80th street beach, Harvey Cedars, NJ

As a boy the white sand beaches of Harvey Cedars were a world of pure freedom and joy.    The first order of business upon arriving at the shore at the beginning of summer was to take active measures to toughen one's feet.   On the walk up to 80th street beach there would be patches of soft asphalt, hot from the sun.  You would learn to search these spots out as the gooey surface was a relief from the biting pavement.   By the time July rolled around our feet would be leathery and calloused enough to run across the blazingly hot white sand and catapult into the cool, blue-green water.

      You could tell the "tourists"  from the regulars on 80th street pretty easily.   If someone wore a watch or shoes onto the beach they were clearly day trippers. Likewise, children my age who were wearing bathing suits instead of regulation cut-off jeans were unlikely to be around for more than a weekend.  These strange people would go to the beach with towels and put on sunblock!  

     Adults seemed not to understand the beach at all.  They would come to the beach with a convoy of gear:  beach chairs (?!), umbrellas, coolers filled with contraband beverages, books, cigarettes and everything necessary to remain stationary for the day. 

    For children being stationary was something to be avoided.  The beach offered almost complete freedom.  We would run along the edge of waves surging along the beach, side by side with the sandpipers.   We would have epic battles with kites we bought at "The Ship's Wheel" for a dollar.   When the ice cream man would ring his bells we would launch a full scale lobbying effort on Mom for enough change to get a creamsicle.  Once in a while Mom would indulge us and during the brisk sprint across the hot white sand we were grateful for the investment we had made in toughening up our feet.


The author, Philip Stephano, is a social media marketing strategist in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

Tacking into Kinsey Cove under sail

Many of you who have seen me tack "Misterioso" into Kinsey Cove powered only by wind may wonder, "how do you do it?"  The answer goes back 40 plus years.  I learned how to sail on a small scow-shaped boat called a "Butterfly".   A little bit more high tech than a Sunfish and quite a bit smaller and simpler than a Lightning, the Butterfly was, for me, pure freedom.

I learned how to sail the Butterfly on the cove, maneuvering in and out among pilings.   The predominant wind here in the summer is southwest.  This presented no problem in getting out of the cove to the Barnegat Bay.  From there I would often spend all day "discovering" all the hidden places of the bay.

West winds were the worst.  They brought greenhead flies, which were easy enough to kill, but unfortunately only after they were already biting you.   West winds also would choke the entrance to Kinsey Cove with thick mats of eelgrass.   It was impossible to sail through the eelgrass so I would pull myself back into the cove using the bulkheads as leverage or I would paddle.  To this day the west wind evokes feelings of restlessness and irritability in me.

In the southwest wind the channel was clear back into the cove but it was dead upwind.   The wind would careen through the channel bouncing off of the houses and often came from two directions at the same time.  As a result I learned to zone out my conscious mind, forgetting what direction the wind was "supposed" to be coming from and FEELING the zephyrs on the fine hairs of my cheeks, my ears, or the back of my neck.   You learned to squeeze as much momentum as possible from every favorable puff.   You also learned to use every inch of the channel,  waiting until the last inch before tacking in a game of chicken with docks and bulkheads.   Finally you learned NOT to try to do this on a Sunday in summer, on the 4th of July, or any other day when the channel was full of other boaters.   Nothing kills momentum like yielding to powerboat whose skipper is yelling at you to get out of his way. LOL

Translating this skill set into sailing almost thirty feet of yacht up the narrow channel of the cove presented no particular problem.   I was aided by the fact that "Misterioso" carries momentum extremely well and corners on a dime.  The one thing I have to pay attention to is  the aft end which seems to trail languidly according to its own sense of time and space.

