civilized ku # 2950-52 / diptych # 153 ~ life's a beach

traditional shore cottage ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
dunes / dunes + "improvementS" (when nature just isn't enough) ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
roadside farmer's stand ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
party ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen

Uncharacteristically, my time at the beach to date has been occupied by the wife's family stuff, aka: parties. With the"other side" of the family in attendance (once very 5 years), there are parties and impromptu gathering every day and 2:30-3:00AM is the standard end of nearly every day. Hence my delay in posting.

As is always the case (for me) at the Jersey Shore, the heat + humidity and the culture of creeping conspicuous consumption are inescapably oppressive. I can escape the heat / humidity issue in "air conditioned comfort" but the prevailing paradigm of tasteless conspicuous (and proud of it) consumption is not so easy to dismiss or avoid.

With each advancing year, the spread - some such as myself might label it as a plague / blight - of ostentatious (nothing exceeds like excess) McMansion architecture / monstrosities is destroying / replacing what was once a small seashore cottage village culture with that of typical of suburban sprawl. The MO is simple - buy a lot with small cottage, tear the cottage down and replace it with an aforementioned structure (most often 3 stories high) which is built right out to edges of the plot.

I just don't get it.