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So during the season you're working seven days a week, you're working sometimes 14 hours a day. And maybe 90 percent of my friends don't have other businesses. “I don't know yet if we're going to have any season or not … we finish our season in October. “Every business is going to get hurt,” he said. The economic effects of the coronavirus could wreck people. Ascandrani, who grew up in Wildwood, said most of his friends in the boardwalk business don’t have second jobs. He is a second-generation Wildwood boardwalk vendor his dad opened up a boardwalk store in the mid-1970s. But plenty of people are in his situation: They’ve lost one income stream while being unsure of how much future income they’ll have.Īnother boardwalk vendor in the same situation as Kelly is Erez Ascandrani. He’s only losing his job a few weeks early, he said, so he doesn’t have it as bad as friends in the service industry have it. Kelly took another hit just before I talked to him last week: He was laid off from a part-time job at the Philadelphia International Airport that he does in the offseason. 'Even if we have the doors closed and we can't actually be open, we'll do stuff like that to get ready.” “We even have to figure out if we're legally able to work inside the store,' said Kelly. Maximillian Kelly owns three stores on the 2800 block of the boardwalk: Zombie Shark, Mr. But as they scramble to figure out their plans for the 2020 summer season, they’re all terrified for what happens next. They all contribute to the feel and look of the boards.

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The stores on the boardwalk are mostly owned by small business owners who have figured out how to make money in the short summer season.

Wildwood is a town relatively devoid of chains. “There has been an economic impact on the island already,” Rose said. Now, events planned for April and May have already been postponed or canceled. But those 676 rooms are not empty in the winter there are weekend events at the Wildwood Convention Center that pack the year-round hotels. A 2012 study showed 7,289 hotel rooms available on the island in the summer months, versus just 676 rooms in January. Ben Rose, of the Greater Wildwoods Tourism Improvement and Development Authority, said the Wildwoods have already taken a hit. But the coronavirus is already threatening to wreck the resort’s economy. The biggest money-making months in Wildwood, and other resorts in Cape May County, are July and August. And since I was a kid, I’ve been enamored with the t-shirts on the 2.5-mile boardwalk that spans the length of Wildwood and 10 blocks of North Wildwood. They rented a shore house with their friends one summer. People with an affinity for Wildwood have usually been going their whole lives. The Wildwoods-a collection of five municipalities on two islands in Cape May County, New Jersey-have long been a summer attraction for residents of the Philadelphia metro area.

I'm hesitant to toot my own horn, but I’ve been the world’s preeminent chronicler of Wildwood t-shirts since I first wrote about them in 2012 for Philadelphia magazine. But will there even be anyone to buy these shirts this year? And for my entire life, I’ve been seeing them in Wildwood. They are in Wisconsin Dells and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They are in Times Square and Venice Beach. But novelty t-shirts aren't meant to be sold online they're a staple of beaches and other tourist sites.

They’re already available online on Etsy and other sites.