Aside from my friends, family, community, and students, the thing I will miss the most from the US is the beach, in particular the Jersey Shore. The Jersey beaches stretch more than 140 miles (220 km) from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Point in the south, through Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties. The shore begins in the New York metropolitan area, where ferries run from Manhattan to points West, allowing me to pick up Françoise from the SeasStreak Ferry in Atlantic Highlands and head next door to One Willow for brunch (local or bluepoint oysters and amazing crab lettuce cups and tuna tacos) before a long walk up the spit that makes up Sandy Hook National Park then back to the dock for the 6pm ferry. This is what we did last weekend on what was supposed to be the last nice weekend of the summer.
You can see the manhattan skyline from the northern end of Sandy Hook, where you can also explore Fort Hancock (open 1865), and the Sandy Hook Proving Ground National Historic Landmark, which includes historic batteries and Army buildings built to defend Manhattan. You can also see the oldest surviving lighthouse in the U.S.!
My favorite place in Highlands used to be The Clam Hut, where you could eat the very best clams and share a pitcher on a jetty out on the water listening to the waves or sometimes a band. The mussels where pretty amazing as well, but the ambiance was also legendary. One night we were there when an intense rainstorm hit. The staff pulled down huge yellow awnings to protect the diners and the lone singer kept singing (I am sad not to recall his name). When the power went out and the rain was hitting the edge of the stage he replaced his electric guitar with an acoustic and sang over an hour’s worth of songs that all featured rain. It was one of my most memorable nights, made better because co-author Becky happened to be visiting and got to experience the Jersey shore at its most whimsical.
Maybe this foreshadowed the future because two years later in October 2012, Hurricane Sandy leveled the place and the ground it stood on and it was unable to reopen. A story repeated all along the shore. Here is a story about the impact on the town of Toms River, where Superstorm Sandy made landfall, and the town’s response.
Further down the coast are neighbors Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, a pairing Walter introduced me to shortly after I arrived in New Jersey. Ocean Grove is an old Methodist Episcopal Church Camp Meeting Ground built around the huge wooden Great Auditorium adorned with a gigantic cross that is lit up at night and can be seen from the ocean. The Auditorium dominates that part of town, holding concerts and services still.
In the summer, the area around the auditorium is filled with the 105+ year old tent colony that reflects the original camp ground (wooden “cottage” at the back and canvas tent for the front half) with spaces in front filled with flowers and beech chairs.
The town is on the National Register of Historic Places for these, the Auditorium, and the Victorian painted lady houses that make up the town. But it has been forced to move with the times. Walter remembers visiting on Sundays when cars were not allowed to enter Ocean Grove (OG)’s stone gate (that law did not change until 1979 I learned from the Historical Society of Ocean Grove) and only in 2024 was OG forced to allow people onto the beach before noon on Sundays between Memorial Day and Labor Day (see an explanation at The Jersey Shore Girl’s blog). It is still a dry town, although most B&Bs do have wine glasses and corkscrews should patrons bring in their own supplies.
One change we really regret is the removal of Ralph the Fisherman from the end of the OG fisherman’s pier. A version of Ralph has sat on the pier for a long time, as this portrait from 2011 shows. The pier was seriously damaged during Hurricane Sandy, but someone rescued the most recent version of Ralph and he was restored to what was left of the pier right after the storm. For many of us, he became a symbol of the stoicism that fueled the recovery. The motto painted next to him, “Down the shore everything’s alright” [in the featured image to this post] gave new meaning to that moment, and we were sad that when the pier was rebuilt be was “retired.”
Ralph’s motto also seems to encapsulate what happens when people come to the shore in times of difficulty — down here things feel better. Problems dwarf against the immensity of the ocean, and the long expanse of beach in each direction. Many of us feel ourselves exhaling and relaxing. The negative ions from the waves probably help as well. The shore certainly works this way for me, and Ralph and his motto frequently appeared as a Facebook profile, liked by those who know.
