Say the words "ghost town," and most people picture tumble weeds rolling across
the dusty streets of some long forgotten western boomtown. They imagine the squeaky sound
of saloon doors swaying slowly on rusted hinges, beyond which the haunting echoes of
barrel house piano music and gunfire can still be heard. There is another kind of ghost
town though, much closer to home, where sand, not dust sweeps across the splintered
boardwalk. The faint echoes that emanate from the hollow buildings here are the swirling
strains of a calliope organ, and the din of childrens laughter. Asbury Park, New Jersey is
one such ghost town.
The Asbury Park that I knew and loved in my younger days was not the wholesome family fun
resort of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Asbury Park of my fond
memories was a seedy, run-down seaside town, languishing in the afterglow of its earlier
heyday, when it was the jewel in the crown of the Jersey Shore. In the early 1980's,
Asbury Park was struggling to maintain the image of a desirable vacation destination, and
to recapture some of the summer vacation revenues that had steadily been moving farther
south for some years to places like Seaside Heights, and Wildwood.
What was left in the wake of the retreating nuclear families and day-trippers, was an odd
assortment of misfit characters. They were the kinds of people who were not necessarily
welcomed with open arms in other resort towns, but who felt comfortable here. Bikers,
hippies, gays, rockers, and religious cultists had all adopted Asbury Park as their new
summer home. This eclectic melange of personalities gave the town a vital counter-cultural
flavor. There was also a thriving (and now legendary) nightlife, where local rock bands
could share the stage at places like the Stone Pony or the Fast Lane with internationally
renowned acts. Fans from all over would travel for miles just to hang out in the local
clubs hoping to catch a glimpse of Bruce Springsteen (not an uncommon occurrence at the
time).
In addition to its colorful cast, what really made Asbury Park appealing in its waning
days was the same things that drew people there generations before. The beach, boardwalk
and buildings there were still among the most beautiful on the entire Jersey Shore (albeit
deteriorating rapidly).
Bracketing either end of the half-mile expanse of white sand beach were two ornate
structures. At the north end was the majestic architecture of Convention Hall, a massive
brick building, circa 1930, with pastel terra-cotta accents. The cavernous hall, theater
and arcade was decorated with patina-green copper sculptures of mythical winged seahorses
and huge lanterns.
At the southern end of the boardwalk was the Casino, built in 1903, which jutted out over
the breaking surf atop a forest of spindly pilings. The Casino's facade was also adorned
with similar reliefs of sea shells and sailing ships. In between these two relics of
bygone summer glory, the boardwalk boasted the usual assortment of T-shirt hawkers,
ski-ball arcades, greasy fried food counters, and miniature golf landscapes. At the
southern end of Ocean Avenue stood the 100-year-old copper and glass carousel house, its
antique hand-painted wooden ponies prancing around and around behind windows emblazoned
with the screaming visages of Medusa-like faces.
Not far from the carousel house, taking up one whole block on the corner of Lake Avenue
and Kingsley Street, was the minty aqua-green facade of the Palace Amusements building.
The turn-of-the-century fun factory beckoned to passers-by advertising rides like the
Twister, the Scooters, the Fun House, and the Tunnel of Love, with colorful illustrations
on its exterior walls. Inside was another antique merry-go-round, and a 100-year-old
Ferris wheel. The one thing that made Palace Amusements so memorable for myself though,
and many others I suspect, was the somewhat deranged looking grin of the two huge faces
which gazed down from the Palace walls with an almost demonic glee. The character, which
was given the name Tilly, had greeted visitors to Asbury Park with his wide-eyed, maniacal
smile since he was first painted on the Palace back in the 1940's.
This was the Asbury Park that I, and so many people of my generation will always remember
with a kind of reverence. It was like a surreal playground city, lost in time and space.
It seemed as if the former occupants had just up and left the town for dead. Then, like
squatters, a whole different crowd took up residency. The feeling in the air of Asbury
Park back then was invigorating. Ironically, the town itself was dying.
By the mid-1980's the City of Asbury Park had had enough of its new, grittier public
persona, and the town began to take action to counteract the downward spiral it was
experiencing. It struggled vainly to recapture the more affluent, family friendly image of
its former self. Before long though, Asbury Park would come to realize that it is
sometimes better to have people in your town which you consider undesirable than to have
no one in your town at all.
A couple of years ago I decided to pay Asbury Park a visit, after having not been there
for almost a decade. It was a warm, sunny day, and I thought that I'd just slack-off work
and go down to bum around for a while. My biggest concern on the way there was that I
might not be able to find any parking, being that this was around Memorial Day, the
unofficial opening day for all summer resort towns on the Jersey Shore. I was not prepared
for what I would find.
