The Wildwood Danger Index

“Nothing good happens after 2AM.”

You know that popular phrase people tell themselves when they’re getting their drunk on, almost always around 9PM, when the first couple beers are going down easy, and they’re pretending that it won’t be *THAT* kind of night? Wildwood is like that. Except nothing good happens pretty much the whole time.

Wildwood is not for the faint of heart. It is a gut punch to sanity and sensibility. Take every reasonable routine and tournament expectation you have and chuck them in the garbage can. You will not be needing them.

Wildwood is, at heart, an exercise in not dying on the Jersey shore. So that’s what we are going to do today: learn how to not die. Through extensive experience with near misses at Wildwood, I’ve put together this handy primer, based on the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index, to enlighten you to the most dangerous times of the weekend. After reading this, you will know the answers to such vital questions as: What are the greatest threats of Wildwood? How do you combat them? What are you doing you here?

Take a deep breath. We’re gonna make it.

Friday, 4PM-9PM

Danger Index: Low-Moderate

This is a real photo I swear.

The safe zone. Unless you are a sociopath who got to Wildwood at noon (or worse, Thursday), these are the hours where you arrive at your hotel, safely hide your belongings in one of the rooms, and proceed to the Binns rooftop for some beers and catch-up. The crew will be small, and maybe you are actually drinking something of decent quality before your taste buds are decimated by swill (here’s looking at you, Kirkland Light). You might even be adventurous enough to make a trip to the boardwalk before the party starts, and soak in the local flavor a little bit. The greatest danger to you is the Hot Spot IV you got for dinner. 

Friday, 9PM-12AM

Danger Index: High

By now most of your team has arrived and you are cruising. The two people that brought coolers have had the entirety of their alcohol consumed by people they don’t know, but that’s ok because you are having a raucous enough time and someone brought Fire Water. You’ve met your hotel neighbors, almost entirely frisbee teams except for the 1-2 families that had the cataclysmically bad judgement to schedule their vacation this very weekend at this very place, despite the clear and dire warnings on the Binns/Bonito booking site. Serves them right. 

The weekend is full of promise at this point. This might be the first ever Wildwood without disaster! You’ve already overcome the challenge of opening that bottle of wine with a broken bottle opener. It was messy and involved way more people than it needed to, but the important thing is you solved the problem and no one got hurt. That’s a win. Perhaps you were wrong to swear that this would be your last Wildwood. Nothing has gone awry! Careful though – that’s precisely how Wildwood hunts – by lulling you into a false sense of security.  Human memory is a fickle thing.

Friday, 12AM-3AM

Danger Index: Very High

We need to clarify the time frame of this entry. Technically the clock has ticked over into Saturday, but for all intents and purposes you are still living in the Friday. I don’t know a single frisbee player who has been to a party tournament and distinguishes between Friday night and Saturday morning when the clock passes midnight. During this weekend, Friday is the rare day that extends beyond the traditional 24 hours into something far more perilous. If you are going to mess with time, you better be prepared to defend yourself. 

From personal experience, the worst moments of Wildwood never occur in this time frame, but in retrospect, the seeds are planted. You may have gone a little too hard on that bottle of liquor, but come Saturday morning you emerge more unscathed than you deserve. Maybe you and a contingent of other degenerates decide that you need to have a late-night hotel room dance party. Nothing wrong with that. But occasionally the structural integrity of the bed frames at Wildwood aren’t quite up to snuff and, could break under the weight of your dance party. You won’t notice it at the time, but the broken bed frame will lurk in the shadows, awaiting its moment to inflict great pain. This is a bad time to be awake not just because of its hangover potential, but also for its likelihood of inducing injury down the road. You might want to win the party by being last one up, but sometimes there is honor enough in finishing runner up. 

Saturday, 7AM-5PM

Danger Index: Low-Moderate

Saturday morning will be painful, but it’s not especially dangerous. Waking up in a fetid, disgusting hotel room stuffed with too many people is par for the course. Naturally, you wander out to the boardwalk in search of your next Hot Spot IV fix before games begin. Because of Wildwood’s unique (stupid) bye structure, you’ll have ample opportunities to traipse about and encounter such New Jersey cultural icons as overly expensive grease masquerading as pizza, poorly made daiquiris, and hordes of dudes in Come At Me Bro pinnies.

If you have your druthers, you’ll be day drinking something light and sluggable on the sidelines. Maybe you’ll shotgun for pull a couple times, or play a round of Gin or More Gin where the only acceptable answer to the eponymous question is “Yes.” If there is danger to be found during this time frame, it lies beneath. No joke. Since this is Wildwood, there could be nails or broken glass or shards of all kinds of nasty lurking in the sand. Don’t worry, though, puncture wounds will almost certainly happen to someone else. 

