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06/26/2007: Summer Megaparty: Fun At The Shell Shop!

We hit up Long Beach Island yesterday, one of my family’s favorite vacation towns from years ago. Everything I loved about LBI was still intact. From the weird antique stores to the Tiki-themed custard shops, it was the same town I’d spent ten consecutive summers swimming, playing, watching and wasting at. The only difference was an increase in traffic lights.

LBI isn’t as glitzy as most of the other Jersey shore vacation spots, if we can define “glitzy” as a series of blinking, neon signs directing your attention towards the nearest funnel cake. There’s no giant boardwalk and there are no big roller coasters. It’s more quaint and subdued, and nothing better evidences that fact than one of Long Beach’s biggest entertainment venues — a strip mall.

It’s called “Bay Village,” home to countless tiny shops selling everything from ice cream to sand sculptures. I loved this place as a kid. With money to burn and a passing interest in everything, I don’t doubt that I’ve purchased at least one thing from every single store in Bay Village at some point in my life. Even at the ones that only sold women’s clothes, I managed. My favorite store was always this little shithole called “Shell Shanty,” and I was elated to find it still running strong.

What can one buy at the Shell Shanty? Well, shells, for the most part. But there’s more than that — everything from shark-themed shot glasses to dead-and-now-decorative shellacked blowfish. There’s enough awesome sea-themed crap in there to get anyone to rethink their living room’s motif. It’s the kind of place that has just the right amount of homegrown charm to persuade even the coldest browser to buy a $300 statue of a lighthouse.

And since it’s been there forever, it’s one of those stores that has 2,000 times more inventory on display than it can really support. Most stores have walking room; at Shell Shanty, you kind of have to just hop around on one foot. This is part of its charm. You’ll find everything from twenty-year-old squeak frogs to two-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean knockoff toys. If only they sold tacos and bottled water, I’d never have to buy anything from anyplace else, ever. It’d be like Wal-Mart, only with an aisle full of plastic lobsters instead of Dyson vacuums. I’d rather do little lobster puppet shows than vacuum cat hair, anyway.

The entire store is lined with a buffet of shells and dead, dried sea creatures. I loved those bins so much as a child. I wouldn’t say that I was an avid shell collector, but when you’re a kid vacationing in a beach town for a week, you tend to pick up the local hobbies.

Then again, it’s possible that kids are just born with a desire to own shells. When we went there yesterday, I was among six of my nieces and nephews, each more obsessed with picking “the right shell” than the last. I strongly feel that you can’t truly grasp human nature until you see a five-year-old boy in tears because he can’t decide between the fifty cent cone shell or the seventy-nine cent dead baby starfish. Trivial pursuits are the ones that stick with you.

Around a quarter of the store’s space is devoted to hermit crabs. Small hermit crabs, medium hermit crabs, large hermit crabs and jumbo hermit crabs. (”Jumbo” crabs, being the largest and most expensive, put to rest the eternal debate over which is truly bigger: Jumbo, or Large?) They sell plastic tanks, wire cages, water sponges, food, endless tank decorations and a hundred other things related to hermit crab care. Every kid who enters the store refuses to leave without a new hermit crab, so it’s smart of the Shell Shanty folks to take advantage. After all, Shell Shanties can’t support themselves on the sale of Long Beach Island mermaid-themed sweatshirts alone.

Running with recent trends, they also sell “designer” crab shells which force the poor hermit crabs to troll around town wearing bad paintings of Mickey Mouse and Dora the Explorer over their asses. It’s the hermit crab equivalent of dyeing a poodle pink, only nobody gets to have their photos purchased by pet salons in need of new material for their print advertisements.

I wanted to leave with something, for old time’s sake, and I have to admit that the dried up baby seahorses were tempting. Had Shell Shanty offered them in protective boxes, I might’ve taken ‘em up on it. As things stood, there was no way that thing would’ve made it all the way home intact. I have little use for dead seahorse crumbs.

I know that killing seahorses for profit is a pretty big taboo nowadays, but as someone who is eternally fascinated by the window displays of Chinatown medicine shops, I can’t help myself. Promise you this: For every dead seahorse I buy, I’ll plant a flower.

I’m the type of person who views life as a fragile chain of events, and within that, there isn’t much room for regret. Shit causes goodness, however indirect, and vice versa. But now I’m a crossroads. Ever since I left the Shell Shanty without the kickass octopus light seen above, I’ve felt regret. Strong regret. Strong, piercing, I-can’t-believe-I-didn’t-buy-that-awesome-piece-of-shit regret. That octopus light is the kind of thing you can come home to after three car accidents and a funeral and still be cheered up by. “Life never sucks when you get to come home to a light-up octopus.” I put it in quotations because, really, it deserves to be on a t-shirt.

