By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Friends Joy Hopkins, Caroline Curry and Meghan Sears were just getting started on their shopping Saturday afternoon at the Skimmer Festival in Sea Isle City.
They had already bought some jewelry and a candle. Next, they were checking out some handbags and clothing at one of the vendors lining the Promenade.
“These are the first buys,” Sears said as she showed off two gold rings on her fingers. “There are definitely more buys to come.”
The oceanfront Promenade was transformed into a sprawling outdoor shopping mall of sorts that included 200 vendors under tents.
Shopping is always one of the main attractions at the annual Skimmer Festival Weekend, Sea Isle’s signature summertime celebration. Thousands of shoppers strolled the Promenade to buy jewelry, clothing, handbags, artwork, crafts, novelty items and much more.
Hopkins, Curry and Sears were amazed by the size of the crowds that jammed the Promenade for a day-long shopping spree.
“I can’t believe how big it’s become,” Sears said, comparing the present-day Skimmer Festival with the smaller predecessors she attended years ago.
Sears lives in Philadelphia, while Curry is from Cherry Hill and Hopkins is a Sea Isle resident. The three friends spend their summers in Sea Isle during the vacation season.
There was one telltale sign that they are regulars at the Skimmer Festival. They were sipping on super-sized lemonades while browsing the merchandise on the Promenade.
“If you don’t get a lemonade, then you don’t do Skimmer right,” Curry said as all three women broke into laughter.
The Skimmer Festival has made a huge comeback from the height of the pandemic. The vendors, amusement rides and food court all had to be canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to crowd restrictions and COVID-19 fears while the pandemic raged.
In 2020 and 2021, Sea Isle held an abbreviated version of the festival that included a sidewalk sale by local businesses and an antique car show that was spread out along the Promenade to create enough room for social distancing.
The festival’s 2022 version was the first full-scale celebration since 2019 and featured thousands of people. With sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s providing great weather, the momentum continued Saturday for the 2023 festival.
“We’re very impressed with the number of people in attendance,” city spokeswoman Katherine Custer said. “Tens of thousands of people is an easy estimate. The Promenade is filled with shops.”
Known for its family-friendly atmosphere, the festival also includes live music, an outdoor food court and an array of free amusement rides in Excursion Park to entertain the children.
Keri Allen, of Millville, visited with her aunt, Dawn Swan, in Sea Isle and stopped in at the festival. Allen brought along her stepdaughters, Ellianna, 11, and Kaylee, 12, her son, Bentley, 6, and foster daughter, 1-year-old Lazuli.
The first stop at the festival was so that Ellianna could get her face painted.
“I thought about sleeping in, but this event was perfect for the kids. We are having a blast,” Allen said.
She noted that her family attends the event most years.
“The weather is great and the kids are really enjoying themselves,” Swan said.
The two-day festival continues Sunday with an antique car show on the Promenade from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. At 1:30 p.m., there will be a parade of vintage cars through Sea Isle’s streets.
Skimmer Festival Weekend jump starts the local economy as Sea Isle transitions from being a small town of about 2,100 year-round residents into a bustling vacation resort packed with tens of thousands of visitors during the summer months.
The festival’s origins date to 1963, a year after a monstrous storm devastated the Jersey Shore. At that time, Sea Isle hoped to persuade tourists that the beach resort was in recovery mode and ready to begin welcoming visitors again, so the Skimmer Festival was created. It took its name from the wide-brimmed, straw skimmer boating hats that were popular with men during Victorian days.
Although the Victorian-era skimmer hats are obviously out of style now, the festival continues to embrace old-fashioned, family-style fun reminiscent of Sea Isle’s days as a genteel seaside retreat in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Kim and Pete Hess and their daughter, Abby, had never heard of skimmer hats before Saturday, but good-naturedly tried them while walking down the Promenade during the festival. The Hesses live in York, Pa., and have a vacation place in Ocean View.
Shortly after the Hesses donned their skimmers, an unexpected gust of wind blew Kim’s hat off her head.
“Oh, no, there goes my skimmer hat,” Kim exclaimed.
But she quickly reclaimed the skimmer and put it back on. After all, how could Sea Isle possibly have the Skimmer Festival without some skimmer hats?
