Back at the Better Duck Today
Cape May is the Very Bottom of NJ
From where I now sit, Cape May is exactly one hundred miles away. I am not actually working at the imagined designer’s table of the Better Duck Inn, which is located quite close to where Netflix is building a hundred-million-dollar production facility on what used to be federal property. I imagine us to be close to the action of high-end content creation.
I just spent three days scouting locations at the very bottom of New Jersey, which most people do not know is way below Philly, across Delaware Bay from the first state.
Cape May has much to offer a cinematographer, and bird watchers. I saw dolphins, swans, turtles, a snake, and even a bald eagle. There were lots of interesting people from all over. Not one ICE sighting in this gentrified Victorian postcard tourist destination. Not a single homeless person. Location, Location, Location.
Most people serving guests here must find their way on and off the cape daily. The paying customers do so dearly, especially during high season which is over already. The Cape May canal makes pedestrian traffic far less likely.
A long way from Newark, Camden, or Trenton, Cape May is already cleansed ethnically, but could not function without Latinos, most certainly. Unconfirmed data from 2023 indicates that eight thousand people work there all year in “accommodation and food services”. Which is more than twice the number of people who live year-round at the very bottom of New Jersey, where in season, as many as forty thousand tourists arrive on any given day.