Shoobie: Local Secrets, Honest Stories & the Real Cape May
Two thousand seven hundred people live here. Fifty thousand think they do.
I was one of the fifty thousand for twenty five years. Same house on Queen Street every August, boogie board down to the end of the block, Kohr's on the way back, my mother counting beach tags on the kitchen table like passports. I thought I knew Cape May. I knew two weeks of it. I did not know it had a February.
Four years ago my parents' house in Havertown sold and I bought a small place around the corner from the old rental and stayed through a winter, then another. The woman on the next porch is Fran, eighty two, whose parents ran an eleven room guesthouse on Jackson Street from 1952 to 1989. She still calls me shoobie. She is right to. Most of this book she told me on that porch. The rest is what I got wrong for a quarter of a century.
What's in it
The day the tags come off. What actually happens in the two weeks after Labor Day: the checkers gone, the stands stacked, the last flag down at Sunset Beach and why those particular flags matter, which blocks go dark and which ones fill back up once the rentals are dark.
Fran's Jackson Street. How a guesthouse ran in the 1950s and 60s, one bathroom a floor, who the guests were and where they came from on the train, what the 1878 fire left behind that the guidebooks turn into gingerbread, and which houses on the Historic District map still have the families in them.
The Point is not the City. Cape May Point, West Cape May and Lower Township are three different places with three different ideas of who belongs. The hawkwatch platform from September to November, the monarchs at the Nature Center, the lima beans on Broadway, and why the ferry horn tells you the time.
Where the town eats when the line is gone. The pancake argument (Uncle Bill's or the Mad Batter), the pizza argument (Mario's, Lucky Bones, and the people who still bring up Louie's), the Boiler Room, Bagel Time, and which places roll the shutters down the second week of October and which are open Christmas week.
What closed and what moved. A running list, kept current: the Filling Station on Sunset Boulevard, Casales on the Mall, the Toy Shop, the coffee places that swapped names, and the Singer-Songwriter weekend that will not come back. Not gossip, just what the street looks like this year.
The seawall, the curfew and the budget, without the shouting. The east end flood project from Madison Avenue to Wilmington Avenue and what it will do to the promenade for a year and a half, the August 2026 curfew on minors and why the police chief said he did not want to be a babysitter, beach fill, roof pitch rules, and how a town of two thousand seven hundred people decides things for a town of fifty thousand.
Getting here without the Parkway. The 313 and 315 from 30th Street, the summer only 316, the ferry from Lewes with the new staircase fares, where to leave the car in July and in November, and which Wawa the locals use.
A porch calendar. Month by month from the first Oktoberfest stein to the last hawk, Victorian Weekend, the Lighthouse Challenge, Restaurant Weekend, the Christmas trolleys, the January nothing, the February nor'easters, and the Saturday in May when the checkers come back.
How it works
You get the download link right after checkout and it opens on any phone, tablet or laptop. Around sixty pages. Fran's town rearranges itself every off season, so when a restaurant closes, a fare changes or the seawall fencing finally comes down, the book gets updated and everyone who already owns it gets the new version free. One purchase, kept current for good.
Who this is for
People from Delco, the Main Line, South Jersey and Baltimore who have rented the same house since they were kids and wonder what it would be like to stay. People who grew up here and left and still check the ferry cam. Anyone booking a first week and hoping to pass for a regular. And anyone who has sat on a porch on the last Sunday of the season and not wanted to go in.
Fran says you don't miss the ocean. You miss the people who used to be on the porch.
Download it now, free updates for life
Instant download. Any device. Written under the pen name Tim Morris.