It's been years since Lucy the Elephant looked this good.

For the last two weeks, Alpine Painting and Sandblasting employees Carlos Fallas and Fernando Ubarno have been putting a new coat on the old pachyderm on Atlantic Ave in Margate.

Today, Fallas says, they will finish the job with some final touches on Lucy's red and yellow blanket, up around the butt area.

The paint was specially mixed for Lucy by MAB paint, so they are using "Lucy the Elephant Gray" which combines black, raw umber, maroon and deep gold, for those keeping score, and Lucy the Elephant Red, which combines maroon, red and white. Plus a yellow known as goldfinch and a brown that mixed green, maroon and deep gold. Just in case you have your own tin 65 foot tin elephant roadside attraction whose paint job needs touching up, I guess is why I'm providing you with these details. You're welcome.

Anyway, Carlos says it's his first time painting an elephant, especially one worn by salt air and blowing sand and whose outer shell is a little flexible and thus needs special care. The red and yellow trim has proved the trickiest, he said. Lucy was last painted in 2000, but with simple house paint, and it just did not hold up. Plus, somebody got a silly idea to paint her toenails different colors. She has now gone back to basic black. Honestly, she is so shiny that I'd have to say, it's worth a trip to Margate to see the old girl again. Alpine has lots of important icons on its resume, including Giants Stadium and Drumthwacket. Looking this good, it seems Lucy will be around a lot longer than Giants Stadium, which is going down this fall.

Long Live Lucy.

This photo is from Saturday night over the Ventnor back bays, since the sun has not yet set tonight as I write this, but what a beautiful weekend it was. Finally. Two great beach days. Saturday was like suddenly full-out summer, a hot land breeze blowing in from the bay, warm water, crowded beaches, streets lit up at night with sidewalk dining. It was like I was back in the land of the living, and glad of it. Some beaches toward the south end, already narrowed by erosion, were a pretty comically tight wall-to-wall squeeze when I walked by them during high tide on Saturday afternoon. Kind of amusing. Ventnor lifeguards were busy on Saturday, with an impressive rescue of about five people on some kind of field trip from Egg Harbor City who did not respond to repeated whistles to come in from too far out. They sent out a lifeguard boat, a lifeguard jet ski, three lifeguards swimming and hauled the people back to shore in the boat. The people seemed more shaken than embarrassed which makes me think they really did need rescuing. Nicely done. State police on the water were also ready to pounce, pulling over (stopping in mid water?) errant jet skiers in the back bays and having none of any excuses. Or so I'm told. Let's just say, tickets were written, moods were spoiled. Sunday was cooler, nice breeze, but the sun held out very nicely all afternoon. Unlike the United States men's soccer team.

Previously on downashore: Shoobie Slander

from zazzle.com, that Pennsylvania License Plate T-shirt's just itching to say shoobie

So is this the season of the rains or what? It's getting ridiculous. Last night we had a couple nice evening beach hours and just when we were feeling like the bad weather was a thing of the past, the skies opened up and it was the tropics all over again, a huge deluge. But one has to pass the time at the shore somehow. For locals like myself, it means we head for Philly. And I give a big thumbs up to the Philly Zoo for an excellent day yesterday with myself and three tweeners. Watching the hippos bob for apples was a jaw dropper, literally. In any case, for people here on vacation, they are stuck sticking it out on the beach even though it's cloudy and depressing. I salute you, intrepid vacationers. The water's still pretty warm though, at least there's that. 

But that is not the reason I brought you here, to complain about the weather. It's to relate this story: The other night, I was walking home from Mento's, the Ventnor water ice and ice cream stand, with my two daughters, who are 12 and 14. A car passed by and a guy leaned out his head and shouted: "Shoobies, go home!" At us!  We were stunned because, hey, we're usually the ones doing the shoobie eye-rolling, though we've never actually suggested shoobies go home, because we like the shoobies. Some of them are our good friends. Anyway, we were thinking, what about us made them think we were shoobies? Here we are, just a block from our home, hey buddy, we LIVE here. Some of us were BORN down the shore. We are graduates of Shore public schools. Our friends surf, even if we do not. We will grow up to be beach badge checkers. So what was it? We narrowed it down to two things.

One: the very act of going to get ice cream at night and then walking around with your ice cream cone is very shoobie. We admit that. Hey, gang, we're at the shore, let's get ice cream! Ok, guilty. But there was another important factor in our shoobie-ness that night.  In reality, I had started the outing with just my 12 year old, and then we swung around to pick up my 14 year old at a friend's house. She wanted a ride home in a car, but consented to being picked up on foot because we were already nearby. After the shoobie slander, she realized her mistake: Only shoobie teenagers down the shore and, essentially, held hostage, isolated from their home peer group, would be out walking with their parents at 10:30 at night. The locals, naturally, roam in unsupervised packs until curfew. So there we were, making like shoobies. So much for my walk with the girls. They took off, put a block between them and their mom, and made like locals.