With time running short and a wallet blown to pieces from our visit to Atlantic City earlier in the weekend, I opted for a cheap little bag of prehistoric shark teeth — complete with “shark teeth facts” on the back of the package! Yes, that’s how the facts were presented. A bullet list, under a header reading “Shark Teeth Facts.” How could I pass that up?

My visit to the Shell Shanty isn’t exactly an epic tale. I realize this.

LIke you know, whatever! that whole article reminded me of that Simpsons episode. I really feel bad about those baby sea horsies. HOWEVER octopus light ohhh man Matt how COULD YOU NOT. Maybe you’ll see it on ebay one day. OR you can take a lamp and glue the shark teeth to it…i know i know, its just not the same

Oh, the octopus light is amazing. I’d kill for a light like that. Well… maybe not kill, but certainly maim. Okay, depending on who.. Kill. Coming home and turning on a light like that would always put a smile on my face.

I live on the coast, and therefore have frequented many many tourist-y junk shops filled with shells, rocks, wooden boats, etc. Matt, you would drop a load in your pants if you ever saw the tourist shops where I come from…although this Shell Shanty place is not too shabby. I used to opt for the polished rocks over the shells.

I thought it was an epic tale…couldn’t u just imagine coming back from summer vacation as a kid and getting up infront of the class and giving the whole speech about getting cool-ass shells and dried up baby seahorses and shark teeth? the kid who brought back his mickey ears from disneyworld would be all awwww shiiiiit. isn’t that what this site is all about my friends??

You could write a sea ‘chanty’ about the shell shanty. try saying THAT 5 times fast.

Aw, I loved collecting shells on vacation. (Rocks, too.) It’s been years, though.
That octopus light is so awesome- I wish I had one! I understand that feeling of regret.

There’s something very similar to that shop up near St Ignance Michigan. It is called Seashell City and is a combination store and gas station. It has freaking everything you could think possible, even those little oysters that they pry open for pearls. I wound up walking away from there with far more crap than I needed.

Boy, do I feel homesick. There used to be stores like that in Cape May before they went “upscale” and the 100-year-old millionares who now mostly vacation there decided they were too good for hermit crabs and octopus lights…or that they had to cost three times what Matt mentioned they were in the LBI article. I miss Cape May like it was when I was a kid, which is probably why I can’t bring myself to go there anymore.

a quick search reveals that it is possible to procure such things online, but I really probably shouldn’t spend money on nautical novelty lamps. and I so want to.

I preferred the shells I collected myself from the shore. Except for the packs of super tiny shells dyed pretty pastel colors. And you were right not to buy the lamp, everyone knows octopi are evil.

A friend of ours daughter has one of those designer hermit crabs. It’s painted the color of the Mystery Machine with Scooby Doo on it.

Hello everyone, nice entry today! I live not too far from the coast, but I don’t go to the beach very often. Yesterday, I got my Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad toys from eBay in the mail. I was late to work because I spent so much time trying to figure out how to transform the vehicles between their various modes. Those Samurai vehicles are some of the most complex toys I have ever seen, transforming and combining in all sorts of ways. I wonder if the original Transformers toys were this hard to deal with. BTW, I would’ve liked the octopus lamp too. Say, since we’re on the subject, why don’t we discuss vacations? I’m hoping to take one later this summer, once I’ve saved some money. Work has been a real drag lately. Anyone have any inexpensive vacation ideas? I’d appreciate any input.

I’m not allowed to go into stores like that, because I have a violent and uncontrollable desire to buy giant handfulls of small plastic lobsters, crabs, squids, and any other marine animal made of badly painted plastic and sold from a bin for .50 cents. Yeah, sure, I always think, they’re only .50 cents, but you know what? .50 multiplied by a million some how ends up costing me 8 million dollars. I suck at math, and I hoard small plastic animals, mustn’t I have a great life?

Need need need Shark Teeth Facts! Some scream for ice cream, I scream for amusing lists.

I am in the “I don’t want sea shells if I don’t get them off the shore myself” group. Store bought shells remind me of the kitchy bathroom decor my mother had in the 80s.
When I was in Seattle the other week we went to the beach and gathered a bunch of shells. They are still sitting in the plastic grocery bags we put them in while collecting. Unfortunately most of them are bleach white and I really don’t have much use for them. Unless of course I get a giant glass jar to use for display.

