This weekend, Ocean City is hosting a great big US Tennis Association men’s tournament. The 25 players will hail from Maryland as well as the other Mid-Atlantic states,  and will compete in one of three divisions: Open, Over 35, and Over 50. Two of the players in the over 35 division are ranked among the top 50 in the division nationwide.  The winners will go on to the regional semi-finals, where they will compete with the winners from other participating Mid-Atlantic cities.

This is the only event of its kind on the Eastern Shore, so the earea’s best players will definitely be there. It should be a great show to watch if you like tennis — which, obviously, I do, or I wouldn’t be posting about it in my blog.  The tournament starts at 9:00 AM on Saturday, and the finals start at 9:30 AM on Sunday. Admission for spectators is free.

June 1st’s karaoke contest on the beach marked the beginning of 2008’s summer Play It Safe activities.  As always, the program focuses on providing fun, supervised, drug- and alcohol-free activities for graduating high-school seniors who come to Ocean City to celebrate their graduation. While the new film “The Graduates” highlights all the trouble that Senior Week visitors are notorious for getting into, Play It Safe hopes to attract those teens who would rather have fun without involving the police or Poison Control, as well as those who want to spend time with others without being harassed by peer pressure.

The karaoke contest was a big hit, with Shannon of Fallston H.S. and Clint of Colonel Richardson H.S. taking the honors. That means that they’ll go on to compete in O.C. Idol in future weeks. Other contestants, well, they tried…  but some of them still managed to end up in the “Simon would have a field day” category on the official website.  To see the best and the worst, check outhttp://www.playitsafeoceancity.com/media.html.

We’re halfway through the second annual Ocean City Restaurant Week, and it’s going smashingly.  Just like last year, several of OC’s most popular restaurants are offering a special 3-course dinner menu for $30, and a 2-course lunch for $20 per person. Some of the restaurants participating are 32 Palm in the Hilton Suites Hotel, the romantic Victorian Room, the Blue Ox Steakhouse and Raw Bar, and many more.

After the smashing success of last year’s inaugural event, guests can expect restaurants to be packed this week, so try to get a reservation while you can! My guess is that this weekend is going to be a record-breaker for OC’s fine-dining restaurants.  I think you’re going to have to either be there or hear about it from all your friends later.

More info and specifics at http://www.oceancityrestaurantweek.com .

Who doesn’t? For me, this is the time of year when I always feel like I could use a week at the beach. And this year, that dream is looking a little tougher to make into reality for a lot of people and families.

Luckily, Ocean City’s hotels, motels and restaurants are doing their part to make it easier, with “One Week Wonders,” a program offering special deals for week-long vacations this summer, packaging hotel stays together with “fun bucks” to spend on restaurants and entertainment. Fun bucks can even be spent at the gas station, to *really* save on that vacation you didn’t think you could afford.

Participating hotels include the Clarion Fontainebleau, the Francis Scott Key Family Resort, the Days Inn Oceanfront, Park Place, and more. Check out www.1weekwonder.com for details and information on how to use your amazing discounts.

Now, if only the package came with an excuse to get a week off of work…

A common complaint about Ocean City these days is that it has “gotten so expensive.” And of course, depending on where you stay and where you go, it can be — heck, just driving here has gotten pretty steep in recent months, unless you live down the street.

However, if you know the right places to look, you can still find a lot of bargains here in OC — and even plenty of fun things to do for zero dollars. Yes, I do mean completely free.

How to find free stuff? Depends on what you’re looking for. The OC Tourism Bureau has compiled a great list of free family entertainment on their website at http://www.ococean.com/familyfun.html* Starting with the big, obvious one — Ocean City’s free, public beach along 10 miles of the Atlantic Ocean — the list also includes some of my personal favorites, including the fun, educational presentations given for kids 6 days a week by the Life Saving Museum in July and August. The list is focused on entertainment for kids, so it’s perfect for parents who really don’t want to hear “I’m bored” one more time.

But what if you’re looking for free stuff for the grown-up set? Outside of the Concerts on the Beach, which are fun for all ages, the list doesn’t take you as far. Of course, it’s always worthwhile to call around and see what you can find, but if you’d rather prepare for vacation by building up a base tan then mounting an investigation, I’m your man — watch this space in the next couple of days for tons of ideas on how to get more out of your vacation, gratis.

