While at our core we document Ocean City culture and events as well as the things to do and see in Worcester County generally, it is easy to forget that there are other things to see and do on the site. We were reflecting recently that the only thing that is more impressive than the interaction we have with our readers is how much that interaction shapes OceanCity.com every day. So as we gear up for another big season, we thought it would be fun to remind people about the lesser-known OceanCity.com facts that are at the heart of many other people’s enjoyment of it.

We Maintain an Active Forum for Ocean City Enthusiasts

Sure it’s old school, but our forum is one of the most active and knowledgeable around. Comprised of both locals and people from around the region who just love Ocean City, the forum is a place to reminisce but also to get info. Our forum members aren’t paid and they aren’t constrained in their views and recommendations. If you have a question on Ocean City, someone there has an answer. Heck, when we can’t find an answer that’s where we go.

We Have Weekly Contests

Photo Friday is a chance for you not only to share your photos from your Ocean City trip but also to win prizes. Just submit your photo through our website. We pick the four best and let the nearly 150,000 people who follow our Facebook page vote. The winner gets two tickets to Jolly Roger and the runner up gets the cover photo on our Facebook page. If you’re into sharing your Ocean City experience, though, we have another idea for you…

We Can Make You Internet Famous

We accept regular contributions to our blog from our readers. We edit them and add photos when necessary, but people who are interested in breaking into the blogging world contribute photoblogs and essays as a means of sharing their Ocean City Experience with as wide a variety of people as possible. But it isn’t just for professional writers. Sometimes people just contribute because they have an experience they want to share or need to let people in on a secret spot that they don’t think enough people enjoy. Heck, they even write about day trips they take outside of Ocean City.

We Know Ocean City Deals

It is something of an open secret that OceanCity.com is the best destination for gift certificates and coupons. Working with local partners, we’re able to provide discounted gift certificates that can mean keeping your wallet a little heavier a little longer. More important, though, just browsing the coupons gives you the opportunity to try a place or experience you might not otherwise have tried.

We Are Hotel Central

Yes. This is a fifth category, but we’re pretty sure you would have guessed this fact, do it really doesn’t count as something you never would have guessed. Still, it doesn’t hurt to give you a friendly reminder that if you haven’t booked yet, go ahead and do that now…

This is the last of a three-part essay. We will publish the series each Thursday through its completion. Find part one here.

So while my dad bought a boat, his dad built a boat. That’s pretty cool, right? My dad was young, very young. He lived in Maryland, on the Bush River on the western Shore. His father was a machinist for the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. It was a kit boat, the boat he built. You know, the kind you build from a kit. Sold by Chriss Craft, it was a 14 foot runabout with a 10 hp Martin motor. Dad says Martin is no longer in business, making motors anyway. He remembers fishing on the boat with his father. Cruising out to the Chesapeake, racing other boaters, spending time with his family, it was a different time for sure. While my mother insisted my sister and I learn to swim, in case we fell overboard or something happened, my dad’s mother insisted he was was restrained by a leash. A leash fastened to his waist with the other end tied to the rail. So he wouldn’t fall out of the boat. Apparently, my grandmother and grandfather won Parents of the Year that year. My grandmother would tell this one story, and with no sense of shame, or embarrassment, or I-should-have-known-better attached to it, she would say with pride that she used that same leash system to keep him safe in the yard. One end fastened to his waist, the other to a clothesline. You know. She could run about the yard. And he would. Back and forth back and forth, on his own little run. It is rumored my grandmother also crate chained her children, but that rumor has not been verified.
“Seriously, Grandma?” I asked.
“My mother told me to do it.” Was her answer. Grandma Casey, was a sturdy German woman who married an Irishman. Oh the stories one could tell about the wisdom and missives and habits of my Grandma Casey, and my grandma always listened to her.

My father’s family moved to Florida when he was ten. His father started working for NASA as a machinist. The boat came with them, much like Hesperus would travel with us. And like Hesperus, they rarely, if ever, went out on her. And there she sat, in their yard, for a long time. Eventually and unceremoniously they sold the boat to a family friend. This friend also allowed her to sit, unused, in their yard. I find it interesting, that, that bit of nostalgia.

