Skimmer Weekend Used to Mean Summer Was Over in Sea Isle City. This Year, It Didn't.
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
If you've lived in Sea Isle City long enough, you know the rhythm of Skimmer weekend. Classic cars line up along the Promenade, the Snake Brothers Band plays a set between ten and noon, and by one thirty the parade rolls south down Pleasure Avenue to 93rd Street before turning back north on Landis toward JFK Boulevard. It happens every year around this date, and it has always felt like the town's way of exhaling. The Fall Family Festival Antique Auto Show & Parade runs today, honoring longtime local Gerard A. Desiderio, and if you were out on the Promenade this morning you saw the same scene regulars have seen for years: hoods up, awards handed out, then the slow procession that used to signal the island was closing up shop for the season.
Except this year, a lot of Sea Isle isn't closing anything.
Walk a few blocks in either direction from the parade route and you'll find businesses that spent 2026 making bets on the months after Skimmer weekend, not the ten weeks before it. That's the part worth sitting with if you live here: the town's newest investments aren't seasonal pop-ups chasing July crowds. They're permanent builds designed to still be running in November.
Start with Bubba Dogs. For close to 25 years, the cart at 59th Street was a beach-entrance ritual, the kind of stop locals built into a walk to and from the sand without thinking twice about it. This year, owner Tim McNamara opened a second, permanent location on the Promenade between 42nd and 43rd streets, next door to Boardwalk Casino Arcade and Zio Niccolo Pizza. A cart is a summer decision. A storefront on the Promenade, sandwiched between an arcade and a pizza shop that both depend on year-round foot traffic, is a different kind of decision.
A few blocks over on Landis Avenue, the corner at 40th Street tells a similar story. That spot used to house Shoobies and Bright Spot Cafe, both fixtures of the old beach-day economy: quick stops, casual counters, in and out. This year it became Coastal Chophouse, Sea Isle's only steakhouse. Steakhouses don't run on beach traffic. They run on reservations, date nights, and the kind of dinner crowd that shows up in October just as easily as August.
Anthony's, the Italian restaurant that's held its spot on Landis Avenue since 1993, made its own quieter bet. This year the restaurant added a full liquor license and a new cocktail menu, moves that make more sense for a business trying to hold onto its evening crowd through the shoulder season than one content to coast through summer alone.
Here's what that shift looks like side by side:
| What used to be there | What's there now |
|---|---|
| Bubba Dogs cart, 59th Street | Bubba Dogs storefront, the Promenade near 42nd |
| Shoobies and Bright Spot Cafe, Landis & 40th | Coastal Chophouse, Sea Isle's only steakhouse |
| Anthony's without a full bar | Anthony's with a liquor license and cocktail menu |
None of these are flashy openings. They're quieter than that, and that's exactly why they're easy to miss if you're only paying attention to the summer news cycle.
The clearest example sits in Townsends Inlet. For more than 110 years, Busch's Seafood Restaurant anchored the south end of the island, the kind of place that measured its life in generations rather than seasons. It closed, and in its place now stands The Dunes at Townsends Inlet Resort Hotel.
That's not a restaurant being replaced by another restaurant. It's a single-season seafood house being replaced by a hospitality property built around a calendar that includes weddings, group bookings, and off-peak stays, the kind of business that needs October and April to pencil out just as much as July does. A hotel doesn't work if it only makes sense for ten weeks a year.
Then there's Kix, the 63rd Street institution that's been part of the island's nightlife for roughly 45 years. This year Kix announced plans for a rooftop bar and restaurant above its existing Package Goods Store and Night Club, with enclosed seating around the current SideKix Lounge. The construction timeline is long. Reports put the finished product at least three years out, into 2029.
You don't sink years of planning and construction into a rooftop addition if you think the island's economy shuts off at Labor Day. That kind of build only makes sense if you expect people to be sitting on that roof in the shoulder months too.
None of this would matter much if the town's own events calendar didn't back it up. But look at what's actually scheduled between now and Halloween:
That's four organized, publicly promoted events spread across nearly a month after the traditional end of summer. Chamber of Commerce President Brian Heritage has described Sea Isle's food scene as one of South Jersey's best-kept secrets, and the same logic seems to be extending to the calendar itself: a town quietly building out a longer season rather than compressing everything into the ten weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
If you've treated the week after Skimmer weekend as the unofficial start of a quiet island, this year is a good moment to reset that expectation. The restaurant that used to be a summer-only counter is now a steakhouse with year-round hours to fill. The cart you used to catch on the way to the beach has a storefront with a lease to justify. The bar on 63rd Street is planning for a rooftop that won't open until 2029, which means whoever's running it is confident the island will still be worth showing up for.
None of this means Sea Isle is losing what makes it feel like a shore town. The parade still runs the same route it always has. The Scarecrow Contest still happens at Excursion Park. But the businesses filling in around those traditions are building for a longer year, and that's worth knowing whether you're deciding where to grab dinner in November or just trying to understand why the island feels a little less empty than it used to once the antique cars roll back up JFK Boulevard.
If you're weighing what a longer season in Sea Isle City means for your own plans here, whether that's a primary move, a second home, or simply understanding how the island's rhythm is shifting, Robin M Anderson has spent years watching these towns change block by block. Let's Connect.
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