So the Ladder Ball story which ran this week got a pretty big bounce, especially online. Here is a picture of our heroes, who were excellent subjects, appearing as if on cue in Ventnor on the day I went looking for a game in progress, and launching into an excellent discussion of possible philosophical underpinnings of their hanging balls game within 30 seconds of me wandering up to them with a notebook and a very weak brown colored pencil that I dug out of my beach bag.  It's that kind of thing that makes reporters give thanks to the journalism gods. They even stuck around while I went back home to get a pen and my camera. (Beach reporting can sometimes leave a person unequipped.) The comments attached to the story are pretty funny, though a little too much discussion of the people pictured in the photos, but yea, for once, it's not a girl in a bikini who was most prominent in a beach photo (though she's part of the gang, above.). Deal with it. And as to whether an elaborately assembled, competitive ball game is the most highly evolved way to spend time on the beach, or some sign of lack of appreciation for the simple pleasures of sand, surf and sky, the debate rages on.

Also, Tom Colicchio, foodie rock star, pulls one out of the oven. And updated with the story from the A.C. Food and Wine Festival. 

If bald, hunky, judgmental television star chefs are your thing, today is your day to go to the reinvented for 2009 Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival. Noted chef Tom Coliccio, owner of NYC's craft restaurant and top judge on Bravo's Top Chef, will be doing the foodie rock star thing from early afternoon (Healthy Eating with Tom Colicchio at Showboat) to late afternoon (Jeremiah Weed Sweet Tea BBQ Tailgate ... at Bally's Dennis Courtyard ... with Tom Colicchio) to Evening (Food and Wine Spectacular at the Pool at Harrahs ... hosted by Tom Colicchio) to Late Night (Crystal Head Presents: House of Blues After Party ... hosted by Tom Colicchio. Whew. Rock this town, Tom C.

I'll be on assignment for some if not all of Tom Coliccio's big day in A.C. (Who other than Tom could keep up with it all) and will be filing for this week's food section. Tomorrow and Sunday feature more celebrity chefs, including a wine tour with Ted Allen, Feast of Fieri hosted by Guy Fieri, Culinary Demonistration with Ingrid Hffman, The Art of Fondue with Duff Goldman and Ingrid Hoffman, an evening with Emeril lagasse, and, the synergistic shindig, the Malibu Rum Beach Soiree at Bally's Saturday, where all the celebrity chefs will be on hand.  

For a complete schedule, and ticket information (some events are sold out), go acfoodandwine.com.

Update: Foodie rock star indeed. Colicchio, he of the bald head and liquidy light blue eyes, was mobbed everywhere he went, so much so that he was basically kept behind ropes at this evening's big event at the Pool in Harrah's, surrounded by security like he was President Obama or something. Meanwhile, chefs from Harrah's, Bally's, Showboat and Caesar's, humped out elaborate little finger food at stations all night long, 1,500 veal meatballs and counting at one station, little tuna tartar and foie gras gelato in tiny cones in another. More sugary deserts than you could shake a white chocolate swizel stick at. More to come.

Another Update: Colicchio and his wife welcomed a baby boy to the world - pulled a bun from the oven, said one headline - the day after his Atlantic City visit. Nice, Tom. Luka Bodhi was born on August 1 at 7:55pm. He weighed in at 6lbs 9 oz.

And here, from Thursday's food section, is the story about my day stalking Colicchio and doing investigatory food journalism for the Inquirer. There were some people very dissatisfied with their experience at the food festival, especially those who paid their own way as opposed to being comped. Seemed the events were widely different, with some, like the clambake, leaving people very satisfied, and others, like the BBQ on Friday, that fell flat. The sessions with the chefs seemed to go over well, less so, the advertised hosting and mingling events, which, at least for Colicchio, seemed to hold less appeal as the day wore on.

Previously: That warm ocean? Nice while it lasted.

Fourth Street Coffee Wars: the debate continues

Well we've had quite a streak of warm ocean temperatures this summer, quite unlike last summer, but on Thursday, that thing that happens when the wind shifts and starts coming in from the mainland, and the top layer of water gets blown out to sea, and all of a sudden. Brrrr. Your ocean is as cold as your beer:

Well, not quite. But during some investigatory happy hour beach reporting, a little Bud Light in honor of our President's choice of brew tonight in his Sgt. Crowley-Skip Gates summit, I discovered that the ocean had dropped about 10 to 15 degrees since Wednesday. It's called upwelling, I tell you. And every summer we write about it like it's never happened before. The lifeguards said the water temp was down in the low 60s, after being nicely in the mid 70s for the last few weeks. Meanwhile, the southern half of Ventnor was still reeking of mussels.

