Dave Winslow was a teenager when he attended his first Night in Venice, Ocean City’s annual boat parade. The decorated vessels illuminating the summer evening captivated Winslow as they floated across Great Egg Harbor Bay.
“It was almost like the water came alive,” he recalls. Forty-seven years later, Winslow keeps returning for the spectacle, which, like Winslow himself, turns 60 this year. The anniversary parade will set sail July 26 between 6 and 7 pm, depending on tides. It lasts about four hours.
“I’ve seen every parade since 1967,” says Winslow, a former Night in Venice committee chairman who now divides his time between Fort Lauderdale and Ocean City.
Mark Soifer, Ocean City’s public relations director, calls the parade “the social event of the season.” He estimates 80,000 people watched the 2013 parade of about 80 boats. The flotilla follows a 3-mile route along the bay from the Ocean City-Longport Bridge to Tennessee Avenue.
Good viewing spots include Ocean City’s Bayside Center, 5th Street and Bay Avenue, and streets that end at the bay from Battersea Road to 15th Street, Soifer says. Grandstands will be in place, but spectators may bring chairs. A free shuttle runs 4 to 11 pm from Ocean City Airport (25th Street and Bay Avenue) to the waterfront. Admission to Bayside Center, one of the shuttle stops, is $5 for adults and $3 for children.
Elsewhere, waterfront access is free.
Winslow says the spectacle incorporates elements of Mardi Gras and Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade. Vessels range from small motorboats to commercial party boats and yachts. Boats and homes along the parade route decorate for the occasion, Soifer says.
This year’s theme is Night at the Oscars, but participants often choose themes related to a current event—such as Bridgegate. “Anything that’s happened in the past 12 months is likely to show up,” Winslow says.
The original Night in Venice cast off in 1907, says city historian Fred Miller. “It was held again in the 1920s, but discontinued because of the Depression and World War II.” He credits Jack Jernee, a captain of the Ocean City Beach Patrol, with reviving the parade in 1954 to commemorate Ocean City’s 75th anniversary.
Since its revival, no Night in Venice has been postponed by bad weather, a streak Winslow hopes will continue. “It can’t rain on our parade,” he says.