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 party. That same weekend, bars and restaurants up and down Route 1 will host 150 bands as part of the Dewey Beach Music Conference.

While summer in Dewey is sweet indeed, there’s a sense of can-we-come-out-now? when Labor Day wraps up. Of course, any real of relief is immediately buried under the vitriolic snipe-fest of municipal elections, but for those who choose to abstain from gladiatorial politics, Dewey has a lovely shoulder season to enjoy. The water’s still warm, even if the mornings are a bit nippy. But isn’t that why we have hot toddies?

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 turned out, was a competent saleslady.

Read More "The Sirens of Jimmy’s" »

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 at the zenith of Labor Day weekend, he became an object of conquest for three girls. They sent the prettiest among them – skinny, chinless and bitter-looking – to fetch his shirt. Bargaining ensued.

Loud Shirt’s friends started discussing exchange rates. What was fair – one shirt, one bra? He’d have to wear the bra. No no no, sell high, one shirt for two bras. Miss Bitter tossed looks to her friends, looking for a sacrificial bra. No luck – just sour looks.

The capitalists lost interest. I watched Loud Shirt disappear into the crowd. I could see the neon angelfish even through the thicket of polos and joke shirts.

Alan Henny photo

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.
Read More "Lady in the Water" »

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 the wires – it was a rake, combing the beach for bottle caps, plastic spoons, condom wrappers and beach towels abandoned the day before.
Read More "Beachcomber" »

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 August: hurricane waves at the beach, back-to-school specials at Wal Mart and occasion for one last heroic bender in Dewey. How are you ending your summer, and what drink should be sweating in your hand? Hit the jump.
Read More "For Every Season, A Drink" »

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 air their greivances. This was brass-tacks municipal politics - residents, not constituents, speaking out.

...punctuated, here and there, with shouts from the twenty-somethings partying in the pool adjacent to the conference room. Through the blinds, I saw a few bellies cannonball into the chlorine. Once, a chant of "Ole, ole ole ole" punched through the wall, almost triggering flashbacks of Running of the Bull.

I saw only a few attendees turn their heads to glance out the window. Did they even hear? Or were they immune by now, the party-clamor just background noise?

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 the headlights, turned to face the grille and waved at the windshield, cuing a chorus of horns.

I wasn’t the only one witnessing Tiananmen, Dewey Beach: Lt. Billy Hocker’s unmarked lit its blinking snow cone-colored lights, pulled a sharp U at the light and pulled abreast the jaywalker, who was now heading at a clip for the Cork’s entrance.

She didn’t make it. Last I saw, she was bending to place her can of Coors Light on the ground. Doubtless, dozens of jaywalkers were at that moment strutting across the highway. But as any Dewey cop will tell you, rules are rules.

Though I couldn’t help but root just a little bit for the girl who stopped traffic on Route 1 – and waved like a pop star.

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 accused me of embellishing the hedonism and alcoholic intensity of the Dewey Beach nightlife. I was indignant – I was there, I wanted to say, like a Vietnam vet. I saw things.

I stopped going to Dewey for a reason. It stopped being fun. But I wonder if my perspective wasn’t colored, a bit. Did I forget that, during the summer of 2007, Dewey Beach was my best friend?

Read More "My Dewey Summer" »

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. So if you’re in Nalu this weekend, be sure to ask for the good stuff – you’ll get a fair price, and the step up from McCormick’s paint-thinner is worth it.

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 music scene is, in essence, a study in what makes a good cover band. Like a good Italian dish, all it takes is the elegant combination of simple ingredients.
Read More "Na Na Na Na Na Na; or, What Makes A Good Cover Band" »

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 off a home run.

Then he’s off, down the hallway to get Judge Scott Bradley on the horn.
The police department was busy, for a Thursday, and waiting to talk to Dempsey felt like waiting for a dinner table at a popular restaurant. When he breezed back into the room, he said,

“Wanna see something?”

“Sure,” I said. Last time he asked that question, he showed me a consumer-model taser. It was shaped like a pager and made a terrifying snapping sound. This time, he grabbed a yellow baggie from a desktop. “Atlantic Books” was printed across the front. Dempsey fished out a nugget of tin foil.

“Sniff it,” he said. “Promise, it won’t hurt you.”

I peeled back a few layers of foil and uncovered what looked to be a candy bell, made from white chocolate flecked with something black. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed.

“For the life of me,” I said, “this is Hersey’s Cookies and Cream.”

Dempsey grinned widely, eyes electric.  “Magic mushrooms,” he said.

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 Rudder, screeching from PAs and howled into microphones. You haven’t seen the power of alcohol until you’ve seen a full dance floor caterwauling the chorus to Kings of Leon’s turgid hit played on acoustic guitar.

Certain songs seem to be unshakable from the set lists of Dewey cover bands and DJs. Hit the jump for a brief digest of sonic cliché and sing-along nausea.
Read More "Play It Again – and Again, and Again" »

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 tells Lt. Billy Hocker that he didn’t glue the wound shut, since it’s on the elbow and it would just rip open again. On the holding cell monitor, a man sits with his hands cuffed behind his back, one arm bandaged from bicep to forearm.

I ask Hocker what he’s in for.

“This guy?” Hocker says. “Urinating in Route 1. Oh, and propositioning a 13 and 17-year-old.”

Read More "Dude Pees in Highway, Hits on Tween" »

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 or something.”

The pair in question were a 14 and 15 year-old from New Castle County, Delaware, passing a joint with complete disregard for McDowell, standing in uniform and in plain view. McDowell watched them pass, and in disbelief, fell into step behind them. The 14 year old took a toke, passed the joint and let loose a plume of heavily herbed smoke.

McDowell cleared his throat and ordered the kids to stop. The 14-year-old spun on his heel in full-on stoned shock; the 15-year-old, an unreadable slate, dropped the joint down the front of his pants and said, “What.”

McDowell was cuffing the 15-year-old when he began to fidget, shifting his weight onto one foot, bending a knee and wiggling in what could only be described as a shimmy. McDowell uncuffed one hand and let the kid fish the joint from his drawers.

Recreating the dance, McDowell alternates between hip wiggles and prancing. Thus was born the Dewey Shimmy.