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Blog The Players Club on Gramercy Park in New York City. Leave your best guess on the 'Talk' page. Or, pick up a copy of the triCity News this month when my architecture column comes out.  Creating buzz on the north Jersey shore: Michael Barker (left) and Tom Bernard, the a-typical co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics. The Big Picture Show By Helen Pike The digital age has arrived. We telecommute. We order food for home delivery. We find mates on social networking sites. We have more than 400 channels of cable and satellite available for viewing. Through our computers and MP3 players we can import movies on demand. So why go out? For the thrill of discovery. How? In a journey of the imagination. Where? In a darkened cinema. When? Months before a film’s magic is reduced to a digital download. Viewed with friends or complete strangers who share your secret passion for the unknown, you are the millennium’s new intrepid explorers. “There’s something about watching movies on the big screen and communally that you can’t duplicate at home,” observes Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, the independent film distribution arm of the Japanese media conglomerate. “Movie goers are having fun because they love finding new films before anyone else.” The two forums for participating in the big-screen movie hunt are festivals and art houses. Monmouth County is blessed with both. The newest entrant is the two-year-old Ocean Film and Arts Festival, a multi-organizational partnership which includes Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute, the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art in Long Branch, and the Two River Film Festival. There is also the Red Bank International Film Festival at the Count Basie Theatre, the traveling Newark Black Film Festival, the Garden State Film Festival in Asbury Park, and the Two River Film Festival, a multi-venue event in which the Middletown resident is involved. The Basie and the Paramount in Asbury Park, the area’s two restored 1920s movie houses, have ideal acoustics for cinema, adds Bernard, because they weren’t built as concert halls. Proof that residents are turning out in record numbers to see art films, sometimes within two weeks of their world premieres in New York City, are in the box office receipts at the Clearview Red Bank Art Cinema on White Street. According Bernard, who makes new work available there under the aegis of the Monmouth County Arts Council, the intimate Red Bank theater is the second most profitable in Clearview’s New Jersey chain; the first is in the more densely populated northern community of Montclair. Another thrill of discovery is picking out which films may be nominated for an Oscar. In 2006 audiences had the chance to see “Capote.” That film won actor Philip Seymour Hoffman an Academy Award for his portrayal of the New Yorker writer who cravenly wanted fame in 1965 by recounting the story of the murdered Clutter family. Nominated this past year, and seen on White Street, have been the Spanish-language “Volver,” the French-Iranian animation “Persepolis”, and the American-made “The Diving Bell and the butterfly.” Bernard shares viewers’ pursuit of unique film stories not made with big studio budgets. “Festivals are a great chance for discovery,” he says from a mobile phone before resuming his bicycled trek between theaters at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “I’m seeing five or six a day for ten days. I have to sort out which films to buy and bring back to the States for people to see. “Two or three might be worth buying,” he continues, “because I’m looking for filmmakers with something to say. They have to connect with the audience. They have a message. They have to say it in an artful way.” Because the Internet has trivialized a lot of cinema, the current crop of aspiring film authors don’t have much originality, he adds. “They just want to become pop stars.” Still, the Internet is not an altogether bad invention. The on-line world make movie-goers better informed. “Audiences are using the Internet as film schools,” Bernard says, and as a result “they are more sophisticated in what they want to see.” *********************************************************  Is the 1941 Canada Dry bottling plant on Ridge Avenue worthy of a hip-and-cool loft make-over? I've received a few responses to my most recent column in the 'triCity News'. This one below arrived Sunday from a third-generation Asbury Parker and a recently retired realtor whose grandfather was Founder James Bradley's on-site agent. He sounds a refrain about willfull ignorance of history, by both officials and citizens, alike. Want to rant? Post on the 'Talk' page of this website. Good Morning, Helen: I read your article in the City News. Months ago, I sent an e-mail to Urban Planners about the Main St. proposal, having worked on it 25 years. What happens when the bus stops and the guy does not have the correct change, or they want directions, or are handicapped. No place to park the supply truck, so it's double parked while unloading. The solution lies in the traffic lights, which now are a random nightmare. They should be delayed left going north after Asbury up to Sunset, south 8,7,6 and then after Asbury, and both at Bangs. Of course, I never heard back. Cordially, Tom ****************************************** triCity News August 21, 2008 Urban Spaces of Yore and Lore While everyone is evaluating the proposals by Urban Partners of Philadelphia for Asbury Park’s Main Street, take five minutes to remember Chester Rapkin. [Heads up: Public hearing 7 p.m. September 3, City Hall. If you want Main Street’s 15 blocks to look like those in Avon-by-the-Sea, this Wednesday night meeting is for you.] In 1963, when the wrecking ball slammed into the Monterey Hotel on the Asbury Park oceanfront, Rapkin, an economist and urban planner wrote “The South Houston Industrial Area” for the New York Department of City Planning. The study pointed out that a proposal for a 10-lane expressway linking the Holland Tunnel with East River bridges would: 1) wipe out 800 commercial and industrial businesses 2) eliminate neighborhood employment for minorities, half of them women 3) destroy 2,000 housing units The Rapkin report laid the ground work for saving, and ultimately creating, SoHo. Of course, it took 30 years for prêt â porter Chanel stores to replace the factories that made Coco’s signature suits. Change does take time, whether it’s SoHo or the Boardwalk. But the more immediate result of Rapkin’s report, together with smartly organized public persuasion, led to the political decision to save a neighborhood and residents’ livelihoods rather than expediting vehicular traffic between the Garden State and Long Island. To be sure, while Asbury Park’s Main Street was never industrial, it has always been a convenient corridor for getting around the shore. The Route 35 we know now was the rustic Neptune Highway when Trenton first handed out a numbered route for Main. By that point, 20th century commerce had marched north from the Methodist-named streets. It bulldozed lovely mid-priced Victorian homes to make way for automobile and appliance showrooms, assorted package stores, supermarkets, various bars, a one-time Plaid Stamps redemption center, two diners, and a Sears & Roebuck. Today there are only two single-family homes left on Main. One doubles as a real estate office with a rental apartment on the second floor. Think you know where the last stand-alone house is that uses Main for mail? E-mail a jpeg to the triCity News: news@trinews.com, and we’ll run your photo in an upcoming issue and give you credit. God got bulldozed off Main. Bethel AME’s congregation found itself pushed into the West Side’s working class neighborhood where, not coincidentally, the city’s industrial zone did exist. The one large operation that remains is the former Keystone Laundry now owned by HCSC at 1005 Memorial Drive. Right behind it, Buchanon & Smock’s historic lumber mill is going condo at Second Avenue and Langford Street. When finished, it will be only the second residential property in all of Asbury Park that can lay legitimate claim to having once been industrial loft space: The Vacarro Guitar Company was the last known manufacturer there. [Don’t be fooled by marketing hype: lofts marketed all over the downtown are merely the synonym for not rebuilding walls that once defined separate living, dining, bed rooms, and kitchens. Cookman’s only factory was Victor’s overlooking Kennedy Park where seamstresses made Christian Dior peignoir sets.] The city’s light industrial zone is Asbury Avenue, a hodge-podge of car shops, private residences, storefront churches, liquor and lottery outlets, eateries, one iron works, and two fraternal halls. Also from back in the day when zoning wasn’t codified are a handful of scattered industrial sites. These buildings, too, naturally lend themselves to lofts. The fast-forward story of Rapkin’s study is one triCity News readers know by heart: Artists move into vacant factories and warehouses, a renewed commitment to inner cities ensues, and the money follows. If that’s true, I’ve got to wonder: Why aren’t artists and musicians looking at the long-vacant and for-sale Asbury Towel Company on Ridge Avenue and Washington Street? The location comes with a historical pedigree: In 1941 the local Canada Dry soda distributor built it as a bottling plant. Is it too far off Main Street to wear the hip-and-cool artist label? Is revitalizing the city’s western boundary solely in the hands of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity? Can the only music created on and off Ridge be sacred? What do you think? For Asbury Park trivia fans: If you think you know which Boardwalk emporium marketed Canada Dry ginger ale as an adults' only drink because it was "champagne", post your answer in the "Talk" section of the website. *************************************************  The ultimate in recycling: Adaptive re-use of historic buildings accounts for 90% of all architect-commissioned work. Special Delivery From Uncle Sam Washington, D.C.’s first skyscraper opened in 1897 as the U.S. Post Office. With a clock tower at twelve stories, the chiseled granite foundation, variety of arches, and delicate turrets captured the more fanciful details of the Romanesque Revival style. After World War I, and flush with America’s new found standing as a global military power, urban planners designated Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues and 