The Best Thing About the Shore in August Still Costs Nothing

Somewhere between the price of a boardwalk funnel cake and the cost of parking a family van for the day, it’s easy to talk yourself out of the Jersey Shore in August. The season’s at its most expensive, the crowds are at their thickest, and every town seems to have found a new way to charge you for the privilege of standing near the ocean.

So here’s a small act of neighborly resistance for the second weekend of the month: some of the best of the Shore is still free, and it’s worth knowing where to find it.

Start with the sand

While Cape May Point runs $10 for a daily badge and Ocean City and the rest hold to their beach-tag traditions, the Wildwoods — Wildwood, North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest — remain among the last stretches of Jersey coastline where nobody stops you at the entrance with a hand out. No tags, no badges, no line at the little folding table. You walk on. For a family of four trying to make the summer stretch, that difference is real money, and it’s the reason those wide, famously-long Wildwood beaches fill up the way they do.

Then there’s the music. On Saturday evenings, Centennial Park in Wildwood Crest hosts free concerts — the kind of low-key, bring-a-chair, kids-running-in-the-grass shows that don’t make anybody’s summer bucket list but somehow end up being the night you remember. A free concert in a small-town park is one of the truest things a community does. Nobody’s there to be seen. They’re there because it’s a warm night and there’s music and it doesn’t cost anything to belong.

Earn your view

A little further up the coast, the free summer tradition holds strong — Lindenwold Park has a big Springsteen celebration on the calendar this weekend, proof that you don’t have to cross a bridge or a toll plaza to hear a live band under the stars. And down in Cape May, if you want to earn your view rather than pay for it, you can still climb the 199 steps of the Cape May Lighthouse and look out over the whole southern tip of the state — the marshes, the ferry line, the Delaware Bay going gold in the late light.

There’s something worth protecting in the parts that stay free — the walk-on beach, the park concert, the climb up an old lighthouse. Those keep the Shore from becoming a place only some families can afford to love.Max Cedar

We’ve got maybe three good weekends of high summer left before the light starts tilting toward September and the crowds thin out. Spend one of them at the Crest with a folding chair and no wallet in your hand. Some of the best things down here were never for sale to begin with.

Based on reporting from Shore Local Newsmagazine, WHYY, The Jersey Shore Girl, and Cape May County event listings.