Previously, on downashore: Skinny's House 

Andrew Mills/Star Ledger

Look, there's no other way to say it. No point in being coy. Also, no guarantees it will last. And, sure, it would be nice if there were a little bit more sunshine, or any sunshine, to go along with it, but listen. The ocean temperature is warm, pushing 70 in Atlantic City, breaking 70 in Cape May, very unusual for June at the Jersey shore, where some years, like last year, the water stays frigid until about mid-August. Or maybe you have already repressed the memories of last summer's shore vacation in which your ocean romping consisted of about a 30 second plunge into a 55-degree ocean, if that. When the ocean finally warmed up last summer, it was like a halleluyah moment. This summer, it's kind of like a, whoa, this isn't too bad moment. Usually, the locals feel lucky to still be here in September and October, when the ocean is always balmy and the crowds have gone. But this year, we had the crazy hot beach day weather in late April, and now, the early warm up of the ocean. The surfers -- that's Ocean City High School's Chris Kelly in the photo, one of the state's best surfers, who is turning pro after graduation -- won't be needing their full wet suits at this point. Though, this being Jersey, things could change at the shift of a wind. And then, depending on whether our editors are down the shore at the time, we will need to do stories and explanatory blog posts about the upwelling effect and its relation to suddenly dropping ocean temperature, usually a late August staple. But for now, nice. Now, we just need to work on those air temps a bit.

Previously, on downashore: Paris Hilton at the Borgata.

Paris, being Paris

...what exactly? This was the question that was bandied about the newsroom this week, after an editor got word of her appearing at the Borgata's mur.mur club, and wondered if we should be reviewing it. Was this a performance? Would Paris be singing? Seemed obvious to me, that Paris would be doing what Paris does: being Paris. No heavy lifting required, which is not to say that pulling off that precise mix of glamour, beauty, irony and ennui that is the Paris Hilton aura is something that is simple to accomplish.  So if you want to go to a night club and hang with Paris Hilton, Saturday at 10 p.m. at mur.mur is your chance. Or maybe check out the poker room, where Paris has been known to show up unannounced. My kids, unlike my editors, had no problem with the concept of Paris at the Borgata with music by DJ Jesse Marco: "She'll be clubbing," they informed me when we passed the billboard on the Atlantic City Expressway (a much more palatible sign than the one across from it that says: "Ever get Leprosy?" Um, ever not want to think about ever getting Leprosy on your way to the shore?). In any case, a few calls to the Borgata confirmed that Paris' appearance on Saturday was simply that: a Red Carpet entrance and hanging around mur.mur, while Marco handles the music. No performance in the usual sense. Noel Stevenson, public relations manager at Borgata, described Paris's duties Saturday night as "hosting" and said hosting a nightlife event in Atlantic City was something Hilton had never done before, at least not officially. The following Saturday, celebrity DJ and ex-Lindsay Lohan girlfriend Samantha Ronson is at mur.mur along with The Hills star Kristin Cavallari, who presumably will be doing much the same sort of vague celebrity thing as Paris. No word if any of Paris's new BFF candidates (including Jersey girls Elena Miglino and Arielle deRouen) will be accompanying her on Saturday, but one person who probably won't be there is Brittany Flickinger, last season's BFF winner, who Paris cut loose because, my afore-mentioned Paris Hilton expert children informed me, she was only in it for herself. Bombshell.

Previously, on Downashore: Upcake, Downturn.

searchin for that lost shaker of salt...

And so the sun sets on another Atlantic City dream that was not meant to be: the transformation of the always-sorta-fun but gettin-kinda-old Trump Marina into a technicolor Jimmy Buffetized Margaritaville Casino. The bankrupt Trump Entertainment pulled out of negotiations with Coastal Marina LLC just short of a deal that apparently, most people on Wall Street thought would never happen, what with the economy. It can't be considered a shock these days, with most Atlantic City projects dreamed up in headier days now skidded to a stop. Casinos have managed to pull together a decent enough summer of entertainment, after a very slow booking start that was, and still is, way off last year's rate, but overall, the town's fortunes feel like they are being supported by, well, shifting sands. I guess we'll just have to keep nibblin on sponge cake, watchin the sun bake, all of those tourists covered with oil, and hope things pick up around here.