14th Street as the Federal Triangle. They issued a long-term renewal plan. When the post office moved out in 1934, it called for tearing down the building whose style had passed into the humiliating category of outré. But there’s a silver lining to appreciate in a recession: the lack of public funds gave pause to construction, or in this case, deconstruction plans. When an effort to level the federal building resurfaced in 1964, Nancy Hanks, legendary National Endowment for the Arts chair, led a spirited public debate that challenged planners to design a new use for the old building. Ironically, the Federal Triangle, which embraces the Capitol and the White House, was in need of a post-World War II plan to refresh the previous post war’s blueprint. Hanks succeeded. The Old Post Office now is a mix of federal and retail space, and its architecture is one more reason to appreciate the visual variety in our nation’s capitol. Red Bank doesn’t have a federal triangle, but it does have a significant focal point on Broad Street thanks to the regional needs of the United States Postal Service. The TriCity’s earliest known formal postal counter was located on the southeast corner of Broad and Wallace Streets in what was then a three-story Classical Revival building. Complete with a cupola, the Mercantile Bank was its primary tenant in 1898. Only a ghost of this building exists today. In 1931 a new landlord built Uncle Sam a Georgian Revival stand-alone main office at Broad and Canal Street that offered off-street parking not only for the growing fleet of mail trucks, but also for customers. Its important public neighbor was right across the street: the Romanesque Revival sanctuary that is St. James Roman Catholic Church. Built in 1894, its more modestly designed Red Bank Catholic (RBC) High School was erected in 1926. The post office stayed at 105 Broad until 1965 when yet another new building, this one done in the international style, beckoned from further south on Broad. No public parking this time, and insufficient parking for employees. [As an aside, and because it is tiresome ~ to say nothing of redundant ~ to listen to history repeat itself over the issue of public parking in Red Bank: why not follow RBC’s lead? [In the 1990s, students with newly minted driver’s licenses no longer wanted to ride the yellow school buses with underclassmen. Learning how to feed the meters between classes, teenaged drivers took up valuable parking spaces that retailers badly wanted to see filled by shoppers. [RBC eventually made a deal with one of the Broad Street churches to rent parking spaces. Sure, the students had to walk a couple of blocks to go to school, but they got to exercise their rite of independence and downtown retailers regained valuable public parking for customers.] In 2006, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s architecture department published a study that charted the growing popularity of adaptive reuse of buildings across the U.S. Apparently, 90 percent of architect-commissioned work involves some kind of interaction with an existing structure. Hello, Long Branch and Asbury Park. Need still more incentive to stand up and be counted? That’s certainly the case at Broad and Canal. In the 1970s Roots, an upscale clothing for men with a cleverly named boutique for women called Adam’s Rib, moved into the old post office. Adroitly redesigning the space for clothing racks and counters for merchandise, along with comfortable seating arrangements for wives, mothers, and girlfriends to appraise their made-over men, the space was magnificent. More importantly, it signaled a new era in retail for Red Bank. In 1997, after Roots closed, Laureano Garmany picked up the trend in retail and customer service when he moved his clothing store from 17 Broad Street and into No. 105. He then pushed the fashiona envelope further by leasing his former space (one-time home of the Clayton & Magee men’s clothing store, for those readers with institutional memories) to the uber chic Coco Pari and Wisteria. Next Garmany gave the rather dull, post-modern Bon Ton (former Steinbach’s built in 1947) a classical facelift and moved his haberdashery there. By raising the height of the façade, he created a scale that maintains parity with St. James, RBC, and No. 105. Garmany’s other coup, for readers who’ve been spending time at the beach or sailing the Shrewsbury River, is the arrival of Tiffany & Co. at No. 105. Now that’s something to write home about. ************************************************* The Coaster, July 17, 2008 Park and Ride, Anyone? Caught between a rock and a hard place, Asbury Park is going to repeat its history and once again install parking meters. Yes, it’s back to the future that we experienced the first time after the close of World War II. You’ve seen the stripes. Now there are numbers. Before the summer is over, the latest in 21st century meter technology is going to rise up along all the curbs within walking distance of the oceanfront. No more scrabbling for quarters. All you’ll have to do is park and swipe your credit card. The rock, of course, is the $12 million shortfall in the city’s budget. The hard place is all the vacant real estate on which the property taxes are the lowest in the city. Lower than a lot with a house. Lower than a block with a high rise. Lower than that of a hotel. Lower than any address with a business operating on it. For years, all those who owned improved property have been dutifully contributing more than their fair share of taxes to Asbury Park. The city could raise those taxes still more, of course. As an aside, we wonder where the threshold is before a taxpayers’ revolt occurs. The developers could do what they’ve promised to do since 2002. But new construction doesn’t appear likely to happen in time to staunch city’s ever-increasing pool of red ink. Who will pay are all the visitors who drive to the oceanfront and probably some employees who are late for work; unless their bosses pay for spaces in the newly paved lots between Kingsley Street and Ocean Avenue. We’re going go out on a limb and assume those lots will be for pay on weekends, and off limits on weekdays unless there’s an attendant or a valet to take money. We also know that the closer to the Boardwalk you park, the higher the meter rate is going to be. The 12-hour parking zones will be located the farthest away. So in addition to food, entertainment and the opportunity to shop on the Boardwalk, visitors will have to factor in parking as part of their experience in Asbury Park. In case you’ve forgotten this chapter in Asbury Park’s history, shoppers went to Monmouth Mall in Eatontown and then when it opened, Middlebrook in Ocean Township, in part, because they didn’t have to pay for parking. They still don’t. Amusement park thrill seekers went to Great Adventure in Jackson. In the beginning the parking there was free, too. But not any more. Now there’s an inclusive fee. So we wonder: How much will the public feel motivated to comeback and spend their disposable income in Asbury Park when the cost of a day at the beach or a night on the town is going to have to include parking? We’re tempted to ask: Couldn’t this wait until next year? Maybe not. In 2009 the city is going to continue with the millennium meters by installing them in the downtown. The lure of free parking in the Bangs Avenue deck has not taken hold. Apparently, the only garages people like are the ones in their own backyards. Let’s see how much business the meters are going to generate. ***********************************  "Our culture is more misogynist than it is racist." Having Their Say “We tell ourselves stories in order to live” is Hollywood screenwriter Joan Didion’s most quoted line from “The White Album.” In her autobiography of life in 1960s Los Angeles, Didion discusses, among other mind-blowing experiences, her attendance at Black Panther Party political meetings and a Doors’ recording session. Stories like hers are how we understand the world around us. They open a window to human behavior among people we might not know personally but recognize from headlines or as role models. Large and small, stories that tell of a shared history also illuminate what we have in common more than what’s different. Too, many use Didion’s essays as a lens through which to gain clarity about the chaotic ‘60s. But what if your story also examines parental duty amid tumultuous cultural upheaval, yet can’t find a publisher? If a family narrative that starts before 1964’s Civil Rights Act and 1972’s Title 9 and concludes with six self-sufficient daughters carrying their widowed father’s casket to his grave isn’t deemed compelling? What if your story written two years before Didion’s 1979 book is released attracts no commercial interest? Who sustains the greater loss: the writer who has written this unpublished story or readers denied the opportunity to read about a part of America’s heritage that is female first and black second? “Our culture is still more misogynist than it is racist,” observes Yvonne S. Thornton, the third of six sisters initially raised in the housing projects of Long Branch. “If you were a black man in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and you didn’t have a son, you were ostracized by the black community. Daddy was determined we were going to make something of ourselves.” For 18 years, and with her father’s same tenacity, Thornton, a double-Board certified specialist in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine, persisted until a publisher finally agreed to print her autobiography. “The Ditchdigger’s Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story” recounts how Donald Thornton, a Long Branch High School drop-out and Fort Monmouth laborer, forcefully inspired all six of his girls to achieve independence and noteworthy careers. “My father was a consummate student of social science,” continues Thornton, who now lives in Teaneck. In 1965 and as a protective parent, he wouldn’t let his 18-year-old daughter attend Barnard College in far away Manhattan. Instead he walked into the office of then-Monmouth College president William G. Van Note, in West Long Branch, and persuaded him to enroll Yvonne. “He was a combination of Rocky and Bill Cosby,” Thornton adds. But as long as it took Thornton to find a publisher, in less than two short years her story was turned into a telefilm. It aired in 1997 on the Family Channel, televangelist Pat Robertson’s hugely popular cable network. The made-for-TV movie prompted Thornton’s appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Today