The Week Ahead: South Jersey Squeezes the Last Sweetness Out of Summer

There’s a particular light in late August — golden, a little tired, slanting long across the Delaware and the boardwalks — and if you’ve lived in South Jersey long enough you know exactly what it’s telling you. The summer is running out. The good news is that the last chapter is often the best one, and the week ahead has plenty worth getting off the couch for.

What just rolled through, and what’s next

If you love live music, you may already be too late for the marquee event — but it’s worth knowing what just happened. Widespread Panic wrapped a three-night stand at Hard Rock’s Etess Arena in Atlantic City this weekend, the kind of jam-band residency that turns the AC waterfront into a reunion for a certain devoted crowd. Keep an eye on that arena — Atlantic City is stacking dozens of concerts through the fall, and the calendar only gets busier from here. Closer to home, we just said goodbye to one of my favorite weekends of the whole South Jersey year: the Collingswood Crafts and Fine Art Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary, more than 190 juried artists lining Haddon Avenue. If you missed it, don’t beat yourself up — mark your calendar for next August and treat the next twelve months as a chance to buy directly from a South Jersey artist instead.

Think small and seasonal

For the week itself, my advice is to think small and seasonal. This is farmers-market season at its absolute peak, and the shore towns do it right — Ocean City runs its market at the Tabernacle Grounds, and up and down the coast you’ll find Sunday markets loaded with Jersey produce, baked goods, cut flowers, local seafood and the kind of tomato that ruins you for grocery-store tomatoes for the rest of your life. Wildwood Crest keeps its free Saturday concerts going at Centennial Park, the sort of low-key, bring-a-lawn-chair evening that costs nothing and gives back plenty. These aren’t headliners. They’re better than headliners — they’re the texture of a South Jersey summer, and they’re free.

The back-to-school countdown is real. Summer doesn’t end on Labor Day around here so much as it quietly clocks out sometime in the third week of August.Jenna Joy

Here’s the part I’d gently insist on: this is the week to actually go. Not next week. Once that first day of school hits, the rhythm of everything changes. So take the long way home this week. Buy the tomatoes. Sit through the free concert. If you’ve got a night open, drive down to the water and watch that golden light do its thing over the river while it lasts. The festivals will be back. The perfect August evenings are a little more finite. That’s the whole trick to living here — knowing which weeks are the ones you’re supposed to hold onto. This is one of them.

Based on reporting from JamBase, Ticketmaster / Hard Rock Atlantic City, Collingswood.com, NJ 101.5, the Ocean City events calendar, and Visit South Jersey.