I always hated getting things like sea shells with my brother. No matter how cool mine was, his was better. When we got the EXACT same toy, his was better. I hated him so much for that.

I live in Colorado, so I rarely make it to a coast, but you better believe I’d come home with and octopus lamp if presented with the option.

Sorry to double post, but I just remembered:
family trip to Cancun when I was 14, we went snorkeling and I dove something like 15-25 feet for a conch shell off the bottom of the sea. It was sweet and it was mine, but I later found out…it wasn’t dead. At least when I found it it wasn’t dead. By the time we got home it make my whole suitcase smell like rotten fish. I left it for a couple years on top of a huge ant hill in a field, but it got all bleached and now I think it’s off in our garden somewhere. Weird how kb mentioning bleached shells triggered that memory in me.

I wish I lived near an ocean where one might procure dried but jaunty dead sea horses and terrific lit octopi, but I have to live in Oklahoma. At our tourist shops you find cans of potted meat with computer printed labels disguising them as cans of “opossum.”

Man, this has gotten me so excited to go back to LBI this August! We usually go to Bay Village while were there so I may just go to the Shell Shanty and pick me up an octopus lamp, so cool!

I was hoping that maybe you would have gone to Showplace, the ice cream parlor that has the waiters and waitresses sing show tunes. It’s so corny but that another thing that I have to do every time I go.

Some of the hermit crabs we sell at my work have painted shells. There’s a bunch with American flags and cartoon characters and stuff…and then there’s one with VIETNAM and the Vietnamese flag on it. Needless to say, that one’s my favorite.

I have a confession. The first thing I ever stole (and one of the last besides 3,494 mp3s) was one of the dried out sea horses from MARINELAND in St. Augustine

FUN FACTS: Marineland opened in 1938 and was featured in the sequel to the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON: 1955’s REVENGE OF THE CREATURE

I kept the dried sea horse for a long time but the guilt, oh the guilt, made it too painful to keep and I threw it away.

man oh man! I saw that octopus lamp and just assumed you HAD to have bought it! It is really cool looking….I may have to make a trip down to LBI after 15 years to get one? Where did you guys stay? Used to stay in Shipbottom, but my friend’s family sold the place…

Skywalking, I think I know what shop you’re talking about. I’m originally from Gladstone, MI so I’ve been to just about every near lakeside-shell-selling-shop along Lake Michigan. My favorite is the one in Manistique, but I can’t remember what it’s called. I’m dying to buy polished rocks and go to the ghost town in Fayette now.

bloodybrilliantme I must say that your post reminds me more of giftshops than rad octupuss lights

Thirty five bucks? You should have gotten it.
Tons of Shark Week promos playing all over Discovery already, and it’s still a month away. I’m excited anyway…I hope they do another “Jobs That Bite” this year.

My only shell experience was clam digging with relatives in the Maritimes. It was good fun - until the moment I was expected to shuck ‘em, cook ‘em and eat ‘em. Still makes me shudder.

I think it was that same trip when a cousin gave me a miniature lobster trap he’d made. It came complete with parts of dead miniature lobster, although those eventually crumbled and fell out. We used to have it in our living room as a “conversation piece” but after I moved out, it got moved out to the shed where Dad keeps all his nails and wood and broken coffee makers…

MattI donâ€™t see how you got Pirates of the Caribbean from those cheap toys. They look like any old pirate toy. Heck, they were probably made before the first pirates of the Caribbean movie was released. I take my pirate toys very seriously, as you can see. God Iâ€™m lonelyâ€¦

Anyway, my aunt and uncle own a cottage on Marthaâ€™s Vineyard and many a time we would scour the beaches for washed up shells. No 99 cent shit for us. I even had a basket that was dedicated to holding found shells. A basket which started out life holding Easter goodies. The sea is a cruel mistressâ€¦

I never liked the shell, it always felt like a lifeless parting gift. It’s main feature is you can hear the ocean, but as a kid all it made me want to do is request to actually ‘GO’ to the ocean. It also serves no real interest especially when your surround by Ninja Turtles/Power Rangers/Ghostbusters and Wrestling Figures are around. Not to mention the fear of breaking someones shell and getting punished, it was almost like a ‘why bother with item’.

