Our ‘Jerseylicious’ Trip To The Shore: Rhinestone Sunglasses, Eliot Spitzer’s Jersey Girl Hooker Ashley Dupre And Yes, A QVC Connection

Ashley Dupre has come a long way since working in the Manasquan shop where we bought our cargo pants Saturday

As we were driving down the Garden State Parkway Saturday to meet our friend Ann at the Cheesequake rest stop — to continue down to the Shore — we realized with terror that we love many of the same styles as the “Jerseylicious” girls. We love animal prints. We love big jewelry (go big or go home). We like T-shirts with metallic designs on them.

As our niece Sydney once told us, “You like shiny things.” Yep, just like a magpie.

In line with that preference for bling, we just bought a pair of huge bug-eyed sunglasses that have rhinestones on them.

When we showed our parents the sunglasses last week, they laughed out loud at them. Too big, they said. So we brought them to show to Ann, who has impeccable taste. Ann hated them. She liked the shape, but not the rhinestones. We always wear jewelry, and that glasses with the rhinestones are too much, Ann said. We love the rhinestones on the sunglasses. That’s the best thing about them.

So we and Ann reached a compromise: We will only wear the sunglasses on the beach, since we never wear jewelry on the beach. Ann gave her OK on that.

Next we headed south to Manasquan, to a craft show where Ann’s friend/ex-colleague Bernadette was selling this wonderful, fanciful jewelry and pictures that use her artwork. It was a beautiful day, sunny and windy, so it was great.

Then we strolled over to the main drag in Manasquan to check out the shops. We stopped at a place called Rare Cargo that had great, unusual clothes. There were dresses that had a $500 couture look selling for $79. We found a pair of camouflage cargo pants we loved, and we went to pay for them.

The woman ahead of us on line was wearing an emerald-cut diamond engagement ring the size of a Chiclet, which caught our attention. We were so busy eyeing it that we missed much of the conversation between that woman and the shop owner. We did hear the woman say something about one of store’s ex-workers being in Playboy. The shopkeeper said, “Yes, she’s on the cover.”

We didn’t know what they were talking about, and we just paid for our pants and left. Outside, Ann clued us into what was going on. The former shop employee was Ashley Dupre — the Jersey Girl, fellow Taurus, and hooker — who brought down New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. We guess the money was better as a a prostitute than working at Rare Cargo.

Dupre, who writes a sex advice column for the New York Post that we never miss Sundays, is in fact on Playboy’s cover, and inside uncovered.

It was off to dinner and drinks at the Lobster Shanty on the inlet in Point Pleasant. We went in to use the ladies room, and as we were washing our hands we looked at the woman next to us. She was wearing a gorgeous silver necklace. We told her it was gorgeous.

She said thank you, and then almost conspiratorially asked, “Do you watch QVC?”

Girlfriend, do we watch QVC? We told her we not only watch it, we blog about it.

Then she pointed to her necklace and said “Joseph Esposito.” We can’t believe we didn’t recognize it.

We told you there was a QVC connection here.