Show,” and “Good Morning America.” The public will have a chance to see “The Ditchdigger’s Daughters” on the big screen when it airs at 7 p.m. Friday, July 25 at Asbury Park High School as part of the Newark Black Film Festival. The six-week series, which also travels to Trenton and Camden for the second year in a row, showcases independently made films that tell the stories of African Americans. Admission is free. The Newark Black Film Festival opens with “The Promised Land,” one of the segments originally broadcast on the highly acclaimed PBS series, “Eyes on the Prize.” The episode from this television documentary looks at the Civil Rights movement. The festival’s historic highlight for this year is “Hallelujah!” the first all-black film made in 1929. It also will be featured in a series of stamps devoted to vintage black cinema that the United States Postal Service plans to unveil in July. “Hallelujah!” was the first sound film made by legendary director King Vidor, a one-time freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist from Texas who went on to direct such landmark films as “Stella Dallas,” “The Fountainhead,” and “War and Peace.” Johnny E. Jensen, a Dane by birth and a cinematographer by training who has worked with directors John Singleton on “Rosewood” and Martha Coolidge on “Rambling Rose,” directed “The Ditchdigger’s Daughters.” “Being an immigrant in this country and growing up in a time and place without any experiences of racial prejudice, this country was eye-opening,” Jensen wrote via e-mail. “I have taken so much from this story, especially with raising four children [of my own]. This film hopefully will inspire more families to examine the relationships between parents and their children facing the challenges of education.” Working in the television format presented its own set of technical challenges, according to Jensen, including, perhaps, the toughest one of all, compressing 50 years into 100 minutes. “One takes certain liberties in regard to production values due to the small screen. I hope the film can withstand the scrutiny of the big screen,” Jensen wrote. He credits another Long Branch native, the film’s screenwriter, Paris Qualles, with delivering a wonderful script. “The book was so full of emotion from the whole family,” Jensen wrote, “and pairing it down without losing and sometime even gaining additional strong feelings was a marvelous job.” Added Jensen, “My hope is the audience will be totally involved in the story about the family headed by Donald Thornton.” “The Ditchdigger’s Daughters” has gone through 17 printings with more than 300,000 copies in print. In March Kensington Publishing issued a new edition under its Dafina imprint with an updated foreword and afterword written by Thornton who now divides her time as a medical consultant and motivational speaker. She will be in Asbury Park to talk after the film’s airing and to sign copies of her memoir which will be for sale. Dr. Thornton paired with Jo Coudert of Califon to write both “The Ditchdigger’s Daughters” and “Woman to Woman: A Leading Gynecologist Tells You All You Need to Know About Your Body and Your Health.” Thornton also wrote a medical text, “Primary Care for the Obstetrician and Gynecologist.” “I love the smell of books!” adds Thornton, who spent many formative hours reading stories in the Long Branch Free Public Library and the college’s Guggenheim Library. *************************************************  Where is Long Branch's maritime heritage? Monsieur Mansart Meet Madame La Veuve Helen, About your Mansard Roof challenge… Whew, didn’t know this would be so hard and that true Mansard Roofs would be so far and few between. Most of the ones I remember from my youth have been horrifically remodeled into architectural disasters…You were right, what a rare architectural gem the T. Thomas Fortune house is in Red Bank. Hopefully it will be preserved. Beth Woolley On the face of it, mansard roofs are practical, but plain. The decoratively-obsessed French certainly thought so. They quickly remedied that situation by trimming the tops of the roofs with fanciful iron railings. It was an all-purpose measure: it also dissuaded pigeons from holding a birds-eye convention on the edge of the roofline, like so many Texans lined up at a bar about to knock back a few. According to several TriCity readers who phoned or e-mailed their discoveries after reading April’s column, mansards exist among the hum-drum suburban roofs that fill the Shore skyscape. While difficult to locate, mansards do seem more prevalent in Long Branch than in any of the other TriCities, although enthusiastic homeowner Robin Margolis writes: What better than [the] 2007 Fourth of July parade [to see] a prime example of a lovely…mansard roof on the world famous Ocean Pathway…[it] will stand the test of time thanks to its locale in historic Ocean Grove. That civic pride is enviable! Yet neither the Grove nor the Branch have much in the way of decorative iron to trim out a roof, let alone a walk from which to gaze at the stars or to steal a kiss. Morbidly referred to as widow’s walks for the wives of 19th century sea captains, they are the crowning touch on today’s well-dressed Victorian mansions. Charleston and Savannah are known for them. Ditto Portland, Maine and Gloucester, Massachusetts. Of course, what those cities have that Long Branch has abandoned is a keen sense of their maritime heritage and how to use it to attract visitors. Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket have elevated the walk to a prominent role in their upscale travel narrative. Nowhere in this presidential city will you find a walk anywhere, let alone a token nod to the city’s Dutch settlers and their role in our state’s 300-year-old fishing traditions. Who remembers the original Gaskin’s Fish Market on the original Ocean Avenue? Or who has heard of the 1890s fishing village of Galilee when biblical references were used to name a neighborhood? Who can recall a bustling, store-lined Atlantic Avenue ~ just east and west of Ocean ~ when the pound-net fishermen were still supplying the catch of the day to the Fulton Fish Market ? San Francisco native Gertrude Stein once infamously observed of Oakland, “There is no there, there.” Anyone zipping through North Long Branch on the four-lane Ocean Boulevard could say the same. Sneeze, and you’ve blown by a section of the city out-of-towners think is part of Monmouth Beach. To the untrained eye, there is no distinction. The two lead buildings that anchor this long-ignored historic district are the Asbury United Methodist Church and the Atlantic General Store. Scattered around is a haphazard assortment of retail establishments worth patronizing from the North Beach Grill to Bare Wires Surf Skate. But, close your eyes, and you won’t know if you’re in Long Branch or Lompoc. Hasn’t the time come to create a distinctive architectural “here, here” for North Long Branch? Before the Miami-styled condos complete their northward creep to Monmouth Beach. While Atlantic Avenue is still pretty much a blank canvas of ramshackled structures. Before the land south of Atlantic and north of Avenel Boulevard becomes a solid block of soulless concrete high rises. Hey, Long Branch, why not use your history to attract real estate development? All it needs is a little civic leadership by residents and business owners and some tax credits by the city to spark an architectural revival. North Long Branch could challenge Mauricetown on the Delaware Bay, another seafaring destination filled with handsome Victorians, mansard roofs, and decorative ironwork. Fleur de lys rail heads, anyone? The Old Testament’s psalmist wrote about men who go down to the sea in ships do business in great waters. For Long Branch residents to support the kind of growth that commemorates its maritime roots, here lies opportunity. Start now to build awareness about this district’s architectural treasures. Do business in the great waters of New Jersey history. *************************************************  An alum of Fordham and Seton Hall, and a retired communications professor, Lloyd McBride has sat in the catbird seat of history nearly all his life. Here he is at table no. 1 in the Adriatic Restaurant on Kingsley Street. His most frequent dinner companion was one-mayor and former Fisher's Bakery employee, the late Frank Fiorentino. McBride Looks Back at the Boardwalk The Asbury Park amusement names are legendary: Zimel Resnick and the Palace on Wesley Lake; Abe Ruben and his electric bingo known as Fascination in the Third Avenue Pavilion; Madame Marie and her fortune-telling booth at the head of Fourth Avenue. “She lived in a rooming house on Lake Avenue,” Lloyd McBride said, “before the bumper cars were put in. She moved her booth to the Boardwalk after the Hurricane of ’44.” McBride would know. He’s lived here nearly all his life and started working on the Boardwalk in 1949, two years after graduating from Asbury Park High School. His boss? Bob Fountain, who operated Bubbleland, the popular kiddie rides at the head of Third. Those were the good years after the end of a war: when the black-out curtains were removed from the Boardwalk and vacationing families returned in droves to reclaim childhood’s lost innocence and follow thousands of rainbow-glossed orbs from Fountain’s bubble-making machine. “The amusements always attracted dreamers,” McBride said. His own dreams led to buying Bubbleland for $54,000 in 1974 after Fountain died. Back then a quarter bought a child three rides from the nine. McBride described them as the “non-horse or German merry-go-round” rides. There was a train, an airplane, a turtle, a kiddie whip, later replaced with fiberglass fire engines, the junior cars, and the spinning mixing bowls. The named rides were Bulgy the Whale, the Star Jets, and the Traffic Circle. The most popular? The rides in which children could imitate adults, he said. Meanwhile, trade shows at Convention Hall captured their parents’ imagination. “The ceramic and boat shows were big,” continued McBride, who was studying communications at Seton Hall University in South Orange, and would later return with a masters degree from Fordham to teach at his alma mater and advise the student-run radio station. But McBride’s summers always belonged to Asbury Park. The beach and the boards were a reunion rendez-vous, he observed. Third and Fourth Avenues were lined with hotels that catered to families staying for an entire week or two. They’d spend the day on the beach or on the boardwalk benches catching up, and after