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Ford_Prefect

(7,817 posts)
4. In some other beach towns you'll find sections marked as clothing optional, or topless allowed,
Thu May 6, 2021, 08:52 PM
May 2021

or some variation of "Family Friendly". Ocean City has been arguing this one since the 70's.

To be fair they have a long standing reputation as a family oriented beach. Given the scale of summer traffic there I agree that they face an issue that would be difficult to manage on 10 miles of open beach lined with 3 miles of boardwalk as well as restaurants, stores, hotels, and condos. There are no dunes to isolate the beach from the town as you might find elsewhere. There never were any dunes on this stretch of coast, just a wide beach.

...during summer weekends the city hosts between 320,000 and 345,000 vacationers, and up to 8 million visitors annually.[4] During the summer, Ocean City becomes the second most populated municipality in Maryland, after Baltimore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_City%2C_Maryland

That works out to roughly 33,000+ people for every mile of beachfront. While not all of them tend to be on the beach at one time and some prefer the bay to the ocean, you can see how local density could begin to present a problem.


The summer crowd is drawn from a very broad cross-section of America, as well as diverse international visitors from D.C. I'm one to advocate for reason, respect, and diversity here. IMO there are ways to manage this without having to fight about every acre of beach. Last time I looked freedom of expression works both ways.
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