'Like it or leave'

Last Updated on Friday, May 11, 2012 12:01 am Written by Cindy Nevitt Friday, May 11, 2012 01:00 am

OCEAN CITY – It’s amazing how Ocean City, a resort town that relies on the hospitality industry, can be so inhospitable.

I’m not talking about the sometimes misleading, hurtful and incendiary commentary that has accompanied the BYOB debate. I’m talking about the posts and the quotes from residents, the very same people who benefit directly from the largesse of those who choose to vacation here and spend their rental dollars on housing so that Ocean City residents can enjoy good services for relatively low taxes.

Where is their gratitude? Apparently, it’s left town, which is where they are so quick to direct others.

Example 1: “If folks really want to take a bottle to local restaurants, there are plenty of shore towns that permit them to do that, spend your summers there,” Ken Ellis of Ocean City wrote in his letter to the Gazette on April 24. The headline on his letter: If you want BYOB, go to a town that offers it.

That’s right. Skedaddle. Git. Go on. Make yourself scarce. You and your ilk are clearly not wanted here in America’s Greatest Resort of Insults.

For downright meanness, those posting on Ocean City Patch cannot be matched.

Example 2: “Those in ‘need’ can go elsewhere, those that proposed the change should go elsewhere …” Margie Compagnola posted in her screed on May 9. Compagnola, who identified herself as a challenger, but did not identify the polling place where she worked during the election, sings high praise to “our sacred town” while disgracing it with her vow against BYOB proponents to “never step foot in any of their restaurants.”

Let’s be clear: Wrapping venom in a thin veneer of Homerism doesn’t make it more acceptable or attractive. It makes it utterly repulsive.

Example 3: “If you don’t like the town, leave,” posted the ever-disagreeable Duffer on May 9 in response to a post. He then topped his nonsense sundae with this bon mot: “There will be a lineup of people willing to purchase your property,” an assertion that makes him seem more Rip Van Winkle than astute observer, seeing as how the previous decade saw real estate values plummet precipitously, jobs evaporate and the economy sink into a morass from which it has yet to recover. Let’s be realistic here: The line of people waiting to buy shore property is way shorter than the lineup of cars headed out of town every summer day at sundown.

Example 4: “You can always go across the bridge.” This quote is attributed to 12-year Ocean City resident Charles O’Brien in the May 8 edition of The Press of Atlantic City. Less abrasive, Charlie, but still offensive.

Example 5: “Then they should leave,” the response of a 2^nd Ward voter outside the Civic Center polling place when informed that not everyone agreed with his assessment that “Ocean City has a good business plan that shouldn’t be messed with.”

How is someone who is not making money here in a position to pack up and move elsewhere? Starting a new business costs money. Moving costs money. Houses are not selling. Jobs don’t exist in abundance anywhere.

Leaving is not the solution. It is part of the problem, illustrated clearly and painfully by the mass exodus of the last decade when 25 percent of the island’s population cashed in and sold out.

For all the haters out there: This island is about hospitality, not hostility. Let’s get it together before it’s too late.

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