What Happened to Seaside?

What Happened to Seaside?

“Remember the chokehold the ‘Seaside’ sweatshirt had on us in high school?!” my friend joked when I told her we were bringing our son on a trip. And of course I did. It was a little over 20 years ago that my parents took my brother and I to the Seaside area for the first time. We were each allowed to bring a friend, but it was explained and understood that they had worked hard to be able to bring us to this “new” area of the Gulf, and that we were to behave accordingly. After that trip, the 30A area became our new summer spot (along with so many other families in the New Orleans area). So when we were able to take our son for the first time this summer, we were excited to show him the beach spot that holds our heart.

We strategically chose a week in mid-May that the agent assured us was not “in season.” But on night one, we all started to notice that something was different. We sat out on the patio and instead of catching the occasional sound of a wave or people strolling by, we were met with incredibly loud music, truck tires screeching, and droves and droves of golf carts packed with what I am sure was an illegal number of human bodies. On night two, we resigned ourselves to white noise we found on YouTube just to sleep through the night. Throughout our stay, we became accustomed to the regular game of chicken between our stroller and a gaggle of young men and women on bikes taking up the sidewalk while scrolling their phones. We quickly noticed house after house being occupied by ladies and gentlemen who looked well under the minimum age for home rentals.

Day after day, we were fighting for our single-file spot on the sidewalk, and night after night there were more and more trucks speeding down the street where we cross with our one-year old. For a change, we took our son to the pool one day but left almost immediately as a group of three gentlemen had taken up the entirety of the pool with a rough and raucous game of football. There was simply no safe way for my toddler to be in the same area. One night we watched a golf cart get pulled over by the country police and were excited to see anyone enforcing any sort of law enforcement in the area. As the cop ran the ID of the individual driving the cart, we watched as the passengers laughed and took selfies with the police car behind them.

And this was the moment I finally thought to myself, “What happened to Seaside?” The lovely little summer getaway we once loved, though often crowded, used to offer a calm, salty rejuvenation. Even at the height of the summer, I always left with a sense that I had experienced a beach town respite, where the days were long and nights were restful. This just wasn’t the experience that had a “chokehold” on me during my previous summers.

We have not given up on Seaside, but my hope is that Seaside doesn’t give up on us. We had a lovely time engaging with other families and children in and around the same age, all equally frustrated by their experience. And of course, I know that things change, time marches on and I can’t expect a place to stay the same forever. But my hope is that Seaside will start to enforce some of the strict policies I used to be briefed on prior to every trip. That it will evolve to embrace the sense of family it once had.

Have you been to the 30A area lately? What was your experience?