Main Line U.S. Open-Haters Incorrectly Referring to Visitors as “Shoobies”
A funny thing happened on the way to the U.S. Open.
As practice rounds kicked off on Monday, a few Pennsylvania residents took to Twitter to yell about “shoobies” gumming up traffic on their way to Merion.
Going to be alot of shoobies in the area with the US Open coming to town
— Sean Gordon (@Air_Gordon20) June 10, 2013
Hoping for torrential downpours and Delco like monsoons next week…go home US open shoobies- you’ve already got me riled up — melissa lyons (@irishsa21) June 7, 2013
Nice try, guys. But that’s not your word.
“Shoobie” is an exquisite, effective and extremely regional label applied to tourists visiting the southern half of the Jersey Shore. It came from a time when Philadelphians came down to the Shore via a train to Atlantic City with lunches packed in their shoeboxes—hence shoobie.
It’s a fantastic word; however, it is not a widely applicable one, like snowbird. A shoobie is someone who visits the beaches from Atlantic City to Cape May only. Not Asbury Park. Not Seaside. And certainly not a golf course in Pennsylvania.
You don’t get to co-opt shoobie because you’re annoyed by visitors, especially since the only shoobies you’re likely to see are yourselves (and don’t give me this “but I own a Shore home and am there every weeeeeekend!”—your car has a Pennsylvania license plate. That’s not your full-time home. You are not a local. You’re a “schlocal”—and that’s a word used by locals only when they’re feeling charitable).
And please, stop whining about the U.S. Open traffic. You can deal with it for six days. This is what you guys do to all of South Jersey every Friday through Sunday, May through September, year after year after year. Have you ever tried driving from one end of Bellmawr to the other on a Saturday in the summer? It’s not even a Shore spot, but the streets are lined with cars with Pennsylvania tags trying to rip a new back road through my hometown when all I really want to do is pick up my lunch meat order from Carmen’s.
We put up with you—and the tourism dollars you bring. So you can deal with the extra traffic and cash, too.
Just leave the word shoobie out of it.
(Thanks to Steve Lemongello from the Press of Atlantic City for finding the improper shoobie users).
