The mayor of a two-bit Jersey beach town has been trash-talking Staten Island – kicking sand at helmet-haired, bar-brawling women, clueless blondes and loud-mouthed “guidos” who flock to the resort’s seaside, bars and rentals.
Belmar Mayor Ken Pringle says his four-page rag on Staten Island visitors was simply tongue-in-cheek, but visitors are seething, with one calling the parody pure misogynist racism.
“If it weren’t for Staten Islanders, there probably wouldn’t be a Belmar,” fumed firefighter Kevin Erkman, 25, from St. George. “I think the mayor should shut his face.”
The maelstrom was set off by Pringle’s zingers in the July 4 edition of “Belmar Summer Rental News,” a flier he personally publishes about tourism life in his 6,000-resident town – where the population swells to around 50,000 on some summer weekends.
Under the heading “SI Girl Behaving Badly,” Pringle chronicled a catfight at D’Jais, a local watering hole.
“Now if that isn’t shocking enough, hold on to your seat: One of the woman was from Staten Island!!” Pringle wrote.
The mayor went on: “Journalistically speaking, ‘SI woman punched other woman’ is right up there with ‘Dog bites man.’ ”
But he noted “the twist” was that the Staten Island brawler was delivering her blows with her drinking glass still in hand.
“We’re not sure if the glass was stuck to her hand ’cause of all the hair spray or if this is a technique Staten Island girls learn in Brownies,” Pringle wrote.
Pringle also had a laugh at the expense of visiting “guidos.”
“We think of Guidos as a kind of rare bird: They flock to our shore towns during the warm months, and are as welcome as, oh, Canada geese,” he wrote.
“They’re always tanned to the color of coconut shells, and easily identified by their plumage: satin shirts and shirt skirts on the females; Armani Exchange T-shirts and artfully distressed jeans on the males.”
He added: “The call of the Guido is bellowing, and frequently slurred, invariably starting with the sound, ‘Yo,’ followed all too often by some creative variation on an expletive beginning with the letter ‘F.’ ”
In another item headlined: “Let Us Guess . . . They’re Blonde,” the mayor regales readers with a tale about a house full of female renters who didn’t know how to take out the garbage.
New York City Council Minority Leader James Oddo (R-SI) suggested, “All Staten Islanders and New Yorkers should heed Mayor Pringle’s call and avoid his town like the plague.”