Or if you run from a bike cop, get creative – try zig-zagging, sudden halts, or hopping a fence. Do not run in a straight line on pavement, huffing and sweating while a bored seasonal officer pedals along five feet behind you.

Seasonal officer Nate Hollis remembered the summer's first foot patrol wistfully.

“It was retarded,” he said.

Nate Hollis resembles Jim Parsons (Sheldon Cooper of "Big Bang Theory") in both looks in demeanor: sullen and laconic, with a mean dry wit. He’s a second-year seasonal looking to transfer out of Dewey; but while the states of the union weather the financial crisis, he’s content to spend another summer in southern Delaware.

Hollis issues a lot of open-container citations. Since many aren’t aware Dewey has an open container law, he’s willing to let a lot slide – if, for example, a Junebug holding a Solo cup seems blissfully unaware, Hollis lets him go with a warning. If, however, he dumps the drink and runs, the chase is on.

Such was the case on a night in early June, when a twentysomething tossed his vodka-and-cranberry and took off sprinting. Hollis had no trouble closing the cap on his mountain bike. He spent half a block trying to talk the suspect down; eventually, he just taunted him.

“I said ‘What do you think you’re doing? I’m on a bike,” Hollis said.

Eventually, the runner wised up and ducked between two parked cars. Hollis, still fresh, had no trouble catching up to the winded suspect. As he snapped on the handcuffs, the suspect told Hollis he was a lawyer. Recalling this, Hollis drew in a breath and released it slowly.

“They’re always lawyers,” he said.

I was at HammerHeads for part of Monday, June 8‘s  town council meeting, riding out the closed-door executive session by catching up on work and drinking Coronas. It was a slow night, but not too slow. I watched it gather momentum, following the cherries of cigarettes as they disappeared down side streets, betting which girl would fall off her heels first.

Then I was joined by Kara and Brianna, two twentysomethings in white undershirts and long, loopy necklaces made of iridescent blue beads and plastic Bud Light pendants. They’re beer girls, and their job is to convince barhoppers to buy not what’s on special, or what’s good, but what they’re holding in their hands. They don’t need mascots or super bowl ads. They have charm.

And they put a Bud Light on the table in front of me.

Kara and Brianna work for NKS, the mammoth distributor responsible for shipping Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), Crown Imports (Corona, St. Pauli Girl) and Sam Adams to stores nationwide. Because most Americans don’t care about the politics of beer distribution, the girls represent one of the distributor’s brands. On June 8, they were Bud Light girls.

Their MO is to make people drink their beer. They asked me why I wasn’t drinking Bud Light. I told them I didn’t drink pisswater unless it was on special. They laughed, not really needing to respond – after all, the next beer I would drink was pisswater, free pisswater, the pisswater they brought to me. Somewhere in the chaos theory of consumer behavior, it makes perfect sense to give away a beer; a combination of gratitude, affinity, or lust could secure a second round. The potential for gain makes up for the loss.

But being a gorgeous beer shill in Dewey Beach –  where sunstroked drunks love to grab more than a cold one –  could be a dangerous job . Fortunately, Kara said, the bouncers keep an ear out for distress calls.

“Just from living here, you know everybody, and everybody always has your back,” she said. At The Starboard last year, a pair of Miller Light shills gave them a hard time for representing the competition. They were silenced before the teasing could escalate.

They aren’t all creeps, Kara pointed out. As part of a promotion last year, they gave away a cruise. The winner was a local, showing up on Sundays with metronomic regularity – the kind of guy you want to win a cruise. He sent her pictures form the boat, gushing with gratitude. Telling the story, she blushes.

Kara graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in business. Brianna is a rising senior Art History major. Being a beer girl isn’t bad for a summer gig, she said – it pays $15 – $20 an hour, depending on seniority. You only work for a few hours, she said, but it’s hardly work.

Kara’s face told a different story. A second-year NKS employee, she wore the detachment of a Dewey veteran, someone who’s been pawed a few too many times to spare the scorn. She sat with her shoulders slanted impatiently, boyishly. She wasn’t selling me anything, which actually made me want to buy whatever she was having. We were two people waiting out the clock in Dewey Beach, which is reason enough for a second round.

Last night proved that Dewey isn’t all puke-in-the-bathroom—a communal bonfire drew hundreds to the beach for free s’mores and good, clean fun. The background noise of adult conversation and giggling kids seemed to vindicate what town officials have been saying (with worried looks) for the past few months: Dewey is a family town.

To my surprise, it worked. The first chamber of commerce-sponsored bonfire night was an unqualified success, drawing over 300 people by the estimate of beach concessionaire David Lynam. As part of his contract with the town, Lynam was asked to provide beach chairs and s’mores fixings, but told he could charge; he decided not to.

“You know what? It just takes away from it,” he said.

Kate Bell, summer intern for the Rehoboth Beach–Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, let the show run itself. She watched kids twirl glow-ropes on the fire’s periphery, and trusted parents to keep an eye on their children while fireside. A grad student studying International Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of South Carolina, Bell seemed coolly surprised by the crowd.

“It supports the notion that you can have families and college students in the same space,” she said, speaking of the two groups as if they were different species.

It’s not as if the party dynamo didn’t switch off—it was still thrumming along a block away, a band cranking out noise from the Bottle & Cork while games of beer pong filled backyards up and down the side streets. But you couldn’t feel the bass, standing on the beach. You couldn’t hear it. It was distant enough to be nonexistent, and watching a little girl pick gooey marshmallow off a stick with her fingers and teeth, you didn’t miss the taste of gin.

But I swear I saw a few eyes wander to the dunes.