Since we’re talking about vacationing and everything…. does anyone here…. y’know…. scrapbook? I’ve been trying not to. Trying real hard, which is difficult when you have an absolutely massive collection of stickers. But I had all these great photos from NYC and before I knew it I was out buying an album and special papers and little stickers with hot dog stands on them. I’ve done about 3 pages and now I’m completely hooked. All I can think about is going to Michael’s tomorrow and buying tons of overpriced pages and little paper frames and embellishments and scissors that cut jagged lines.

I’ll admit…that IS an interesting Octupus Lamp, but I can’t justify buying it for $35.

I hate the beach…but I love beach towns, with all of the nautical themed places as well as the kitschy stores like the Shell Shanty.

These places not only turn up in coastal towns, but, as Rebecca said, they appear in towns with large, famous lakes too. Lake George for example has “kitsch” written all over it, with tons of these ridiculous Shell Shanty-esque places…and a kickass arcade.

Besides here, I only remember the ones from Myrtle Berach and Orlando, both awesome places that had tons of these “beach tourist crap” stores, many of them having large ponds with sharks in them.

Also, I had an interesting experience tonight with the GF. We were at TGI Friday’s and some guy shuts the linds on the window…then approaches us and starts talking to us for some reason. His icebreaker? Telling me I look like Justin Bateman (Micheal Bluth from Arrested Development). He also noticed that I was slightly OCD and asks if I’m on any drugs. And my gf was just sitting there…covering her face from all the awkwardness.

He gave some good advice to get through the OCD though. “1, 2, 3…(runs his hand through his hair) Not my problem.”

Wow…i never thought i’d see the day my home turf would translate into an X-E blog entry. Awesome writeup Matt, it was a great read. Did you make your way to the glorious Fantasy Island, while you were there?

Sorry to bring up something in a comment way up there, but I just *had* to say something. Mystie - that octopus site is freakin’ awesome!! Its tone reminds of the Colbert Report, actually. In fact, I’m pretty sure he did something about octopi at one point.

Anyways, even though octopi are evil, I love them to bits. Incredible animals. Uh oh, I feel a pointless rant coming on, better stop this post.

Last note - I also only get sea animals/shells from the beach. I still have a starfish from my sister’s wedding (on a beach, obviously) on top of my TV.

I got movie Optimus today!!! I thought I broke it when one of the pins holding the back wheels together came out the wrong way, but I pulled it out with a pair of pliers and popped it back in. Freakin’ sweet. Awesome in vehicle mode, awesome in robot mode. Little pricey, but well worth it.

Matt, if you ever get to Seattle, you HAVE to go to Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. All this and mummies! And something that’s supposed to be a mummified mermaid, but looks like a monkey with the backend of a salmon.

Every time i go to a seaside town, i always look for people who look like fish and imagine that i am in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Just thought i’d throw that out there.

Those shark teeth look authentic-ish. If only you could buy the rest of the shark’s skeleton in little plastic baggies and eventually assemble one yourself.

Mystie - I don’t scrapbook, no matter how crafty I become I just can’t get into it. For the sake of relevance though, I do make ocean themed jewelry and sometimes I knit nautiluses. Nautili? I think both are correct.

Here in New Mexico, our gift shops sell small cans of green chiles, large bunches of dried red chiles, and those little glass hemispheres with tarantulas or scorpions inside. Outside of that, it’s all novelty postcards, shot glasses with clever tequila-related slogans, and t-shirts that mostly talk about ski resorts. Which is sad, considering we have one of the world’s largest and clearest dinosaur trackways not forty miles from my house. If it was up to me, our gift shops would be overflowing with dinosaur-related material.

Of course, if you find a gift shop next to a reservation, all bets are off. Tomahawks, cork guns, mineral samples, and more tacky turquoise jewelry than you can conveniently carry away in two wheelbarrows. Still no shells, though.

Sadly, no awesome octopi lamps for us. All we have are dead fish and potential mercury poisoning.

Awesome article. There’s a town about an hour north of me that’s packed with shops like that…Takes me right back to my childood.

Not trying to make you feel worse for not buying it but…That lamp is so damn cute!! Guess you’ll be needing to make a return trip soon…

When you go into these stores, do you get the “OK” from the managers to take pictures? Atleast half the time when I try to bust out the cam in a store for a stupid photo session, somebody comes over and tries to tell me to put my camera away or leave, like a local grocery store who literally has all shelves on one side of this aisle, from front to back, filled with hamburger helper. I tried to take some pictures on my digicam and someone came over and bitched at me, so I was stuck sneaking some shots in on my phone.