dinner, the adults would return with their children for the rides. “Or, they’d sit on the hotel porches and talk,” he added. It was a simpler time with plenty of people to hire for the fall travel season that lasted until Columbus Day. As Fountain’s general manager, McBride had a list of 100 employees to draw from, adding adults when teenagers went back to school after Labor Day. But once the Garden State Parkway opened in 1956 and vacationers could travel by car instead of by train, the slow trickle away from Asbury Park would gradually turn into a torrent. The parking meters didn’t help, McBride noted; by the 1970s, visitors were coming to the Boardwalk only for the weekends. “It used to be that 50 percent of our business was done by the Fourth of July,” he continued. Bit by bit, the city raised the Boardwalk rents and the insurance companies upped their policy premiums. By 1987 three rides cost 75 cents at Bubbleland. Thirteen years after he bought the mechanized rides, McBride lost his Boardwalk dreams to eminent domain and the city’s attempt to revive the beachfront with a hotel whose bridge was to span Ocean Avenue. It was an ill-fated imitation of the walkway that once connected the Berkeley hotel to the Sunset Avenue Pavilion in the 1930s, and it didn’t come to pass. However, “the city cancelled my lease,” McBride explained, and another high school alumnus, Sam Vaccaro, bought four of the rides and moved them to First Avenue. But by then the city’s Boardwalk had lost most of its appeal as heavily branded theme parks like Great Adventure with Bugs Bunny, Hershey Park and its candy-inspired rides and architecture, and Disney World with Mickey Mouse and the casts from dozens of popular TV and movie cartoons exerted an enormous influence over families’ vacation decisions.' Bob Fountain’s oft-repeated line - “I guess we’ll stay in our own backyard” – according to McBride, seemed a self-fulfilling prophecy in retrospect. The parade of increasingly sophisticated travelers passed by a seashore resort that had turned inward, trapped by old habits. “Asbury Park will come back,” added McBride who can sometimes be spotted at his favorite table at the Adriatic on Kingsley Street. “In five years it will look different than it does now.” He paused. “It will look different in 10 years.” ************************************************* Coaster editorial May 29, 2008 No Calm On These Islands Ever read about an idea that looks good on paper, but once it’s put into action doesn’t work? We think that’s the case with the proposal to build traffic islands down the center of Main Street in Asbury Park, similar to those installed in Avon by the Sea several years ago. The logic behind their design has some merit: to slow down drivers on a state highway. As they cruise up and down Route 71, they might “see” the businesses on Main Street that they, in turn, might want to patronize. Assuming all these establishments have parking. And that’s where angled parking proposal comes in. You can fit more cars if they’re parked grill to curb. Add in a parallel bike lane, like in Avon, before you know it, the four lanes we used to have are whittled down to one. Only at intersections would the islands be shrunk to allow for a left-turning lane. Has anyone counted how many blocks that is from the Lake-Springwood Avenue traffic light north all the way to Deal Lake? Fifteen, by our count. Has anyone counted the number of stops the NJ Transit buses make as they lumber up and back on Route 71 every day to off-load and take on passengers? Many’s the time we’ve waited behind the bus because we couldn’t cut into the steady stream of left-lane traffic. Does anyone want to guess how many fender benders have already occurred from angled parking instituted elsewhere around the city? Park a compact car next to a SUV and you get the picture. Throw in tinted windows of the luxury car parked next to your hoopty and see how good your visibility is pulling out into on-coming traffic. And those bicycle riders? They should wear pads on their knees, ankles and elbows in addition to a helmet if they want to exercise on Route 71 anytime other than Sunday morning. Like hair in the shower drain, we think this idea will clog traffic in Asbury Park and lead to a higher rate of horn-honking. That’s called disturbing the peace and is cause for citizens’ arrests. Until the urban planners first address the idea of what the business properties require for an on-site make-over so shoppers will find them more appealing, leave the north-south highway alone. Instead, think about how a Main Street concept might work for Asbury Avenue. After all, that’s what the majority Asbury Park visitors use to come into the city from the west. Shouldn’t a welcome mat be put out for them?  Want to sell residential real estate in Asbury Park's downtown? Build buyers a fully stocked ~ Jersey Fresh and complete with a space for musicians ~ French Market on Lake Avenue. The bonus? Just like in New Orleans, visitors will shop there, too. ooolala New Orleans Most often when Asbury Park is compared with New Orleans, it’s about music. The diversity there is immense: traditional jazz, soul, rock, rhythm and blues, zydeco, country, swing, gospel, funk, reggae, Dixieland. You can even find classical music if you know where to look, just don’t ask after Professor Longhair because he was the city’s legendary bluesman. “Boom-Boom” Lewis and I spent one memorable afternoon at Tipitina’s listening, and dancing, to Bruce Daigrepont who anchors the club’s traditional Sunday Cajun Fais Do Do. But there’s more to New Orleans than its music. At the Vieux Carré’s waterfront lays a useful history lesson that could be applied to the downtown’s renaissance. Crescent City developed UP from the elevated banks of the Mississippi. Its location between the Gulf of Mexico and America’s second longest river continue to make New Orleans a vital port. Commerce and culture spread from the river. Point of reference, the heartbeat of the music scene, Bourbon Street, is the fourth street UP from the Mississippi. You remember the Bourbons, don’t you? Long before that spat with the Bonapartes, they had colonized New Orleans for trade in sugar and cotton. Because Louis XIV married Maria-Théraèsa of Spain, the Louisiana Territory changed from French to Spanish then back again before the United States made the largest real-estate deal in history by buying it in 1803. I'm native American. Non, je suis francaise. No, yo soy espanole. Nah, I'm American. During the Spanish reign two fires destroyed much of the cypress-roofed French Quarter, leading to the architecture, and tile and brick construction material, we recognize today. Most of it is Spanish with wrought iron balconies, central courtyards and, yes, readers, mansard roofs. The riverfront was largely untouched. Between the Mississippi and Decatur Street, the French Market is a major destination. A city resident can fais son marche and guests can drink chicory coffee, eat beignets, and listen to music at Café du Monde. It’s a walkable neighborhood to Bourbon. Visitors amble the cross streets to find museums, B&Bs, shops, the St. Louis Cathedral, and even rental properties, along with music. Like New Orleans, Asbury Park developed UP from the water. Look at the southern bank of Wesley Lake and take in the variety of Victorian styles in Ocean Grove to see what had been the mirror image. But gone is the Lake View Hotel at the foot of Grand, though we can be grateful Kennedy Park provides a visual anchor and a shady respite for pedestrians. Gone, too, is the house of artesian well digger Uriah White. But his heirs took the dining room’s carved corner china cabinet, the curb’s granite carriage footstone chiseled with the family name, and a framed photo of the house to Cedar Avenue in West Long Branch. To see for yourself, look in the pages of my book 'Images of West Long Branch'. White’s property is the VFW parking lot at Bond. Moved is the home of Asbury Park’s most prolific 19th century architect William Cottrell. He lived at 415 Lake Avenue. His house sits abandoned on Second Avenue across from the Jersey Apartments. Will it be deemed blighted and taken down under eminent domain? Or will it be sold for continued use as a multiple family dwelling Lake lost its residential mojo going commercial in the post-war years. It got so bad that the five-and-dimes on Cookman used Lake as a loading zone. The city paved the green necklace along the lakefront for parking. Later the Board of Education tried to use a vacant storefront on the backside of 500 Cookman for adult classes. Yet a comeback is underway. It began when Howard and Luke took on the Herculean task of making over the old Deck House into the fabulous Moonstruck. Next came William Sitar’s real estate firm that began a stylish front-to-back make-over of both the former Woolworth’s and the original location of Harry Berger’s clothing store for young ladies. Anyone looking for the New Jersey Natural Gas office will find it on Lake. New construction in the form of the Wesley Grove townhouses provided a surprising return to the avenue’s residential character. All the more reason, then, to take a second look at that vacant Board of Education storefront: Can’t you see a New Orleans’ styled bazaar there? An outlet on a par with Delicious Orchards in Colts Neck or Sickles in Little Silver? How about a Jersey Market fully loaded with Jersey Fresh produce? Uber restaurateur Marilyn Schlossbach thinks so, and I bet sharing her views are the residents and weekenders evaluating their downtown options. So, why not make Asbury Park a retail food center for our Garden State heritage? Stock this market with artisanal cheeses from Bobolink Dairy in Vernon; peaches from Gloucester County; mint Baccardi rum because that herb is grown at the DelPonte family farm in Atlantic County; fish right off the Belmar boats, and eggs and free-range chicken from the West Trenton ranch that supplies the Long Branch Poultry Farm with birds for its rotisseries. If Meat ‘n’ More loses its Main and Springwood lease when its building is sold, move ‘em to the lakefront! And give serious consideration to putting in a music hall for dancing. How about that vacant Lerner’s building at Lake and Emory? You know, no time like the summertime to think about food, music, and a waterfront location. *************************************************  Preservation worthy: Early 20th century home of noted African American journalist T. Thomas Fortune House on Drs. James Parker Boulevard (formerly West Bergen Place) Red Bank. Built about 1883, its third