You hear it before you really think about it. “Watch the tram car, please.” On Saturday, that echo was less prominent as some of the new ev’s on the boardwalk didn’t play it. It’s another sign of the changing of New Jersey’s Boardwalks, once filled with games of chance, restaurants, video game arcades, light gun saloons, and classic Americana.
It has been replaced with “arcades” full of claw machines and plushies, tattoo parlors, weed shops, souvenir stands, and corporate branding. The changing of the tram cars is just the latest nail in the Americana coffin at the Jersey Shore. There was no “watch the tram car” for this ride.
Seeing the new electric vehicles work the Boardwalk during a packed Wildwoods Air Show weekend, something felt different. For generations, those five words have been part warning, part soundtrack and part inside joke shared by just about everyone who has walked the Wildwood Boardwalk. The voice is still there in 2026. The yellow-and-blue passenger cars are still rolling along behind it.
I know how I sound like an old fart when I say shit like this, but I can't help it sometimes. I can remember, as a kid, my Mom and Dad taking us kids on that tram car train as if it was one of the rides on the piers, and it lasted almost a half hour all the way up and back. The cost back then? Ten cents. A dime apiece. Best deal on the boardwalk. Wanna ride it today? How about $ 5.00 a head. from ten cents to five bucks in a short 65 years. Go figure...
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