“Shhh! Keep it down.” that could be the slogan for Ocean City’s annual Quiet Festival, a celebration of silence set for the weekend of November 16 to 18.
“It’s serious and humorous,” says Mark Soifer, the city’s public relations director, who started the festival fifteen years ago to bid farewell to the noisy crowds of summer and usher in the quiet time of fall. (Soifer has come up with other offbeat Ocean City events such as french-fry sculpting and hermit-crab wrestling.)
The festival’s “sponsors” are the National Association of People Tired of Noise and the National Association of Tired People.
On Friday, at 11 am at the Music Pier, you can witness the Ocean City Downtown Yawn Alongers yawning—audibly, like soft humming—to the tune of Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.” That will be followed by a nature walk and lunch at the Chatterbox restaurant, where, despite its name, “There will be no loud talking allowed,” Soifer says.
On Saturday from 1 to 3 pm at the Ocean City Public Library, watch mimes perform, or participate in paper-airplane flying and seashell listening.
“On Sunday, you’re on your own,” Soifer says. “Go fly a kite, read a book, or watch TV with the sound off.”
Mum’s the word.