floor is capped by a mansard roof. Mo' Mansard, S'il Vous Plait Farewell Second Empire. Yours is a practical but seemingly all too brief existence amidst the showy Victorians of the Jersey Shore. Though your handsome mansard roofs contribute to the diversity of the tri Cities’ housing market, your continued reign is precarious. Then, again, so was that of the Bonapartes. They were the Corsicans who tried to rule greater France as a territory. Their efforts triggered a counter insurgency largely led by the Bourbons who wanted their monarchy back. Towards the end of that political tug-of-war, Napoleon III unwittingly encouraged your unique roof revival. In case readers are keeping score, Trey was the nephew of the first Bonaparte who proclaimed himself emperor. He also was the nephew of that other Bonaparte who exiled himself to Bordentown, NJ. Point Breeze, Joseph Bonaparte’s estate, is undergoing an archaeological excavation led by Dr. Richard Veit and his students from Monmouth University. The public is invited to see their finds at a Bontaparte-y there May 4. Phone the Burlington County Historical Society to attend: 609-386-4773. Meanwhile, let’s return to this six-degrees-of-separation tale that’s taking place in the triCities. Louis, the real name Trey went by when he wasn’t swathed in ermine, instituted three policies for the reconstruction of Paris after his 1848 take-over: modern sewers, more parks, additional housing. But whatever the government gives its people, it finds other ways to take some of it back. Paris had a floor tax. With each floor added to accommodate the growing metropolis along the Seine, the empire’s treasury filled with new-found cash. Enter Francois Mansart, probably the most practical Frenchman TriCity readers are ever likely to remember. His blueprints a century earlier called for pushing roofs nearly upright in order to create livable attic space. The genius of his design lay in outfitting this extension with traditional materials, notably slate. Voila! Toujours un grenier! More voila: No tax! This architectural gerrymandering turned out to be so popular in the 19th century that the style came to be known as mansard. My grandmother lived in one on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. You might recall from an earlier column on La Tour Eiffel and Asbury Park’s Chase Tower (601 Bangs Avenue, in case anyone needs reminding), the French reigned supreme at creating legacies. To show off his urban, industrial and cultural achievements, which were considerable given that he was in office only four years, Napoleon III held an exhibition in Paris in 1852 to which all of Europe was invited. The result? The British became gobsmacked for the Second Empire’s roofline and the light and airy space it could afford cramped Londoners. Naturally, it was just a matter of time before the near perpendicular roofs found their way across the pond to America. The time came at the end of the Civil War when Reconstruction had begun. In 1869, the military hero who was about to become the most famous summer resident in Long Branch history, Ulysses S. Grant took the presidential oath of office. His administration adopted the practical Second Empire for public buildings. So did fashionably conscious, yet pragmatic new homeowners. Tired of those pitched roofs from the Gothic Revival? Push them forward, and give the floor above the cornice a mansard make-over. Need to take-in the in-laws? Add a convex bump-out and some windows, and then stash them on the third or even fourth floor. Want the ocean view obscured by a neighbor’s house? Add a tower with a double-hipped roof and floor-to-ceiling dormers. Install a comfortable chair and you, or at least your cat, can dream away the hours. In Red Bank, the most famous Second Empire address whose fate hangs in the balance is the T. Thomas Fortune house on Drs. James Parker Boulevard. Go west from Maple Avenue and you’ll find the Fortune house just west of the Conrail tracks on the north side of the street. Fortune was the founding publisher and editor of the “New York Age”, one of the rare newspapers launched after the Civil War to serve the African American community. Built around 1883, the house became the Fortune home in 1901. Approximately 17 years later the site became a bread factory operated by the Vaccarelli family. It has been unused since 2001. If the house is saved from demolition, Preservation Red Bank will be able to add a third historic Second Empire to the borough’s civic collection. The first is the circa 1860 home owned by abolitionist and real estate investor William Conover. Originally located on East Front Street in front of Riverview hospital, today this ornate example of Second Empire can be found on Oakland Street where it’s used as a charter school. The other is the more spare, yet statement-making Dublin House on Monmouth Street. Moved from Broad Street in 1905, Robert Allen’s original mansion got a retail conversion as a residential-looking vertical shopping mall in 1971. Back then it was called the House on Monmouth Street, and a Victorian retail village was added alongside the eastern end of the property. Now owned by the Irish-born Sean Dunne and Eugene Devlin, this Celtic pub is a popular TriCity gathering spot. With the arrival of good weather, patrons are encouraged to linger at its outside café tables at both the front and rear of the house. Last year the outside Temple Bar, another nod to Dublin, was installed on the rear patio. While Red Bank isn’t the only TriCity to have examples of Second Empire, it’s the only one whose savvy residents have an organized strategy to save its architectural heritage. In Asbury Park, one visible example of Second Empire can be found boarded up on Grand Avenue, awaiting demolition. In Long Branch, at least one lies in an eminent domain zone. Another has its first and second floors so altered that you have to crane your neck to find the mansard roof and appreciate the longevity of its original wood-frame construction. Now that you’ve read a few examples of what Second Empire looks like, are you ready to take the TriCity Architecture Challenge? E-mail us examples of where you’ve found a Second Empire building, and tell us what contribution you think it makes to the TriCity landscape: news@trinews.com. If your selection meets the design criteria and we like what you’ve written, we’ll run your picture and prose in an upcoming edition, and give you credit. Or, you can wait for me to cite new examples for you in a later column. As you might have figured out, I’ve got my eye on at least one that’s undergoing some form of renovation. Could be a remodel. Could be a restoration. Too soon to tell. But one thing’s for sure: its owner is determined to give this Second Empire a second life. That’s cause for celebration! *************************************************  How much has Brighton Avenue in the West End section of Long Branch changed in 100 years? Looking for San Francisco in Long Branch Spanish fort. Chinatown. Victorian city. San Francisco is an immensely diverse metropolis. Its successive waves of development from its fishing wharves, over Russian Hill and through Eureka Valley reflect its commercial origins and immigrant heritage. Its architecture ranks high on the quality-of-life scale. It’s also part of Bay City’s allure as a destination. Think about it. No other place like San Francisco exists along the entire west coast; my mother’s people think its Paris on the Pacific. Landmark buildings are commemorated on thousands of continental-sized chrome postcards. You’d never confuse the TransAmerica Pyramid with New York’s Art Deco Chrysler. A similar, though not as easily recognizable, diversity exists in Long Branch, the largest of the TriCities. The former fishing village of Atlanticville is now known as North Long Branch. Uptown’s identity is so entwined with West Long Branch that the city once claimed the centennial borough as its own. F.W. Beers’ 1872 atlas reveals the names of the original Dutch families who first defined Branchport. A comparison of Ghiradelli Square to Pier Village is too obvious to merit further commentary. But where the visual cues get interesting is when you stop to consider Alamo Square and West End. You know Alamo Square: Runner of green lawn in the foreground, brightly painted Queen Anne row houses in the center, followed by the variegated gray tones of the modern downtown, and then the blue California sky that frames the backdrop. Led by artist Butch Kardum, the 1960s colorist movement, as it’s since been named, transformed dowdy facades into saucy architectural design statements all over San Francisco. But none are more photographed than the houses on Steiner Avenue that front a park whose name is Spanish for the cottonwood tree. Once nicknamed the Painted Ladies, this vista’s more recent moniker is Postcard Row. West End has a similar landscape, seen best as you’re driving north on Ocean Avenue from Lake Takanassee. It slowly starts to emerge after you go through the Cedar Avenue traffic light and drive past Stingers, or as many will recall, Charlie Ilvento’s West End Manor. It was the longest running restaurant in the neighborhood that married the Ilvento name and magical brand of hospitality to a once nationally desirable destination. The show business crowd helped make it so. Real estate moguls did their share. They built enormous frame resort hotels to attract the actors and their admirers. So did the New York Times’ whose social coverage of the rising political and merchant class made Long Branch a place to see and be seen in the decades following the end of the Civil War. In the name game that replicates instead of originates, West End echoed London’s own theater district; its main thoroughfare, the seaside health resort of Brighton on England’s southern coast. Boasting two ice houses, three stables, a bowling alley, music hall, and a small string of stores that included the Pach Brothers photo studios, the Steinbach Brothers dry goods store and a post office, D.M. Hildreth’s West End Hotel compound anchored this neighborhood. The property was beyond enormous in size. According to 1886 maps, it spanned the entire north side of Brighton Avenue, from the Atlantic Ocean to Second Avenue. Say what? Yes. To see the history that was Ocean Avenue as it elbowed east at the modern Brighton traffic light, take a side trip through realtor Edward Thomas’s amazing collection of postcards at: www.historiclongbranch.org. There’s a button for West End. The West End cottages, another Hildreth property, occupied the south side