For those unfamiliar, MTV’s Jersey Shore portray’s a group of young people spending the summer in a beach rental property in Seaside Heights, NJ. The show follows their antics as they spend their summer hanging out on the beach during their day and clubbing at night.
Quite frankly I’m surprised at the popularity of the show. In the New York and Boston area where I spent most of my adulthood, it seems pretty common for young adults of all demographics (typically in their 20s and 30s) to get together with a bunch of their friends and rent a summer house along the Jersey Shore, the Hamptons, Fire Island, Cape Cod, or Newport RI. But I suppose it’s less common if you don’t live near the coast.
I’ve stayed at the actual Jersey Shore (mostly but not exclusively Wildwood) many many times over the past 20 years, but mostly did it with family and we didn’t stay all summer.
If by demographics , you just mean race or ethnicity , you might be right. And you probably think I’m talking about income or marital status, and there is a little bit of that. But I have to ask, where did you and your friends grow up? I’m guessing not in either New York or Boston. I grew up in New York City ( although not Manhattan ) and didn’t know a single native New Yorker who got together with friends and rented a summer house. Not the ones from Brooklyn or Queens or even Manhattan. We either drove or took the bus or train to the beach for the day, or went to someone’s parents’ summer house at the Jersey Shore or bungalow at Breezy Point.
My wife’s family has a house at Seaside, within walking distance of the “Jersey Shore” house. I love it down there.
As noted above, who can afford an entire summer just hanging out? (Although don’t the Jersey Shore people actually have jobs there, besides being sponsored by the Network? I haven’t watched the show, but I was under the impression that they worked). But we’ve had weekend parties at the Shore House, where people just crashed on the couches, chairs, and floor.
I grew up in Jersey and spent a lot of time down the shore. The closest I came to doing a whole summer was renting a room in a boarding house with a buddy. We’d work all week at home and go down every Friday night for the weekend. This was in Belmar in the late 80s. Also rented houses for a week at a time with friends in Jersey and Fire Island a few times.
In college work study, a group of us from the job would go down one time during the summer and rent a beach house for one weekend. Not an all summer, hang out and party thing.
I’m curious to know how many of them live in the house, and how much a beach house/bungalow such as theirs might rent for. Anyone care to make a guess at either?
Not I, but to address some of the how can they afford questions I had friends who would take summer jobs at a tourist destination and pack 20 or so people into a 5 bedroom house for the duration. You had to be able to function with no sleep because it was NEVER quiet. I visited a couple of times for a weekend but it was just too chaotic for me.