Before the casinos and Donald Trump’s now-bankrupt hotel and gambling properties made Atlantic City the pre-eminent Jersey Shore resort, Wildwood was the place to be for vacationers from New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. With its sandy beaches and amusement piers the Wildwoods (there are five individual towns Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, North Wildwood, West Wildwood and Diamond Beach) still attract nine million summer visitors. In its heyday, during the 1950s and 60s, hundreds of new motels were created for postwar families driving their shiny new cars past brash neon signs promising exotica and escape from workaday blues. By the 1990s, these motor-hotels were largely redundant, with many bulldozed to make way for bland condominiums. However, their neon sparkle was never fully extinguished, and now it’s blinking back to life.
This is where Chubby Checker first did The Twist and Bill Haley’s Comets rocked around the clock. The look is more kiss-me-quick than Palm Springs’ artful mid-century modern, and less niche than Googie, Populuxe, or Tiki architectural styles.
Today, nostalgia is the mantra. New motels, and even Acme supermarkets, Walgreens pharmacy stores and gas stations, all are designed in futuristic doo wop 1950s style. The tide has turned.
The Caribbean Motel
With a retina-burning palette of lemon yellow and lime, this isn’t a pastiche of the 1950s, this is the 1950s spruced up and gleaming. A classic two- storey U-shaped motel 50 metres from the beach with crescent pool, it was the first to have the area’s now ubiquitous plastic palms (winter winds blow down the real thing) and beaming rooftop neon. A wafer-thin concrete spiral walkway connects the floors. Bedroom colours are bold, lit by Jackson Pollock-style spattered lamp fittings. Original bathrooms are pink and chunky. There are no iPod stations here; piped music (doo-wop, natch) comes through the original ceiling speaker, with volume controlled by a single Bakelite knob. Outside on the street, a multicoloured Vacancy/No Vacancy neon sign may look original but was made recently by local neon craftsman F Dominick Musso, a giveaway being the word “Wi-Fi” (available throughout the property). Televisions are, disappointingly, colour.
• Doubles from $89, +1 609 522 8292, caribbeanmotel.com
The Shalimar Resort Motel
Motels of the 1950s and 1960s were basic boxes brightly painted to attract passing motorists, seducing them after dark with garish flashing lights. The Shalimar’s vivid cobalt blue turns the saturation level up to 11. Its five storeys accommodate penthouse duplexes for views of the ocean by day, the nearby neon signs by night. An equally vibrant swimming pool is squeezed between the main building and street, with just enough space for a line of tall plastic palms. Utilitarian rather than simply nostalgic, the rooms have their own balconies, kitchenettes and modern bathrooms. Design geeks will love the exact reproduction of original ashlar brickwork on the upper floors as well as the massive rooftop neon beacon visible for several miles out to sea.
• Doubles from $80, +1 609 522 0609, shalimarresortnj.com
The Starlux
This is an aluminium space-age fantasy slap bang in the centre of Wildwood, facing the beach. An old property refurbished, it mixes 1950s futurism with 21st-century irony, down to its own 27-hole luxury crazy golf, an acid-hued version of the Shore’s more sober courses. A dazzling interior palette of turquoise and purple requires the use of RayBans. The glass and metal poolside lounge is a remodelled Jetsons interior, with plastic palms hugging the ribbed metal walls as architectural statement rather than just garden decor. The choice of rooms includes two superb vintage airstream trailers.
• Double rooms start from around $90 B&B, airstream trailer from $80, +1 609 522 7412, hotels.moreyspiers.com/starlux
The Doo Wop Experience Museum
Close to the Starlux Hotel and the Boardwalk, this home to the Doo Wop Preservation League is housed in a 1960s space-age restaurant, The Surfside, which was dismantled in 2002 and stored for three years until being rebuilt in its present location. A curious pinwheel-shaped roof of jutting angles and glass walls gave it landmark status back in the day. Inside, at first glance, it appears to be a random assortment of junk. But the furniture, neon signage, artefacts and pop memorabilia that have been rescued for posterity represent a trove of modern historic treasure from dozens of motels lost to the wrecking ball. This is where to pick up your map of the doo wop district, which catalogues the 220 motels still standing nearby. The museum is also the starting point for a twice-weekly evening bus tour (Tuesdays/Thursdays) which takes in all the neon it’s possible to ingest as well as extensive new murals celebrating stars of the 1950s and 60s like Bobby Rydell, Bill Haley and Chubby Checker.
