Shoobie Doobie Do

Living in a New Jersey shore town, I’m used to the ritual that begins every Memorial Day weekend – the official launch of the summer season. It’s a time when half of Philadelphia migrates to the balmy climate of the Jersey shore for a cheap Bacchanalia consisting of beer, fire-cooked meats and dry humping underneath the Boardwalk.
At a time when Americans should honor their war dead, the Philadelphian tourists, whom we refer to disparagingly as “shoobies,” pound Yuenglings and finger-bang each other.
It’s not like I despise the shoobies – I just don’t want them to come here anymore. I find most of them loud and obnoxious and ill educated. I mean, “youse” and “yez” are not words.
“How yez doin’?”
If I hear that one more time, I’ll firebomb the Tastykake-munching morons.
I’m hating on the shoobies because I saw the police pull over an SUV in front of my house. A young man and woman were stopped and the police pulled a wine bottle and a bag of marijuana from the vehicle. The man was arrested while the car was impounded. Apparently the three police cars responding to the scene had to deal with a crisis of epic proportions – a DWI with possession of marijuana thrown in.
Shoobies come here and think they’re partying at Hedonism. They lose themselves and think they can take more drugs than Woody Harrelson on an all-night bender in Vegas. Yet it’s the locals who have to put up with the binge drinking, projectile vomiting and large groups of horny men cruising the streets at midnight looking for clunge.
I realize that young people like to blow off steam and party. When I was in college my friends raided my parent's beach house and drank all night till the sun came up. We chatted up besotted women and had long makeout sessions with them.
You go to the Jersey shore to get drunk and laid, to meet people and party. Yet there’s a difference between pounding a few beers and injecting raw heroin in a nightclub bathroom.
When I was in college, I was aware that I was a guest in someone else’s town. The shoobies have this attitude that they are superior to us dim-witted locals, that Pennsylvania is higher on the cultural food chain than New Jersey and that their bowel movements smell like a bouquet of scented lilacs.
I understand they pump millions of dollars in our local economy, but do they have to be such assholes while they’re doing it? Can’t they at least show some common courtesy on our local roads instead of driving like they’re on the Schuylkill Expressway?
I don’t want to start a war with these rancid cheesesteak-breathed knuckle-draggers, but they come to the Jersey shore to relax and kick back, not bring a plastic trashbag filled with cocaine and enough firearms to supply Hamas.
I like Philadelphia. It has a unique culture, a vibrant history that traces itself back to our country’s founding and great people with a certain je ne seis quoi that I like. Yet when I visit Philly, I don’t drive 80 miles an hour and wave my dick out of the car window.
Maybe I’m just getting old and my worldview is clouded by age. Maybe I should join the Curmudgeon Club, a gathering of old men who sit on the front porch and glower and anyone under 30. I’ll wave my cane and shout at the heavens whenever a shoobie takes their family to the beach and fails to let a pedestrian cross the street, or when a shoobie on a bicycle doesn’t obey traffic signs or when a broad from Northeast Philadelphia blows a guy behind the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Maybe I should just relax this Memorial Day with a bottle of wine, a bag of weed and a skank from Kensington.