For the whole of my adolescence, I stood on the far side (and what many would call the wrong side) of the Philly-Jersey Shore continuum. Every summer, Philadelphians, made expansive by beer, would flock to my then-home of Cape May County — teen daughters in tow. The arrangement was an agreeable one.

Because of this connection to Wildwood, I jumped at the opportunity to crash the 9th Annual Ascension/K&A Neighborhood reunion at The Bay Club (formerly Lighthouse Point) knowing nothing about it other than that people from Kensington would be gathering there. I hopped on the NJ transit train, prepared for whatever may come.

As if to confirm I was in the right place (the parking lot of The Bay Club, a huge outdoor bar standing on the dock of the bay), I see bumper stickers which read “Kensington Born & Raised” and hear affectionate f-words and f-word-variants tossed throughout the air. Almost every visible square inch of flesh (mine included) is Irish-American and some shade of red or pink.

I sit down and notice that the voices, speech-patterns and music at the venue are exactly that of any Kensington neighborhood bar, even though this is all taking place on a sun-soaked deck with a beautiful view of the bay, complete with draw-bridge and boats. I close my eyes to confirm this, then chat with the man behind the predominately Motown soundtrack, DJ Mark Steven Mroz.

Beginning at the tender age of 13, Mark became known as Kenzo’s go-to DJ through working the Kensington Roller Rink in 1981, then by playing Ascension school dances. He explains that Ascension was a church/Catholic school and that this event is their reunion.

In 1985, when the neighborhood was in the midst of change, the tight-knit community, formed by and around this school, fled the area to Mayfair, Parkwood and New Jersey, among other places. Some two decades later, these people started seeing each other down the shore and a blog called “Kensington Memories” formed to keep them all in touch.

While the idea for the reunion was that of Timmy Layton, former Ascension football coach, he passed away before the reunion’s fruition in 2007. Fortunately, his widow, Donna Layton, a former Ascension cheerleading coach who has since moved to North Wildwood to work in real estate, knew enough bar owners to facilitate this particular group of people finally coming together in meatspace.

“Nobody profits from this,” she tells me while overseeing the event. “We do this as a neighborhood get-together.”

For some, this event holds more significance than for others. This is especially true for Scott and Cathy Hunter, who Donna is easily able to point out because people sit in the same spots every year. On Aug. 7, 2007, the first annual reunion, Scott Hunter came alone and met Cathy, with whom he shared mutual friends from back in the day. On their second year, they returned together as a married couple and haven’t entertained the thought of missing one since.

“It’s kind of like a religion,” says Scott. “If we don’t come, it’s sacrilegious.”

They now live together in Sea Isle City.

The event, now including relatives, hosts a broad spectrum of ages, ranging from 22 to 82. With so many generations of Ascension alumnae bringing more and more of their families, the tradition has steadily grown throughout its nine-year existence; folks drive upwards of 90 miles, rent out houses for the week and plan their vacations around the event. This growth has caused the event to evolve from an Ascension reunion to a K&A reunion.

As Kensington old-head Al Maiden puts it, “It’s nice to get people together … turf wars were a big thing, but as we got older, we just let that go.”

As he says this, I hear the crowd singing for someone’s 50th birthday.

As the sun rolls past five o’clock, the crowd, roughly 400 deep, disperse into other bars, houses and after parties — the most popular of these seems to be at Ship N Shore, a neighborhood bar owned by a fellow Kenzo who, presumably, everyone knows. The drinks are cheap, the vibe unpretentious and their DJ, by parallel thinking or by design, is also playing Motown.

Upon leaving and letting my impressions congeal, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Everyone I met was friendly, down-to-earth and happy to share their stories of the tradition. The biggest distinction I hadn’t made before going in is that these people are from both a particular place and a time, one Al describes as, “when you were a kid and you could still play on the streets.”

The reunion shows every sign of growing and no sign of slowing. Should I find myself in those parts next July, hopefully they won’t still think, as one attendee did, “Who’s this young hippie who just wandered in here?”