Or perhaps it is just a sentimental me grasping at a connection with my father and his father. A man I never knew. And yet, like my own time, my father’s time to be raised on the water, raised by the water, raised by that vessel, that boat that safely carried our lives across the water. Well, it was ended at the age of ten. Nothing remarkable, I suppose, but a coincidence, a thing we share, an unspoken and perhaps until now, un-thought of thing we share. Yeah, it’s kind of sad in a way, the selling of the boat; my grandfather’s, my father’s, and in a sense mine. A sad demise of a boat, and maybe of a childhood. Oh, that may be a bit dramatic. For certainly my childhood continued. My father’s as well. Mine lasted quite a while, I thank my parents for that, my father’s was cut short by an early marriage, child, and the death of his father. Allow me one more indulgence, one more comparison, one more coincidence … As I’ve said, the sale of the boat for my father was clearly more than a sad demise of what was always far more than a boat. I say clearly, as it is evidenced by his continued desire to have a boat. His first boat he bought maybe five years after his father died.

We moved back to Orlando. Hesperus had finally and also unceremoniously been sold for a second time, and the horses went with her. We were free of horses, we were free of boats. And we were free of the ties that bound us together. Times were good, times were bad, times were as bad as they could ever be. So my Dad bought a motorcycle. That lasted a very short time. It was never the same. It didn’t work the same. My dad, my mom, they couldn’t fight and scream, and yell, and laugh and love and work together. Not on a motorcycle. And not in their lives. They could do some of those things. And they did; thy fought and screamed and yelled and there was still love, but the love was now like Hesperus, or the old kit boat. It sat in the yard, unceremoniously. All but forgotten. And the work, there was no work. Or the laughter, that had gone too. So they didn’t: they didn’t laugh and they didn’t work.

Then along came a no named Scout 165. For while time may heal all wounds, so too does a boat. This one was a small 16-and-a-half foot skiff for fishing and tooling up and down the rivers of Central Florida. They went out on it, my parents did. Sometimes just the two of them, sometimes with others. My mother’s mother went with them a few times. Some friends, my sister. I regret that I never did. And while it was just a small boat, it was also a small step in their learning to work once more. That small step, I suppose, held a lot of significance.

The first time we went for a ride on this new boat of Dad’s, it was a little bit of an ordeal. Mike had gone with him to get the boat in Delaware. They drove together back to my parents’ house, and bright and early they set out to launch the boat and bring her out to the boat slip my father had secured at the Eastern Shore Yacht and Country Club. Mike and my father are quite close. Mike and my father are quite similar. Mike and my father had a long day. I drove down to meet them. Our plan was to have lunch and go for a ride on the boat. Getting the boat secured was evidently less than fun. The slip was not the best of slips, the tying of the boat was not easy. My father and Mike rigged up or invented some weighted system that would allow for movement of the tide and current and all sorts of things that could potentially go wrong. What they did not account for, however, was the simple fact that the docking system for my father’s kind of boat was not really suitable. Not to mention we were all a little out of practice. And then on top of all of that, the accessibility to the bay and other rivers and inlets and creeks, it would not be a suitable and easily accessible location for my father and his boat. It was, at first, a disappointment.
What was not a disappointment was my father seemed to fall right back into the old swing of things. His boat owner swagger, if you will, had begun to come back. I offered to help Mike and Dad with some of the set up, I was essentially told to go below. Yep, “Get down below,” was the phrase my sister and I would often hear when things were about to go awry. When it became necessary to drop or raise the sail. Tie some lines or lower the boom and batten down the hatches or whatever nautical thing might arise. I’m so technical here, because, you see, although my sister and I grew up on a boat, our knowledge of sailing consists of hotdogs make good bait, colorful language and what we could learn while we were banished to down below. And what we learned was we always got sick when we were down below. Especially my sister. And so, as I have said, my offer of help to my father and my husband was unceremoniously declined. I chose to have a beverage with my mother instead.
We made it out on the boat, however. My parents, Mike, Sam, and I. Mike and my father had figured out whatever it was they needed to figure out. We took a quick cruise down Taylor Creek, into Puncoteague Creek and we returned once we met the Chesapeake Bay. It was not a long ride. It was a windy ride, beautiful scenery, much to look at, and much to remember. And that old bit of arguing came back, highlighted by my mother’s attempt to assist with docking and my father’s shouts of protest and my mother’s comments of how she has done this before and my father’s insistence that she get out of the way. “I used to do this all the time!” She complained to me once we were safely ashore and Mike and my father wrestled with the tie up once again. I shook my head. Things really hadn’t changed. They were on a boat, fighting and yelling.

