Better business at the beaches
Chade Brooks and Kionna Moore found their first taste of Thrasher’s french fries to their liking today, but something was missing.
“We need ketchup,” Moore said.
A request for ketchup at Thrasher’s immediately brands the customer as a newbie to Rehoboth, and indeed, it was the first visit for the Suitland, Md., duo. Vinegar is the garnish of choice at the iconic Rehoboth Avenue shop, where ketchup is viewed as rank heresy.
As Brooks and Moore went off in search of ketchup, the aroma of fries and vinegar blended with the familiar smells of salt air and suntan lotion as the Memorial Day weekend got under way. But this year there was an added piquancy to those hallmark smells: the tang of fresh wood from the boards in the newly refurbished boardwalk.
Rehoboth was open for business today, and the visitors were obliging. Thrasher’s was doing a steady trade, as were the nearby Dolle’s and other Rehoboth Avenue staples.
Off the avenue, though, there were plenty of parking spaces at midday, even on the ocean blocks.
“It’s just a slow start until the kids are out of school,” said Bob Plunkett, who runs Bob’s Bikes, a rental shop that’s been a First Street fixture since 1934.
Plunkett said business was “pretty good” today, adding it was a whole lot better than at this time last year.
“It was slow last year. Last year at this time there were no cars parked here,” he said as a Mini Cooper eased into a metered space in front of the shop.
The morning began on an inauspicious note: rain, a factor that bedeviled businesses and visitors throughout the summer of 2009. The rain soon ended but the sun played hide and seek, and an afternoon downpour sent beachgoers fleeing to their cars.
On the beach, Mike Yosifon was digging a moat in the sand for what his young son Evan envisioned as a sand sculpture with a volcanic island motif.
“He’s the designer,” Yosifon said. “He’s engineering.”
The Yosifons came to Rehoboth by way of Milford, where he, wife Tracy and Evan are staying with relatives who retired there.
The family arrived Friday and hit the beach, where Mike Yosifon rescued two teenage girls who were caught in a current and panicked. “He got them treading water and calmed down and brought them in. I was so proud of him,” Tracy Yosifon said.
Today was the first day of the season for members of the Rehoboth Beach Patrol, whose whistles chirped throughout the day to warn swimmers away from jetties.
Wilmington resident Jimmy Castellani kept a careful eye on toddler Angelina, who ran squealing from the surf as the waves rolled ashore.
“We weren’t even going to the beach, but she wanted to come,” Castellani said.
Although Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, it’s still spring as far as the Atlantic Ocean is concerned -- something that would-be swimmers soon learned. The water temperature Saturday was 59 degrees.
source: delawareonline.com
