A wood plank boardwalk lined with arcade fronts and taffy shops runs beside the beach, with Victorian houses on the blocks behind it.
What Ocean City looks like
The boardwalk runs two and a half miles along the beach, from Twenty Third Street up to St. James Place, wide enough for arcade fronts and pizza counters that open straight onto the planks. A private fishing pier reaches out from the boards at Fourteenth Street, and the surface itself is painted and sun bleached wood the full length.
At Sixth Street the Music Pier juts out over the sand in white stucco, with arched windows and a red tile dome in the Spanish Mission style. The boardwalk here sits on concrete pilings set back from the water, an alignment dating from the late 1920s.
A few blocks inland, roughly between Third and Eighth Streets, wood frame houses from the 1880s through the 1920s fill the historic district. Queen Anne porches and Folk Victorian cottages with shingle and clapboard siding sit close together on narrow lots along Central and Ocean Avenues.
The town's year round storefronts line , a block behind the boardwalk, in two and three storey buildings with flat fronts and fabric awnings. The , an open sided wooden pavilion from 1881, stands at Fifth Street and Wesley Avenue with its gabled roof above the surrounding houses.
Shot in Ocean City
Ocean City has filmed as itself rather than as a stand in for another place. Three productions used three different blocks of the same boardwalk, from Ninth Street down to Fourteenth.
Ninth to Fourteenth Street
Three different productions used three different blocks of the same two and a half mile boardwalk, never the same stretch twice.
Girl Most Likely, 2013
The film used the pizza shop on the boardwalk at Ninth Street, then known as Mack and Manco before the family split that created the current name in 2012. A longtime pizza maker there appears briefly on screen. The flagship shop later moved into the old Strand Theatre building up the block in 2017, so the storefront in the film is no longer the one serving pizza today. Street View
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore"
The FX series filmed its Jersey Shore episode on the beach and on the boardwalk's Tenth and Eleventh blocks. Cast members visited nearby shops between takes, according to local reporting. Street View
Servant, Apple TV+
The series filmed several beach and boardwalk scenes near Fourteenth Street. A private fishing pier run by the Ocean City Fishing Club reaches out from the boards at this block. The key assistant location manager said the beach and boardwalk filming were both covered under one city permit. Street View
Wildwood built out its own boardwalk with arcade fronts and food stands in the 1920s and 1930s, the same era as Ocean City's own boardwalk shops. Look at the blocks between Poplar and Cresse Avenues for comparable storefronts. Wildwood's boardwalk is wider and its signage taller and neon lit, so a tight, low shot holds the match better than a wide one. Try searching boardwalk arcade storefronts now.
Rehoboth Beach in Delaware
Rehoboth's own boardwalk runs along the beach with Victorian cottages a few streets back, a similar scale to the blocks between Third and Eighth Streets here. Both are a quiet mid Atlantic beach resort rather than a city waterfront. Rehoboth's boardwalk sits back from the water on higher ground and its shops stand further apart, so tighter frames around one storefront hold the match better than a long establishing shot. Try searching Victorian boardwalk cottages now.
Atlantic City in New Jersey
Atlantic City's own boardwalk carried the same kind of arcade fronts and food stands before its casino towers went up, so a low shot could pass for an earlier decade of it. Any wide shot that includes the modern casino skyline gives away present day Atlantic City immediately, so keep the frame at street level. Try searching boardwalk arcade fronts now.
