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Feeling Fairly Feckless on the Jersey Shore, N.J.
Alongside one of the skyscraping “extreme rides” that dot the New Jersey coastline, the one at Funtown Pier where you are strapped into a harness and flung fifty miles an hour, ten stories high, out over the Atlantic, is a sign warning you not to ride if you are impaired by drugs or alcohol or if you have “mental problems that cause doubts.” Are they kidding? Who else would? What is it about the boardwalk that makes us feel so reckless? All around, people are swallowing artery-clogging cheese fries, getting themselves pierced or tattooed, shooting rifles and throwing sharp, pointy objects—losing the rent money trying to win a beer bong. Is it the screams, the neon, the palpable overstimulation that make us want to be just a little bad? We cannot take our eyes away from the somewhat seedy spectacle. And we’re certain we’ll be back next year. And the next.
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