The author, Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

Top 10 reasons to have a house on Kinsey Cove

1. One block walk to 80th street beach, the best beach on Long Beach Island
2. Eating a "Noonie Burger" at the counter at Neptune Market
3. Walking 1/2 of one block to happy hour at The Plantation
4. Sailing a small boat on Kinsey Cove
5. Watching your kids swimming in the Cove from the comfort of your deck
6. Reading a book while a Nor'easter is blowing
7. Hearing the surf from your deck while looking over the shimmering lights reflecting on the Cove
8. Having a cookout with friends while watching a spectacular sunset
9. Taking a quick dip in the Cove on a sweltering hot summer day
10. Riding a bike or taking a boat to Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars to watch fireworks on the 4th of July



The author, Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

Chess visitors to the Kinsey Cove house

Grandmaster William Lombardy is considered to be the greatest Roman Catholic chess master since the 16th century cleric Rodrigo (Ruy) López de Segura .  I studied chess for several years with Lombardy.  On a couple of occasions I had the pleasure of entertaining him at the house in Kinsey Cove.   We would smoke fine cigars and analyze end games and middle game strategies for hours.


The children loved having Grandmaster Lombardy around for a visit.  They jokingly called him "grandmother."   In the mornings Lombardy would walk around in pajama shorts with his skinny and blindingly white legs an incongruous attachment to his rather portly figure.  He would fill a mixing bowl with breakfast cereal and eat it with a serving spoon.   One evening, after a good meal and a glass of scotch Lombardy stood on the deck and serenaded the cove in a lovely tenor voice, singing "Ave Maria" into the night and the twinkling lights.


Another frequent visitor was international chess master Emory Tate.   In contrast to GM Lombardy's classical style, Tate is more of a chess Ninja.  His tactical  prowess is the stuff of legend and he is widely regarded to be among the strongest African-American chess players in history.   Tate has the great gift of story telling.   When recounting a chess game his narrative is peppered with colorful and evocative language that seems more apropos of a martial arts contest than a chess game.  "Swizzle sticks" is castling.  "Sweeper/sealer" is a tai chi pawn move.  The fork of two pieces by a pawn would be accompanied by  a delighted exclamation of "squeak!" followed by "deal with it muthaf--ker!".   When one of his attacking pieces would penetrate into a broken defense, Tate would klaxon, "intruder alert, intruder alert".   In addition to being one of the most entertaining chess players in America, Tate is a master wordsmith and a brilliant poet.    We would always keep the Oxford English dictionary within reach to plumb the etymology of our far reaching wordplay. 


My good friend in Christ, Fritz Ukstins, and I are patzers by comparison to these geniuses.  When Fritz comes to the house we cook up a couple of steaks and enjoy a meal together before  retiring to the dining room overlooking the cove.  There we play endless games of blitz chess (5 minutes for each player for the entire game)  and sometimes analyze a game or two from the masters like Tal, Keres, or Bronstein (our favorites).    The night frequently ends watching the Philadelphia Phillies play a seemingly meaningless game in the middle of June.  To a  true baseball fan like Fritz even an early season game like this is riveting and full of import.  To me, the sound of the game is a sleep inducing drone at the end of a fun evening of chess and fellowship.

The author, Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

A fishing trip from Harvey Cedars to Barnegat Light

Sometimes my son Theo and I would load our 17' whaler with fishing gear and head out at the end of the day to catch the flood tide at Barnegat Light.  We would fly across the bay to the Double Creek Channel and wind our way along sedge islands and shallows towards the inlet.  At all times we would have our eyes peeled looking for the telltale signs of fish: splashing water, other boats, and working birds.

One late afternoon we fished the inlet for about half an hour with light tackle and silver spoons with treble hooks. Nothing.  No birds working, no action.  We cruised back to the swirling shallows across from the lighthouse and saw a school of bait fish in an  energetic mass moving along the edge of a channel.  There were no birds working and the school was undisturbed.  We had gotten to them before the blues or the stripers had even discovered them.  We began casting lightly with anticipation when all of a sudden.....STRIKE.....and then another STRIKE!    A school of striped bass had found the bait fish and were moving in.   We must have caught and released 15 fish before another boat saw us and soon another.  Before long there was a small armada of anglers joining the fun.

I have to admit that I'm not a good fisherman.  Most of the time Theo and I get skunked.  It is VERY gratifying to be at the right place at the right time when the fish are biting on the Barnegat Bay.

