Asbury Park

Jersey Summer, Part 1: Asbury Park

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This is my first round-up post about our summer days here in New Jersey. Our time here started a bit early (my friend who cares for the New Jersey cats went to Jamaica for a few weeks) with Kim working here and me commuting. Our two weeks of real vacation wraps tomorrow when we head back to Manhattan – again a bit early to accommodate Kim’s gig speaking at the Library of Congress and then SPX the second week in September. I will need to travel back to New Jersey in late September or early October if I want to see the last of my dahlias bloom however – several have stuck stalwartly to buds only.

Photo strips.

Last weekend I seized the opportunity for Kim and I to grab a ride with a friend to Asbury Park. Kim had never been and I had investigated and found a few junk stores potentially worth checking out there. The Asbury of my childhood has receded almost entirely into the background of pricey new condos, townhouses and shore hotels superimposed on it.

Maybe a future post on this little gem!

We didn’t go to Asbury, or its kissing cousin across the lake Ocean Grove often (or nearly often enough for me), as a kid. I remember going to a doctor there and also a sort of girl scout outing there. We were taken to the amusement pier for a bit although it was largely closed down. (The other feature of that day is we made candles – I have no memory of exactly how all this matched up.) Seeing the pier and the then defunct Merry-Go-Round, lives in memory however and I always itched to go back but it was a little too far and a bit too rough around the edges for my folks to bother taking us. Somehow by the time I was in high school my crowd wasn’t one for going to the Stone Pony and we never got in the habit of going down there.

A sort of average view from the interior of the Antiques Emporium.
I really wanted this weird jug but evidently, I have very good taste and he was too pricey!

Kim is still recovering his distance walking and I wasn’t sure how much we could cover of the pier on this hot day, so we started at a smattering of junk and vintage clothing stores (and one rather superior used comics store), in a little downtown area with a larger antique annex next to it. After Kim bought some paperbacks at the comics store, we wandered to the annex. It is one largeish floor. The pickings seemed a bit thin at first but somehow as always, we came away with some interesting bits including this rather lovely plate of Psyche (shown here) and some Bakelite forks and spoons for the apartment in Manhattan. Kim came away with several Gene Autry novels he regrets buying. (He does not appear to regret the paperbacks however.)

I think all these came from our Asbury junket!

While we looked for a place to eat lunch we stumbled on a photo booth, and I insisted that we take photos. They are catnip for me; I can’t pass one without stopping.

Views of the pizza place and a period movie theater playing revivals.

We wandered a bit more and I saw a pizza place in a rather extraordinary old building and snapped these pics. However, in the end we decided on Mexican food. (This has been a bit of a theme for this vacation – we’ve eaten a lot of good Mexican food. Many Mexicans have settled in the area and there is no shortage of great places in Red Bank as well as this one in Asbury.)

Close to a train station, Asbury Park has clearly become a spot for day trippers and weekenders coming for a shore weekend even as their great grandparents may have. Every shop carries copious copies of Weird New Jersey magazine and absolutely every place is playing Bruce Springsteen – the ultimate in native son made good. We visited a shop that appears to specialize in occult publications – Bruce playing there as well (is it one loop somehow piped into all the shops?) but they had a very impressive Zoltar fortune telling machine which I gave a shot for a quarter.

My fortune was very non-descript, but his delivery was well worth the price of admission.

After lunch we walked to the boardwalk. Despite it being the afternoon and sunny, a breeze found its way, off the ocean or the small lake, which made it a pleasant walk. Asbury is beach and the ocean on one side and what they call lakes (small fingers of water) on the other two sides. Old pedestrian walkway bridges, as well as roads, cross them and this feature also always stuck with me from childhood. My grandmother’s preferred, red church was on the outskirts of one side, closer to her home in Long Branch and the town of Ocean Grove is to the south.

Some views of the old buildings in a state of decay or being repaired?

We walked along the south lake to the boardwalk and examined some of the old buildings, in various states of disrepair, there without making it all the way up to the original pier and bathing pavilion which appears to also be the process of renovation.

View of Ocean Grove from the water.

Heading back to where we were being picked up we walked along the Ocean Grove side. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the area, Ocean Grove is a Methodist camp founded in 1869. Maintained impeccably as a Victorian architecture gem and historic site, with its summer tent inhabitants, has held a dual fascination for the area which I have never had sufficient opportunity to explore. We could see old hotels on the ocean front, still in use, with wide porches with views that must incorporate sea and town in all directions.

Swan pedal boats as the sun started to head down.

