As some of you may recall, my last visit to this fine New Jersey tourist trap...er, attraction...was a bit of a non-starter when I discovered -- after the fact, mind you -- that the daily cancan performance had been postponed due to a lack of girls who knew the routine.
Nonetheless, hope springs eternal, and I figured I'd get my Bastille Weekend off to a Yankee start and give 'em another chance. So I showed up early in the afternoon and killed some time by sauntering up and down Main Street -- which includes a "Ladies Dress Store," featuring a cute strawberry blonde named Nicole out front, in her finest Little House on the Prairie duds.
After giving her some good-natured guff about the store displays (let's just say there was a Merry Widow corset there that, while cute, was far from authentic "period garb"), I recounted my previous year's disappointment and hoped out loud that the cancan girls were on the schedule that day. "Well, they should be," Nicole grinned. "I'm one of the dancers."
Huzzah! Excelsior! Hot damn!
Nicole, it turns out, is one of those "historical re-enactors," a la the RenFair/SCA bunch. (It was amusing to hear her rag on Mel Gibson's THE PATRIOT for getting ALL the historical details wrong...) Also turns out she was doing some serious multitasking that day: in addition to her store owner and high-kicker personnae, she sauntered down the main drag in her town-flirt finest during the big Saloon Brawl routine.
Enough talk. Here are some photos of the blessed event. And if you're surprised who I focused on for 95% of the photos...well, you haven't been paying very close attention, have you?
And they say Friday the 13th is unlucky. I think I'm in love... 
Le Flatline
