So that's Irish Pub owner Cathy Burke, God love her, she offered to buy drinks and food for the entire press and security corps with Gov. Christie. Gov. Christie was in town to sooth the nerves of a jittery city a few days after the stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists in broad daylight and just a day before Memorial Day. As the DO AC folks handed out free popcorn and shirts, Christie said he'd be forging ahead with sports betting regulations in defiance of the federal ban. He wants the sports book legal in A.C. in time for football season. 

He dismissed the idea that Atlantic City is a dangerous place, and said he was not giving in to the perception that tourists are not safe. "I'm not buying into that," he said. "We're never going to try to justify senseless acts of violence that happenned recently," he said. "But things are much better. "

"I'm not going to surrendor to that perception," he said, though he acknowledged that some of the negative perception of the city is earned, some not. As to the headline in the Daily News this week, Tourist Deathtrap, he said. "I don't ever care much what Philadelphia thinks of New Jersey."

He said he and Mary Pat and their kids would be spending part of their Memorial Day weekend at Revel. And as for his efforts to get Bruce Springsteen to play in Atlantic City, he said he has yet to hear back from the Boss. "No, he hasn't called me," he said. 

Courtesy of the @AtlanticCity911 twitter feed (not an official police site, but a scanner monitoring twitter feed, here's the police audio feed from the horrible stabbing of two Canadian tourists Monday morning in broad daylight, a half-block from a trauma hospital, a block from the Walk outlets and right near Bally's, at Michigan and Pacific Avenue. Despite the fact that a police officer, Jacob Abbruscato, was there almost immediately, and with the hospital nearby, the women, ages 80 and 47, died within a few hours. The suspect, Atoinette Pelzer, 44, is being held on $2 million bail. Her mother told Action News her daughter was a schizophrenic who was probably off her miedication. The murders couldn't have happened at a worse time for Atlantic City, which just launced its multimillion promotional campaign, DO AC, and markets heavily to the Canadian market, and which had high hopes for the new state run tourism district, in which this occurred. 

The news of a Boardwalk collapse last Thursday was somewhat muted by its location, far from casinos and stores and tourists, around the bend past Revel and bordering the inlet that separates Absecon Island from good old Brigantine, the Australia of the Jersey shore (and future home of Patrick Kennedy, his bride and their baby, when they can move out of her parent's house in Absecon.)

This part of the Boardwalk has been crumbling for years, and part of it has been blocked off, sadly. The collapse happened after pilings gave out, leaving it somewhat poetically in mid-collapse, the piling leaning one way, the buckled Boadwalk leaning the other, a bench in mid-slide, the wood curving like an accordian, but seemingly not more than a plank or two actually detached. If you look closely at the jetty in the distance, you can see a lone early fisherman at the end.

This is a really undervalued part of Atlantic City. The inlet waves and views are just epically beautiful, a little fiercer than the ones that border the casino row of Atlantic City, which also have big sand dunes that make it hard to see the ocean from the boardwalk. This is near where the old Capt. Starns restaurant used to be, and not far from Gardiner's Basin on the bayside, another undervalued part of Atlantic City, places a little closer to its alternate identity as a barrier island and fishing port. (As opposed to seaside casino town). This spot, just off Maine Avenue, is also a go-to spot during Hurricanes and Nor'easters to see some dramatic churnted up ocean, which may also explain why it was the first place to give way. City officials are talking about demolishing, which is sad, in favor of expanding the sea wall as a promenade. Either way, it's a spot worth seeking out, Boardwalk or not.

And here's the video, which in its loneliness and collapsed Boardwalk and rushing waves, seems like it could have been taken in some future time, after all the casinos have finally collapsed themselves, and the water is still rising, and the Army Corps has given up, and the island is returned to nature. Oh jeez.

