It’s now that time of year when there are enough people coming to town and enough going on in the bar that I can switch the focus of my articles back to my life at the bar and away from my bizarre home life. To me this is actually mildly unfortunate. Personally, I believe that my soon to be quintet of spawn make for much more interesting subject matter than the demographic currently invading our shores. But I’m probably a little biased.
This is that awkward time of year at the beach. It’s not summer yet, it’s no longer winter, and Mother Nature seems to have decided in recent years that we don’t need spring anymore. By this I mean that if you are in town right now, you are rolling the meteorological dice because the temperature may very easily be in either the 90’s…or the 30’s. So make sure to pack accordingly.
Many local business folk refer to this time of year as the “shoulder season”. I don’t much care for that particular vernacular. The reason being that like most things, I hyper-analyze it. Once I apply a human body part to a time of year, then I start mentally going through the rest of the year as body parts as well. And by that scale it turns out that my birthday lands right in the anus, and I have trouble with that. So with that in mind, I try to come up with different phrases to describe this time of year before we kick into high gear.
It seems that right now, each weekend is either a holiday weekend or a theme weekend of sorts. I won’t refer to them as conventions, because there are no hot rodders or springfest grazers who are attending seminars, so I’ll stick with the term ‘theme weekend’. This three-week span we are currently wallowing in is what I like to refer to as the trifecta of tourism terror. Alliteration kind of softens the blow for me and makes it more tolerable. When I say “trifecta”, I’m in no way referring to the triple crown horse races currently going on. I simply mean three consecutive weekends of such a unique conglomerate of humanity that you can’t help at some points but think that we may have morphed into some paradox where every day is a trip to the Arkansas state fair.
Let’s go back a couple of weeks to my personal favorite, Springfest. Can you sense how firmly embedded in my cheek my tongue was as I wrote that last line? Much to the dismay of some of its’ organizers, and others who sprinkle all Ocean City events with proverbial sugar, I give my honest local opinion. This is nothing more than a weekend when out of town vendors make money while locals do not. There, I said it! If you’ve been to one of them, you’ve essentially been to all of them. There’s not much diversity from year to year other than the battle over which two bands – who haven’t had a new song in 50 years are still clinging to their glory days – will to come and play this event.
Once you’ve arrived at the grazing grounds (if you were fortunate enough to find parking in the same area code) then it’s time to enter the battlefield that is known as Springfest. You now find yourself in a labyrinth of makeshift shops packed underneath giant tents. Many of them are peddling crafts, the sophistication level of which doesn’t impress my pair of toddlers. Most however, are selling you food prepared in a trailer-mounted deep fryer hooked up to a truck with tags from another state. Sounds yummy huh? I can only assume that part of the hook to get these vendors here is by telling them that it will not be health department regulated.
Now here is where I have my biggest problem with the event. After spending the day in the Thunderdome eating various meats on a stick, any substance that won’t come apart in a deep fryer, and a bunch of ‘whatever the hell it is’ generously sprinkled with powdered sugar, these nice folks aren’t exactly out hitting the town and spending money in the local businesses. Nope! In fact, I would imagine that most are on the floor of their dilapidated motel rooms curled up in fetal position in tears screaming WHYYYYYY!
So anyway, there are people in town, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for us hardworking locals who have to sit behind them in traffic to get to our jobs that they won’t be spending money in.
The very next weekend is Cruisers weekend. This traditionally is a week full of classic cars and hotrods, mostly good old fashioned American made steel and muscle. But lately I’ve notice that what I like to refer to as the Fast and Furious Generation are slowly infiltrating this crowd, in essence, taking an already crappy weekend and making it much, much worse.
The streets are lined and packed as far as the eye can see with very powerful and unnecessarily loud vehicles leaving burnout marks all over our freshly paved roads like stains in the underwear of humanity. These noise makers on wheels are mostly being operated by grown men either living vicariously through a much younger and hipper version of who they once were (at least in their mind), or those who are presumably compensating for some physical shortcoming. A lot of these dudes couldn’t so much as pull a phone number walking naked into women’s maximum security prison pushing a wheelbarrow full of pardons. But you take that same wheelbarrow, put a racing slick on it for a wheel, paint flames on the side, and for no apparent reason have it make noise the decibel level of an Ozzy Osbourne concert, and now, it’s on. I’ve written entire articles on these cats before, so I’m going to end it there.
And for what it’s worth, I dig the cars just as much as the next guy. But what I don’t like is my six mile commute to work taking me over two hours, only to go in and nickle and dime my way up to feeding my kids. One more quick side note. If any of you EVER see my wife and I wearing matching satin jackets emblazoned with the make and model of our vehicle, I’m giving you carte blanche to put us down. Try to get us with the first shot if you can.
And now comes Memorial Day Weekend! The official kickoff of summer and the true tourism season. It’s kind of like clipping your toenails. Nobody actually enjoys doing it, but it’s definitely necessary. It’s totally okay though locals. Once we’ve gotten through these three weekends, then we get firemen, Raven fans, and June bugs. Wait a minute, never mind.
Let the games begin! Happy 2015 season everyone. As sarcastic as I am about it, I secretly love this stuff. Thanks for playing along.
Until next week…Syd Nichols
Send me your thoughts, pictures of your car, or a corn dog on a stick at sydnichols@yahoo.com
