This place was known as a mini-Vegas, "down the shore", with the boardwalk smell I can still recall decades later. As the 80s were nearing the 90s, the boardwalk amusement parks closed including Steeplechase, Million Dollar Pier (where Handcuff King, Harry Houdini, performed a stunt) and Steel Pier. Atlantic City became more of the gambling town, less about the kids. The Miss America Pageant remained, however, the even seedier parts of "the shore", became the place where the youth would cruise.
Ocean City was the nicer version, but we will focus on Wildwood!
This was the cake! The Seedy Cake! If you wanted to see wacky hair, fashion and lots and lots of drunk, stoned folks, many girls with hair teased nearly a foot tall and fellows without shirts, ripped jeans with combs in the back pockets, this was the place. Sometimes you found other punk/ alternative folks, but mostly it was a slightly "different crowd".Morey's Pier & Mariner Landing!!! I can hear the commercial for these amusement parks right now! Actually, load this page for Morey's Piers and just keep it in the background for the audio as the soundtrack to this post. It will make the next paragraph much more vivid.
I do miss the aroma of the salty Atlantic ocean mixed with sun cooked sand, the distant smell of ice cream and cold treats brought by the ice-cream guy, the peanut/ nut stores, cotton candy, pizza, Curly's Fries, bumper cars' burnt rubber (or whatever that was), Salt Water Taffy and Fudge, seagull crap, smoking tobacco and alcohol. Maybe I do not miss all of that. Oddly enough, it has been a long enough time now, that I almost even miss the sound of the infamous boardwalk tram alert which was repeated in place of a horn which reiterated, "Watch The Tram Car, Please!".
So this brings us to today's video which was prompted by seeing a posting from Sarah Lane regarding a clip from Ruthless Films called "Wildwood: The Movie".
Hair, Nails, "Fashion", Dialect, & Mustaches, Oh my!
This girl, "Jana", at 40 seconds into the video, must have been huffing the Nestle Strawberry Quick mix! What do you think? "It's diff'rnt ev'ry night... n ev'ry night it's diff'rnt!"
More info here and here.
Unrelated: We are gathering more Zombies and folks with cameras for the Zombie Dance routine at Midnight night for First Fridays at Medusa Lounge if you want to join or know someone who may. This is going to be fun!
http://myspace.com/revellshok
RSVP here: http://bit.ly/rsff4
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