Why can't they just stay at Carolina Beach?

I have returned from a weekend at our condo at the beach. Overall it was a relaxing, refreshing respite, but the experience was marred by the presence of unkempt, raucous peasants, and the realization that the genteel, gracious Wrightsville Beach my wife knew as a child is slowly being consumed by white trash.

A few years ago, the nearest public access lay a few blocks away from our condo, thereby containing the unwashed masses to a distant section of the beach, leaving the area in front of the condo practically the exclusive domain of residents. Then there came a time when the city government bullied the condo into allowing a public access walkway to cut through its property, permitting the filthy throngs of cretins to slither their way in from their dumbbell tenements and infest our beachfront. As an additional affront to the condo residents, we must use the same footpath to access the beach as the peasants use. So once we residents get onto the beach, we must then walk a good 100 feet or so to the left or right to find a spot of sand that hasn't yet been claimed by Elmus and his common-law wife Joleen, sporting her multiple sagging tattoos, with their many hell-spawn who shriek, scamper about, and throw sand at each other. Then the guffawing teenagers show up and play some idiotic game of throwing a tennis ball and then fighting over it. Not long after we've found a relatively peaceful plot, along comes a boisterous group of Weight Watchers dropouts who communicate back & forth from beach to water by screaming. As if that weren't enough, a nearby cracker with voice modulation disorder starts yakking with them about his marvelous folding beach chair. "YEAH MAN, THIS PAHRT FOWLDS DAYUWN, AND THERE'S A POCKET FER YOUR SAYLPHOWN!" The way they screeched about how miraculous Bubba's chair was, you'd think they'd found a bucket of Popeye's chicken buried in the sand.

To make things worse, the shitty economy has forced unit owners to cut their rental rates and be less choosy about whom they allow to rent their units, so now practically anyone who can scrape up a couple grand can stay at our condo and befoul the pool area with their unappealing presence. And it's highly likely that they're calling up their buddies to drop by for a swim.

My wife has been coming to this beach and staying at this condo for nearly 20 years. As recently as 10 years ago, she says, it was a much different environment. Respectable families owned or rented homes and condos, and all knew each other, creating a close-knit community in which people comported themselves with dignity and class out of respect for one another. Teenagers and college kids would sometimes come down unchaperoned, but they were the same people who had been vacationing there since childhood and didn't misbehave too terribly because they didn't want to lose the respect of their parents' friends who were staying nearby. Compare that to the incident this past Friday night when some drunken fratboys got into a fight over a slice of pizza that caused the police to show up. Yes, I said they were fighting over a fucking slice of pizza.

At least on Saturday evening we had a break from the trashiness outside, spending a couple of hours in another unit with my wife's parents and some of their friends, all well-bred, quality people who carry on the old, genteel way of life, enjoying pleasant conversation over wine and fine hors d'oeuvre. There was once a time when this sort of thing happened in most every house. Now it's fratboys and other lowlifes throwing back Natural Light and passing the bong around. I wistfully yearn for a return to the gentler days when one could stroll down Lumina Avenue without his eyes being soiled by the sight of scruffy rednecks and teenagers who should be turning tricks in Bangkok. Carolina Beach and Myrtle Beach are reserved for these types.