August 29, 2022

The vinyl houses in Ocean City, New Jersey are mostly gray, white, or beige, and trimmed in titanium white PVC. Occasionally, various shades of slate blue outline windows and doors. Canvas awnings striped in alternating white and blue, or white and red, or white and green fan out from the porches. Other flecks of color punctuate the buff monotony: the orange, red, blue, burgundy, and gold of college football flags; pink pansies, fuchsia dogwood blossoms, and improbably manicured astroturf green patches of sod (weed free); saturated polychromatic beach towels hung to dry over railings; fluorescent orange construction cones… For as long as I can remember, this place has been enraptured by the eddy of tear downs and new home construction. Contractors and subcontractors with their trucks and vans and dumpsters occupy the gridded streets, as pervasive and cacophonous as shrieking sea gulls attacking a discarded hot dog on the beach. Of course, this gluttony will not last. Faced with extreme weather and catastrophic sea-level rises, these plastic beach McMansions are probably heading to a landfill sooner than most realize, or care to admit. Life’s a beach, unless it’s under fifteen feet of water and pounded to oblivion.