Did I mention Ocean City is a great coffee town? I drive over the bridge all the time to get a drink in Ocean City, home of some of the finest lattes at the Jersey Shore. Alas, these same cafes that also serve dinner in the summer will not be able to draw the wine with grass-fed beef crowd now or any time soon. The BYOB measure that finally made the ballot was trounced by a 2 -1 margin Tuesday night by people in town who just want the town to stay the way it is: Dry, with a splash of your own alcohol from Circle Liquors in Somers Point. I guess I understand people don't want to mess with a good formula, and Ocean City has achieved an unassailable brand of family-friendly, founded on Methodist values. Pre-teens gather in hordes in the summer on the Boardwalk and I guess people didn't want any adults walking out of nearby restaurants with a glass or two of wine in them. I don't know, I wouldn't want Ocean City to be a place where liquor stores popped up, but BYOB seemed rather civilized. 

I like to walk along the beach studying the carpet that has been laid before me by the tide: the shells, stones, bits of sea life swirling around in the little whirlpools.

Every now and then, there’s a bright, colored glint, and my heart beats a little faster.

Could it be? Is it really a piece of sea glass?

Usually it’s not. But once in a while, I find a once-sharp shard that has been twirled and smoothed by the polish of the roiling sea.

I used to have a big jar – I don’t know whatever happened to it – to collect Mother Nature’s treasures.

Searching for sea glass and interesting shells along the Ocean City beach with my grandmother is one of my earliest childhood memories. She taught me how to discern the rare from the common.

Years later, I’ve learned sea glass colors are gauged by rarity, from the most common brown, white and Kelly green – likely remnants of old beer bottles – to the most rare oranges and reds. The spectrum also includes hues of yellow, turquoise, pink, cobalt blue, and citron. Also hard to find are soft blue, lime green and amber.

The most coveted of all sea glass -- the orange and red pieces -- probably came from things like Victorian lamps, old railroad lanterns, later Depression glass and automobile brake lights from the days when they were made of glass and not plastic.

Veteran collectors consider red sea glass their “holy grail,” according to Richard LaMotte in his colorful 2004 reference guide called Pure Sea Glass – Discovering Nature’s Vanishing Gems.

Sea glass often is made into jewelry. One of my favorite pieces is a delicate bracelet of tiny multicolored shards, including a rare red, that my husband gave me a few years ago.

It recently inspired a trend in a home décor. Since I’m such a beach girl, when I decided to nix my old gray professional-grade Calphalon cookware for a dip in the Le Creuset pond and I couldn’t make up my mind between the lovely rainbow of choices for my new pots and pans, I decided to mix and match them in beach glass tones. Now my kitchen is adorned with Caribbean, Coastal and Cobalt with a smattering of Dune.

Good to know I can really go wild and add Flame or Cherry cookware and still stay on theme.

Thanks, Gram.

Well, well, well, if it isn't our good friends the Army Corps of Engineers come knocking at our door just int time for Memorial Day weekend. Don't know if they're coming with that crazy beach vehicle they used last summer (above, from the Shore News Today site), but in Ventnor, Public Works Director David Smith has ordered all hobie cats off the Suffolk Avenue beach by May 7th with an end date not expected before June 1, according to an e-mail sent to a few owners of boats (including a friend of mine). So much for that inaugural big weekend sail, though in a phone interview this morning, Smith said he actually believes the Army Corps will be finished with that portion of their job before Memorial Day and the boats will be allowed back. The entire project in Ventnor will be finished by the end of June. It involves shoring back up the dunes built, in a really badly-timed project, last July, from Richards north to the Pier. Those dunes lost about half their sand over the last year, Smith said. They will also pump sand from Richards south to the Margate border, but will not bother with any dunes there, as they have proven to not hold at all. I guess unwanted guests over Memorial Day is a wee bit better than July and August, but these guys have a way of spoiling our fun. They're also very busy, according to Richard Degener of the Press of Atlantic City, removing tons of rocks from some beaches in Cape May that resulted from some new replenishment techniques to avoid the dangerous gullies that formed in the past. Read all about that here. 

CAPE MAY – Before I let the rock of the waves and the hum of engines lull me off for a nice little nap on a recent crossing on the Cape May Lewes Ferry, I noticed a new promotion encouraging exploration of the “Twin Capes Region.”

Instead of using the ferry only as a means of transportation to get from, say, South Jersey to the Chesapeake Bay region – without having to negotiate the traffic-laden landlubber route along I-95 – ferry-operator Delaware River and Bay Authority recommends the boat as a conduit to a day trip to explore Delaware’s coastline.