As I drove past the Palace Amusements building, I saw that it was tightly shuttered and
looked dilapidated. I made my way toward the beach, noting an unusual lack of cars parked
on the street. As I made the turn from Asbury Avenue onto Ocean, I could see all the way
up to Convention Hall. There was not a single living soul anywhere in sight. Neither were
there any cars, none moving, none parked. Dumbstruck, I looked down at my watch, thinking
that maybe I had gotten here earlier than I'd planned. It was 11 a.m., surely there should
be people out by now, I thought. I wondered if I had been mistaken, perhaps the season
didn't really start until the actual first day of summer. What I would soon learn though
was that in Asbury Park, the season doesn't start at all anymore.
 I
drove slowly up Ocean Avenue in amazement. Every single store was closed for business, and
many were boarded up. To my dismay, many of my favorite places had vanished altogether,
empty lots where they had once stood. Sure, the Stone Pony was still standing, but what
about Mrs. Jay's Beer Garden, which once occupied the property right next door? Where was
the half-block-long row of gleaming Harley Davidsons which used to line the sidewalk
outside? What became of their leather and denim clad owners, who would guzzle pitchers of
cheap beer in the open air out back while the bar band ran through one crowd-pleasing
blues-rock cover after another? I had no idea. All that was left was a vacant lot littered
with some rubble and debris.
Nearing the northern end of the strip I was horrified and bewildered by the gargantuan
hulk of the half-constructed concrete and steel structure which stood right in the middle
of Ocean Avenue. I couldn't tell if it was a building in progress or just the skeleton of
a 10-story mistake.
I was up near the Convention Hall when I spotted the first living human being I'd seen
since entering town. She was a black woman who was walking south along the avenue. I
considered stopping and asking her just where the hell everybody was, but decided against
it when she stopped walking, and began to stare at me oddly from across the road. I
continued slowly by her, more than a little confused now.
I decided to turn my car around and take another pass though town. I needed to find some
clue as to what had happened here in the nine years since I had last visited. As I passed
the walking woman for the second time, she once again stopped, and turned to look at me.
It almost seemed as if she expected me to stop the car and give her a lift. When I got
beyond her, I looked in my rearview mirror to see her standing on the curb, one hand on
her hip, looking at me as if I had just stolen her cab ride on a rainy day. What was that
all about? I wondered.
I parked my car near the beach and figured I'd take a stroll on the boardwalk. Surely
there, I thought, the shops would be open and I would see people on the beach. I was
wrong. From the space-age looking Howard Johnson's Restaurant at the north end, all the
way down to the Casino, everything on the boardwalk was shut down tight. Not only did the
shops seem as though they would not be opening soon, they looked as though they had not
been opened in years. The whole place was deserted, and more desolate than other shore
towns are in the bleakest days of February.
I began to get the feeling that I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was a
beautiful day at the Jersey Shore, the Atlantic Ocean was sparkling, the sun hung
suspended in a clear blue sky, and here I was, the last man on Earth. Had there been some
kind of contamination here, I wondered, that would keep everyone else away, and if so, why
hadn't I heard about it? The place was truly abandoned, a real honest-to-God ghost town.
The only people that I talked to in Asbury Park that day were the few that I found in the
old carousel house. Apparently the antique merry-go-round that used to be there had been
sold off, piece by piece, some years before. This beautiful copper and glass relic from
the heyday of Asbury Park now housed a rag-tag flea market of sorts. There seemed to be
about ten vendors (who outnumbered customers by ten to one) who appeared none too
enthusiastic about their own merchandise. I became depressed and decided to get back in my
car and head for home.
The entire trip home on the Parkway, I wondered what could have gone so wrong in Asbury
Park? Sure, it was run down when I used to visit on a regular basis, but it was nothing
like this. How did this once inviting vacation mecca, located barely one hour away from
New York City by car, come to suffer this abysmal fate?
It would be almost another two years before I would once again find a reason to go back to
what remained of Asbury Park. In that time, several articles were published in area
newspapers that shed a little light on the demise of the town for me. The Star-Ledger
published a story on May 22, 1994 which stated:
Whatever could go wrong in Asbury Park, did. The locals rioted. The upper class bolted.
The economy crashed. The working class ran out of work and became the welfare class. The
mental patients and druggies moved in. So did the prostitutes. (Of course! I thought,
feeling a bit naive in hindsight. That's why that woman on the street was looking at me
like that!)
The city gave away too much in a desperate attempt to secure developers who promised too
much and went bankrupt. The only construction accomplished after nearly a decade of effort
was either torched or halted mid-way.
If there is a single symbol of the state of the Asbury Park redevelopment, it's the
monstrous, traffic blocking, steel-and-cement hulk on Ocean Avenue. It is the skeleton of
the luxury condominium high-rise that developer Joseph Carabetta abandoned in
mid-construction four years ago. One city official said: "People hate it so much they
would pay to blow it up."