We’ve made other trips. Mike, my parents and I went up and down the Pokomoke River. A beautiful ride to be sure. The dark waters and amazing wildlife, it is a real treat. My parents have made that a few times. My sister has joined them and my father’s oldest friend, Ronnie. My father has boated with other friends as well, and one of his newest friends, my husband. They have fished and cruised and laughed and even argued. My father in-law joined them on one such venture. My father brings his boat up here, to Salisbury, and they launch in the Wicomico or Nanticoke. Sometimes the fishing is not so good, sometimes it is very good. But it is not about the fishing, not really. Nor is it really about the ride. It is about the boat.

It is always about the boat. And what we learn, and that it brings us together. The boat does. The boat brings us together. Some of my greatest memories of real and true togetherness are on a boat. My dad’s boat sinking is one of my earliest memories, a broken engine, too many mosquitos joining us when we tried to sleep down below, a cool breeze and gentle sway and listening to our parent’s tell stories when we moved out to the deck. Swimming, diving, jumping laughing. Being afraid, being sad, being angry … and working it all out on a boat.

Fifty years my parents have been married. Actually, it has been a little over fifty years now. I figure they have, God willing maybe another thirty year run. At least twenty-five. I don’t really like to think of my parents in terms of their mortality, I guess no child ever does. But they have time. Another quarter of a century or so for fighting and laughing and yelling and loving and screaming and, well, growing. Of growing up, learning to live and love. Learning how to navigate their twilight years, together. Absolutely together, still, on this no-named boat.
So my Dad bought a boat. Big deal, right? But this time it’s different. This time it has done something else. It means something else. He didn’t just buy a boat. But then again, maybe it is not so different after all. The boat, owning a boat, it has never really been just about the boat. I think that my Dad has figured that too. So my dad bought a boat.

The two six-year-olds whom I accompanied (along with both their mothers) to the Saturday, May 7th matinee performance of The New Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, were giddy with excitement as we entered the theatre. The Ocean City Convention Center was crowded with activity. There was a volleyball tournament going on, and girls from teams across the state were wandering into the main floor of the center. We made our way to the Roland E. Powell Performing Arts Center and showed our tickets at the door.

It was there my daughter began to get nervous. She asked the usher, “Where are we sitting?”

The usher looked at our tickets. “You lucky girl,” she said. “You’re in the front row!”

She turned to me. “Why do we have to sit in the front row?”

My daughter has never been a fan of dark theaters. She’s six, but she’s seen only three movies in theaters in her life. (When I was that age I’d spent several hundred hours in dark theaters, mesmerized by moving pictures.) She was not happy about having to sit so close to the stage in a darkened theatre. When the lights went out she grabbed my arm and draped it over her shoulder.

I had only one expectation for this production of Alice in Wonderland, and that is that it would be like the book except in play format. There would be a girl named Alice—enthusiastically played by Danielle Tuomey—who would fall asleep in a tree, and then she would follow a white rabbit down a rabbit hole and enter the world of Wonderland. I was a little surprised, as was my daughter, to hear some heavy bass coming from the speakers, and the unmistakeable riffs of eighties jazz music. Howard Sribnick, the president of the Worcester County Library Foundation which brought the show to Ocean City, announced just before the performance that this was the 20th anniversary of the production. When I heard the music I understood.

