Retail Therapy In The Wildwoods

Rob Ascough, Treasurer

I’m not old enough to remember, but those who’ve lived on the island long enough insist (with photographic evidence!) that Pacific Avenue was once a true downtown hub – Main Street U.S.A., so to speak. With restaurants and nightclubs, it surely gave the famous boardwalk a run for its money when it came to providing things to do. It even had department stores, which I would have loved to have seen. I grew up just in time to see the end of five & dimes like McCrory’s and Woolworth’s, as well as independent gems like Epstein’s in my hometown of Morristown. The closest the island had to a department store in my time was Silen’s, which my mind says closed last year, but in reality probably closed almost a decade ago. Despite being among the last of its kind, it was definitely a curiosity, much like many things in The Wildwoods.

My mother overpacked for our week-long vacations and my father struggled to load it all into the family station wagon, although he’d eventually celebrate victorious over the Herculean task. Despite traveling with half of the family’s possessions, something would no doubt get left behind, and it was usually something we needed that first morning on the beach. A few blocks north of the Cape Cod Inn was Crest Pier – not the current incarnation featuring yoga classes and an indoor pool, although I can’t be sure the previous one didn’t offer those things as well. In fact, all I do remember was a store – my memory suggests on an unventilated second floor where the summer heat baked everything as if displayed on the surface of the sun. There was also a store selling similar items and beachy goods on New Jersey Avenue between Sweetbriar and Wisteria. It featured a lot less heat, but also required considerably more walking, including a crossing of busy Pacific Avenue (because for some reason, we didn’t take the car).

The start of every vacation inevitably involved a trip to The Acme (and if you’re from the New Jersey/Pennsylvania region, you know every neighborhood Acme grocery store was referred to as The Acme). In my youth it was a late-1950’s/early 1960’s-era building, constructed just as The Wildwoods were evolving into the tourist destination we know it as today. With only eight or nine aisles and overwhelmed by the variety of products introduced since its Magic Carpet doors first swung open in a gesture of welcome (Acme’s words, not mine) as customers approached, it didn’t take much for the store to feel cramped and claustrophobic. It was common practice for one family member to grab a shopping cart and get in the line for the registers that snaked around the perimeter of the building while others were dispatched throughout to collect items on the grocery list – a scavenger hunt involving peaches from the produce section, milk from dairy, and that toothpaste mom told us to pack, and we said we packed, but really didn’t.

Each motel was a self-contained venue for spending money, and most contained a small room with video games and gift shops (or some sort of retail display) somewhere in the vicinity of the front desk. The Tangiers had a huge game room in the attic of the lobby building – like the old Crest Pier store, it was unventilated and oppressively uncomfortable for any amount of time. Think you were good because you beat Donkey Kong as a kid? Why not try doing it with sweaty hands barely capable of grabbing the joystick while suffering from the unfortunate effects of dehydration? That was the Tangiers game room experience. Which was entirely different from the experience at the Waikiki’s gift shop where two older women luxuriated in ice-cold air conditioning while watching me and my brother with intense focus, making sure we didn’t touch anything, break anything, or even breathe on anything while mom exhibited a previously untapped interest in tops and handbags seemingly plucked from a Boca Raton retirement home. Considering one had to be staying at the Waikiki AND somehow stumble out of the elevator, onto the fourth floor, and to the right, it’s quite astonishing there was ever enough business to keep it operational and staffed for decades.
When looking back at things lost to time and process in The Wildwoods, it’s natural to look back on restaurants, miniature golf courses, and boardwalk amusements, but not necessarily stores and gift shops. But there’s no denying my unspoken wish for one more opportunity to push a shopping cart over the cracked linoleum tile floor of The (old) Acme, sweat it out in Tangiers as Mario dodging rolling barrels, or be given the evil eye at the Waikiki gift shop while lusting after a plastic beach toy seemingly placed on the shelf to merely test my will.