Believe it or not, people live in Dewey Beach.
Not many – the official estimate hovers around 300 people, little more than a pilot light in terms of the on-season population – but enough to keep the bars open through September. The Starboard won’t wind down until Oct. 3, when they’ll stage a lavish 50th Anniversary [...]

After July’s Better Than Ezra concert, my friend Stan slipped his number to a server. We were drinking Coronas at Jimmy’s Grille, waiting for our DD when a pretty brunette server caught his eye. He scribbled on a napkin and hand-delivered like a man, confident he’d never hear from her.
She called. The server, as it [...]

It was a pretty ridiculous shirt: multicolored angelfish tessellated from sleeve to sleeve, the kind of camouflage that might work in a Crayola 120-pack. Its wearer had a Cromwell haircut and a sneering way of talking that let you know that his shirt, and probably more, was a sarcastic affect.
Nonetheless, drinking on The Lighthouse deck [...]

Unless Dewey Beach commissioners don grass skirts and lead a conga line down Route 1, last Saturday’s water rescue wins Summer’s Strangest by a long shot. Rachel Decenzi, a 30-year-old from Media, Penn., was naked, imperiled, and screaming for help – in about four feet of water.
Just look at the photo. This doesn't end well.

I met Tony Johnson on the beach at 9 a.m., just as he was finishing his day’s work. He sat meterstick-straight atop his tractor, a traffic-cone orange front-loader with what appeared to be a giant wire cage hitched to the back. As it dragged along the sand, I saw dozens of tiny teeth working behind [...]

I make a leap of imagination and faith when I say: there is a different drink for every stage of the Dewey Summer. The leap of imagination assumes anyone else in Dewey embeds a dramatic arc into their drinking life; the leap of faith assumes they would drink anything other than what’s on special.
It’s late [...]

Bayard Avenue, Dewey Beach  has a flooding problem. With a drainage system described as "essentially ineffective" by a local engineering firm, a heavy rainfall will put pools of standing water on the street for days. Residents are understandably upset, and crowded into a hotel conference room at the Saturday, Aug. 23 roads committee meeting to [...]

She jaywalked across Route 1 with a gaggle of friends, striding towards the Bottle & Cork without pausing at the median strip, wading into oncoming traffic without pause. Their gallant pedestrianism got more than a few blasts from car horns – one, coming from an SUV, blared long enough to turn heads. She halted in [...]

Most drinking-age Delawarians have their Dewey phase. For some, it lasts a summer, while for others, it spans years. The story is usually the same: Fun while it lasted, but it got old. Too many hangovers. Too many mornings of turning out an empty wallet.
In the wake of last week’s cover article, a few residents [...]

Apologies to Dewey Beach bar Nalu. In this week’s City Paper, I compared their standard gin-and-tonic – a $5.75 McCormick – to that served at The Starboard, a $6.50 Tanqueray-and-tonic.
Nalu owner Regan Derrickson told me that while McCormick is indeed the rail gin at Nalu, their Tanqueray-and-tonic, like that served at The Starboard, costs $6.50. [...]

Grumble as I may about ubiquitous disposa-pop, there’s good music to be had in Dewey Beach. The Bottle and Cork brings an increasingly diverse string of performers every year – Old 97s, George Clinton and Citizen Cope, to name a few – and every Wednesday night, Laura Lea &Tripp Fabulous rock The Starboard.
Enjoying the Dewey [...]

Standing in a black shortsleeve, navy cargo pants and a black tactical vest with POLICE stenciled across the right breast, Dewey Beach Police Sgt. Cliff Dempsey looked as if he were waiting for someone to shout “action!”
I asked him what the occasion was.
“Oh,” he said. “Little drug interdiction.” He sounds like a little leaguer shrugging [...]

In Dewey Beach, certain songs are inescapable. During summer 2007, The Killers’ “Read My Mind” stalked me from bar to bar until I actually started to like it. This year, the song is Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire.” No hopes of endearment there.
I’ve heard “Sex on Fire” in Northbeach, The Starboard and the Rusty [...]

Water skips and spills out of the back of the Dewey Beach Police paddy wagon. Inside, a crouched seasonal patrolman uses a hose to blast quarter-sized drops of blood off the treaded steel floor. I ask him what happened.
“Had a guy, gotta clean it up,” he shouts over the hose.
Inside the station, a shortsleeved paramedic [...]

In cop parlance, catching a whiff of ganja is neatly phrased in reports as “detecting a strong odor of Marijuana.” Last Wednesday evening, Seasonal Patrolman Micheal McDowell detected a strong odor of marijuana while standing near Bellevue Street.
“I couldn’t believe it,” McDowell said later. “They were walking around smoking a joint, like it was Europe [...]