Alice in Wonderland performance

The show doesn’t open in a park with Alice reading a book, though. It opens in a city. For this former Manhattanite, The City will always be New York City, and when the performers come out on stage and begin to dance against the backdrop of a cityscape, New York was my first thought. The White and Red Queens wander the stage with entourages in tow holding aloft cupcakes which they are taking to have judged at a cupcake baking competition. Alice steps in the middle of it, of course, as that is what Alice does. “Curiouser and curiouser,” cries Alice (in the book and in the musical), and the words could describe both what is happening to her, and Alice herself. Her curiosity is what propels the story. She wanders off to explore the city, losing her sisters, and it is then she sees the White Rabbit (Shawn Nakia) scurrying away with an invitation for the Duchess (Amanda Patten). Alice follows him, not down the rabbit hole but down the subway stairs. And anyone who’s ever ridden a New York City subway knows how dark those tunnels can look from the platform.

Here the show takes a more traditional turn, though with a few twists and turns that help the story move faster. What really gives the story a modern feel, and helps it stand out as truly a gem of a production, are the dances. This is not a musical in the sense that characters suddenly break out in song in the middle of a performance, though there are two songs that conclude the first and nearly finish the second acts. It is a musical dance performance in that every scene is full of spectacular, show stopping dance routines. The opening dance in the city scape sets the mood for dancing that both engages a young audience, and moves the story forward. In the subway tunnel number, Alice wears a lighted costume and dances through ever decreasing colored arches. The world seems to get smaller and smaller with each arch she passes through. In the tea party scene the dancing takes a modern twist with the Mad Hatter teaching Alice the Whip and the Nae Nae.

The Mad Hatter steals the show with his flamboyant costume and his witty and often outlandish modern references. Played with perfect over-the-topness by Jeremy Trammelle, the Hatter brings a smile to every face in the audience. Even my little girl pushed my arm away and clapped her hands excitedly when he crossed the stage in his giant tea cup.

After the show, the stars lined up in the lobby and the kids crowded around them. My daughter and her friend went to every performer for their autographs. The biggest crowd was around Alice. She is the star of the show, after all, and the one with whom most kids identify. It isn’t just her that makes this a great show, though. The entire cast, and the energy they bring to the show, make The New Adventures of Alice in Wonderland worth going out of your way to see.

Especially if you’re a nervous six-year-old.

The New Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Susan Thornton and written by Ms. Thornton and Steve Steele, was presented by Other Voices, Inc, at the Roland E. Powell Performing Arts Center in Ocean City. The show starred Danielle Tuomey, Julie Herber, Joann Lee, Amanda Patton, Jeremy Trammelle, Shawn Nakia, Adam Blackstock.

The is one of two reviews of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in what we’re calling our Battling Buellers posts in anticipation of this Wednesday’s re-release in Ocean City.

Few can deny that 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a classic, and if you don’t, its likely you view the film as the miscreant-truant of cinema or as the sibling-who-gets-away-with-everything of film. As with any film as popular are Ferris Bueller there are those who take issue with it, some for its whiteness, some for a protagonist who can fairly be described as unlikable. But it’s clear that despite those dissenters, the film still enjoys a wide popularity nearly 30 years after its release, perhaps surpassing other huge works of the Hughes canon.  To me the reasons for this are clear:  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is an exemplary hangout movie with a magnificent script, great characters, and the ability to endure after numerous viewings.

In preparation for this review I viewed the film for what was probably my ten millionth time (give or take) and what is important to note is that I do not consider myself an above average fan. Whether you love this movie or just like it, if you’re a Gen Xer or a Millenial, you’ve probably seen it that many times without meaning to. That kind of ubiquity is in no small part due to Hughes’s script, which is able to take the silly fun and poignant coming of age themes while Weird Science while leaving the sophomoric humor, and also the teen melodrama of The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. I do not mean to put those films down, but Ferris Bueller is simply able to strike a balance that those otherwise fine films cannot. To emerge from my digression, what I found on my ten millionth viewing is that the film continues to charm me, from my favorite bits like, “They bought it.” To lines I hadn’t noticed before, “I want to go to a good college so I can lead a fruitful life.” Hughes’ clever dialogue and excellent characterizations hold up better than they have any right to.

