Rehoboth Beach
I’ve been going to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware for my entire life. As a Ken, my job is just “beach” and Rehoboth is a quintessential “beach” town. Nothing has changed in my lifetime (more or less) and it probably hasn’t changed much before that either. There’s certainly some kind of ordinance to keep buildings fairly low and to limit franchises & chain stores. The boardwalk is dotted with Ice Cream shops, French Fry huts, Pizza joints, and Hermit Crab dispensaries. Everything is local and new or local and older than me! (I could argue that I’ve been going to Rehoboth ever since my Mom was a kid, because the egg that eventually became me was there when she was just a little girl. Those waves have carried me to the shore for almost 76 years.)
Gus & Gus, a corner shop right in the middle of the boardwalk, has probably fried a billion pounds of potatoes in the 300 years it’s been open. I’d love to tag them here, but when you’re a 300 year old institution do you really need an Instagram? They do not. Of those billion pounds of French Fries, it is estimated that seagulls have stolen 1 million pounds of them.
This year’s weather was fantastic for drawing. Mid-80’s all week long. While I didn’t get too far along with my goal (the goal was drawing everything, which is a tad ambitious) I was able to wander away from the family beach towel for some doodlin’ time. On my way to the perch where I had begun my drawing the previous evening, i passed another bench of people drawing Gus & Gus. This is uncommon! Typically I wouldn’t approach utter strangers on a bench minding their own business doing their own thing, but this time it seemed appropriate
“Oh hi. I’m coming over because I’m literally about to do the exact same thing you’re doing.”
The two of them looked up from the canvas boards they were sketching on and said, skeptically “You’re going to draw Gus & Gus?”
“Exactly! Actually,” I added as I rummaged through my bag, “I already did draw Gus & Gus. I started yesterday and just need to finish up some details before I paint it.” I wish I knew who those two people were, but I’m trusting the magic of the internet to bring us together again. They’ve got my info, but whether or not they'll follow up on my info is TBD. One way or another, maybe they’ll find me & we can see how our works turned out! Let’ s go, internet! Find those art people!
When I was a kid, these dunes didn’t exist. Sometime about 20 years ago, they restored the entire beach because it kept eroding. There used to be a 4 foot drop from the boardwalk onto the beach. Now there are these dunes. It’s lovely, but I very much miss the under-the-boardwalk shenanigans that were once possible. Another evening, we sat on a bench with another woman who had been coming to Rehoboth her entire life (also 47 years old just like me) and she told us how she used to hold a dollar bill through the slats of the boardwalk and yank it away when someone tried to snag it. Her Dad (probably 47 at the time) would stomp his foot when someone took the bait, to cue the kids below to spring the trap. Ironically enough, my sister fell for an almost identical trick this year when she tried to pick up a quarter that was glued to the wood.
Something I realized when I was trying to draw people walking on the boardwalk is that I don’t know how to draw people walking! For this reason, i want to figure out how to bring a treadmill to the next SOMA Figure Drawing session. If the model is cool with it, they could walk for 20 minutes, and we can figure out how to draw them.
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