THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 12, 1994 TAG: 9407130656
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: DAY TRIPPING
LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
HERE'S WHAT it's like at Beach Bumper Boats: Floating in an inner tube with a hive of angry bees between your knees and someone occasionally dumping oily water in your lap.
Turn the handle to the side and spin dizzily. Straighten it out, pick up ramming speed and find someone to bounce into. Sometimes there's no splash. Sometimes the splash goes straight up and down between the boats. Sometimes the splash comes down on you.
Strangely, it's kind of fun.
The Motil family had to move to Tennessee to find this out. When they lived in Midlothian, outside Richmond, they'd visit Virginia Beach and pass right by this attraction at Pacific Avenue and 22nd Street, heading straight for the sand and waves. After they moved to Tennessee, they still came to the beach, but this time, the Motils were acting like regular vacationers.
``They used to beg to go here,'' camera-equipped Gina Motil said of her daughter, Kristin, 9, and son, Eric, 6. ``Now's the first time they've done it. . . . We've done more here now than when we lived here.''
``I think it was fun,'' a slightly damp Kristen said.
The Motils were like most of us who live around here. We avoid the resort area during the summer. Too crowded. Too hot. Too, too - well, resort-y.
But what a place to kill several summer hours with the kids.
Play tourist for a day. Do all those things you've been driving past all these years. Let down your hair and hike up your wildest Bermuda shorts. And don't worry about getting caught - it's highly unlikely you'll bump into anyone you know.
First, a few caveats:
Go on a weekday.
Go early, when most of the traffic is going the other way to work, when you can actually find free on-street parking within a block of Pacific Avenue in the central resort area, and when it isn't so darn hot yet.
Don't go on the hottest day of the year, because that wipes out the getting-there-early-to-beat-the-heat advantage. But even on hot days you can mix in air-conditioned kitschy souvenir browsing or a museum visit with the outdoor stuff.
Don't try to do everything. You can spend a lot of money in a little time - $4 for 10 to 12 minutes on the bumper boats; $5 a round at most miniature-golf courses. But, hey, you're also not spending $150 a night on a hotel room.
You might start with a traditional Oceanfront pancake breakfast at a traditional Oceanfront pancake house. Say, the Pocahontas Pancake-Waffle Shoppe at Atlantic Avenue and 35th Street, where the seats are covered in orange vinyl, the waitresses always carry full pots of coffee and AAA-worthy directions - ``You can go down Shore Drive . . . '' - and you can eat beneath a wall-size mural of American-Indian princess Pocahontas on the arm of English settler John Smith.
Plus, you get to hear conversations like this:
Woman, obviously not from around here, puzzling over the menu and pointing to a plate on the next table: ``What are those?''
The pointee, wearing a quizzical, almost frightened look: ``Home fries.''
Miniature golf might be a good idea before the sun gets too high and the crowds come out. Jungle Golf, diagonally across Pacific Avenue from Beach Bumper Boats, is open around the clock and has a sign you won't see at many shopping malls: ``Stay off the volcanos.''
Time was no problem recently for Jeffrey Giannasi of Richmond. The 4-year-old and his brother, Gregory, 5, were plowing through the course in quick-step, Jeffrey taking great sweeps at the ball with his putter turned backward.
``He's got great technique, doesn't he?'' said his mother, Selena Giannasi.
The family was tagging along on Dad's business trip, making its first visit to the resort area. ``I just thought, with the way they play, let's get out here before we interfere with a lot of people,'' Mom said.
Jungle Golf's arcade provides a cool break, a visit to the ``Jane'' or ``Tarzan'' rooms and a quick 25-cent game of ``Wacky Gator,'' where the object is, simple enough, to whack an alligator. The earlier you are, the better chance you'll post a ``high score of the day.'' The arcade also contains a handful of virtual-reality machines, $5 a ride, er, experience.
You and your children will never realize all the things that can be done with seashells unless you window-shop along Atlantic Avenue. At Forbe's Candy, they've got seashell ships, seashell dinosaurs and anatomically correct seashell women with seashell bonnets. Anything seashell-y is a big seller by this seashore, said owner William Lawton.
And if you've been dying for a plastic fish-skeleton comb, you'll find it a couple of doors up at Family Values. They're down the aisle from the measuring cups, across from the white socks and multi-color Slinkies.
Along Atlantic Avenue you'll also come across all manner of souvenir T-shirts, from the innocuous to the crude to the inexplicable: In one storefront, a shirt with a pro-Bible message hung next to one of a lusty couple clinched tightly under the words ``Bump and Grind.''
A question: How come there are so many Virginia Beach mugs and postcards picturing women in thong bikinis when these type bathing suits are outlawed in the city?
By now, you might be ready for those bumper boats, which don't open until 10:30 a.m. Don't expect to find your neighbors in line.
``It's mostly just tourists,'' said Traci Gladstone, who's behind the ticket counter. How can you tell?
``They all wear `Virginia Beach' shirts,'' said John Roberts, taking a break from scrubbing down the round rubber boats.
Hot again? Try the Life-Saving Museum of Virginia, next to the 24th Street Park on the Boardwalk. It's one of the few places at the Oceanfront where shoes and shirts are required, and it costs $2.50 for adults and $1 for kids 6 to 18. Probably 90 percent of its summer visitors are from out of town, and employees complained that locals don't know what they're missing.
The museum is small but cool, with the downstairs dedicated to ocean lifesaving and the upstairs to Coast Guard wartime efforts. Look for the shark fin circling beneath the shipwreck survivor in the table-size rescue diorama and the ``How to Abandon Ship'' book in a display of items that washed up from shipwrecks.
Back on Atlantic Avenue, you can watch a wide-eyed little girl get dressed up in hat and boa for an Old Time Photo; stumble through Rockin' Rosie's Fun House, where you'll meet the in-hiding Elvis - ``You didn't see me,'' he pleads - and banter with voices behind the walls; or grab a window stool at Luca Pizza and munch your lunch while watching the passing parade of humanity. This might be the most fun of all.
Short. Tall. Fat. Skinny. Nearly bare and dressed head-to-toe in black. Most share one thing in common - sunburn. And out-of-town addresses.
Consider yourself one of them for a different kind of day. ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff color photos
Jeffrey Giannasi, 4, lines up a putt at Jungle Golf in Virginia
Beach. He and his brother, Gregory, 5, and their parents came from
Richmond on vacation.
Many families enjoy strolling on the Boardwalk or riding bicycles
along the bike path next to it.
Ashley Bennett, 7, and her mother, Linda, from Philippi, W. Va.
enjoy a turn on the bumper boats along Pacific Avenue at the
Oceanfront.
Photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff photo
Douglas Scott, 4, and his grandparents from Mayville, Mich., visit
the Life-Saving Museum of Virginia.
by CNB