Things to Do in Ship Bottom, New Jersey

"The Original" Ron Jon Surf Shop: A Surfboard Table Outside a Grocery Store Becomes an East Coast Chain

The best-documented thing to know about Ship Bottom is that it is where Ron Jon Surf Shop actually began as a physical retail store. Ron DiMenna, a native of the Manahawkin area just across the bay, started out around 1959 selling surfboards he had bought from California in front of his family's grocery store in Manahawkin. The business grew quickly enough that DiMenna moved it across Manahawkin Bay to Ship Bottom, where in 1961 he opened "The Original" Ron Jon Surf Shop — the chain's first true physical storefront, right here on Long Beach Island.

From that single Ship Bottom storefront, the company expanded to a Florida location within a couple of years and grew over the following decades into a chain of roughly 13 to 14 stores (sources differ slightly on the exact current count), with locations across New Jersey, Florida, Alabama, Maryland, and South Carolina, plus international locations in Grand Turk and Cozumel, Mexico. Two former locations, in Orange, California and Sunrise, Florida, have since closed. The flagship store in Cocoa Beach, Florida is described by the company as the largest surf shop in the world, at more than 52,000 square feet — a scale that traces directly back to a Ship Bottom storefront that started as a Manahawkin grocery-store sideline.

This is a genuine piece of surf-industry history, not a themed reference invented for a page like this one: the first true Ron Jon storefront, the seed of a chain that eventually reached roughly thirteen to fourteen locations and the largest surf shop on earth, opened its doors in Ship Bottom, New Jersey in 1961.

2025: Ron DiMenna’s Death, the Original Storefront’s Demolition, and a Foundation That Carries the Name Forward

2025 brought genuinely current, sourced news tied directly to this story. Ron DiMenna died on September 6, 2025, at age 88. Company president Michele Goodwin said DiMenna "was known as a free spirit and his love for the beach and the sport of surfing endured throughout his life." No cause of death was reported. The company stated it would continue normal operations after his death, with his vision and legacy carried forward through both the retail chain and a foundation he and his wife helped establish.

In the same year, the original 1961 Ship Bottom storefront building was demolished. There is no observation deck, gift shop, or storefront left to visit at the original site as a result — this page will not claim otherwise. What remains as a living continuation of the DiMenna family's connection to surfing and the coast is the Surfing's Evolution & Preservation Foundation, co-founded by Ron DiMenna and his wife Lynne DiMenna, which supports Florida beach health. Anyone visiting Ship Bottom looking for a physical trace of the original 1961 store should know, going in, that the building itself is gone as of 2025 — the story now lives in the company's chain of stores, in the foundation the DiMenna family built, and in Ship Bottom's own place in the record as where it all started.

The Fortuna Anchor on the Borough Hall Lawn

Ship Bottom's other real, visitable historic landmark is the anchor of the Fortuna, an Italian steel bark that ran aground and capsized at 16th Street beach on January 18, 1910, during rough seas and thick fog, on what was then called Beach Arlington. The Fortuna was a steel-hulled, three-masted bark built in 1869 in Hamburg, Germany — 924 gross tons and 193 feet long — carrying a cargo of coal from Montevideo, Uruguay, bound for New York City. All 18 people aboard were rescued without casualty by the Ship Bottom station of the U.S. Life Saving Service, including Captain Giovan Adragna, his wife, their two children, a newborn infant, and 13 crew members. The wreck itself remained visible on the beach through most of 1910 until wreckers cut it up for salvage.

The anchor resurfaced decades later: in 1983, resident Carole Bradshaw found it protruding from the sand. It was recovered, authenticated, and is now displayed on the lawn of Ship Bottom Borough Hall, where it remains a real, freely visitable landmark today. A centennial re-enactment of the wreck took place in January 2010, drawing roughly 100 participants to a scale-model presentation led by Bradshaw, who documented the full story in her 2010 book titled Fortuna. Between the anchor on the Borough Hall lawn and Bradshaw's book, this is one of the more fully-documented shipwreck stories on Long Beach Island, and it sits a short walk from the same stretch of island where the Ron Jon story began.

The 2025 Centennial: Day at the Bay and the Centennial Gala

2025 also marked Ship Bottom's incorporation centennial. Sources give two different 1925 incorporation dates — Wikipedia states the borough was originally incorporated as "Ship Bottom-Beach Arlington" on March 3, 1925, from portions of Long Beach Township, while the Borough's own official history page states that five communities (Bonnie Beach, Bonnet Beach, Edgewater Beach, Beach Arlington, and Ship Bottom) merged to form the borough on May 25, 1925. Both accounts agree the consolidated town was first named "Ship Bottom-Beach Arlington" and was shortened to simply "Ship Bottom" in 1947. This page presents both dates honestly as differing accounts of the same founding year rather than picking one as more authoritative.

The Borough marked its hundredth year with a Centennial Gala and, per TAPinto NJ reporting, folded the milestone into its annual "Day at the Bay" celebration on Saturday, September 13, 2025, featuring live music, food, vendors, and fireworks. Borough Hall's own dedication also launched the centennial year with a maritime-history theme, per The SandPaper — a fitting note for a town whose name literally comes from an 1817 shipwreck rescue and whose Borough Hall lawn already displays a recovered ship's anchor.

What This Page Does Not Claim

This page covers what is documented: the real Ron Jon Surf Shop founding story and its 2025 news, the Fortuna anchor at Borough Hall, and the 2025 centennial events. It does not list restaurants, shops, or other current businesses beyond what is sourced above, because Ship Bottom is a very small borough (0.99 square miles, roughly 1,100 year-round residents swelling to about 20,000 in summer) and this page will not invent a current business landscape that was not independently confirmed. Anyone planning a visit around a specific current restaurant, shop, or seasonal event should confirm current hours, dates, and offerings directly with the business or with the Borough of Ship Bottom before making plans.