Or those on the Delmarva can come over here and see what lovely Cape May County has to offer.

A new pamphlet, available when you buy your tickets, features maps and informative blurbs about places like the Wildwoods, Avalon and Sea Isle on the Jersey side and Rehoboth, Bethany Beach and Fenwick Island in Delaware.

In fact, my hubby and I were so busy chatting about the great hash browns we had for breakfast before we got on the ferry that when we got over to Lewes we missed a turn and ended up accidently taking a route through the little Delaware beach towns mentioned in the booklet. Maybe it was a subliminal decision after reading the blurbs.

Our trip south to Virginia was actually enhanced by the chance to see how New Jersey’s cape twin in Delaware does its beach thing. This time of the year there was no traffic and the signal lights are mere blinkers, so it was a breeze through Bethany and Fenwick.

We made a turn inland after driving through Ocean City, Md., where we reflected on how much more we like our Ocean City in New Jersey. Interestingly, if you can head about 25 miles south of the Lewes ferry terminal, you end up in Ocean City, Md. If you travel roughly 25 miles north of the Cape May terminal, you are in Ocean City, N.J.

We got back on track after an inland turn somewhere near the middle of OCMD. If it had been closer to lunchtime, we might have set a course for a place that had the biggest jumbo lump crabmeat we ever saw (and ate) called the Captain’s Galley II on the water in West Ocean City, Md.

ATLANTIC CITY – I’ve always been one of those people who’ll run in the opposite direction of a crowd. Maybe, it’s because my job will often send me right into the middle of a big bunch of people. Maybe I just don’t like the noise.

So after I checked out the big hoo-hah that was the “soft” opening of the Revel a couple of weeks ago for work purposes -- crowds everywhere, lines to do everything, very noisy indeed -- I headed over to the Golden Nugget. I’m not much of a gambler. But I was hungry. And I like contrasts.

And I wanted to see whether the big, bad $2 billion Revel really was beginning to suck the life out of the other casinos as AC watchers have predicted it will.

Golden Nugget, the former Trump Marina, has been undergoing a stylish $150 million transformation. They’ve put in new showrooms, redone the casino, hotel rooms and suites, and added lounges, bars, a salon and spa, pools, and a new Ronnie Wood Art Gallery (the Rolling Stone guitarist turned artist). And five new restaurants, including a Chart House outpost with a terrific view of the Farley Marina, Gardiner’s Basin, and the Revel.

The casino was busy, it looked like plenty of people were checking into the hotel on a random Monday, and the dining room was pretty full, too. The staff was friendly and efficient and made me feel very welcome. I got a nice table by the windows. And as I enjoyed my chopped salad and a lofty tower of shellfish, I grew optimistic there certainly will be life after Revel for places like the Nugget – as long as they stay in the game.

After five years of asking people to name their favorite beaches at the Shore, the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium says the annual contest is the really gaining momentum.

Response to the annual online poll has been steady and strong in 2012 and may end up being double what it was last year, according to Kim Kosko, a spokeswoman for the Sandy Hook-based consortium, an affiliation of colleges, universities and other groups dedicated to the stewardship the state’s coastal and marine environment by educating adults and children.

The consortium forges deeper connections to the Shore by helping people care for coast, through activities such as beach cleanups and educational workshops.

Apparently people are really digging the idea.

“We actually got more votes for the Top Ten Beaches survey in the first few weeks of voting this year than total votes for the 2011 survey,” Kosko noted.

In addition to picking favorite beaches, a single-question poll asks web visitors to select an issue from a list of 20 that they feel has the biggest effect on New Jersey’s coastal future.

To thank participants, the consortium has partnered with tourism representatives from the state’s coastal counties for prize packages, which will be awarded in a random drawing.

So it could pay to vote for your favorite beach!

“We’re using this project to remind residents and visitors every summer about the importance of New Jersey’s coastal resources and their critical connection to New Jersey’s economy,” Kosko said.

Voting began Feb. 21 and ends April 30. The consortium will announce 2012’s Top Ten Beaches at the consortium’s annual State of the Shore news conference May 24.

To vote go to www.njtoptenbeaches.org