Speaking of characterizations, let’s talk about Ferris, who is one of those characters that you simply cannot imagine anyone else for the role but Mathew Broderick. It’s a shame no other film has been able to use the actors talents quite as effectively, because he is spot on in this. Hughes presents a character who is a liar, a cheater, a law breaker with little reverence for education or the feelings of others, but because of his roguish characterization and Broderick’s boyish smirking, we love him. He is a snobby brat and a charming rapscallion; a selfish truant and a charming rogue; a privileged punk and a mythological trickster god. If there is something I don’t like about Ferris, is that he has pretty much no emotional journey or change in the film. There is obvious error in the characters ways, but the film refuses to acknowledge them. There is no lesson to learn and no real threat of failure throughout the film. But these concerns are mitigated largely by the film’s truly dynamic character: Cameron.

There’s been a lot of attention paid to Cameron in discussions of the film, and it’s no wonder why. Cameron begins the film as Ferris’s foil and partner in crime, a brow-beaten best friend who is dragged into Ferris’s day off and spends most of the film objecting. But Cameron is the character who has stuff to work out, who is in desperate need of change. Without Cameron, the film would be watching a winner always win. Not the height of drama. Cameron provides the film’s emotional core. And, in Ferris’s offer to take the blame for the destruction of Cameron’s Father’s car, Cameron’s sublot is what gives Ferris is one moment of goodliness and humanity. By way of this I can say that film might be elevated by giving  Cameron a larger, perhaps even POV role. Many are fond of the Ferris Bueller/Fight Club theory which posits Ferris as Cameron’s psychological manifestation of the man he wishes he could be a la Tyler Durden. Although I view this theory as bullhockey, it’s a fun exercise to consider it. Instead, I’d like to see something more in line with The Great Gatsby, wherein we view the magnificence and the flaws of Bueller through the perspective of the more grounded Cameron, as we see Gatsby through Nick. Regardless of how the film might be improved in this sense, Alan Ruck’s performance as Cameron and the role the character plays in the film as it is excellent.

Mia Sara’s performance and Sloan is fine. Her characters presence in the film is fairly inconsequential but does a nice job of rounding out the threesome and does add much to the dynamic of our heroes. Beyond this, Jennifer Grey and Jeffery Jones, as Ferris’s annoyed sister and his buffoonish principal respectively, are great characters and great performances. Through them, the film delivers a myriad of complications that threaten to put an end to Ferris’s Day Off, and though these complications could be a bit more dire or threatening, they still add a tension that keeps the story going.

Perhaps the best thing that I can say for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is that it manages to be a film that is undeniably 80s, while not letting this detract from it. The film could easily be remade in the modern era, but of course it should not. Not only is it a classic work of a beloved auteur, but there is no reason to modernize it, because despite being 30 years old, it remains timely, or perhaps timeless. The characters and situations are iconic and though some improvements could be made, I struggle to think of any that need to be made. You can (and should) see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on the big screen at Fox Sun & Surf Cinema on 5/18 at 7:00 pm

This is the second of a three-part essay. We will publish the series each Thursday through its completion. Find part one here.

For as long as my father has wanted a boat, or at least this boat, or at least this iteration of his boat wanting, if you will allow me that, eight to ten years say, my mother has wanted a new vanity for their hall bath. The one they have is horrifically ‘80s. Now, I won’t make some snarky comment as to my mother’s taste in décor, her sense of style, or the like (this is not a piece of fiction in which I can protect her sense of anonymity behind a pseudonymed caricature named Rowena). No, this is real. So I’ll just say I was pleasantly surprised that she wanted to update the horrific vanity.
We’ve looked at them, bathroom vanities. She and I. She’s looked at them with my father. She’s looked at them with my sister. She has even looked at them with her grandchild, my son Sam. She has some specific wants or needs or demands, you can call them. It must be white. It has to have drawers and a cabinet. It cannot be too deep. She and I actually were looking at a vanity on that fateful day. That day my Dad bought a boat. The vanity she wanted cost about $300. The boat did not cost $300. My mother is still waiting for her vanity. So, my Dad bought a boat.

Our next boat, the second one, came not too terribly long after the tragic dockside mauling of our first. It was not a fishing boat. It was a sail boat. Who knew my Dad could sail? I didn’t. But then I was like three when he got it, so what did I know? It was a 25-foot American Masthead Sloop christened Hesperus. A good name for a boat, I know. Perhaps you remember? Hesperus is the personification of the Evening Star in Greek Mythology. Hesperus is also an ill-fated boat in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s tragic and epic poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus. In our lives, however, it was the no named boat that sunk. But Hesperus? I grew up on her. Sort of. My sister and I both did. And come to think of it, my parents did as well.
With the purchase of Hesperus, my mother made a decision. If we were going to do a lot of boating, my mother insisted that my sister and I could swim. My mother didn’t think she was a strong enough swimmer to save us should something happen. So at three, I learned to swim and swim well.