The author, Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

Sailing by the wind or sailing to the mark

From Kinsey Cove to the Great Barnegat Bay is only a short sail.  The bay, from  the town of Barnegat to Tom's River, is deep with plenty of water to maneuver.   This is where I would teach the children how to "sail the wind." Tightly hauled and with a variable wind there are opportunities to make extra headway to windward on the lifts.  A lift is when the real or apparent wind clocks around to the beam a degree or two which allows one to gain ground to windward.  This is a "feeling" thing for a sailor.  On a broad or beam reach sailing the wind also meant sailing the waves and it is fun to slalom down the face of the chop or round up to bleed off a gust. I'm happy my children learned the joy of "sailing the wind."

Sometimes we had a destination and it meant we had a mark to make.   My brother Michael says, "nothing ruins a good sail like having a destination." There is more than a little truth to this. Nevertheless, sometimes you do need to actually get somewhere or it is important to stay in the channel.   The children would always ask when I gave them the tiller of Misterioso, "should I sail the wind  or sail to a mark?"  While sailing the mark required a little more discipline and a little more attention to the main sheet, at the end there was the reward of having arrived somewhere powered only by the wind.   When you sail to a swimming hole or a distant anchorage for a picnic it really feels as if you have discovered it yourself.  Never mind that there is a raft of  power boats already at your destination; this is your secret discovery and in your mind you are as clever as Magellan.


The author, Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

The horizon- Harvey Cedars

I have a friend who used to work on Wall Street.  His name is Steve.  Standing on the beach looking up towards Barnegat Light or just out to the open sea Steve would say,  "you know what I miss?  The horizon.  We don't get a horizon in Manhattan."

There is something special in seeing the long arc where the sea meets the sky.  At night I like to go to the beach with binoculars.   The range buoy off of the inlet looks like you could reach out and touch it.   Sometimes the full moon rises out of the sea and it looks extra big and spectacular: a blaze of reflecting moonlight shimmering in an unquiet sea.

There is an audio counterpoint to the horizon.  On still foggy nights you can hear the foghorn balefully droning its single note.  Even though it is about 5 miles away it sounds like it is much closer on nights like this.    Like the horizon, this phenomenon has a unique way of giving one perspective and a sense of place that is special to a seaside town like Harvey Cedars.


The author, Philip Stephano, is a social media marketing strategist in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

"The History of Harvey Cedars," by Margaret Thomas Buchholz

The Borough of Harvey Cedars is on Long Beach Island, Ocean County, New Jersey
from "The History of Harvey Cedars," by Margaret Thomas Buchholz
http://www.harveycedars.org/HChistory.html

The Borough of Harvey Cedars was formally incorporated on December 11, 1894, when a group of men living near the hotel seceded from Union Township (today's Barnegat Township on the mainland). Capt. Isaac Jennings, owner of the hotel, was named mayor. He died shortly thereafter. Jason Fenimore, who lived on the bayfront at Burlington Avenue, soon became borough clerk and his brother Francis became mayor in 1899.

Early Industry: Seaweed and Fish
Aggressive development with an eye to summer visitors and profits started in 1884, when Josiah Busby Kinsey (son of John Warner) and Isaac Lee each bought tracts in what was called High Point (87th Street to Sussex Avenue). Kinsey owned the land to about 78th Street and centered his development around his general store on the northeast corner of 78th and the Boulevard, and a yacht club on the bayfront at 78th -- both still standing. He used his large expanse of bayfront property along Bay Terrace as a field for drying eelgrass. This seaweed was used for insulation, packing and mattresses, and was a well-developed industry in many coastal areas during the early part of the century. Kinsey's name remains in Kinsey Cove.

Lee operated another booming business at his end of town: pound fishing. Lee had operated a fish restaurant near New York's Fulton Fish Market, then became a wholesaler in Philadelphia. By 1900 he had two fish pounds in operation off High Point, two and four miles offshore. He employed 32 husky, strong men and housed them on a seasonal basis in a row of tiny cottages on 76th Street. The men topped 6 feet, 200 pounds, necessary to power the boats through the surf and haul the heavy nets, but the cottages were so small they got the nickname "petrel's nests". The two remaining "petrel's nests" were joined into one, which hugs the Boulevard just across from the Borough Hall. Lee paid $25,000 for the land and in 1887 built his home, still standing on the north side of what is now Lee Avenue. Two of the cottages he built to rent for $50 a season also survive on Lee Avenue.