• Free, +1 609 523 1958, doowopusa.org/museum/index.html
Summer Nites
In North Wildwood, the Summer Nites B&B is at first glance a straightforward condominium with a peaceful veranda. Inside, the ebullient Sheila Brown has created a raucous shrine to the 1950s and 60s, with bedrooms dedicated to Elvis (his room has a library of all his movies), Marilyn Monroe, surfing and retro TV/movies, using airbrushed artwork and memorabilia. Each year Sheila organises a garden party with Elvis impersonators that blocks surrounding streets. Breakfast is served in a boxcar diner straight out of Happy Days (quarters are supplied for the juke box) and the playroom consists of period pinball machines and tabletop 10-pin. All that’s missing is the Fonz and the cast of Grease.
• Double rooms from $115 B&B, +1 609 846 1955, summernites.com
Maui’s Dog House
Acid yellow and vibrant red, this is the home of the smokin cheesy drunk ($4.65) and the sausage soprano ($6.95), two of several dozen different hotdogs, burgers and sausage creations served with sides of cardiac fries and rootbeer floats. Once featured on Guy Fieri’s down and dirty TV show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, it serves generous portions – in dog bowls. A neon sign shouts “Salty Balls” at potential clientele. These turn out to be rather innocent baby new potatoes cooked in heavily salted brine and spices. The nearest you’ll get to health food is the macaroni salad (mayo, tuna, spices) and the only greenery is a sausage-sized pickle ($1.65).
• 806 New Jersey Avenue, +1 609 846 0444, mauisdoghouse.com
Cool Scoops Ice Cream Parlor
This million-dollar collection of 1950s music and design includes fin-fringed car booths from chopped-up Cadillacs and Chevrolets. There’s so much memorabilia the ice-creams (nearly all under $10) seem almost secondary but the place offers countless flavours including 35 sugar-, dairy- and gluten-free versions plus sundaes such as scoop deville and wild-woody. Hot dogs are served in hot rod paper cars and the burgers are called Doo-Woppers. The owner is former New York architect Paul Russo, who left his native Brooklyn after 9/11. He already had a vast collection of jukeboxes, concert posters, figurines and signage, which are on display. The neon sign outside is an unmissable giant green gas guzzler.
• 1111 New Jersey Avenue, +1 609 729 2665, coolscoops.com
Boardwalk
Here, there’s 2.5 miles of raucous entertainment and ceaseless noise day and night as shrieking punters indulge themselves on roller coasters or partake of Breakfast in the Sky aboard a giant ferris wheel. There are three piers along its length, accommodating versions of every fairground ride you’ve even seen, from nostalgic super scooters and teacups for the fainthearted, to the SkyCoaster (“soar through the air over the beach!”) and the frankly terrifying SlingShot. History still squeaks out, most notably from 1930s World Fair electric trams which glide past and announce “Watch the tram car please” (they have no horns) and stores such as Douglass Fudge, where a seventh-generation Scot is still mixing sugar and butter into the tooth tingling fudge so beloved by his forebears. At night the dazzle of neon and School of Rock soundstage make Brighton Pier look like a village fete.
• Free entry, moreyspiers.com
Vegas Diner
A vast neon roadsign announces this old-school diner four blocks – and several decades – away from the Boardwalk. It’s a bring-your-own-bottle diner, and the charming waitresses will happily telephone the nearest liquor store for you to make sure they’re open. The food is roadside classic without a twist: meatball sandwiches and turkey Reubens are appreciated by the mostly local clientele, and this is reflected in the prices, which hover around $15 for a variety of the broiled or the battered inclusive of help-yourself salad bar, bread, water, vegetables, fries or spaghetti and dessert. Shrimp and scallop, for example, come with added tilapia fish, stuffed mushrooms and extra stuffed scallops. Choose from early bird specials, lunch specials, blackboard specials and weekly lunch/dinner specials. Everything here is special.
• 14th & New Jersey Avenues, North Wildwood, +1 609 729 5511, on Facebook
Cycle round the neon
The best way to see all the neon is by bike in the evening. Motels generally provide their guests with free bikes but hirers such as Zippy’s rents cycles, tandems, trikes and e-bikes. Most of the motel signage is concentrated in the Wildwood Crest area, which stretches along the oceanfront for about 20 blocks. Styles vary greatly, from the exotic to the gaudy, with faraway place names featuring heavily: Hawaii, Tahiti, Singapore, Pyramids and Tangiers. History features in the Crusader, the Jolly Roger and the Aztec, as well as space age travel in the Pan American and Satellite. Out in North Wildwood, the Lollipop and Chateau Bleu are of note, the latter being one of two properties on America’s National Register of Historic Places. The Boardwalk is open to cyclists from 5am to 11am (10.30am at weekends) and there’s an 11-mile Bikeability route that takes in further sights.
• Bicycles from $30 a day (half day from noon $20) at Zippy’s zippysbikes.com
• Flights were provided by Virgin Atlantic.
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