Bar Closed In N. Wildwood For (Gasp!) Serving A 20-Year-Old

The Daily News reports today that Keenan’s, beloved North Wildwood Irish pub, will be closed for Irish Weekend. Keenan’s? Closed for Irish Weekend? Be still my Irish heart!

The annual festival, which begins today, brings thousands to the five-mile island to do many things celebrating Irish heritage, like drinking, getting drunk and listening to Timmy Kelly (pictured) while consuming alcohol. (There are events that are about Irish heritage and non-alcoholic fun — and there’s probably a Mass, too — but I’ve never known anyone who attended them. Maybe I only know drunks.)

Keenan’s big sin was (get ready for this) serving alcohol to both a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old. Since every bar everywhere ever in the history of mankind has served underage patrons, the usual maxim with selectively-enforced laws applies: Somebody at Keenan’s pissed the wrong person off.

Keenan says the bar is constantly fighting a battle against fake IDs. He believes that his family is being punished for flaws in New Jersey’s and Pennsylvania’s licensing systems. “That hand we’ve been dealt isn’t 100 percent accurate. Yeah, we served minors. But we confiscated 175 fake IDs from Memorial Day to Labor Day,” said Keenan, 35.

“The bottom line is we have four separate violations, with a total of six underage drinkers in 10 years. Every one of them had a Pennsylvania valid ID with no dupes.”

Hey, only six underage drinkers (in a bar that takes up a whole block) in 10 years! That’s quite a record. Now that the bar is closed for Irish Weekend, no one under the age of 21 will ever drink in New Jersey again. You can lay off now, Richard Codey!

N. Wildwood’s Keenan’s shut for Irish Weekend [Daily News]
Photo by Irish Philadelphia, Creative Commons License

Cape May Should Not Have Crossed Cats

Score another win for the federal government! Earlier this year, the feds (along with the state of New Jersey) encouraged Cape May to move a colony of feral cats off the beachfront because they might kill endangered birds. The cats were moved off the beach, and now the beach has a skunk problem.

Animal Control Officer John Queenan said he has gotten very few calls about skunks on the beachfront in his 23 years of working in the city but that suddenly he is being inundated with such calls. Queenan said he relocated the feral cats to the Cape May Harbor area in February, and he began receiving skunk complaints this summer. “Nature takes its own course. One species in eradicated and another comes in,” Queenan said.

There isn’t much Queenan can do, he said. The new beach-management plan designed to protect piping plovers and other endangered species takes control of predators - except cats - on the strand out of his hands. It is up to the state Division of Fish and Wildlife to deal with the skunks.

Queenan recommends using coffee cans filled with ammonia-soaked rags to deter skunks, and notes that they would not be there if not for a food source. [...] However, Queenan says that removing the skunks may invite another problem, such as the Norway rats that live in the jetties. There is food and shelter, so wildlife will fill the void once occupied by the feral cats.

If you didn’t get all that, let’s recap: Cats could eat endangered birds, so the cats were moved. This brought in skunks, who if moved will bring in rats. So the only way to stop the skunks is to put ammonia-soaked rags in coffee cans. Ahh, yes, what a wonderful time down the shore, smelling skunks mixed with ammonia and coffee beans.

As far as I know, the Atlantic City boardwalk cats are still okay.

Feral cats gone, Cape May now as a problem of a different stripe [Press of Atlantic City]
Photo by Andrew Larsen, Creative Commons License

Atlantic City & Other Bummers

Oh, let’s just start with one last great summer story. Two women in their 20s were down in Atlantic City, minding their own business and attempting to buy a little weed.

The Press of Atlantic City notes the two “approached a black man in his early 20s wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a black bandana.” Our two smart vacationers got into his car, where he drove them to a dirt road near the Atlantic City airport.

Then, of course, he made them strip, emptied out their purse and drove away. And the girls apparently didn’t even get any marijuana. This is truly the most depressing story in the history of this site.

I’d wager to guess most people stripped and robbed when attempting to buy weed don’t report it to the police, so who knows how long this has been going on. But it’s not like the cops don’t have their hands full with pot: According to just-released government statistics, almost 873,000 were arrested for marijuana law violations in 2007, 89 percent for simple possession.

The news isn’t all bad, though, as one can see from this YouTube video titled “WORLD’S LARGEST JOINT.” Watch it before Google takes it down!

Would-be drug buyers stripped, robbed in Atlantic City, police say [Press of AC]
Photo by Alejandro Forero Cuervo, Creative Commons License