of Brighton where the Spanish-styled condos are today. Across Ocean Avenue was Philip Daly’s wildly successful gambling venue known as the Pennsylvania Club; undoubtedly the second most hated venue after Monmouth Park by uber moralist James Bradley who developed Asbury Park. Ironically, to Asbury Park went Daly’s ornately carved and pirate-themed bar back when the Pennsylvania Club was dismantled. Postcards promoted the new place as the Coleman House Annex. Today the shingle says Tap Room. When the Daly property was divided, three quarters of it became a park; Brighton Court edges its western end. Prosaically enough, with no nod to history ~ natural or otherwise ~ it’s called West End Park. It’s the site of hugely popular festivals held every summer. Three are stand-outs: the art show, Sunday afternoon jazz concerts, and Cruise Night for classic-car enthusiasts. Brighton Avenue’s north side is an ideal visual and spatial backdrop for all three as well as for every day. It’s human in scale. The sidewalks are deep enough for café tables and benches for kibitzing. Leafy boughs filter sunlight. Best of all are the different facades built during various decades of the early 20th century; though Ed Thomas swears at least two are still standing from the 19th. Over time they’ve housed a bait shop, skillo arcade, antiques stores, luncheonette, hardware and paint store, dress factory, grocery store, and probably one head shop in the ‘60s. The equally non-conformist rooftops meet the blue sky with no hulking high rises towering in the background. The eye is never bored. The soul is never crowded. If ever there were a postcard image to let you know this is Long Branch, Brighton Avenue is it. *************************************************  601 Bangs Avenue at Emory Street in Asbury Park. What do you think of Chase Tower? C'est La Vie, 601? You’ve got to hand it to Gustave Eiffel. Not only did he think outside the box ~ his chief critic was architect Charles Garnier who had designed the neo Baroque opera house ~ but he came up with a winning design intended to guarantee him income after the 1889 World’s Fair closed in Paris. Lucky for us, Eiffel’s dream succeeded against the odds to become a timeless example of originality and multiple use. Thousands around the world flock to it. From its observation deck they take in the magnificent views of Paris. On its second platform level they dine. And now they even get to visit a replica of Eiffel’s office for a fuller appreciation of the genius behind the building. Whenever I think of the Eiffel Tower (and I’m half French, so that’s fairly often), my thoughts turn to a lovely address in downtown Asbury Park that has a lot in common with Eiffel’s vision. It’s #601 Bangs Avenue. When it opened in 1927, #601 Bangs was a stand out in Asbury Park’s then old downtown much like La Tour Eiffel stood out starkly against the old-world architecture that was Paris. Eiffel’s building was taller than the Washington Monument; #601 was the tallest building on the Jersey Shore until you hit Atlantic City. Like La Tour, #601 featured the latest in electric elevator technology and building construction. It put Asbury Park on the map of modernity. Eiffel used iron to make his design statement. #601 wears its decorative limestone exterior like a woman’s sheath. Carved with the 1920s’ craze in archeology and all things Egyptian, Mayan, and Aztec, it is only one of two such Art Deco buildings in all of Asbury Park. They are prime examples of what puts this city’s distinct architectural treasures on par with other cosmopolitan destinations. Throughout its existence, though, #601 has been an orphan. We know the Eiffel Tower, thanks to the French culture that publicly honors its creative minds. But in this case, the electric company commissioned Chicago architect and engineer Frank Chase to design it. And, the gas company was its last long-term ground-floor tenant. You tell everyone your age by which utility company you reference when talking about it. Why not formalize this building’s role in Asbury Park’s diverse architectural vocabulary and acknowledge its designer? Just like the French recognized Eiffel, let’s call this building Chase Tower. Here’s another connection I see between the Eiffel Tower and what I believe is the untapped potential of the Chase. It has to do with that other French tradition of idolizing its writers. The futuristic Eiffel Tower’s swanky restaurant pays homage to the French author who pioneered science fiction, Jules Verne. What a delicious juxtaposition. And so very French. For Chase Tower truly to take its place alongside Eiffel, and Asbury Park alongside Paris, it needs a restaurant and one named for a writer best associated with the city’s pivotal role in U.S. travel history. Who gets my vote? Adventure travel writer, newscaster and co-founder of Cinerama, Lowell Thomas. Why? He wrote With Lawrence in Arabia while living at his parents’ house on Fourth Avenue (yes, boys, that Lawrence played in the movie by Peter O’Toole). Thomas also founded the influential Society of American Travel Writers. Frankly, this naming opportunity is a no-brainer. The on-going free publicity from travel press writers is priceless. How about the name Lowell & Lawrence? How about a Middle Eastern restaurant? Please pass the baba gnosh. Giving those real-estate tours for Road Trip 6 last July, and my pitch to save the M&K (thank you for signing those postcards), prompts me to think about a downtown nightclub. So how about a switch-hitter for another level at #601: observatory floor by day (with lite lunch fare); by night, the Chase Club. Works on so many levels, no? Chase Tower affords the most spectacular views of Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, and the most dramatic sunsets you’re ever likely to experience on the Jersey Shore. Who wouldn’t want to have cocktails and dinner here? One last dream-like connection to my maternal city: theaters. Every size. Every genre. In fact, every world-class city has stages for every taste and talent. Frank Chase designed a two-story appliance showroom so the electric company could sell products. It did until Trenton passed an anti-monopoly law that, ah, pulled the plug on that line of business. The second story featured a mezzanine. Chase Theater could be ideal as an incubator for original plays; a complement to the productions put on at the Crane House, and an entirely different performance space than the Paramount Theatre. Together with the offices that already have tenants, all these dreams make for the kind of vertical integration Asbury Park’s downtown could use. ************************************************ Crawfishers and Clamdiggers TK What do GQ's Alan Richman and Asbury Park City Councilman Jim Keady lately have in common? Both had to duck local wrath when it came to delivering bad news. ************************************************ Death and Taxes TK The academic year of 2006-7 was memorable for all the wrong reasons. I buried too many people I cared about from students to long-time friends, and my property taxes surged upwards to make up for years of political corruption in Trenton. ************************************************** Wither M.A.R.? What do I do with an Asbury Park restaurant story I was assigned, and paid, to write, but will probably never see the printed page, the result of the publication having gone AWOL? [hint: I have the article as a pdf.] In September I even gumshoed the offices over the old Woolworth building in downtown Red Bank, looking for the editorial staff. Nobody home. Nobody home in any of the other offices of the white-walled hallways, either. What's up with our (local) economy? ****************************************************** After the above was posted November 11, 2006, UPS made a delivery this past Friday. The box contained the latest edition of M.A.R. magazine with Donald Trump on the cover (reflecting the Mid-Atlantic Riviera's relocation to north Jersey, perhaps?). The Donald has a new project in Jersey City. Despite the cover promoting Vol. 3, Issue 3 as the New York, NY issue, on the inside pages you will find my round-up of Asbury Park restaurants chosen by M.A.R.. ***************************************************** Where is the Golem? TK My experiences in Asbury Park one long Thursday into night this past June. The destinations: A ballroom in The Berkeley-Carteret Hotel; Lloyd's table at the Adriatic Restaurant; the back row in the Baronet Theatre, and a bench at Asbury Lanes. It was the intersection of weird and ironic. As columnist Cindy Adams might write: Only in Asbury Park, kids, only in Asbury Park. The issue: how many of us are looking for a savior - whether it's in the northern sky or at the bottom of a bottle? *************************************************** Black Box Women's Festival Asbury Park, NJ [July 17, 2006] - Helen Pike will lead two writing workshops for the 2006 Women's Festival of the Arts in September. Both will be held at the Stephen Crane House Museum, Fourth Avenue. * Red-Hot Words by Red-Hatted Women * Jersey Chronicles Fees for both workshops: $10/ ************************************************************** March 26, 2006: A Theater Review by Helen Pike Washing the soul, the mind, and the material body is a ritual rich in symbolism. Through April 30 at the Lumia Theatre in Long Branch, Deborah Brevoort’s play “The Women of Lockerbie”, is as much about the cleansing of grief, fear, hatred, frustration, and anger as it is about laundry. Each emotion is introduced through individual vignettes before coming together for a collective expunging by the end of the 90-minute performance. Part drawing-room, part Greek chorus, part therapy, the play introduces four women who grappled with death when Pan-Am flight 103 exploded over their community to a mother still looking for anything remaining of her son on the seventh anniversary of the tragedy. The masculine view is supplied by her husband and a Washington bureaucrat ordered to burn the passengers’ effects warehoused on “the shelves of sorrow” at the conclusion of the governmental inquest. “Give love to those who have suffered so the evil won’t return” is the message of this award-winning play, a worthy exhortation given the geo political history which continues to link Americans to events in the Middle East. ************************************************************** "Musical Heritage Sought" The Coaster, March 9, 2006 By Helen Pike Philadelphia ragtime pianist Harvey Brooks was said to have changed the life of a teenage Duke Ellington at a chance encounter