I'm thinking perhaps I should invite some Ventnor police officers to a Bud Light summit of my own, see if we can work out our differences. They seem way too interested in my traffic habbits this summer. I mean, I make that U turn in front of CVS all year long, no problem. Only in July does this cost me $85. So much for cutting the locals a break. In any case, I found it interesting that President Obama went for Bud Light, as my usually way ahead of the curve nephew just this week accepted one of my Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre brews but then chose to polish off our stash of Bud Light, kept in stock for an always-dropping-in neighbor who drinks nothing else, and sang its praises. So maybe they're onto something. Anyway, hopefully the ocean will reverse course and warm up again for this weekend. Though it seems some thunderstorms may make things a little lively. No worries. Despite the worms, mussels and seaweed, it's been incredibly lovely this season.

Previously: From Worms to a Whale.  

This has been an interesting marine science lesson in Jersey this week, hasn't it?

From these guys: 

... to this unfortunate young mammal, shown here in a photo submitted to WPVI by Michael Wray of Ocean Grove.

This is a 12 foot short finned pilot whale that washed up around 3 p.m. yesterday on the 35th Street Beach in Ocean City. Officials said it was severely underweight. It died shortly after it came ashore. Michael Miller of the Press of Atlantic City wrote: "The cetacean looked skinny for a whale, with a bulbous head and glossy black skin that reflected the sunlight."Some people on the beach pleaded with lifeguards to help push the whale back into the ocean, according to Miller's story. The whale's body was taken to the University of Pennsylvania for a necropsy. Miller's story noted that some parents told their children the whale was sleeping, others photographed the kids in front of the carcas, and one 9-year-old gave the whale a name: Ruby. R.I.P. Ruby.

So now that the excitement over the worms in the ocean has settled a bit, a blog post five times more popular than even the one about Paris Hilton, draw your own conclusions, and Ventnor beach goers have been left with only the stench of rotting mussels to bum them out, we can turn out attention to this pressing issue. Which coffee shop is the proper heir to the fabled and beloved old 4th Street Cafe at 4th and Atlantic in Ocean City? I bit the bullet and had coffee and scones at both places this morning (hey, I have a story in today's paper, I'm entitled). As you can see by the photo above, the people at the Who's on First Cafe at 1st and Asbury, consider themselves the real 4th Street Cafe, and believe me, they have the coffee (La Colombe) the scones (how do they get that crust so crusty, that inside so fluffy???), and the management (from the old 4th Street) to make that claim. But yet....

But yet. It was only at 4th and Atlantic, where Positively Fourth Street thrives under the same owners of the building, but not the people who actually ran the old cafe, and the same gang hangs at the old roundtable in the back room, doing crossword puzzles and yacking, the breeze from the ocean finding its way to the front patio at that corner, which once upon a time was actually nearly ocean front, hence the old Lifeguard Station that is cattycorner to the cafe, that I felt that old 4th Street raison d'etre, or perhaps it's the comforting lack of raison d'etre, feeling kick in. The coffee, Harry & Beans Fair Trade Organic Nicauraguan, was good, tho not La Colombe. And the Mexican chocolate scone I had was a doughy parody of the ones the original 4th street cafe people mastered that now are baked at 1st street. But yet. Something about the space at 1st and Asbury that feels claustrophobic. Even the patio, which is nice, doesn't feel right. There's a bit of a slope, I think, and the chairs are too high, and I kind of couldn't wait to get out of there. And some guy stood on the corner and yacked on his cell phone, not realizing that even though he had stepped out of the cafe itself, to be polite, he was still bothering everyone on the patio. But at 4th Street, I settled in for a nice chunk of Anna Karenina (I'm on page 574, and I'm beginning to suspect that this isn't going to turn out so well for Anna). The chairs felt right. The tables inside have some really nice glass tile work. The coffee refills were free, not 50 cents, as at 1st and Asbury. It's still a tough call. I'd take either one in Ventnor and give thanks. The food is excellent at both places, both serve a similar lunch menu, with a similar dinner option. The baking is still better at 1st and Asbury. But the space, the je ne sais quoi, the reason we seek out these places to begin with, somehow, it didn't make the leap to 1st street. Maybe it's just the proximity to the ocean. A few blocks toward the bay is just stuffier air. Whatever it is, I'm going to give this year's nod to location.Still champ: 4th and Atlantic, a charmed spot at the Jersey shore. 

