Mayor writes of "Guidos,' "SI girls"
Belmar newsletter jabs visitors
BY FRAIDY REISS COASTAL MONMOUTH BUREAU JULY 16, 2008
BELMAR Oh, no, he didn't.
Such was the reaction from a group of young Staten Islanders huddled on the
boardwalk
Tuesday morning, gasping as they read a recent edition of Mayor Kenneth E.
Pringle's
summer newsletter complete with its jabs at "Staten Island girls," "Guidos,"
and blondes.
"That's like us calling all Jersey girls skanks!" 20-year-old Samantha Padovano
exclaimed
after reading a story about a hairspray-wearing "SI girl" whose bar fight
"ended the way
most fights with SI girls do" in the July 4 issue of the Belmar Summer Rental
News.
"This is what they think of us?" Padovano asked, while one of her friends
suggested the
mayor go do something that cannot be printed in a family newspaper.
The July 4 issue of the newsletter that has angered some of Belmar's residents
and visitors
was not intended to of-fend anyone, Pringle said. Not even the description of
"Guidos" as
rare birds that flock here during the warm months in Armani Exchange T-shirts
and are
"as welcome as, oh, Canada geese."
"It was intended to be entertaining and get people to read the newsletter," he
said. "It's
meant to be tongue-in-cheek."
Pringle begins writing the weekly newsletter in June, just as thousands of
beach lovers
descend on this milelong borough, and he posts it on the Belmar Web site. He
also prints
up, at his own expense, enough copies for special police officers and code
enforcement
officials to deliver to the borough's 300 summer rental units, he said.
The publication's goal, Pringle said, is to show renters how year-round
residents perceive
their conduct and to educate the renters about local laws on everything from
"animal
houses" to trash pickup.
"They come here thinking that they can get away with all this stuff and no one
will bother
them," he said. "The newsletter is a way to repeatedly drum into them . . .
what the rules
are."
And it works, Pringle added. Since last year, when Belmar began distributing
the
newsletter, the borough has seen a decrease in the number of summonses issued
to
renters, the mayor said.
Longtime borough resident Pat Melango, however, said she has seen a different
trend.
Fewer people come to Belmar each summer, because of the attitude toward
visitors that is
displayed in the newsletter, she said.
"We're supposed to be a tourist town," Melango, 72, said. "We're not inviting
tourists."
Every week she hides the "disgraceful" newsletter from the Italian tenants
renting the
upstairs apartment in her "Italian household," she said. But she was extra
careful, she said,
to hide the July 4 edition and its references to "Guidos" who show up in Belmar
"tanned to
the color of coconut shells."
"The majority of Belmar people don't feel this way," Melango said. "Certainly
to specify a
group of people and depict them so horribly I think it needs an apology."
Not in Tony Alfano's opinion. The Central Jersey Italian-American Club council
member
laughed out loud when he read the newsletter, whose "banter" he attributed to
ignorance.
"That's why Belmar will always be No. 3 when it comes to entertainment," he
declared,
listing the borough behind its oceanfront competitors Point Pleasant Beach and
Seaside
Heights.
A story on the last page of the newsletter made Becky Kowakzyk of Hunterdon
County
doubt she ever would spend the day on the Belmar beach again. The story, about
two
clueless women who could not figure out how to take out their own garbage
without the
help of a man, appeared under the headline "Let us guess . . . they're blonde."
Kowakzyk shook her head, her blonde pigtails waving.
"The impression I now have is that the leader of this community is a
misogynistic racist,"
the 31-year-old said as she stood on the Belmar boardwalk. "Is that really the
picture he
wants to paint of a community that depends on tourist money from the people
he's
insulting?"
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