at the shore. The year was 1914. The location was the greater Springwood Avenue area. The mystery to be solved? Did it happen at the Carver Hotel? The Monmouth Housing Alliance (MHA), a non-profit development corporation, wants to know so it can plan a benefit concert later this spring to help renovate the famous address on Myrtle Avenue. The alliance is aiming high. Among the living legends who once stayed at the black American hotel in Neptune are Harry Belafonte, Fats Domino, and Lena Horne. Knowing there are musicians still living who performed with such late great hotel guests as Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton, the alliance is trying to make contact with those entertainers for the fund-raiser. “We hope they will agree to return to Asbury Park for a concert like no other that celebrates the jazz and music of the ‘40s and ‘50s,” said alliance member Ray Smith in a prepared statement. The MHA acquired the one-time hotel after a fire destroyed it in 1999. Construction plans are underway to convert the structure into 14 affordable apartments for active adults in the Neptune-Asbury Park community. Part of the work is being done with a loan of $112,350 from South Amboy Bank, a participant in the Federal Home Loan Bank Network of New York. The MHA was the only Monmouth County program to receive a loan from the bank’s affordable housing program initiative in 2005. Last operated as a boarding house by Helen Johnson, the Carver Hotel’s history is best recalled in Lenore Walker McKay’s book, “The Blacks of Monmouth County: A Bicentennial Tribute.” In her 1976 work, the late McKay included information about the Carver’s famous guests, as well as Howard University students who boarded there in the summer while working at resort jobs on the Asbury Park, Ocean Grove and Bradley Beach oceanfront. Among the hotel’s original investors and owners were Springwood Avenue electrician William Knuckles, Bangs Avenue Elementary School principal Highland Moore, and local entrepreneur Walter Upperman. The Carver was one of a number of black-owned and operated West Side businesses that catered to the African American travel market. In the 1948 edition of “The Negro Motorists Green Book”, the Carver was listed along with the Waverly Inn on DeWitt Avenue as the avenue’s two leading hotels. Smaller tourist homes were operated by Mrs. W. Greenlow on Summerfield Avenue; Mrs. Brown on Ridge Avenue; Mrs. C. Jones, on Sylvan Avenue, and E.C. Yeager on Mattison Avenue. Mrs. V. Maupin and Anna Easton had separate accommodations on Atkins Avenue. Anyone would has historic information; personal contact with the sought-after entertainers, or who would like to volunteer to help produce the event, please contact Smith at 732-747-1000 or the alliance at 732-289-2958. ****************************************************** "There Was Something About Mary" The Coaster, May 27, 2004 By Helen Pike Mary Theodora Walsh lived large. She laughed often, sang with heart, and danced all night. But when the 48-year-old quietly died alone over Mother’s Day weekend in her Ocean Grove home, it was up to her neighbors and former colleagues to write the coda of a life vividly lived by a friend and professional they will long remember. “ ‘Damn it, Meg, you threw a party and you didn’t call me’,” said Megan McCluskey, imaging Walsh’s reaction to what her friend of eight years had done in organizing the public memorial service. “Here’s to you, Mary. Everything’s okay now.” About 50 people attended the informal eulogy held May 20 at Clancy’s in Neptune. The sports bar she frequented was a fitting location across from the historic gates to the “dry” camp meeting association and just over the city line from Asbury Park where Walsh had begun her reporting career 25 years ago when the Asbury Park Press was on Mattison Avenue. “I will miss that laugh of hers,” said Janet Mazur, a former Press reporter recalled earlier, “that wild, uninhibited burst that ripped up the scale and caused heads to spin.” Walsh had an eye for vintage ‘50s fashion and many of her finds came from Dottie’s, a former second-hand clothing store then located on Mattison Avenue. According to Mazur, now a freelancer writer and instructor living in Ocean Grove, after front-office editors went home, Walsh provided entertaining fashion commentaries on her purchases for fellow reporters working their way through the long, sometimes tedious night shift in a decaying downtown. The Irish equivalent of Leslie Caron, the gamine-faced, blue-eyed Walsh was tall, slender, had dark red hair she sometimes spiked with gel, and enjoyed dancing. Remembering the “the circuit” of the 1980s and the rock and blues-infused rhythms of locally known bands, Mazur added, “She loved those Sunday nights at the Stone Pony.” Walsh also reveled in karaoke at Kelly’s, the older sister tavern to Clancy’s over on Route 35 in Neptune City, bringing down the house with her Ethel Merman rendition of “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” “She was always very effervescent,” recalled Neptune Township business administrator Phil Huhn who married Walsh when he had been mayor of Long Branch. Walsh covered that city early in Huhn’s tenure that ran from 1982 to 1990. “She was quick on the uptake. She understood municipal business (and) always was fair in her reporting.” “She didn’t fit the corporate mold,” said Jody Calendar, former Press executive editor who rehired Walsh at the shore paper from the Home News in New Brunswick. “She had passion. She was a great talent. She had a temper,’ conceded Calendar, who now conducts workshops for journalists around the country. “And, she had an enormous heart. There’s not a lot of that in journalism today.” In more recent years Walsh got her real estate license, selling local homes, including that of one-time Press news photographer Michael Rafferty of Long Branch. “She knew how to read a community,” said Rafferty from his studio in West End, “size it up, be a part of it, cover it, work it.” More recently still Walsh began contributing articles to this newspaper. The Philadelphia-born Walsh’s affiliation with Asbury Park went as far back as her elementary school days attending the now shuttered Holy Spirit Lyceum on Third Avenue and Bond Street where among the aspirations she had in common with her classmates was becoming a cheerleader. “She had the best cartwheel in town,” said Denise Marano Nadel who now lives in White Plains, N.Y.. “We wore pettipants under our blue plaid uniforms and hers were in psychedelic colors.” A 1973 graduate of Red Bank Catholic High School, Walsh then was graduated from Chestnut Hill College, a small Catholic liberal arts institution founded by the Sisters of Saint Joseph in northwest Philadelphia. Walsh was an early morning fixture on the Ocean Grove boardwalk, her silver mug filled with coffee from Freedman’s Bakery on Main Avenue and her friendly, shaggy, gray-haired dog, Buddy, faithfully trotting by her side. She leaves two cats still in need of a home. Out of respect for Walsh’s love of animals, donations can be made to the SPCA shelter in Eatontown. Divorced, Walsh left a widowed mother, a married sister, a niece and a nephew. She also left a host of friends, neighbors, and former newspaper co-workers with vivid memories of one of their own who lived larger than life. ****************************************************** The Boston Herald: "My City Revives" May 2002 By Helen Pike It was December. Outside, the weather was cold and dank. The resort skyline, tattered and bleak. Residential streets had a haunted look, locked in the grip of a bankrupt builder. Inside Convention Hall, Bruce Springsteen sang a eulogy for the city that made him famous with his first record album cover, "Greetings From Asbury Park". The song was "My City of Ruins". Eighteen months later after a City Hall election, the arrival of a new developer financed by Wall Street, plus efforts of Springsteen fans worldwide to save the architectural icons of his songs, and it's a whole new score in Asbury Park. For the first time in recent memory, the music is back. And not just rock and roll. From blues to opera, the sounds that made Asbury Park a must-be 20th century destination for performers and listeners, alike, are overpowering the sounds of silence that filled much of the '90s. "Driving in you see different things, said Jeanne Coleman, a claims adjuster who came eight and a half hours from Cleveland for the Asbury Music Festival on Memorial Day Saturday. "There's all kinds of construction. People are playing in the park, others are walking to the beach." Added Coleman, who was in the crowd when Springsteen debuted "My City of Ruins" in 2000, "It was summer again, the way it used to be." Founded born-again brush maker James A. Bradley in 1870, Asbury Park still has a crepuscular look with vacant buildings and blocks of debris-filled vacant blocks. But the sounds of gentrification are unmistakable, and there's music beyond the boardwalk. Sharing the block with a tattoo parlor, Spanish travel agency and take-out Chinese and Mexican restaurants, The Saint, an alternative rock club on Main Street. Although the corner entrance at Munroe Avenue is still crowned with the former bar's signature shamrock, inside it's pure hyphenated rock. In its embryonic days, Creed played here. So did Jewell. Going into the Memorial Day weekend, the Mexican pop stars Kinky and South African metallists Seether were on the bill. Later this summer owner Scott Stamper has booked, among others, Crockpot, Fluxx and Maybe Pete. Stamper is also trying out a new acoustic series. It's a night of no smoking, pastries, coffee and folding chairs. Listed as the Asbury Café, the unplugged nights kicked off with the Be Good Tanyas from Canada. Not quite the entertainment Bradley had in mind when he named the resort for the first Methodist bishop in colonial America, but times have changed. North on Main Street, which does double duty as state highway number 71, is the Crossroads Bar. Years ago it had a country western twang and was known as the Wagon Wheel. Then it became a bikers' bar. This spring it emerged behind its painted brown and brick façade between Third and Fourth Avenues as an edgy blues club, featuring long-time Shore musicians who have day jobs as tradesmen. Sonny Kenn, Ken Sorenson as Stringbean and the Stalkers, and Billy Ryan are some of the names to look for. About two years ago the art-gallery-as-performance-space scene started to take root in Asbury Park's downtown that saw foot traffic leave after suburban shopping malls proliferated in the