ON A GLOOMY SUNDAY MORNING, with most of the content you now hold in hand and a hundred miles between me and the nearest Jersey beach, I sat down to write the introduction for this issue. Three-thousand words later, well…I still needed an introduction – and a few more pages in the issue.

Some stories travel light, without luggage or entourage, while others need first-class accommodations. The product of that daylong writing binge ultimately spanned 40 years, miles of coastline, and three generations. Trouble was that for too long its individual components had been waiting standby, each one hoping for a seat…when what they really needed was a private charter.

And it was up to me to keep the group together.

In the end, like so many things that actually go anywhere in life, we compromised. And so, that would-be “introduction” now appears in three installments across this second issue of Beach Badge.

* * *

I am grateful to all of those individuals and institutions who continue to reaffirm my lingering suspicion that there is an audience for this sort of thing. That the Jersey Shore means as many things to as many people as you can muster, each one part-owner of something much bigger.

For them, Beach Badge is at once private charter and group discount.

Thank you to all of the first– and second–issue contributors for sharing their stories and images. Thanks, too, to our retailers, for helping to spread the word. To that end, special thanks are in order for Liza Minno and her associates at Asbury Book Cooperative; Mike Dyer and Pinelands Coffee Roasters; Rachel Whang and Benn Ray at Atomic Books; Laura M. Poll and the Trenton Zine Library; and Kerri Sullivan, editor of New Jersey Fan Club.

Most of all, thank you, D and G, for all of your love and support.

Finally, thank you, dear reader. For every copy you buy, borrow, or lend, you make Beach Badge possible.

William Patrick Tandy
Editor & Publisher
October 2022