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The Boardwalk and Beyond

While watching New Jersey Public Television just a few days after arriving here in Philly, my wife Hilary and I discovered that the Jersey shore’s famously kitschy beach front boardwalk communities are struggling with a rash of architectural teardowns. A teardown is any instance where old buildings are destroyed to make way for new construction. There is nothing inherently bad about a teardown when necessary, but in recent years our country has witnessed a remarkable rise in the number of perfectly decent and often historically valuable structures gratuitously destroyed to allow construction of aesthetically incongruous big-ticket buildings. I know it sounds like a trivial concern, but no matter how you feel about McMansions, too many teardowns ultimately mean bad news for the environment, knock our historic neighborhoods out of whack, and make it real hard for first-time home buyers of modest means to get a leg up on the market. It turns out that New Jersey ranks first in the nation among states dealing with substantial loss of historic buildings to teardowns. And Wildwood, a New Jersey boardwalk town bred of post-war America’s love affair with tail fins and pink flamingos, is supposedly among the most at risk of losing all those wonderfully tacky dive motels of the technocolor yesteryear, a.k.a. Doo Wop architecture.

So, with all of this in mind and with a few days to spare, Hilary and I set out in search of the bygone object along New Jersey’s imperiled coast. I had spent time in these parts previously and so had a pretty good idea of what to expect. For Hilary, however, who hails from considerably further inland, it was her first time amid the gaudy surf shops, greasy spoons, and candy-striped tourists that all distinguish a motif I call boardwalk gothic:


Despite the teardown problem, there is still plenty of Doo Wop to go around in Wildwood and it appears that some effort is being invested in preserving a handful of these places. And, even though I imagine that developers might make a decent buck off some flashy new high rises, it doesn’t seem to me that Wildwood devotees are particularly troubled about shelling out $100 a night to stay in shabby old motor inns with names like Starlux and Casa Bahama. Isn’t that, after all, the point?

It’s hard to deny the carnivalesque magnetism of places like this. Maybe it’s something in the cheese fries, but stroll down the boardwalk on any given summer night and you’ll be amazed by the throngs. We encountered people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and origins enjoying a place that, if it weren’t for the beach, would resemble some kind of funky Happy Days red light district. Wildwood means something to them all and, judging by the atmosphere, that something has something to do with some notion of the past. But this is not the Wildwood of yesteryear. Scattered across the aged stage set are extreme bungee rides, cell phone shops, and a human diversity not permitted in this place forty years ago. There is plenty of new here, but the bygone object beckons loudly and tourists from miles around come to gobble it up like pieces of salt watter taffy.

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"Does anyone here object to this marriage…"

I’ve seen a lot of reenacting in my time. From the summertime kepi brigades of my Pennsylvania home to the weird guys in tricorn hats that lurk nearly everywhere in Williamsburg, VA where I spent my grad school years, I thought I had developed a pretty thick skin for this kind of thing. But I must admit to have being caught off guard upon learning of Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross’s impending nuptials. What luck to arrive in Philly just in time to see Ben and Betsy tie the knot! This is no joke. The performers who interpret these two icons for passing heritage seekers evidently became smitten after discovering that they shared–brace yourself–a “mutual love of history and education.” One thing led to another until, just yesterday, in front of Independence Hall and accompanied by the Philly Pops, Mayor Michael Nutter presided over the wedding of Ralph Archbold (Ben) and Linda Wilde (Betsy). “The rest,” as they say, “is history.”

Or is it? Historical anachronism is so commonplace in this country that I can’t help but believe that amid all of the retro cars and renaissance fairs and battle reenactors that we’ve grown remarkably unaware of the power of historical meaning. I’m certainly not the first to voice this concern. With Jean Baudrillard’s ghost lurking from my previous post, it is perhaps wise to recall his characterization of postmodernity as the result of a procession of simulacra wherein copies come to be accepted as acceptable substitutions for the various realities they replicate. In other words, what happens when we begin to accept PT Cruisers as really being like 1950s hot rods? Is there any problem with buying a ye olde Coke at the renaissance fair? Civil War battle reenactments are just good fun, right? Sure. I, like lots of other folks, enjoy all of these things more or less. I especially enjoy them because, unlike their “real” counterparts, the PT Cruiser doesn’t pester me with the burgeoning socioeconomic conflicts of Cold War America; I mustn’t contend with the bubonic plague at most renaissance fairs; and as for Civil War reenactments, well, you get the picture.

Perhaps we should congratulate ourselves for having become so adept at finding the good in history. Returning to Ben and Betsy’s wedding, consider how powerfully the image speaks to our willingness to forge common ground in public celebrations of the past. Here we see Ben Franklin, that notorious cad, putting aside his old ways and embracing Betsy as an equal partner (not property) in marriage before the authority of a respected man of color and power. The bygone object shines brightly here. It is in the redeployment of old things with new meanings that we find ways to repair the lesions of history while preserving a common narrative. But that old question still lurks–does it matter that this particular narrative is a complete fiction? Does it matter that, in the (re)writing of this story, there is no voice to remind us that white and black faces neither would nor could have mingled in this way? Does it matter that, had Ben and Betsy actually married (their chronologies did overlap even if briefly), their reasons would have likely had nothing to do with shared passions?

I think so. As fun and as comfortable as reenactment may be, it is imperative that we recreate with caution. At a time in our own history when the manipulation of official memories–from restrictive legal controls of federal communications to willful misremembering by our elected officials–has become all too common, never has the responsible maintenance of the link between representation and reality been of greater importance. Ben and Betsy, I wish the best to both of you but, please, next time leave the histrionics at home.

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Homecoming

I come from a place in south central Pennsylvania that, over the years and depending on who‘s listening, I’ve called Middletown, Hummelstown, Hershey, and Harrisburg. In reality, where I come from is none of those places precisely, but a little bit of them all with a whole lot of what’s between mixed in. Powerful forces led me away, however, and for some years now I’ve wandered south and west variously seeking love, learning, and cash. But, with heaps of hard work and a good dose of luck, I’ve found my way back and am happy to once again hang my hat in Pennsylvania. From my rooftop now I can see a bronzed William Penn high atop City Hall gazing far off into the north and east across this city that he named Philadelphia.

My hope here is to get something of his perspective as I too look out across this town in search of meaning in unlikely places. I am looking for the bygone object. The famously cryptic cultural observer and theoretician Jean Baudrillard referred to the “bygone object” in an early moment of clarity as an object that is so old(ish) that, lacking any practical use, it remains only to signify time. The problem is that “time” is a fairly slippery concept. In fact, it is such an abstract notion that each of us devise our own unique ideas about it whenever we must. And when do we do that? Well, pretty much any time we’re confronted with stuff like antiques, relics, museum pieces, collectibles, old buildings, heirlooms, keepsakes, old photographs, reproductions, forgeries, fakes, duplicates, and the list goes on. The bygone object isn’t just an old thing, though, but rather a particular kind of old thing (or maybe just a thing that seems old) that, for whatever reason, makes us feel patriotic or nostalgic or somehow moved by the presence of the past. Why is it that some things make us feel that way? And how do they do it? I don’t have the answers, but Philadelphia seems like the perfect place to look…