The article goes on to quote an Asbury Park Councilman, Angelo Chinnici, referring to the
oceanfront area as "Sarajevo-by-the-sea," and City Manager Alan Feit calling it
"the dead zone."
"The town has been crippled by economic doom," Chinnini said, citing the $750
million pie-in-the-sky redevelopment agreement then languishing in bankruptcy court,
"and you don't change that overnight."
The fact is that very little has changed in Asbury Park in the five years since those
statements were made. A New York Times article published January 31, 1999, described the
current state of affairs:
Asbury Park has seen many builders express interest, only to recoil because of the
bankruptcy proceedings and the litigation over the redevelopment agreement. Others,
including K. Hovnanian Enterprises of Red Bank, have withdrawn in exasperation over the
city's political leadership.
The city is indeed in political shambles. It has had seven mayors in 10 years, and the
Council seats have rotated with each election, including a recall vote in 1996. The
recently departed city planner is suing the city, claiming his dismissal was racially
motivated.
"It's not a matter of black or white," said Mr. Douglas Mauro, the former
Council candidate, who has lived here for eight years. "It's a matter of green, and
of ignorance and greed. This city has been bled so dry with back-room deals." In
running for office, Mr. Mauro said, "you're vilified, you're threatened. They've made
it so good people won't get involved. When it was over, I said, I must have been crazy to
do that."
The Times article also quoted former Council member Dr. Angelo Chinnici as saying, "I
invite the Attorney General and the state of New Jersey to take a good, hard look at
what's going on. There's no other city in the U.S. that's suffered so much financial
blight because of a few individuals."
Recently The Asbury Park Press published an article stating that Palace Amusements, the
110-year-old landmark, was in imminent danger of collapsing and would be demolished
shortly. The article stated that the Palace, which closed its doors to the public for the
last time back in November 1988, exhibited significant stress fractures in the exterior
walls. In addition, a portion of the second story had recently caved in. The city notified
the owner, a Connecticut based developer named Joseph Carabetta, of the problem. Carabetta
purchased the building in the mid-1980's, along with acres of other Asbury Park properties
and businesses, and set out to redevelop the waterfront, only to end up in bankruptcy in
1992. The century-old carousel, with its hand-carved horses had been auctioned off in
1989, and the Ferris wheel was sold to a water park in Mississippi.
With the destruction of one of New Jersey's most recognizable landmarks imminent, Mark
Sceurman and I decided it was time to revisit Asbury Park one last time before the swing
of the wrecking ball. So, one bitterly cold day last January, we found ourselves in Asbury
Park once more. It looked even worse to me than it had on my previous sojourn there (if
that's possible to imagine). It appeared as if someone had dropped a neutron bomb on Ocean
Avenue, leaving most of the buildings standing, but obliterating the populous. There was
no apparent evidence that anyone had taken any measures to restore, or even maintain any
part of the waterfront, with the exception of Convention Hall. This disheartening fact was
made all too clear to me when I looked up at the Casino from down on the beach. I could
see straight through the broken windows of the grand old building, through its cavernous
interior, and right up through the gaping hole in its roof to the grey skies above.
Over at Palace Amusements, the entire block and bordering streets around the condemned
structure were cordoned off with yellow police tape and orange plastic barrels. The paint
of the building's once brightly colored exterior was chipped and flaking off. The
multi-colored neon lights, which once framed the ever smiling faces of Tilly, hung broken
and swaying in the freezing winter wind.
At the northern end of the strip, the 10-story carcass of that ill-conceived luxury
high-rise still stood like a monument to greed and stupidity. Somewhere up near the top of
the hollow edifice, the icy wind was rhythmically banging a huge piece of sheet metal
against the structure's skeletal frame. From where we stood, on the links of a miniature
golf course reclaimed by nature, the mournful echo of that clanging toll seemed like a
death knell for the city of Asbury Park.
Madame Marie, a boardwalk psychic who has been telling fortunes in Asbury Park since 1932,
was quoted in the Star-Ledger making this prediction:
"I most certainly knew the developers were going to come to a bad end, but I stayed
here because this is the beautifullest boardwalk in the world. Sure I could have warned
people in town, but who's gonna listen to me? But I'll tell you this: Asbury Park is gonna
come back bigger, I mean much, much bigger than even before and it's gonna happen in the
next three years. Trust me, I know these things."
That prediction was made five years ago. Anyone who has been to Asbury Park recently
wouldn't need a crystal ball to see that it might be time for Madame Marie to hang up her
tea leaves.
You can read more tales from Asbury Park in issues #13, #14 and #15 of Weird NJ.
© Weird NJ, Inc.
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