mom, my sister, and her kids. This time we walk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read a haiku once that I have never been able to find again. It\u2019s about a boardwalk at the Jersey shore (or maybe it was Coney island) in April. While I don\u2019t remember the exact words, I do remember that the haiku perfectly conveyed the lonely, empty, beautiful feeling the boardwalk has in the office season. A place where there are no people, but where there are thousands of people on another day. Like a baseball park in It blew me away. I wish I had had it tattooed backwards on my ass, the body\u2019s Moleskine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d like to write a haiku about the feeling on the boardwalk\non an early August evening. The endless thronging sounds of arcade games, the\nsun sitting out over the ocean, the smells of ice cream and funnel cake and hot\ndogs and pizza so thick that people could gain weight from inhaling. The waves\ncontinuously crash, but we can\u2019t hear them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shops on the boardwalk are a hodge podge. There\u2019s run of\nthe mill shore fare like novelty signs and ceramic busts of sea captains. Stores\nsell hoodies, long sleeved T shirts, and sweatshirts for $5. They all sell well\ndespite the daytime heat. My theory is that people stroll the boardwalk in the\ncooler night and that stroll would be even more pleasant with a hoodie for $5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One shop sells hermit crabs in terrariums. I have always\nfound this awful in a so close, yet so far kind of captivity. I supposed they\u2019re\nused to it at this point, but my instinct has always been to grab them all and free\nthem in the sand ten feet away. They wouldn\u2019t be able to run very far though\nand I\u2019m fairly certain I\u2019d just get in trouble. I could buy them and set them\nfree, but it\u2019s with that option that I understand the very shallowness of my\ndistress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a slew of clothing shops that cater to a right\nwing fringe. Shirts that read I support LGBT: Loyalty, Guns, Beer, and Trump.\nSo much geared towards the overt patriot. I kneel for the anthem and the\nfallen. America. Don\u2019t love it? I\u2019ll help you pack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d scoff, but judging from the shirts of many people on the\nboardwalk, those shops are just aiming at their target market. Charming shirts\ninclude Black Guns Matter and a whole slew of shirts proclaiming allegiance to\nthe 2nd<\/sup> Amendment. No other amendment has ever been so supported by\nour nation\u2019s clothing suppliers. Maybe I\u2019ll start a line of clothing for the other\namendments. The 1st<\/sup> or maybe the 6th<\/sup> for those who want a\nspeedy trial. I could go for the underrepresented 14th<\/sup> amendment or\nmaybe the seemingly more significant 25th<\/sup>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walk down the boardwalk eating ice cream. The dinging and\nbonging of boardwalk games grows distant as we get home, stuffing the tip of\npaper from our cones into our pockets. We can\u2019t hear it in the backroom where\nwe sleep. I love the boardwalk, how much it changes throughout the day and\nyear. It\u2019s a different place in the morning, the afternoon, the evening. I\u2019ll\nsee it change again tomorrow. I just wish I could remember that damned haiku. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

courtesy of Tripsavvy.com In the mornings, Burke and I ride our bikes down the boardwalk. It\u2019s early, after she\u2019s done teaching (online) and I decide to abandon work for the brisk salty air and the feel. It\u2019s going to be hot later, really hot, and so I want to enjoy the boardwalk in the cool […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/JSOS.jpg?fit=2124%2C1412&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1fo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5666,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798\/revisions\/5666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}