UD‘s great-uncle, Nathan Rapoport, settled in Ocean City in 1912 and built some of its first boardwalk businesses. UD‘s father graduated from Ocean City High School. She follows the sad fortunes of that resort closely.

Like notorious Myrtle Beach, OC has over decades allowed large stretches of itself to sink into squalor, with resulting high crime rates, guns, drugs, fights, and even riots. Both of these locations might have done something to discourage their takeover by sleazy motels, cheap bars, ugly and dangerous city thoroughfares, and many other marks of civic degeneracy. But there was money in degeneracy.

Until there wasn’t. Non-degenerate locals and visitors are leaving.

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Now an established low-life magnet, OC is trying, late in the game, to de-magnetize. It banished, for instance, the annual vile H20i gathering of assholes with loud cars; but scofflaws don’t exactly care whether you banish them, and year after year thousands keep coming, turning OC, for a week in September, into a wasteland of smoking squealing crashing hulks circled by drunks recording the fun on their phones. After each year’s debacle the town revisits and revises its laws in hopeless, increasingly police-state, measures.

This month’s tweak, described in my headline, involves real surveillance state stuff, with, what, drones? satellites? tracking the movements and collecting the identities of the asshole brigade.

On the streets and even highways leading from the Bay Bridge to Ocean City, wall to wall police will engage in constant arrests, and, with those crowds no doubt pushing back, we can expect lovely results. Rumble strips will be everywhere. City officials have been having nice chats with the proprietors of the dumps that house the crowds and nicely explaining to them that if they keep housing overflows of people the town will put them out of business. Cars will be impounded, and, in an interesting twist, owners can no longer just come and claim them but must hire companies to drive them out – at no doubt great expense.

Oh – and next year:

In 2022, Ocean City hopes to hold a three-day concert during the weekend of H2Oi. Additionally, the town wants to host a sporting event that weekend.

“For the last 10 years when the pop-up rally was here, we’ve kind of been on the defense,” [the OC mayor] said. “I think we all feel it’s time to go on the offense and set our own destiny.”

Try to imagine what it’s like to live in Ocean City. You get to witness a yearly actual reversion-to-barbarism event. And you get to look forward to next year’s raid, which will add huge numbers of pissed off (what’s with all the police and those car assholes?) sports and country music fans. Where do I sign up.

Joe’s brother Nathan owned various Ocean City properties and concessions as far back at 1912, and the one you see in the picture – now a Dumser’s ice cream parlor – has remained in the Rapoport family all this time. The city has been trying to evict them, claiming it’s been owned by OC all this time.

The state’s highest court on Friday denied a petition by the Town of Ocean City to hear an appeal in the battle over ownership of a Boardwalk property, essentially bringing closure to the longstanding case.

The state’s Court of Appeals on Friday denied a petition for writ of certiorari filed in February by the town against Nathans Associates, the heir and owners of the century-old-plus building the east side of the Boardwalk at South Division Street, which, for decades, has been home to the iconic Dumser’s Dairyland. The petition asked the Court of Appeals to hear the case after the lower Court of Special Appeals ruled twice against the town.

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.

The 1929 Evening Journal (Wilmington Delaware) reports that UD’s grandfather, Joe, and Joe’s brother Nathan, had warrants sworn out against them by an angry dance hall owner, who considered it unfair that he had to close on Sundays, but Ocean City boardwalk amusements did not.

… is “Christmas came early for the heirs of the historic building…” — but let that go. The heirs of UD‘s grandfather’s brother just won an appeal of a 2017 Worcester County Court decision that would have allowed Ocean City to take away from them a boardwalk building they’ve owned since 1905. 

UD‘s grandfather, Joseph Rapoport, was one of seven brothers who came here from Russia and settled in Philadelphia, but eventually bought and operated businesses in Ocean City, Maryland. Indeed, Nathan – the brother at the center of the appeal – eventually moved to OC full-time and lived on the second floor of the building at issue (its first floor has, for decades, been a Dumser’s ice cream parlor).

Interestingly, Nathan’s obituary only lists Joe among the many brothers.

Nathan Rapoport, 88, one of the business pioneers in Ocean City, died Wednesday in Peninsula General Hospital in Salisbury after a short illness. Mr. Rapoport was formerly of Philadelphia. He was born in Russia. He had operated a games concession business on the boardwalk since 1912, retiring about five years ago. Mr. Rapoport’s wife, Minnie, died in 1968. Surviving are a daughter, Mrs. Gertrude Goldenberg, who with her husband, Bernie, operates a beach accessory business here; three granddaughters; nine great-grandchildren; and a brother, Joe Rapoport, Baltimore. Funeral services wiil be held Friday at 2 p.m. in the Goldstein Funeral Home, Philadelphia. Interment will be in Roosevelt Memorial Park, near Philadelphia. The family suggests, that as a tribute to the memory of the deceased, contributions may be made to the State of Israel, in care of the Beth Israel Synagogue, Salisbury. 

