Workers prepare rental chairs and umbrellas on Delray Beach’s public beach. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By John Pacenti
If the beloved child cartoon character Waldo were basking in the sun by the Delray Beach pavilion on this November Saturday, he might never be found — swallowed up in a sea of beach chairs and umbrellas, mixed in with people who don’t pay the rental fee and are spread out on blankets in between.
“Between the parking and the chairs, I have to spend 80 bucks to sit my butt down on a beach, on a public beach, and that’s the truth,” Butch Zumpf, who frequently visits from Chicago, said on a beautiful Nov. 8 day that reminds us all why we live in South Florida.
Once again, the issue of beach space was the talk of some circles in Delray Beach, and whether it’s a good idea to allow Oceanside Beach Service to place chairs on the sand before even renting them out.
Delray resident Jim Delrae — we kid you not, that is his real name — started posting on the issue in the Facebook group Delray Matters on Nov. 1 under the heading “Just Venting.”
Delrae — a somewhat recent transplant from the Phoenix area — explained later, “They had monopolized everywhere that they left nowhere for anyone else to sit, because that was the only space there was, and they filled it up with their chairs instead.”
Well, The Coastal Star decided to investigate and ended up on the beach by the pavilion near Atlantic Avenue that Saturday, where we found plenty of people echoing Delrae.
To be fair, this is not exactly a new issue. Some could say it comes and goes like the king tides — which are particularly prevalent at this time of year. Erosion from Hurricanes Imelda and Humberto churning off the coast in late September and early October made it even tougher to find your own place on the beach without paying $60 a day for a chair and umbrella (or $15 per hour).
And there’s a bonus: sargassum — that stinky seaweed — is still making its authority known this fall.
Yet, even put-out beachgoers are in a good mood.
Zumpf, for instance, was part of an extended group of brothers, sisters, husbands and wives, wedged in between the chairs and umbrellas. They have condos here and have been visiting for 40 years.
Empty chairs take up space
JoAnne Bobus — part of the Chicago group — said she thought a good idea would be for Oceanside to put up beach chairs only when customers pay it to do so — similar to resorts everywhere. She said even on weekdays it’s tough to stake a claim.
“We still had a hard time on Friday to find a spot, but none of them [the chairs] were taken,” she said. “If they would just do it as needed, right? Somebody wants tables, OK, where would you like to go? I like that idea.”
“This little chunk was the best she could find — and that was at 10 in the morning,” said Jan Zumpf, spouse of Butch, talking about Bobus.
Rick Drnek, another member of the Chicago group, said, “Over the years, it’s morphed into something I don’t think it was intended to be.”
He then told the story of how an Oceanside worker asked him to move over on the sand because he was in the shade of the rental umbrella. “The guy’s sitting right behind us, renting, and he felt awkward and I felt awkward,” Drnek said.
There were a lot of ghosts on the beach that day, as well, taking up seemingly empty chairs and umbrellas. At one spot near the water, there was an arc of six chairs and three umbrellas waiting for customers to manifest.
While tourist season is roaring to its eventual peak, the beach space is an issue for Delray Beach residents, as most weekend visitors will pay for a chair and umbrella without complaint.
People who flocked to Delray Beach’s public beach on a recent Saturday morning rented the Oceanside Beach Service chairs placed out in advance.
Catering to tourists
Chet Gilbert, wearing a hat from The Boys Farmers Market — the Delray Beach iconic grocer — said if he has to, he will move a rental chair to get space. Spouse Marta Gilbert said, “We still love it here.”
Oceanside Beach Service’s upper management didn’t return a message to call back to comment on this story. Instead, The Coastal Star found its enthusiastic company ambassador, Andre Fladell, who called himself an operational consultant.
He said the service changed hands several times before a South Carolina operator took over in the 1990s, but ultimately abandoned it. “He wasn’t making money, and just left everything on the beach,” Fladell said.
For a while, he said two drunks took over the abandoned chairs — one nicknamed Colt 45 because he opened beer cans with his teeth — and were charging tourists. Fladell said he approached his friend Michael Novatka, Oceanside’s owner, to come to Delray Beach and take over the operation in the 2000s.
Fladell said the current beach chair system operates under strict guidelines. Lifeguards determine chair placement to ensure emergency access and visibility.
Putting out empty chairs is aimed at catering to tourists who are spending a lot of money for rooms at resorts in Delray Beach, he said. The Opal Grand Resort & Spa is diagonally across State Road A1A from the pavilion, which is undergoing renovations this tourist season and is off-limits to all.
“In season, people started complaining because their cousins, their uncles, their grandchildren would come down and say, ‘Can we have a chair?’ And ‘No’ was not the answer they were looking for,” Fladell explained.
City manager has discretion
The city provided The Coastal Star with two contracts for Oceanside. Novatka signed a contract in January 2014 for a total of 250 beach chairs, cabanas, umbrellas and clamshells. In the new contract, signed in February 2024, the number of chairs and accessories expanded to 400 — 50 at Atlantic Dunes Park near Linton Boulevard.
The current five-year contract is worth nearly $2.3 million to the city. It does have a carve-out: “The maximum allowable number of chairs may be lowered by the City of Delray Beach as needed due to erosion, diminished beach size, special events or other circumstances.”
City Manager Terrence Moore has, according to the contract, discretion as to the number of beach chairs allowed in these circumstances.
Beachgoers said they saw no such change when the twin hurricanes led to significant erosion in October. They were followed by king tides that further eroded the space available to set up shop.
The premium space is around the pavilion. It’s within walking distance of restaurants and resorts. There was plenty of space, though, about a half mile north on the beach across from Thomas Street — albeit on a Monday, Nov. 24.
That’s where resident Susan Eben set up her towel and tent on a postcard-blue-sky day. She has heard the concern down the beach but heeded it no mind.
“This is a slice of paradise. I try not to complain,” she said.
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