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OCEAN CITY, N.J. - Why this Cape May County town has simultaneous Fourth of July bike parades, creating a kind of not-so-rivalrous north-south rivalry, no one is quite sure. Kids riding two- and three-wheelers festooned with flags and streamers, accompanied by the sound of baseball cards clacking against spokes, are ubiquitous this holiday weekend. But nowadays, bike brigades are only part of many celebrations. tiffany uk

A parade dedicated exclusively to the grass-roots tradition is a rarity. Two in one town - attracting hundreds of children, parents, and spectators - is rarer still. "I think it's one of those things that makes Ocean City so special. We're lucky enough to have two bike parades going on at the same time, one in the north end of town and one in the south end," said Bob French, 90, a World War II veteran who with his late wife, Marie, came up with the idea for the north-end version in the late 1950s. tiffany accessories

"We all had so much pride and patriotism when we came back from the war, it seemed logical that we would want to organize something like this," French said. In the beginning, the "parade" was mostly the Frenches' three children and a gaggle of other youngsters in the city's Gardens section, where families tended to live year-round. The longtime Realtor recalls that they traveled only a few blocks along Atlantic Boulevard, then held a small block party. Now the north-end event, scheduled for 10 a.m. tiffany pendants

Monday, is a mile long and attracts about 2,000 spectators. About 500 children are registered to ride. The route will extend from the foot of the Ocean City-Longport Bridge down Wesley Road to Atlantic and finish at Beach Road, where refreshments and prizes are to be distributed. The Gardens Civic Association, which took over running the parade 35 years ago, expanded the reach of the event by creating a T-shirt design contest in the local schools. Each year, a child's drawing is featured on the shirts, which also list the sponsors that helped pay for the shirts, refreshments, and goody bags handed out to the kids. tiffany mens necklace

The association works with Ocean City police to help spread the word about bike safety and the importance of wearing a cycling helmet, said Debbie McKenna, this year's parade chairwoman. "This parade is really the most important function of the Gardens Civic Association. It really brings the community together," said McKenna, who recently hosted a bike-decorating party in her driveway for her grandchildren and others in the neighborhood. "Kids have been decorating bikes forever. tiffany necklace silver

It's one of those old-fashioned kinds of things that everyone loves to see on the Fourth of July," she said. The bike-parade tradition began a couple of summers earlier on Ocean City's sleepy South End, about eight miles away, where there were more summer residences than year-around homes. Men from the local firehouse agreed to lead a ragtag assembly of children who trailed behind a fire engine for six blocks on Central Avenue and the parade was born, said Tom Grossi, chairman of this year's event, sponsored by the South Ocean City Improvement Association. tiffany necklace white gold

This year's parade is expected to draw from 800 to 1,000 people as it rolls down Central Avenue between 40th and 53d Streets, also starting at 10 a.m. Monday. About 100 children on bikes or in wagons pulled by their parents will, once again, be led by a fire truck, Grossi said. There will be a couple of floats, too. "It's pretty casual in the south end," Grossi said. "They really go all out in the Gardens, with the T-shirts and going into the schools. But we try to keep it very simple. A lot of the families are just here on vacation or come down to their homes on the weekends." Is there a rivalry? It's more like a draw. "The Gardens may have a bigger parade, but ours is older," noted Grossi.

tiffany cufflinks "We pride ourselves in Ocean City with doing things generation after generation, in a sort of small-town way," said Fred Miller, a local historian. "The parades really bring that all together. We have a big, spread-out town where you can have two parades going on at the same time, yet Ocean City still has that small-town feel.