Oh, and uh.. smooth move on not getting that octopus lamp. Before I even got to that part of the article I saw the picture and thought, “Yes! He bought an octolamp!”.

What’s with the dead seahorses? They almost have them displayed like they’re a bowl full of peanuts and all you do is grab a handful and munch.

I don’t know what those blue and green balls are hanging from the ceiling in that place, but I wish my house was decorated like that.

Matt, haven’t you been the proud owner of a hermit crab or two in the past? I remember the neon fish injected with dye or whatever, I remember the chinchilla, but only recall reading about somebody and their hermie.

Sorry to “spam”, but I came across this and figured quite a few of you would totally get down on these, especially with the whole summer theme going on.

Disney Shopping’s website is having a pretty big sale on some of their beach towels.

Oh yeah, I don’t get paid or points or anything for this, and if it wasn’t for the power rangers towel, I would’nt have mentioned it here.

Due in some part, I think, to my reading of Matt’s Disneyworld adventures over last summer….
I’M GOING TO DISNEYWORLD!!
I’ve always wanted to say that. I convinced the woman that we could drive there (from Detroit) and even got her to read Matt’s articles. Not having any kids, it wasn’t a natural destination choice, but we’re going.
We’re headed out Friday, but I’m so geeked, I had to share it with someone.

Jessica Marie: Sadly, shark skeletons don’t preserve very well outside the teeth and jaws because they’re made of cartilage instead of bone. That’s what makes the study of ancient sharks like Megalodon so difficult…pretty much all we have of them is their teeth.

Now, to make up for being the Well Actually Guy, a fun shark fact: the word “shark” was not used until 1569. Up until then, most sharks were known as “sea dogs.”

I used to scrapbook until I had a kid. And now with another on the way, I have resorted back to photo albums with the sleeves for pictures… and even those are pretty much empty. But it was totally fun when I had the time to do it… and I have a bunch of stuff I don’t use that I will gladly send you… just say the word! All I ask is for more hardbody pictures on your site!

Jedoc - I know they’re cartilaginous; I just think that selling shark teeth is so hokey that it seems some of them must be fake, and that people would totally buy shark skeletons if they could. Also, I think someone on here - anyone - should change their name to Sea Dog. It sounds cool.
Speaking of bad science though, I once had to read a story for work in which the main character, a military genius, was taken to a high mountaintop by a crazy local and shown what he recognized as an octopus skeleton. I need to start a bad science blog about these manuscripts.

A google search for “octopus lamp” brings up over 500 sites. For some reason I find this amazing.

Isn’t strange how time doesn’t seem to affect crappy little gift shops? I’ve gone back and visited shops like your Shell Shanty that I loved as a kid, to find them looking like a time warp back to 1986. Selling the same crap, everything still in the same place. Weird.

WOW! I used to go to Bay Village with my mom and Aunt all the time. My uncle has a house down there. Once again X-E struck a nerve!

Keep up the good work.

Maybe it’s because people love nostalgia, especially when it comes to vacations. They want to go back to the place they visited when they were a kid and feel like that again, knowing that nothing has changed. Everything else in life changes so rapidly, it’s a great comfort to know that you can still go to some gift shop and it will be exactly the same…it’s kind of rad.

I think I’ve decided to take a “me” day next week -or sometime soon- and drive to the beach and chill for a day. And if I decide to stay, I can do that as well.

I just got back from a preliminary interview for a job that I really want, ant it went really well. The next person I interview with, the principal, is next. The gentleman ended the interview by saying “you should here from her by the end of next week”. I hope that’s a good sign, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up in case it doesn’t work out. Now I’m rambling

I also watched the Larry King deal late last night where he had Paul and Ringo, as well as Yoko and George’s ex, together at the one year anniversary of the “Love” Cirque show in Vegas. Very cool to see them all speaking so highly of each other. So I’m spending the morning downloading the remainder of my Beatles collection to my IPod….a very hippy day indeed.

And kb I agree with your thoughts about summer from the other day. I enjoy the fall much more. And this is the first time in years I’ve lived in a house without air conditioning in the entire place. Urg. Deep south + no air conditioning = me melting like a wicked witch.

Jessica Marie: Cheers, then. I hesitated over my keyboard for a long while before offering yet another unsolicited factoid, but in the end decided that I could not countenance even the remote possibility that a fellow XEr could be taken in by hypothetical sharkbone shysters. Also, it is against my personal code to pass up any opportunity to bring up Carcharodon megalodon in any context. I mean, a shark big enough to kill and eat baleen whales? How cool is that?

