Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/category/news/exploring-south-jersey/)
Bert Lopez has a full-time job and is involved with more than a few chambers and charitable organizations. He isn’t sure he wants another side project. But as one of the founders of the long-dormant Hispanic Alliance of Atlantic County, he’s been under some pressure lately.
Our World Famous Atlantic City Boardwalk has grown longer by at least a few hundred feet in the last couple weeks (who’s counting?) but anyone contemplating a wander on foot to the end should be advised the Boardwalk currently dead-ends rather dramatically at around Grammercy Place, with no ramps, steps or exits back to Maine Avenue as of now. To get back to street level, you have to turn around and walk back to Pacific Avenue (more than 1,000 feet by my unofficial reckoning) to find a ramp to get down to street level. The issue was raised Tuesday morning at the Boardwalk Committee Meeting where residents pointed out they’d seen people climbing over the railing to get to Maine Avenue. If you’re on a bike or otherwise mobile, that might not be a big deal but if you’re not so mobile, a two-thousand-plus foot detour is a bigger deal. When I was there I saw a 72 year old man (his estimate) who had scaled the wall with his dog.
Under overcast skies as gale-force winds blew across the bay, a group of soccer players from as near to home as Somers Point and as far afield as South America and Europe ran drills and bantered on Atlantic City turf yesterday.
Ventnor natives Sean Hughes and Emily Van Duyne have started a new podcast called Exit 38, after the ramp on the Garden State Parkway that points you to Atlantic City.
Come and get your five free trees! There’s no catch. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Forest Service has teamed up with Arbor Day Foundation to offer five trees to each New Jersey resident this spring. Each year they give out more than 100,000 seedlings. Each New Jersey resident can receive five one- to two-foot tall bare root tree seedlings in a bundle, according to the Forest Service’s Facebook page.
Clamming has served as a viable source of income in South Jersey since time immemorial, although the work becomes harder and harder with each passing year.
Kara Quigley Keane usually starts putting the Halloween decorations up outside the house—a little Cape Cod bungalow on Fulton Avenue in Margate—the day after Labor Day.
“The Boardwalk is for slow cruising only,” reads a new sign on the Atlantic City stretch of the Boardwalk, not far from Jackson Ave. The “Atlantic City Boardwalk Bike Riding Etiquette” sign is filled with other good advice too, such as to yield to pedestrians, walk bicycles through crowds and be prepared to stop. We at Route 40 are avid Boardwalk cyclists and we’re fans of the intention behind the sign. Even the wording is intelligible and straight-forward (leaving aside slow cruising double entendres). But there’s the rub.
Atlantic City’s Surf Stadium was filled last night with guests for a pop-up fundraiser for the city’s Boys & Girls Club, organized by a collection of South Jersey wunderkinder that formed a non-profit called 4AC x AC earlier this year.
It’s going to be a beautiful weekend (sunny, 80-83 F) and there’s a lot going on. In Atlantic City you can kick off with a full moonrise climb at the Absecon Lighthouse tonight before heading over to Gardner’s Basin to support the AC Arts Foundation with a strawberry-moon cruise, then tomorrow morning watch the round-the-island paddle race (it kicks off at 8 am on Saturday from the marina outside Golden Nugget), watch or take part in the double dutch skipping event at Brown’s park in Atlantic City on Saturday,
Downbeach, Ventnor is hosting a food truck festival on ski beach all weekend, then Porchfest will kick off from 1 pm on Sunday, followed up by Funk Daddy playing the beach concert on Newport Ave. In Linwood, there will be music at the farmer’s market on Saturday and over in the Pines, there’s a Blueberry-themed art contest at Whitesbog (kids enter free) all weekend and on Sunday (also at Whitesbog) you can enjoy a lunchtime music jam. Over in Hammonton on Saturday there is another food truck festival from 4.30 pm. All that and more on our Route 40 Events page. Want to send us an event?
Longport, Absecon Island’s hinterland of smoke-free beaches and elevated mansions, now has a beach-tag vending machine. “This is a new concept for the Borough so please have patience (as) we learn how to operate and maintain this machine,” read a message posted to the Borough’s website on Tuesday. The machine is located in the police department foyer and available 24 hours. If you’re considering buying a Longport beach tag, you should probably get down there to check it out quick since tag prices are soon going up. Regular seasonal tags are available for purchase at $15 through June 16. Then the price will go up to $30.
