Columns
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•August 21, 2025
Your Complete Guide to Hurricane Erin; Littleneck Laughs
Cue the dramatic music. This could be one of the most interesting weeks of waves on Long Beach Island for the year. Hurricane Erin is out there sending swell of historic proportions, and as a surf…
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•August 20, 2025
Chris Guzman Discovers His Side Hustle
It’s no secret that Long Beach Island is home to not only a thriving nightlife scene, but a dedicated music scene that serves its community all day long, seven days a week. Many Island acts are…
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•August 20, 2025
Unusual Shipwreck Off Surf City
Mentioned in the shipwreck database of the New Jersey Maritime Museum in Beach Haven is the wreck site 48 miles east of Surf City, N.J. of the screw steamer Corvallis, sunk in June 1925.
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•August 20, 2025
Hurricane Erin Could Mean Big Shifts in Island Beachfronts
There’s not much to say about Cat-3 Hurricane Erin that isn’t already being expounded upon through every known media outlet. I’ll therefore offer some dedicated LBI insights, led with the obvious and…
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•August 16, 2025
A Botched Inlet Jetty Upgraded to Become One of Coast’s Best
“Wie kann das sein?” That’s me asking “How can this be?” in German – for no apparent linguistic reason, short of the fact it could take a few languages to rationalize how summer’s end is drawing…
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•August 13, 2025
Wondering Where the Sand Goes After Replenishment? Longboard Classic Was Fire, and Tropics Heat Up
I have to imagine regular beachgoers don’t look at beaches the way surfers do. Or at least, they don’t look at as many beaches.
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•August 13, 2025
‘J.M. Hilton’ Wreck Hits the News
In July 1925, Capt. Curtis Hilton of the J.M. Hilton encountered dense fog off the Jersey coast. The captain decided to wait out the weather and anchored his ship close to the Barnegat Lighthouse in…
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•August 13, 2025
Samantha Dress Collective Brings Harmony to ALO Surf Classic
The sun shone down on 68th Street in Brant Beach on Saturday, where the community gathered on the beach and in the water for Alliance for a Living Ocean’s Longboard Classic, an annual surfing…
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•August 7, 2025
Summertime Conversations; Fun in the Water Continues
“Do a cannonball!” I heard the renters yell from my neighbor’s yard.
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•August 6, 2025
Deadhead Sheds Unlikely Days Between Light on the Ozzman
As dedicated readers might have picked up … this time of year I typically write a segment on the Days Between, a more than weeklong event between Aug. 1 (Garcia’s birth) and Aug. 9 (Garcia’s death)…
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•August 6, 2025
Being Number One Can Get a Bit Odd Even When Flushing
America is number one in many ways, some of them sorta weird. For odd instance, it is proven that our toilets have the highest water levels of any other nation. That indicates we’re flush with water.
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•August 6, 2025
Congested Shoreline Leads to Mystery
Standing on the beaches of Long Beach Island today, it’s a rare sight to see a large ship close to shore. But in the age before radar and GPS navigation, it was common.
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•July 31, 2025
A Summer Clam Roll Recipe as Surf Cools and Events Heat Up
Every summer for the last few years I have, without really planning it, included some recipe or another in these Liquid Lines. It’s usually based on some summer harvest, seasonal tradition or…
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•July 31, 2025
Twisted Livin’ Brings Cool Blues as Summer Salve for Hot Nights
It’s been hot and heavy, even for July, marked by the usual thunderstorms and unusually high heat waves. Islanders are not a people to complain about the heat, especially when there’s a 75 degree…
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•July 30, 2025
Support Sea Turtles Even If They Drive in the Passing Lanes
It came as a certifiable shock to me that sea turtles not only drive, but also do so slowly … and in the frickin’ fast lane, no less. “Move over you, you … reptile!”
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•July 30, 2025
Testing ‘Shenandoah’ for War
As the summer of 1925 began, the United States possessed two airships, each over two football fields in length. The German-built Los Angeles was designed to show the commercial use for the giant…
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•July 23, 2025
Little Sunday Mysto Swell Adds to Summer Fun
This is turning out to be quite an enjoyable summer. Last Sunday was the Jetty Coquina Jam. And while my colleague Ciara Dursee has the full wrap-up of the event in this issue, I want to note there…
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•July 23, 2025
It’s Hot to the Hilt But Summer Frosts Could Cool Its Jets
It’s a slam dunk that we’re feeling the hottest summer on record … unless we’re hit by August freezes. Hey, just such summer chills happened in 1816, proclaimed “The Year Without a Summer.”
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•July 23, 2025
Chevy Lopez Teases New Tunes at Surf City Hotel for 15th Summer
The Surf City Hotel was all fired up on Friday night as Chevy Lopez brought the heat home for its 15th – yes, 15th – season playing on Long Beach Island.
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•July 23, 2025
USS Shenandoah Shifts Roles
During the summer of 1925, the United States possessed two giant airships. The USS Shenandoah was designed to be a weapon of war, while the USS Los Angeles was to be a trailblazer for promoting the…
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•July 17, 2025
Evolution of America’s Music Industry, Part Three
For the last two issues, we traced the growth of the music industry back all the way to the late 1800s, following the evolution of piano performances and sheet music sales to the development of…
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•July 16, 2025
Brushes With Naturism in the Pines, Little-Wave Summer and the Jetty Coquina Jam This Weekend
I was recently telling my son a story of when I was a little kid. It was the early ’80s, and my father had taken my brother and me canoeing through the Pines. I should start by saying that for all of…
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•July 16, 2025
‘Jaws’ Celebrates Its 50th to the Worldwide Sound of an Inescapable Ostinato
The movie “Jaws” (1975) is celebrating its 50th anniversary. And it has been an unusually active worldwide celebration for a mere movie, albeit one that irreversibly altered ocean bathing – in the…
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•July 16, 2025
Rival Airships Fight for Helium
During the summer of 1925, the U.S. possessed two of the world’s largest and most modern airships. Unfortunately, a rivalry would be created between them that would lead to the destruction of one…
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•July 15, 2025
The Lengths We Go to Avoid Traffic, Fantastic Fourth, Little Swells Keep Us in the Water
It’s fair to say that was a fantastic July 4 by pretty much all measures. The waves were a little lacking, but it was surfable all weekend. The weather was simply incredible, especially when you…
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•July 12, 2025
Be on Lookout: Beach Shade Makers Have Roaming Minds
A short while back, the beaching community did a synchronized cringe upon hearing about the Asbury Park female lifeguard, Alex, 18, who was horribly impaled with a beach-type umbrella. The news went…
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•July 9, 2025
The Last English 4th of July
The 4th of July, 1775 was the final one that Americans called themselves Englishmen, but at the time few had any idea what the next 12 months would hold.
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•July 9, 2025
Evolution of America’s Music Industry, Part Two
Last week, Sound Waves took a plunge into earliest days of the music industry, outlining the historic evolution from music-related commerce generated by minstrel and vaudeville performances and sheet…
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•July 2, 2025
A Strange Fourth of July for America; Summer Surf Keeps Us Going
There is a scene early on in the movie “Forrest Gump” where a gang of meatheads in a truck with a Confederate flag license plate chases down a kid with a learning disability. That movie came out in…
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•July 2, 2025
Evolution of the Music Industry in America
Independence Day always creeps up on us with the stirring reminder that summer days are ebbing away, and will crawl back with the tide just as surely as they rolled in. The reminder is to wake up to…
