Best April Fools Spoof Ever!
- Details
- Category: Latest News
- May, 2018
Many of us were both surprised and excited to read that Jarvis Beach was ranked 12th best beach in Trip Advisor’s ranking of the top 25 best beaches in the United States. This article was given prominent billing in Mike Glasser’s recently relaunched rogerspark.com website (to see the April Fools posting, click here). Many of you know Mike better as the President of Rogers Park Builders Group.
But one small detail might have escaped the notice of most of the readers of this article. It was dated April 1st. As Mike points out in a follow-up, tell-all confession on the website, April 1st is better known as April Fool’s Day! If you were one of the many readers fooled by the first article, don’t feel too bad. You were in good company. The local affiliate of CBS News sent a camera crew to the beach later that same day to interview locals about the surprising award. WGN radio ran a short story as well. There may have been other news outlets that picked up on this story. In the internet age, word gets around pretty quickly. (Full disclosure – I was fooled too, and originally wrote this article as a congratulations piece for our unexpected ranking.)
Sad to say, any google-search of the Trip Advisor awards will reveal that Jarvis Beach is, indeed, not on the list. In fact, no Chicago beach made the list, nor did any other beach in the Midwest. As you might expect, most of the featured beaches were in Florida, Hawaii and California. Only four were in other states, all coastal, and all but one in southern locals (congratulations, Provincetown, Massachusetts for being the one and only northern beach on the list, with a 21st place ranking).
But maybe Mike is onto something. Maybe we are being unfairly overlooked. Jarvis Beach may not hold much appeal this time of the year – especially with the awful spring weather we have been having. But anyone who has spent any time there on a summer afternoon could be forgiven for thinking that Jarvis Beach is Rogers Park’s own little slice of heaven. We might not have the swaying palm trees or endless expanses of white sand. But what other city in the US so perfectly blends urban and beach culture? New York completely turns its back on its waterfront – New York’s beaches are all in the outer boroughs. Even in Los Angeles, you won’t find a beach anywhere near Beverly Hills or the city’s downtown. Not in Chicago, where the city and the beach are like two sides of the same coin.
So, now that the idea has been planted, maybe the good folks at Trip Adviser will decide to come see for themselves. We have something pretty special – even if the rest of the world doesn’t know about it… yet.
