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Apparently People Become Really Offended When You Tweet About Jersey Shore Houses
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I threw this up Sunday night and it got 90,000 impressions, for some reason:
This was very triggering for some people. A user named @NHLFlyersHockey was so offended that he blocked me for tweeting it. Outrageous!
Here are some of the responses:
- “The only people who complain about something like this are the ones who are angry they can’t afford a shore house lol”
- “They’re like that out of state regulation after Sandy. That small home? Guess what their flood insurance costs. Stop with the old man routine ‘back in my day!'”
- “Get a clue before you say stupid shit.”
- “Fortunately for you the salary at crossing broad can barely afford a 600/sq foot studio in. Norristown.”
- “Stay in wildwood where you belong”
- “that’s the Jersey Shore in a nutshell? get outside more”
- “You become more unlikable with every post. Just enjoy the shore, douchebag!”
- “You wouldn’t get it #moron #shrink“
- “God forbid people with money build houses to have large get togethers! The horror!”
- “Clown take. Only someone who had zero clue would think this”
What’s funny is that this isn’t even a “take” or an opinion, it’s more of an observation. This is Sea Isle, 45th and Central across from the church, and it’s a great snapshot of developmental Jersey Shore Zeitgeist, where you have the dwindling juxtaposition of these 1970s and 1980s houses against modern, three-story behemoths. On one side, you’ve got a landscaped and fenced-in yard with mature trees, and on the other side there’s a bunch of stone laid around pavement. The contrast really sticks out.
The soon-to-be end result is uniformity, or monoculture, where these cookie cutter houses take over like Eagles fans in Los Angeles. They’re limited in design and color and personality, the houses, not Eagles fans. There’s no landscaping, no grass, no trees, nothing really green at all. And when you put it all together, it saps the unique vibe out of some classic shore blocks that used to “feel” a certain way. Now you walk around down here and it’s less like Ocean City or Sea Isle City and more like Point Breeze on the Sea. You can’t tell me with a straight face that this is a desirable aesthetic:
This looks exactly the same as three houses across the street. The paint color is barely different. They dumped a bunch of stone into the yard, planted five shrubs and a sapling, and called it a day. There’s more white and gray in this photo than a 2015 Fishtown new construction. Heyo!
Of course, you’d be naive to think that these 50-year-old, classic shore houses are going to stay up forever. As one angry respondent noted, new construction looks like this because, after Super Storm Sandy, New Jersey made significant code changes, notably elevating buildings to account for higher flood levels. But that only tells half the story, because even before Sandy, developers were scooping up old houses and tearing them down and building only slightly smaller cookie cutters. If you sold 20 years ago, like my grandparents did, this was what popped up on the property:
Not bad at all, but again, uniform and unimaginative.
Anyway, it’s not the biggest deal in the world. I just think this shit looks tacky. The shore used to have a lot of personality and vibe and it’s going away as building code is updated and real estate trends change. From the department of “more than one thing can true,” you can dislike how things look down there now while also agreeing that it’s just not tenable for old-school home owners to cough up 4x for flood insurance when hovering developers are willing to pay out the wazoo for their properties. You can’t blame anyone for selling when you consider the conditions.
What’s been really interesting over the last 3-4 years is to experience the corner of Twitter that deals with development, housing, and urbanism. Not something Crossing Broad ever explored until the Sixers arena saga, which pulled together sport, mass transit, union labor, race relations, and pretty much everything one could think of. It’s what made the story so interesting. But holy shit do those people have insanely strong opinions, and quickly become offended. What is this, a Sydney Sweeney jeans commercial? Pagan wrote something about the PPA a few weeks ago and I was thinking I might have to hire private security to keep the bike brigade from murdering him in his sleep. All he did was compare the Parking Authority to Al Qaeda, which isn’t far off since both are terrorist organizations.
Honestly, people gotta go outside and touch grass. Or, if you own a new construction at the shore, go out and touch rocks.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com