Also, now I kind of wish that octopi really did have skeletons, because that would be a really awesome Halloween decoration.

Hey, BSG fans, doesn’t that one pirate toy on the right look just like Col. Tigh in his current one-eyed state?

My mom lent me her high school scrapbook to scan stuff for my dad’s 50th birthday (obviously they went to HS together.) It was falling apart, so I decided my Christmas present to her would be to surprise her by redoing the whole thing. The end result turned out really nice, but it cost me around $50 to do it. It’s hard to justify that for my pictures when I can just put them in an album. Besides, I know if I got into scrapbooking, I’d just end up with a box full of pictures because “one of these days I’m going to get around to finally putting them in a scrapbook.” Plus, you can only put a couple of pictures on a page, and I take way too many pictures for that to be practical. Still, if I had the right collection of memorabilia, I might be persuaded to do it again. I agree, once you see it coming together, it just psychs you up to do more and make it look even better.

Jedoc/Sea Dog - No offense was taken; I’m pretty flighty in real life and often need to be reminded of things that are common sense.
Now that I think of it, the octopus skeleton thing was on par with another story in which a geneticist informed both a man and a woman that they each carried the elusive ‘y chromosome’; in that storyline, it meant they were descended from Jesus. Bad science, ahoy.

Shaunfu - Good luck with your job interviews! And I agree about summer totally sucking. It’s nice to look at in all, but I spend most of it counting down to September, and when the first of September arrives and it’s still 90 degrees I get irrationally angry.

I almost feel bad writing this, I mean, I know you don’t need any more regret. But as I was reading through the article and thinking, what did Matt buy? The picture of the octopus lamp made me stop and instantly say, that’s it. That is an awesome lamp.

I don’t want to pressure you, but you should probably drive back to the Shell Shanty right now and buy it. Or maybe call them and have them mail it to you. If you don’t in twenty years, you’ll be writing about this very lamp and your mistake of leaving it in LBI.

Ah, but how many great sea stories are there about “the one that got away?” Sure, now it’s “I should’ve bought this lamp but I didn’t and now I feel bad,” but in a few years it’ll be “I had the lamp in my hands when a group of pirates barged in and stole it from me!” That’s how fish (on in this case cephalapod) stories work. It could wind up almost as epic as the Chia Plot…

Mystie, I tried scrapbooking, I really did! I bought all the stuff you’re supposed to but when it came down to actually doing it, I guess I’m just too lazy or something!

Probably be best to keep it in one thread Meepy. As for those of you who prefer the fall over summer… get out of my sight

But seriously, being hot and sweaty rocks.

Fall Life, w/o a doubt. Summer is just horrendous sad and constantly ready to backfire on you:

“The sun struggles up another beautiful day
And I felt glad in my own suspicious way
Despite the contradiction and confusion
Felt tragic without reason
There’s malice and there’s magic in every season

From the foaming breakers of the poisonous surf
The other side of Summer
To the burning forests in the hills of Astroturf
The other side of Summerr”

I also throw my hat in with those that say you should’ve got the octopus lamp. It’s a big megaparty, go and get it and write an article about that sucker! Because as you said, “Life never sucks when you get to come home to a light-up octopus”.

Nice write-up though dude. I remember there was a shell shop where I used to vacation as a kid… for some reason it always smelled like a dentists office.

My mom owns a scrapbooking store and has been published in those magazines. There’s scrapbooking stuff all over the house. Can’t complain seeing as how she’s always looking out for crazy Ninja Turtle and Ghostbuster items for me.

Sorry if someone mentioned this already (no time to read all comments), but that octopus lamp is clearly part of a larger set that is widely available. My dad has the frog and my friend Christy has the turtle. Sounds like it’s a sea life series. So, probably you can find it somewhere, Matt.

Welp, if you think that is awesome the Cape May / Wildwood area is nice and has a bunch of shell shops, as does the otherside with Ocean City, MD and Lewes, DE. Any “down the shore/tourist” area would most likely have them but… I happen to like the one in Cape May NJ best, “Diamond Beach”. They find little clear “rocks” since its not a sand beach, it’s the bay. They polish them and sell them in a tiny jar that has “Diamon Beach” written on it… for about 7.00 =) hah. But, on another cool note, there is an old cement ship wreck that sun right off the beach, though pretty worn now…used to be awesome when I was younger. Salt water does it’s wear… Alrighty anyway…enough banter… Enjoy reading my insanely long post.

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