{"id":378424,"date":"2026-06-28T17:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T17:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/378424\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T17:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T17:05:12","slug":"we-just-need-some-basic-rules-for-the-jersey-shore-jeff-edelstein-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/378424\/","title":{"rendered":"We just need some basic rules for the Jersey Shore [JEFF EDELSTEIN COLUMN]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want more Jeff Edelstein? Head over to jeffedelstein.substack.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

And now, a few words about the Jersey Shore, which belongs to all of us equally, the same way a rest-stop bathroom belongs to all of us equally.<\/p>\n

I drive down from Mercer County like everybody who lives more than a few miles from salt water, which is to say: Too fast and badly, just like everyone else. By the time my feet hit sand I\u2019ve already witnessed nine, maybe 10 crimes against human decency, and nobody\u2019s even opened a beach chair yet. (I love the Shore. Would take a speeding train to the thorax for the Shore. We\u2019re getting to the \u201cbut.\u201d Stand by.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing. New Jersey does not need more laws. We have laws. What we need is one laminated card, handed out at every beach entrance, titled, simply: Don\u2019t Be This Guy.<\/p>\n

So I made it. You\u2019re welcome. Clip \u2018n\u2019 save.<\/p>\n

Rule one: Do not feed the seagulls. Not one fry. I know it feels generous. It is not generous. It is terrorism. The gull does not thank you. The gull goes and tells nine hundred of its closest associates, and forty seconds later a family three blankets over is reenacting a Hitchcock film because you wanted to feel like St. Francis of Assisi with a tray of boardwalk fries.<\/p>\n

Rule two: The Bluetooth speaker stays home. You are not headlining anything. Nobody within sixty feet asked for your playlist, and the fact that you have to be told this is, frankly, the whole problem. As we speak you are being silently hated by everyone who can hear your crappy music, and I honestly don\u2019t think a jury would convict someone for actual, honest-to-goodness murder as a result.<\/p>\n

Rule three is do not shake your towel. Fold up your towel, scrunch up your towel, walk your towel far away from other human beings, then shake your towel.<\/p>\n

Those are the easy ones.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a few that should get you banned for the season, no appeal, no parole:<\/p>\n

SAVING SIX PARKING SPACES with chairs, cones, or a cousin standing in the road like a traffic pylon with opinions.<\/p>\n

THE DEATH PIT \u2014 your child excavating a four-foot hole that some unsuspecting retiree is going to vanish into at dusk. \u201cThey\u2019re just playing\u201d is not a legal defense. I checked.<\/p>\n

THE UNATTENDED UMBRELLA in a stiff wind. Now it\u2019s a javelin. Now it\u2019s a lawsuit. Now it\u2019s somewhere over the next town.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019M A STRONG SWIMMER,\u201d said near the jetty. The ocean does not care. The ocean has never once cared.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

And before anybody emails me to complain about the tourists, save it. Sure, the out-of-towners are bad. But plenty of us with Jersey plates are out here being absolute monsters, complaining about the traffic while we are, ourselves, the traffic.<\/p>\n

But if I could laminate one rule, make just one of them stick, it would be this one, and it isn\u2019t a joke: When the flags are red, stay out of the water.<\/p>\n

The kids watching the stands are 19. Some of them are 17. They are children, and they will swim out into something that frightens grown men because you decided you knew better than a flag. Don\u2019t make a teenager risk drowning for your confidence problem. That\u2019s the one. That\u2019s the whole card, really, in five words.<\/p>\n

Everything else we can laminate, clip, and save.<\/p>\n

That one we just learn.<\/p>\n

Okay. The rest of the rules are posted at the beach entrance. Don\u2019t shake your towel on the way in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want more Jeff Edelstein? Head over to jeffedelstein.substack.com\u00a0 And now, a few words about the Jersey Shore, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132,153128],"class_list":["post-378424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-we-just-need-some-basic-rules-for-the-jersey-shore-jeff-edelstein-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}