Shorecrest Celebrates Fifty Years at Misquamicut

“I’ve been looking through the old pictures for days… It’s very nostalgic. Here’s one of me at age three inside the store with my grandparents!” Holly Sisco-Bowen is sharing her family story as we chat in the store and again later that day on the phone. She is lovingly holding the box of her family history and thinking of her mom and dad.

It all started after the ‘38 hurricane. “My father, Cosmo Sisco, was a visionary and had the foresight to imagine what Misquamicut could be after the devastating hurricane. Cosmo and Christine had no money at the time and took a huge risk and opened up Dicky’s Hot Dog stand.” They actually moved an old outhouse from a Tower Hill estate to the beach and renovated it and sold hot dogs to surfers on a kerosene heater. The original store was where Wuskenau Beach is now. “Many surfers still call it Dicky’s Beach!” says Sisco-Bowen.

There were several iterations of the business as it shifted along with the times and the addresses on Atlantic Avenue and the changes and growth of their family. Later they expanded and had a beer garden and Neptune Room. The bar was huge and that was not common in the mid ‘40s. They later again moved down the stretch closer to where the Hotel Maria is now and had Sisco’s General Store but in ‘52 a storm hit and then they rebuilt again.

Eventually, they didn’t want a seasonal store anymore so Holly’s Dad built and ran the Shorecrest Store where it stands now at 57 Shore Road. “I was three when it was built,” she explains. “Later when I was pregnant with my first daughter I didn’t want to miss anything–Morgan is 26 now–so I brought her with me. I would bring both my girls here, Adrian too,” she says with so much happiness. “It is great to keep the family together. It’s a LOT of work, but worth it!”

Over the years cousins and kids and friends and family have worked at the year-round store. And the customers are some of their favorite memories. “We have a little wall in the store with pictures of our dear customers we love who we have lost, like a memorial. Our customers mean the world to us. We can set the calendar to them! We know when one family walks in it is the first week of July and then another that it is August!” She remarks on how the kids of their customers have grown up married and now come with their own kids.

All this summer they will be celebrating the golden 50th anniversary of a family beach legacy. No doubt they already are a part of your memories at Misquamicut, so be sure to pop by, pick up what you need be a part of the hard-earned celebration.