Saturday, 5PM-8PM

Danger Index: Very High

Somebody call Kenny Loggins, because we’re back in the Danger Zone. You’ve been out in the sun roasting and not hydrating appropriately, because what is this, a real tournament? The wait for the hotel showers will be endless, so it might be best to figure out dinner plans, unless you want to be the daring one who skips dinner. Who is to say eating dinner is safer though? Let’s say, hypothetically of course, you and your teammates wanted to go out for a team dinner. You find one of the few non-Hot Spot food-serving establishments and order some drinks. A couple rounds later someone orders shots.. It’s all going so well until someone spills their drink. Then another drink. Then someone else’s drink. Then their sandwich. How on Earth did they do that? Eventually their clothing is so stained they look like a cross between a Jackson Pollock and an advertisement for OxiClean. Friendships in ruins, they’ll throw some money on the table and leave, never to show their face in that restaurant again. All hypothetically, of course. 

Saturday night is at risk of going off the rails, and it’s not even 8:00PM. 

Artist's rendition of Smokey the Bear at Wildwood.

Saturday, 8PM-11PM

Danger Index: Severe

It’s time for Rooftop Party 2: Ravaged by Drink. You are ready for the night to begin and you’ve learned from Friday. Sure, it was fun to try and play table-based drinking games inside the hotel room, but in retrospect, maybe that wasn’t the best idea when there’s a security deposit at risk. No need to make that mistake again. The Saturday night party might take a little time to kick off depending on how the rest of your teammates are doing. Maybe a few of them went too hard on the “no alcohol in this Gatorade cooler, officer” sideline mixed drink and are sluggishly trying to rally from a nap. Maybe the boldest of your teammates attacked the post-games, late afternoon 5PM-8PM period with a little too much gusto, not realizing that their base layer drunk from the fields was probably enough to carry them into the night. Watch out for them. If they don’t find a way to hurt themselves now, chances are they will later. 

Saturday, 11PM-1AM

Danger Index: Extreme

No it doesn't.

Friday and Saturday nights of Wildwood follow a pattern. The first night, everyone arrives at various points and congregates at the chosen cheap hotel that you all should have stopped staying in years ago but still do because of nostalgia and it’s honestly what you deserve. Saturday night you party at the hotel again, but there is also the tournament party, if you are of age. In recent years, you’ve had your choice of the Bolero or Stardust. Both will be completely packed, so deciding whether to go really should come down to how much you like sweating, because You. Will. Sweat. A. Lot. Do your drinking at the hotel before heading out, since a packed bar means it’ll be tough to order anything, and if you aren’t in a good enough place before arriving at the Bolero, you certainly won’t enter a better one when you get there. Assuming you survive the tsunami of perspiration on the dance floor, you still need to navigate your way home. The most important thing to remember on this Odyssey: avoid the locals at all costs. Interacting with them can only lead to a Schrödinger’s cat of fist-based probability: the positive is punching a townie and the negative is getting punched by one. There exists no greater shame than getting mugged in a New Jersey beach town with its own Doo Wop Preservation League. 

Saturday, 1AM-4AM

Danger Index: Catastrophic

You knew this was coming.

Actually, hold my beer - that’s not true. There are in fact greater shames, though they can only be found here, at the pinnacle of the Danger Index. If you’ve made it this far, you are entering a time when there are so many threats of such gravity that they endanger the survival of humanity itself. The safest thing to do if you’re still up in this time frame is to go to sleep immediately. Find the nearest unlocked room with people you know in it. Do not worry about an open bed, let alone finding a comfortable one. That ship has sailed hours ago. Maybe you can’t find a spot and decide to sleep outside. Chances are, though, that some people have the ingenious idea of having one final late night dance party on the roof. They’ll get yelled at by the security guards a couple times; they might even go so far as breaking some furniture. If you’ve never seen someone jump up and down on a picnic table until its legs break and it collapses, you are in for a treat. 

Speaking of breaking things, remember that bed frame we talked about before? It’s still busted, and not everyone on your team knows about it. Wouldn’t it be awful if someone turned the corner by the bed just a little too fast and tight and speared their foot? Because this is the beach they will inevitably be wearing flip-flops. But such a relaxed and breathable footwear choice won’t save you. It might have taken two nights, but someone finally got injured, and it’s past midnight and no one is in a state to drive to an urgent care or hospital, so you’ll have to tough it out a few more hours until morning to get those stitches. Such is the ignominious fate of the traveler who laughs in the face of Wildwood and expects to go unpunished, for the final weekend of July is cruel. 

Sunday, 7AM-Friday 4PM next Wildwood

Danger Index: That which is dead may never die!

Perhaps, by some sliver of luck and a snippet of skill, you may avoid any of the above downfalls. You lucky dog. You smartened up, made better decisions than the rest, and emerged unscathed. And if you didn’t? Fuck it. Make one last trip to Hot Spot IV and gorge yourself on some pizza. By this point, your insides have almost certainly defensively shut down in a desperate bid to survive, so what’s the worst that can happen? Going to work Monday morning, that’s what.