We lived in Largo, Florida at the time. Largo is a little suburb of town in the St. Petersburg area between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Given the location, we sailed a lot! We would overnight at various islands, some with conveniences and some without. We swam, we fished, we never used sunscreen! Ahhh, the seventies, what could go wrong? Your child is pale skinned and fair, blonde hair and blue eyes? No worries, rub them down in baby oil and stick them on the white reflective surfaces of a sail boat, surrounded by water in the blazing Florida sun.
My mother always wanted my sister and I to have fun. My Dad could be a bit more serious at times. He learned to let go. One night, Lyn (my sister) and I wanted to fish. Dad didn’t want to deal with it so he insisted we had no bait. Mom insisted we could fish anyway. Dad didn’t want to go through the ordeal of baiting hooks and setting it all up for two kids who would be bored with it in ten minutes anyway. My mother asked him what else he was doing out here anchored by some little island off the Gulf Coast of Central Florida? Again he insisted there was no bait. She handed him some hot dogs. He laughed, then protested, then looked in her eyes and saw she was serious. He protested some more. Lyn and I fished. I think my sister might have caught one. But, soon enough, like Dad had said, we indeed were bored. We wanted to do something else. But my sister had caught a fish. So there was my dad, with fishing pole and hotdogs, fishing away.

Our family vacations were on that boat. Most weekends were spent on that boat. We slept on it, fought on it, ate on it, had fun on it. My sister and I actually had to be friends on it. Our families joined us on the boat. My mother dealt with my dad’s family, and my dad dealt with my mother’s. Our parent’s had jobs on the boat. My dad captained and navigated and reigned supreme. My mother cooked and manned the sails and was the final word. They fought, yelled, argued, screamed; they laughed, they talked, they loved. They learned to work together. It wasn’t always a smooth partnership, but it was theirs. It was that way on the boat, the way they learned to navigate the waters of the Gulf Coast, and the depths of family weekends and vacations too. It was how they learned to navigate the last 50 years, I would say. 50 years of marriage is no weekend getaway.
Of course with all the fun, there were the rough times. The time my father nearly went blind while painting the bottom of the boat. The time both my parents were certain we weren’t going to make it back to the marina during a freak thunderstorm. And the times my father used the boat as an escape when things got rough. If escaping my mother by going to the boat was his intention, well, that boat was as much her respite as it was his. And so now, as I think on it, he wasn’t escaping my mother, he was running to her. Running to the place where they yelled and screamed, and argued and laughed and learned and loved and worked together. Where they were one. That place where they grew up. Together.

We moved, eventually. From Largo to a little town in North Florida called Sopchoppy. Yep, I’ll write it again so you don’t have to go back to re-read that word. Sopchoppy, S-O-P-C-H-O-P-P-Y. I’ve had to spell that word to folks my whole life, well, since I was 10. We were not too far from the water, and we sailed occasionally. Not as often, but still, we sailed. Oh, but we had horses. My sister and I had school. My mother had PTA and my father had work. He traveled, my mother volunteered, my sister and I had friends that lived in a church. No, really, their house was an old church. Our lives changed drastically. Hesperus was no longer the center of our vacations, our recreation, our trips, our lives. It was no longer my father’s escape. It was no longer my father’s return.

We moved again. To Lakeland, Fla., a mid-sized town between Orlando and Tampa. We sold Hesperus in the six months we lived there. We moved again, to Alachua, near Gainesville. Gainesville is the home to the University of Florida and the Gators. The people who bought Hesperus stopped paying. My dad retrieved her and once again, Hesperus sat in our yard. She rested, unceremoniously, on her trailer. Kind of like those reconstructed whale or dinosaur bones you might find in museum. I would climb up on her sometimes, and sit. And remember. I suspect my dad did too.