Wow, I thought I'd seen everything at the beach in Jersey. But today, wow, worms!  At the shore! And I'm not talking about those slimy politicians in Deal. I'm talking actual worms, red, juicy worms, washing up in your ocean onto your beach. Comme ca:

 That's a closeup of one such sucker in the sand in Ventnor. The beach patrol guys said not to worry, they are clam worms, and they are your basic bottom of the ocean food chain, bait for schools of blue fish and the like, washed up to shore by all the churning of the seas, the same churning that brought all that slimy seaweed and smelly mussels that were bumming every one out. The lifeguards said they are not harmful, except that we should maybe watch out for the schools of fish that are coming after them, make sure we don't get zapped by some fins or bit by some hungry fish. Ok.

Here are kids playing in the piles of mussels! Isn't Jersey fun?

 Anyway, mussels a la Ventnor is an old story. The mussels wash up, they dry off, they start to stink. We get it. But the worms, that was freaking everyone out. At least the water was warm though. Definitely in the low to mid 70s. But slimey. Here's another picture of the worm tracks left on the beach.

And, because this is just so gross, here's another picture of the worms swimming around in the ocean as it washed into shore. Again, no health hazard, says the beach patrol. Just another reminder, that this is an ocean, people. But still. Worms!

 And, just for fun, here's a picture of a human kind of slug I found slogging around the Margate beach, under the fishing pier. And drying his laundry to boot. Nice, dude.

 Update on Sunday: Water was much much clearer today, and still nice and warm. The stray skate had washed up on shore, drawing some gawkers, but mostly, it was busines as usual.

Video: Down the Shore, Ventnor City

Video: Down the Shore, Strathmere

Video: Down the Shore, Stone Harbor

I got a phone call the other afternoon that made me kind of glad I live at the shore. It was from a friend who said, hey wanna learn to surf this afternoon? I was like, this is cool. A little change of pace from the usual late afternoon, hey wanna go to Starbucks? Let's do it. I had written about Stacey Marchel, the surfing mom who gives lessons, and so now I was ready to give it a whirl. Never mind I can't even boogie board. I have been rowing for the past two summers at the Viking Rowing Club in Ventnor, and that has been great. Great exercise, great discipline, total focus, lots of quirky cool people, no cell phones on board. I figured, if I can row, I can surf, yes?

Then I discovered the pop up. Like surfing the web, you can't get anywhere until you get through the pop ups. Pop up, it turns out, is the whole key to surfing. It's the part where you go from lying on the board, feeling groovy, to ending up on your feet, feeling really groovy. It's not supposed to involve your knees at all, much to my surprise. It's supposed to be one fluid springy motion. So it's like, lying on your stomach on the board, lift up your head and torso, push down, spring up to your feet, and -- presto -- or, in my case, no presto, crash into shore.

The thing I like about rowing is that all of my strengths seemed to be needed. My legs are stronger than my arms, check. I can focus, check. I can work with a team, check. I can master precise instructions for finicky stroke technique, check. I can power ten when commanded, check! I can hide my smirks under a Phillies hat and behind sun glasses, check. Except for that one time I left the hat home and pissed off the instructor with my raised eyebrows.

But the surfing pop up. Wow. Upper body strength. Nope. Agility and spring. Nope. Limberness, Nope. Courage in the face of rough surf and high tide, Nope. Another mom who was clearly pop-up worthy and getting the hang of it (it was her third time out) said to me after I complimented her, "Well, I'm just very athletic." That kind of irked me. I'm very athletic too. Wanna take this over to the Jerome Avenue basketball courts and work it out over there? I'm just not pop-up athletic.

Basically, I need to go home and do like many many dry land pop ups, as demonstrated by this fine limber young surfer dudette in the video below. And then maybe I shall attempt again. Or maybe it's just getting over the pop up hump. And once you make yourself do it, get on your feet, you get that surf buzz everyone talks about and then you're hooked. But at least the water was loverly warm, at least low 70s, and I stayed out in the big surf longer than I have in years.

The one guy I'm sure who totally could surf, though, is Raul Ibanez. If you saw his falling catch the other night against the Cubs, and the scramble to his feet, then you saw perfect pop up form. Here's the video of that. Really, compare it to below.