Ocean City “failed to present sufficient evidence to support the circuit court’s conclusion that the Property is located within the boundaries of the dedicated and accepted public easement of Atlantic Avenue,” so it stays for the time being with the Rapoport heirs, who remain in OC and who get rent from Dumser’s.

The current owner of Dumser’s remembers Nathan:

 I remember him walking on the Boardwalk in the mornings in his long sleeved white shirt with a bow tie. A very quiet man. What I know of him is that he came to this country at the turn of the century, and decided to invest his life in business in Ocean City. He owned the property across the Boardwalk where Daytons and Dough Roller sit today. He had to rebuild after two devastating fires only to lose the property in the depression. He and his descendants have occupied the present building for more than 100 years. This is all that is left of one of our pioneers who took a chance on Ocean City when tourism was all about new businesses.

You’ve had a ringside seat for ‘thesdan snobbery for years on this blog … I mean, in my Snapshots from Home category I’ve tried to educate you on the inner workings of the place Brett K. and I call home…

And while it’s true that UD‘s ‘thesdan coordinates (father a scientist at NIH; mother president Mason/Dixon English Cocker Spaniel Club; Garrett Park Elementary, Kensington Junior High; Walter Johnson High; performing with voice and guitar, when a teenager, at a ‘thesdan McGovern rally; local school named after my rich important Uncle Mario) are less impressive than Kavanaugh’s (more money; private schools), she knows her way around the local status markers.

And when it comes to which nearby beach a ‘thesdan chooses, I’m afraid Mark Judge – just discovered hiding in Bethany Beach – has somewhat fallen down. While raucous working-class Ocean City is totally out of the question (though Brett K. apparently went there for Beach Week, which is acceptable) (and careful readers will recall my father’s family, the Rapoports, owned property there as early as 1905), boring Bethany (scattered big houses on the ocean) is only a bit better. The socially acceptable place to be is of course UD‘s beloved Rehoboth Beach (she’ll soon be there with a bunch of friends for their traditional Sea Witch Festival get-together), with its lively, civilized, commercial as well as residential life. (Henlopen Acres, steps from Rehoboth, is the richest town in Delaware – the ‘thesda of Delaware, in other words.)

Les UDs live in Munro Leaf’s house (Leaf’s NYT obituary was written by another Garrett Parker, Ben Franklin, with whose daughter UD went to school); they bought it from his sons. Leaf wrote The Story of Ferdinand, which is about to be released as a major motion picture — and may even be an Oscar contender.

Having grown up just down the street in Garrett Park from the Leafs, UD knew Margaret Leaf a little (Munro had died by the time our families got to know one another). Margaret also wrote children’s books.

Faithful readers know that Les UDs have various memorials to Ferdinand in and around the house – most famously, two topiary bulls in the front yard that children love and dogs love to bark at.

Anyway, what with the film coming out and all, UD has now received two media inquiries about her house from journalists preparing stories about the new film. If anything comes of these inquiries, she will of course link you to it.

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UD has deep Ocean City roots. Her grandfather, Joseph Rapoport, in partnership with one of his brothers, Nathan, owned several boardwalk businesses and concessions. UD‘s father graduated from Ocean City High School.

Rapoports started buying property in Ocean City in 1905.

Joe and Nathan had a falling out of some kind, and Joe moved (in the ‘thirties? ‘forties?) to Port Deposit, an odd, amazing little town at the foot of bluffs overlooking the wide Susquehanna River, where he bought a department store that did insanely well because not long after he bought it, Roosevelt built a naval training facility a short walk away, and suddenly tens of thousands of people needed a department store. UD has vivid memories of visiting her grandfather at his store in Port Deposit. It’s a successful restaurant now.

Back in Ocean City, Joe’s brother Nathan was becoming legendary – “Mr Nathan,” a local celebrity and benefactor who continued to own property and run concessions for decades.

The boardwalk building Nathan retired to and died in – he lived on the top floor, and the bottom was – is – an ice cream parlor – is now all over the local news. The city has informed Nathan’s granddaughter, who has been leasing it to the parlor for forty years, that it owns the land it sits on, and it wants the Rapoports out of there and the building demolished. The Rapoports don’t really own it (it’s all very complicated: here) and after over a hundred years they need to disappear so the city can take it.

There’s a petition, natch.

I’ll be updating events about the Ocean City Rapoports here.