The train was the key to this development: Kinsey shipped tightly-packed bales of eelgrass and Lee barrels of weakfish, croakers, butterfish, flounder and bass to metropolitan markets. And the train brought the first tourists. Ed Merchant, still living in town, remembers, "We quivered in anticipation of that magic aroma that meant seashore: salt breeze, new-cut marsh hay, sun-dried eelgrass and overripe clam shells left too long in the sun. Not to everybody's taste, but for us it was the perfume of summer." In 1886, the first train into town was a one-car combination engine, passenger and freight owned by the Lee and Fenimore Train Co., painted various shades of yellow and dubbed the Yellow Jacket. By 1906 a longer summer passenger train was brought in but the schedule was erratic at best, and not a very rapid transit. Carlyle Stevens told the story, "We were coming along between Surf City and Harvey Cedars and there were no stops. My buddy and I were playing football in the empty baggage car and the ball got tossed off the train so he jumped off, picked up the ball and hopped back in. He could run faster than the train". The small, cedar shake-covered High Point station was located about where the borough hall is today. It was moved and is now the second floor of a house on Mallard Lane. The Harvey Cedars station, little more than a covered platform, was near Atlantic Avenue.

Steady Growth in The Twenties and Thirties
As Lee and Kinsey sold off lots, and houses were built, both men dedicated several streets to the borough and in 1916, with 20 men registered to vote, Kinsey was elected mayor. Meetings were moved from the hotel to his general store. The center of activity shifted from Harvey Cedars to High Point. The separate names were commonly used well beyond when the U.S. Post Office requested the town drop "High Point" in the early 1930s, and remains in the name of the fire company.

About three dozen cottages had been built from Kinsey Cove to Lee Avenue and the town was a small, friendly place where everyone knew everyone else.


The curator of this article , Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano

Fun on the Barnegat Bay

The Barnegat Bay is one of the greatest assets of Long Beach Island. For centuries watermen have plied her for crabs, clams, and fish.   The bay is a favorite spot for migrating seabirds, monarch butterflies, and raptors to visit on their way to southern climes.  

  For those of us on Kinsey Cove, the Barnegat Bay is our "backyard".   Her shallow waters and steady winds make the perfect spot to learn how to windsurf or kite surf.  Water is quite a bit deeper over towards Barnegat and Forked River.  These waters are great for yachting of all kinds.   The Gunning River offers a maze of smooth water for kayaking, canoeing, and bird watching in solitude.  

In the channels near Barnegat Light the tides move in and out with strong currents that bring an abundance of fish in all seasons.  Winter flounder, bluefish, weakfish, and stripped bass are among some of the species that can be fished within the safe confines of the bay.   If you want to catch tuna, bonita or other game fish, the Barnegat Light inlet is the gateway to a sportsman's paradise.

Having a small powerboat is desirable if you live on Kinsey Cove.   There are many "secret" spots to visit on the bay for swimming, picnicking, or gunk-holing.  On warm days in the Fall you can find a secluded white sand beach on the bay that rivals those of the Bahamas. 

Many families enjoy fishing or crabbing. With the bay so close such an outing does not have to exceed the attention span of small children. The rewards of few hours on the bay can be a delicious flounder filet or crabs boiled with chesapeake bay spice.  Yum. 

My favorite activity on the Barnegat Bay is sailing small boats.  I keep a 29' Hereshoff sloop named "Misterioso" in Kinsey Cove.   For the most part I can sail her in and out of the cove without auxiliary power.  This involves some rather spectacular tacking that takes me right up to the bulkheads.

The bay contributes to the sea breezes that are a delightful feature of Long Beach Island in the summertime.   The difference in temperature between the cool ocean and the warm mainland creates a thermal wind that often keeps the island 10-15 degrees cooler than the mainland during the dog days of summer.   Find a way to have fun in that breeze- whether flying a kite, sailing, or sipping a cool drink in the shade!  Cheers.  


The author, Philip Stephano, is owner of PrimalTweet a social media marketing company in Bucks County,  PA.  He is passionate about helping local and regional business around the country to use social media as an effective tool to find local prospects and customers. To learn more about Stephano go to http://about.me/philipstephano