In the 1930s, Washington’s gay elite began vacationing in Rehoboth, and over the years the town became the place where those who were not out in DC could relax and even mingle comfortably across the aisle.
![delaware beach life magazine delaware beach life magazine](https://www.ellenrice.gallery/uploads/1/0/7/8/107833993/65f0001e-be98-457a-875d-cce3306bbf17.jpeg)
At first, it was the Methodists against a new class of pleasure seekers who came via neighboring Lewes, lured by the sea. Rehoboth was founded in 1873 as a camp meeting site for Methodists.īut it didn’t take long before it was home to battles over its own identity.How did things get so very bad in Washington’s favorite place to summer? “No one had seen that in Rehoboth before,” full-time resident Donna Mabry says. They showed up in those red T-shirts and mugged for the cameras. On the day of the vote, she and her allies-including a former congressman-rallied under the name Save Our Nation’s Summer Capital. Gillespie was in the former camp, whose partisans saw the measure as an apocalyptic assault on their constitutional rights. Year-rounders are steamed about these “mini-hotels”–huge, party-ready rentals. Across town, supersized new homes dwarf those built around the 1950s–a contrast made starker by the fact that most lots are small. On the other: long-term mayor Sam Cooper and a bevy of year-round residents-including more than a few former Washingtonians-who are deeply concerned about what a spate of McMansions is doing to Rehoboth. On one side: the summer crowd and owners of pools, many of them Washington types who shelled out for these amenities precisely because they help make a property appealing to renters in a town where a nice house can fetch $10,000 a week in-season. It was an unprecedentedly draconian proposal in one of the East Coast’s most beautiful resort towns. They could stare at the pool through the beach-house windows, but there’d be no swimming. But in this case, it became something impossible to ignore: Under the bill, people who rented houses with pools wouldn’t be allowed to swim in those pools.Īs in, owners renting their homes to vacationers would have to politely, awkwardly explain that- not to worry!-they could use the nearby beach all they wanted, just not the pool out back, because, unfortunately, due to a spat with the mayor, sigh, it would have to be closed and covered all week.Īs in, city dwellers who’d waited all year for their weeklong summer rental at the shore could frolic in Rehoboth’s two-foot waves, but there would be no lazy swims after dinner or morning laps at home. It all started with the sort of mundane ordinance proposal that might normally slip past most of Rehoboth’s 1,400 year-round residents, not to mention its 150,000 weekenders. A homeowner from Washington who was mad about the Rehoboth mayor’s proposed ban on pools used this photo of her sons as part of a social media campaign to fight the lockdown. With that, the Great Rehoboth Pool Battle was on. “REHOBOTH,” one of the signs read, “where it’s a CRIME to be a KID.” On June 16 last year, Gillespie posted a photo of her sons staring seriously into the camera in the manner of Michelle Obama with her “Bring Back Our Girls” placard, but with a communiqué that was rather less serious.
![delaware beach life magazine delaware beach life magazine](https://schellbrothers.com/content/presize/9/95/954/954b699f508f00ba7d3fece3de454354-1532966016.jpg)
![delaware beach life magazine delaware beach life magazine](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5363b540e4b054843f9bf812/1607471169207-11GBF1N93QGB5A3DSG7D/JF%2BCovers.jpg)
They ordered T-shirts-an eye-catching chili-pepper red-and cooked up a social-media campaign.
Delaware beach life magazine tv#
She and her team plotted out what props would make for the most provocative TV clips. In the weeks before the rally, Kelley Gillespie threw herself into its organization with the savvy of the seasoned planner of Washington events that she is.