*links don’t seem to be working right now… I should have them fixed later tonight.

Who else saw the article in the Washington Post weekend section about the three young Maryland filmmakers making a movie about Senior Week? The movie is The Graduates, a Judd Apatow-esque comedy about the yearly ritual of high school seniors celebrating their graduation with a visit to Ocean City.

The really awesome thing is that the film was made entirely in Ocean City, with scenes shot in classic OC locations like Seacrets, Dumser’s Dairyland, Trimpers, and more. The city and the various business owners involved were very cooperative, according to the filmmakers, who say that they tried to make The Graduates “an authentic Ocean City film.”

We don’t have many movies set in OC, so I really can’t wait to see this one! It’s screening this summer in DC, Baltimore and, of course, in Ocean City. I will be sure to post details, news and reviews as they come out.

Frontier Town Campground is a great place to get away from it all and experience the togetherness and wholesome fun of camping with your family. But not all of us really want to spend our vacations trying to build a fire and catch a fish to cook on it, amirite? For those kids who take after Calvin’s mom rather than his dad, Frontier Town has a perhaps more appealing option: a Wild West theme park, with action including a bank holdup, a can-can show, Indian ceremonial dances, and, of course, the showdown at the OK Corral. Now that’s excitement!  The park includes a fun mix of actual history and Hollywood-style fun, and kids get to use their imaginations and pretend to be cowboys and Indians.

Stay tuned for more OC blog posts on what to do with the kids this summer. It won’t be too long before school’s out, and amazingly enough, eventually they will get tired of the beach.  In the meantime, we’ve got plenty of suggestions for bored little ones here,  on www.oceancity.com.

The Ocean City council just voted 6-1 to change carrying open containers of alcohol outdoors from an arrestable offense to a municipal infraction. If the bill is made into law, after the final vote in two weeks, it wouldn’t mean that everyone was free to walk around with open beer or liquor bottles, just that people caught in violation of the rule would be fined $100-$200 dollars rather than being arrested.

The general tone of the discussion has been centered around the benefits of reducing public drinking vs the risk of police harassment. Obviously, in the wake of the massive brawl outside Seacrets earlier this month, some locals as well as legislators are nervous about appearing to condone bad behavior, but on balance it doesn’t seem likely to me that reducing the sentence to a relatively steep fine will actually encourage people to violate the law. And reducing police harassment is a valid goal, in my opinion, since arresting people for this kind of infraction will pretty much inevitably lead to gray areas involving discrimination and harassment.

Just to give you an idea of how likely it is that this change will lead to open containers becoming legal: the all-knowing wikipedia tells us that only 5 jurisdictions in the United States permit open containers, incuding the Las Vegas strip and the French Quarter of New Orleans. Kind of hard to imagine the boardwalk joining that company, is it? I’m pretty sure that our local jurisdiction is aware that people don’t go to OC for the same reasons they go to Vegas — since generally what happens here is more likely to be posted on flickr and mailed out on family postcards than to, y’know, stay here.

On Sunday, May 18, the Ocean City Life-Saving Museum is celebrating International Museum Day by offering free admission all day. The museum is one of my favorite spots on the boardwalk — it’s a historic building full of educlational and fun exhibits for the whole family. The current featured exhibit focuses on the heroic work done by the Life Saving Service that used to be stationed in the museum’s current home.

So far this spring we’ve been seeing a lot of articles like this one, from Forbes, and this one, from the AP, predicting that high gas prices and the generally rough state of the economy are going to be a strain on Ocean City tourism this summer. It does make sense as a theory — going on vacation is more expensive now than it was last year, or the year before that. And more families are trying to tighten their budgets — just look at the numbers of people who said that they were going to spend their economic stimulus checks on bills or long-term saving.

However, here at oceancity.com we haven’t really been seeing this panning out. It seems like lots of people are reserving hotel rooms, and festivals like Springfest and Cruisin’ are doing really well — Cruisin’ registration just sold out this weekend. Whether the visitors we’ve seen so far are coming from DC and Baltimore rather than PA or Ohio, or whether they’ll start to trickle off as the summer heats up and the air conditioners have to be turned on, is yet to be seen. But so far it seems like, despite the early alarms