In the summer, Walter and I often rented a B&B in one of the gorgeous gingerbread houses that line the roads from the beach. Since he’s been in France, his sister Françoise and I have taken to doing the same for the weekend, ideally a B&B that welcomes her “grandpuppy” Kodi, a beautiful samoyed who we dognap for the occasion (Kodi loves the shore as much as we do). Like the tents, the houses are all fronted by handkerchief gardens packed with colorful flowers from roses to petunia, that were still in profusion when we went down this weekend (halloween) when the weather promised 70º days and clear, but chilly nights.
We love to stay in sedate Ocean Grove and walk along the boardwalk to Asbury Park, just the other side of a ruined casino built on the border with Ocean Grove, perhaps to flaunt their differences. Asbury Park, birthplace of Bruce Springfield, home of the Stone Pony and the Wonder Bar, could not be more different than Ocean Grove, although it is named after Francis Asbury (the first American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States) and began as another Methodist beach resort just two years after Ocean Grove. Unlike Ocean Grove, it secularized somewhere along the way and became a mecca for musicians and the world that surrounded them. [For an interesting history of the town and the exclusions that marked its growth, check out the Asbury Park Museum].
To repeat a theme, Hurricane Sandy wiped out a lot of the buildings along the beach, including a collection of stores just over the border with OG that included a food emporium with fabulous lobster sandwiches and icecream sundaes. That remains an open space that I assume insurance will not permit rebuilding (like the Clam Hut up the coast). In contrast, the seediness the waterfront of Asbury Park had fallen into before Sandy has today been replaced by huge luxury hotels and apartment buildings boasting gyms, spars and all the luxuries Manhattan exiles might desire. Another huge structure is being built between the Wonder Bar and the Asbury Hotel, to our disappointment and inland, vacant lots have been seized up for apartments and town houses. This may be the greatest comeback story along the shore, and much that we love remains unchanged so . . .
The boardwalk still boasts souvenir shops and shipping containers cut open to become store fronts, and you can still find a fortune-teller next to a tomato pie store, and a crêperie next to the amazing MoGo Korean Fusion on the Boardwalk that siren calls us regularly in the summer months (they also have a brick and mortar restaurant on Cookman that is open year round, but part of the joy is eating a basket of tacos on the beach).
The old Berkeley Hotel is still there looking more like a Victorian hospital than a fancy hotel, but with renovated rooms many with a view of the ocean. And the Asbury Park Convention Hall is still across the road, but although it still hosts some great concerts, the ocean side is still under repair.
As I said, Françoise, Kodi and I went down to Ocean Grove this halloween and enjoyed a chilly but sunny two days walking on the beach, eating lobster sandwiches, and exploring “Porch Fest,” in which 100 musicians set up on 25 porches and played the widest range of music from country to rap (but with a lot of 70s and 80s rock), entertaining crowds in lawnchairs or standing, many of them in halloween costumes. It was great! The amazing Asbury Park Oyster Fest may be no more, but it is still a great place to hang out. And we were really there for the shore anyway.
The southern end of the Jersey Shore is part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area, attracting a whole different group of people and beach culture. Yet the beautiful Victorian painted houses turned to B&Bs stretch down the whole shore, and I am not sure whether Cape May or Ocean Grove wins for sheer picturequeness (is that a word?). Wikipedia tells me that the Jersey Shore has “the highest concentration of oceanside boardwalks in the United States” and I do believe that claim. Walter and I once planned a Bill Bryson style walk down the Jersey shore, arguing all the way about symbolism, relative attractiveness, and desirability. I loved the irony of getting a ridiculously cheap room in a gambling casino in Atlantic City, but not gambling; he found the casino culture unenticing. We both love the juxtaposition of Asbury and OG, but we could still argue. After Hurricane Sandy we thought we should do the book and donate any profits to the relief fund, but best intentions do not necessarily lead to the fine acts they imagine. The book remains unwritten.
But the ocean is still there.
This is how you greet the ocean if you have never been to the shore — and this is how it greets you back!
