Like Myrtle Beach and Panama City Beach, Ocean City (where, devoted readers know, UD‘s family has deep roots) has long put its fiscal faith in any and all forms of scummy behavior. This commitment to pandering to the worst has worked out beautifully at all of these resorts for decades; but a problem has lately arisen related to the ownership of guns by increasing numbers of the people who go to these places. They’re shooting them off on the major thoroughfares, and they’re scaring away a lot of vacationers who don’t want to die.
What to do when large stretches of your resort are designed to appeal to people who get in fights that turn into public gun battles? Where do you start changing that?
Point One: You don’t. There are tons of shooting ranges within an easy drive of Ocean City, and they’re expressly designed for visiting gunnies looking for a place to go bangbangbang. Carrying and shooting guns is in the DNA of places like Ocean City.
Not to mention all the cheesy hotels, bars, and restaurants whose livelihood depends on lowlifes. Much of the place depends on encouraging gross noisy dangerous behavior.
Point Two: One modest place to start shifting from gang- to family-friendly, if you do want to try that, would be the tee shirts for sale along the boardwalk, catching the eye not only of gross people, but also of non-gross people. And indeed OC is looking into this right now:
Ocean City Council plans to pass a new ordinance that … would limit the display of obscene material and language on merchandise on the boardwalk.
Gross porny shirt merchants are understandably upset: One of them points out that Brass Balls saloon and many other porny establishments abound, but they’re not getting shut down.
This is a good argument: Lots of commercial OC is explicitly violent/smutty in one way or another; and even when the city has tried to shut down America’s most disgusting events, they’ve failed to do so. They’re kind of locked in to being the host city for H20i, for instance.
OC has chickened out of going after obscene merchandise this year. They’ll chicken out next year too. Place has gotta make a living.