In my mind these two towns have had a sort of remarkable Cain and Abel existence all these years. Cheek to jowl, the religious community which doesn’t even allow cars to drive through it on Sunday is a stone’s throw from the music venues and biker bars (we only saw one biker bar while we were there although my guess is that there are still a number of them tucked away) of Asbury. One can’t help but wonder how many Ocean Grove inhabitants sneaked quikely across the river on a Friday or Saturday night in summer for a different kind of fun.

Ocean Grove

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This snapshot popped up on Instagram for sale recently. Ocean Grove, New Jersey, is about a forty minute drive from where I grew up in Monmouth County and it immediately took me back to my childhood. Written on the back of the snapshot is Asbury Park 7-4-35. I thought this photo was earlier than 1935, and I am a bit tickled that it is July 4. I am also surprised by the coats for a July 4 at the seashore however. I don’t think I remember a chilly Fourth.

The Ocean Grove community abuts onto Asbury Park so this declaration of location is not surprising – a town called Bradley Beach surrounds Ocean Grove on the south end. For those of you who may not be acquainted with it, Ocean Grove was founded in 1869 as Methodist summer camp community. Known for its enormous wooden Great Auditorium, an extraordinary survivor of Victorian architecture, it has hosted concert performers from Enrico Caruso and John Sousa to Kenny Rogers.

Another notable aspect of Ocean Grove are the more than 100 tent-homes that are erected annually, these attached to wooden sheds providing a kitchen and bathroom and making them more substantial. There is a more than ten year waiting list for tent rental. (I would put myself down now for a summer tent for retirement, however Wikipedia notes that dogs, cats and barbecuing are prohibited, as is subletting of tents. A cat-less summer would be no fun. It is also noted that while you do not need to be a Methodist you do need to support their spiritual mission.) Ocean Grove is the longest active spiritual camp site in the country.

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As a child, the concept of the tent-houses fascinated me and I longed to see what they were like inside. The idea of a whole summer spent enjoying ocean breezes and sun dabbled days in one was fantastic.

Meanwhile, the law prohibiting cars on Sunday was equally exotic to my childhood mind. It seemed impossible – how could you close roads to cars every Sunday? Was there a place where people parked them and walked in? The fact that additionally the beach was closed on Sunday meant that this was never really a destination for weekenders from Manhattan, unless they were there for the day, attending one of the many concerts (musicians from New York and Philadelphia regularly grace the stage) or lectures held there.

Although neighboring Asbury Park was also founded by Methodists, soon after Ocean Grove, it was more like the Jersey shore’s answer to Coney Island. While Atlantic City reined for boardwalk pleasures further to the south, Asbury was the turn of the century amusement park boardwalk gem of Central Jersey and therefore a fairly easy day trip from New York City. The Convention Center and Casino offered largely the opposite sort of appeal of its religiously observant neighbor to the south. The difference struck me even as I understood it as a kid.

During my childhood both towns were largely in steep decline and neglect. The Victorian hotels were turned into SRO’s and, it seems to stick in my mind, nursing or retirement home type facilities. (Maybe we knew someone who lived in one?) During the late 1960’s Asbury was the site of race riots, documented by my father in his role as news cameraman. All this to say, I rarely went to Ocean Grove or Asbury Park growing up unless there was a specific reason. As these things do, it therefore fascinated me all the more. The architecture of the somewhat deserted Convention Center and the dilapidated boardwalk (and not to mention a really great if dilapidated carousel) always beckoned for more exploration than I was allowed.

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In young adulthood I discovered that a series of summer flea markets are offered in Ocean Grove, which I have only had the pleasure of attending once, many years ago with my father. It was perfectly splendid and I have always wanted to go back. Starting in the late 1980’s, both towns but especially Ocean Grove, enjoyed an immense renaissance and renewal. Despite knowing this my parents could never quite get over their dislike of the area and were always reluctant to go. (My mother is the same person who still sees Central Park through the lens of 1970’s urban decay and was appalled when I announced that I was going to work for the Central Park Conservancy years ago. In fact, I think she can barely accept that my whole life in Manhattan – and that of my brother – isn’t taking place in the neglected city of her memory.)

The area is not ideally accessible by public transportation (some Pictorama readers may already know that neither Kim nor I drive) so alas, it remains somewhat unexplored for me – one of those things that nags and glitters just out of reach. Summer always tugs me back to my childhood at the shore. I miss the ocean and the beach, but busy times mean that trips to Jersey are more about spending time with my mom, and less about lazy days of ocean and sand. Meanwhile, this Covid summer has deprived me of all summer Jersey shore visiting pleasures. But perhaps this means that next year I will plan a real vacation at the shore – one with trashy novels and a little too much sun – and of course well-timed around some flea markets at Ocean Grove.