Previously: Oh those wacky Stone Harbor shoobies

So I'm minding my own business inside the Hoy's in Stone Harbor, looking for story ideas and scoring, finally, an updated version of Scategories, and this group of people brush past me breathlessly, stick a camera into my hands, whip out funny sunglasses and ask me to take their picture. Wookay. Multi-generational enthusiasm on the streets of a Jersey shore beach town? This means only one thing: shoobies! 

So I take the picture, exchange rolled eyes with the store clerk, get some vague explanation that they're engaged in a game, and they disappear. I move on, looking for story ideas and scoring, nostalgically, an old barrel of monkees game. Cool.

But people like this do not just appear in your life once and go away. No, they come back again and again. Such enthusiasm! It turns out these are the  wacky Greco, Roessler and Peak families of Doylestown. 

But that guy in the middle is Michael Herbert of Staten Island, N.Y. He was spotted for the distinction of being "an adult wearing crocs" which was one of 57 different things on their scavenger hunt list they had two hours to complete on unsuspecting people and things along Stone Harbor's 96th Street strip. He took it well, like, whatever, sure take my picture, agreeably putting aside any thoughts that there was a vaguely mocking context to fitting any of the list's criteria. Here' a photo of the family with another unsuspecting target: man walking a dog. People are very cooperative in Stone Harbor.

Shannon Peak, who is holding the list up there, said the families do it every year during their shore vacation, and then in a few weeks, get together back up in Doylestown for a barbecue and compare results, pick a winner. The winner gets some kind of Mr. Potato Head dressed like Darth Vader, which she called like Darth Vaderhead, or Mr. Potato Vader, I forget. Cathy Greco, in tie die, above, is the mastermind behind the list, which commands the teams to find and take their pictures with a bald guy pulling their finger, someone in East Coast College Gear, something about fudge and, of course, the adult wearing crocs, among other things. Seems to take a big chunk out of a nice beach day to me, and today, in the rain, maybe they were questioning their timing, but they seemed to be having fun. Actually, they seemed to be having a crazy fun good time. Here's another of the families streaking (not that kind of streaking, streaking, like moving fast) down 96th Street. I only caught them from behind, but I recognized the list.

Well, whatever. Here's to you, Grecco, Roessler and Peak families of Doylestown. You go ahead and make the Jersey shore your wacky playground. We are happy to be your props. Personally, I liked this other game I saw being played yesterday in Stone Harbor: The I dropped my ice scream scoop of my cone and now am wondering if the 5 second rule applies to a scoop of ice scream on the sidewalk at the shore. I would've said, definitely. But the group of girls I saw couldn't quite get their fingers around the ice scream in time to satisfy their concerns. And so, sadly, they had to leave the scoop behind:

 Previously: I miss the nuns

One of the cool things about moving down the shore more than a decade ago was our awesome neighbors, the Dominican nuns from Blauvelt, N.Y. They were, and are, great neighbors and amazing people.  One of our best memories, and maybe even theirs, is leaving our infant daughter with the nuns on their porch one afternoon and going to play tennis for an hour or so. They passed her around the porch, rocking chair to rocking chair, and had a great time. Or so they said. They often bring down children of migrant workers for a beach weekend, and for many years, the big gray house was packed every weekend with vacationing sisters. We got to know a few of them pretty well, they oohed over my daughters' growing up over the years and never failed to remember my husband's Labor Day-ish birthday, sending over a bottle of wine from "the sisters." Sweet. Oh well, times change. And economic realities of both shore towns and the Catholic church have forced the nuns to rent out their home almost every weekend this summer, except for the few that the sisters still come down. Better than selling, as the nuns next door to them did a few years back, extracting a promise that the buyers would never tear down the gorgeous green and white trimmed house with the landmark cupola, a promise that was immediately violated. But it's been an adjustment. After all, who rents out a house that has maybe 37 bedrooms and an enormous industrial kitchen? Lots of people at one time, that's who. I'm estimating maybe six different family units from New York are down this week all together, with what sounds like 700 children and teenagers who like to stay up all through the night. C'est la vie, definitely comes with the territory of living down the shore, but man, I got a headache. Last night, Ventnor police had to drive down the block to finally quiet down the rambunctious group. (I was not the one to call, though the thought crossed my mind). It's a far cry from the sisters, especially for that one weekend in October when they come down for a silent retreat (silent except for when we pass in the street and have sotto voce catching up exchanges.) I guess this is the noisy retreat. I'll try to deal.

Previously: The Mind of Margate