Best Place To People-Watch

Not even a pane of glass separates those inside Nick's from the action on the Broadwalk just outside. The windows swing in and anchor to the ceiling, leaving large openings in the stone façade. All the better to spy on the parade of exercisers speed walking, teenagers cruising, couples courting, babies wailing, condo commandos conferring, Canadian snowbirds squishing in Aquasox, tourists sweating in rented pedicabs. Peer past them to the sun-addled die-hards blackening on the beach, then adjust your pupils to the worn nautical interior and peel a few spicy, beer-steamed shrimp and slurp a daiquiri. Patience. If you sit here long enough, it seems, every demographic and nationality will make an appearance. Yet despite this variety, a lack of pretension or even self-consciousness binds the passersby into a single stream.