early '60s. Storefronts that once showcased men's and women's clothing now house Be Gallery, the Asbury Arts Center, El Negro Lobo and Divine Madness. On any given weekend night the sounds of smooth jazz, shock rock and the occasional blues rift come spilling out of the doorways framed by construction scaffolds. Even the beatnick cadence of poetry has found a home at the gay-friendly Insomnia Café. Sonny's Southern Cuisine in the old Seacoast Trust is trying out soul music in a supper club format on Saturday nights to complement its soul food. While the legendary rock club circuit around Kingsley Street and Ocean Avenue continues to fade as the long-delayed beachfront redevelopment takes hold, the bar-and-band scene has pockets of preservation. The most notable is The Stone Pony that Springsteen made famous after he began gaining national attention. The Pony ignominiously ended its glory days as a mosh pit on Ocean at Second. But due to the outrageous promotional efforts of Cuban-born, Jersey City restauranteur Domenic Santana who now owns it, the Pony is once again a stop on the club circuit between New York and Philadelphia. Talent scouts have returned to check out the action. The club's been auditioning for a house band. Actors Russell Crowe and Kevin Bacon brought their ensembles here. Ronnie Spector is coming back. Gary U.S. Bonds and Clarence "Big Man" Clemons are weighing in for the July Fourth weekend. Arena rock remains a mainstay at the exuberantly tiled and styled beaux arts Paramount Theater and Convention Hall designed by the civic architects who did Grand Central Station in New York. Built to straddle the boardwalk between Fifth and Sunset avenues nine years after Bradley died in 1921, their exteriors are undergoing restoration. Inside their stages have held everyone from Maria Von Trapp to Frankie Lymon to the Rolling Stones. "I'm trying to reclaim history," said one-time horn player Tony Pallagrosi who booked his former boss, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, as the closer for the Saturday festival that drew close to 3,000 people. In 1995 when he turned concert promoter, Pallagrosi booked the then-unknown No Doubt. Now he's lined up Jimmy Eat World, the next-expected break-out band, for July, along with the established Judas Priest and a rejuvenated Elvis Costello. "Asbury Park is a tabula rasa," Pallagrosi added. "People have come from Hawaii, Germany, Russia, Australia. They want to shape the music scene " That's why Bob Crane who lives outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland came. As co-founder of the Save Tillie Campaign, the Springsteen fan group hoping to adapt the shuttered Palace Amusements used in E Street Band promo photos and music videos, Crane and his crew were signing up supporters on Saturday. "These are the people who care about the places in Asbury Park," said Crane, talking with out-of-staters from Virginia, Minnesota and Ohio. "They are the force in music tourism at the Shore." With the backing of the current mayor who is a drummer and a city business owner, summer visitors will also be able to hear music outside, much of it free. Sunset Park, which fronts the Paramount, is the setting for a series of nightly concerts and weekend festivals, beginning with a municipal band tradition started nearly 100 years ago by John Phillips Sousa trombonist Arthur Pryor. Extending east six blocks to Main Street and complete with a statue of Bradley, a lake and a spray fountain, the tree-filled Sunset Park hosts the annual weekend Jazz Fest whose headliners this year are Kim Waters, the Slam Allen Band and True Worship Gospel Choir on June 29 and 30. Despite the reconstruction cranes surrounding the Grand Avenue bridge that bisects the park, Pete Seeger's enviro-folk music and arts and crafts show known as the Clearwater Festival returns August 17 and 18. Springsteen put in a surprise appearance here last year, joining musicians on stage for an impromptu sing-along. And then there are the enthusiasts who like their metal music on asphalt. Pallagrosi is bringing back the Vans Warped Tour to the parking lot between the formal red brick Berkeley Carteret Hotel (itself trying to revive its cocktail lounge) and the tall yellow brick tower that is a seniors residence. There are 39 bands scheduled for August 10, including MXPX, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Bad Religion. How and where the music scene will shift for next year is still undecided as wrecking balls and dump trucks continue to clear out the Asbury Park of old. Oceanfront condo development is around the corner. But what appears clear is a reborn determination that music can be viable again in Springsteen's beloved city. SIDEBAR: Horned Helmets and Double Chins A fickle man and two women. Tragic romance. Love and family honor. The proposed rock opera "Drive All Night" based on Springsteen classics? No. The classics of opera: "Carmen", "La Boheme" and "Lucia di Lammermour". If you like your musical theater pre-Andrew Lloyd Weber, then the Metro Lyric is for you. As it has since 1959, the company whose choir is largely drawn from the voice students of Madame Era Tognoli takes up residence in the Paramount Theater for a series of Saturday night performances. Octogenarian Anton Coppola -- yes, of that Coppola film family -- returns as this summer's guest conductor. Also coming back is leading lady Shannah Timms, a vivacious soprano heralded as a rising star in 1998 who is now singing with the New York City Opera. She will be partnered with three different men, including Kevin Short, a bass from nearby Ocean Grove who grew up singing in gospel choirs and was a high school varsity jock before switching to the classics and landing on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera. Joining Short will be two bass baritones, Richard Hobson who debuted with the Met in 1999 and freelancer Stefan Szkafarowsky. Curtain is at 8:15 p.m. Ticket prices start at $20. Phone: 732-531-2378 or go on line to www.MetroLyric.com.  Raised in Long Branch, now a resident of Ocean Grove, Stroby left the "Asbury Park Press" around the time it was sold to Gannett Corp. in 1997 and went to work for the Newark Star-Ledger. The Coaster, May 5, 2005 By Helen Pike Crime readers met Harry Rane, a former state trooper down on his luck, in “The Barbed-Wire Kiss”, in the 2003 literary debut by aspiring noir novelist Wallace Stroby. The Ocean Grove resident’s freshman effort drew critical acclaim. This year, devotees of the crime genre get a chance to reconnect with Rane in “The Heartbreak Lounge”, Stroby’s second book that is set in the “desolate grandeur” that was Asbury Park’s more recent past. Written for St. Martin’s Minotaur, it, too, is drawing strong, positive response from critics. Readers will now have a chance to meet Rane’s creator as Stroby will be on hand to sign copies of his new book from 8 to 10 p.m. for First Saturday Night at Antic Hay Books, 721 Cookman Avenue. “I read non-stop,” Stroby said, “and gravitate towards crime fiction.” Dashiell Hammett, the one-time-detective turned crime novelist, invented the hardboiled genre, and Stroby credits the author of “The Maltese Falcon” as his seminal influence. “He was very connected to real life,” said Stroby, a former reporter for the “Asbury Park Press” who is now a features editor for “The Star-Ledger” in Newark. As much as crime fiction is about righting wrongs, Stroby observed, there is a lot written in noir novels that’s about the futility of good intentions. “Crime writing allows you to explore that in a structured way,” he said. Born and raised in Long Branch, Stroby regards the shore as “a place about which there’s a lot to write. I wanted [“The Heartbreak Lounge”] to be rooted in geography that wasn’t going to be there.” He added, “When you’ve grown up here, you know what goes on behind what everybody sees [and] the towns have pretty interesting histories.” Stroby also wanted to write about state troopers because they are so strongly associated with New Jersey’s image and culture. Rane “had to be somebody who could do certain things,” he explained, and those skills can be found in law enforcement officers. “The Heartbreak Lounge” is a double helix story line of two men, two women and what happens when one wants to find the son put up for adoption and the other tries to stop him. Stroby is already writing a third book involving Rane and the shore. He also has a short story included in an anthology slated for summer release based on a Bruce Springsteen song, “Meeting Across the River”. “Lovers in the Cold” is set in 1974 in Bradley Beach. "Bradley Beach Author Debuts First Novel, The Sound of My Voice" The Coaster, April 14, 2005 By Helen Pike For 15 years, journalist Jo Kadlecek, has reported on trends and issues regarding higher education, race relations, the arts and religion. The more she covered the latter two, the more she saw a growing tension between the next generation of post-modern artists and traditional evangelical Christians. “I wanted to see if there was a way to bring these two groups together,” Kadlecek said, “so they might begin to understand just how connected through the gifts of creativity and a common purpose they really are.” “The Sound of My Voice”, slated for release next month by Random House, tells the story of an aspiring playwright who leaves her Southern home to pursue her passion in New York — without the blessing of her father who is a minister. The daughter and father struggle to find their unique voices, and what emerges is a shared grief from the past that neither is prepared for. A public reading of her book is in the planning stages for the third weekend in May at Avon Cards, Books & Gifts. While “The Sound of My Voice” is Kadlecek’s first effort at fiction, she is a seasoned professional at authoring books. Living in Harlem for eight years prior to moving to the shore, Kadlecek helped four known metropolitan church activists write their autobiographies. She co-authored another book and wrote four other works of non-fiction. In 2001 Random House published her memoir, “Fear: A Spiritual Navigation” which explores the courage she found to overcome her reaction to water. “I learned a lot about writing from teaching it,” explained Kadlecek, who holds two masters degrees, one in communications and the other in the humanities. She has taught in her native Colorado, in Mississippi, here in New Jersey, and for the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York. She has also coached women’s college soccer. Of Czech descent and married to Australian journalist Chris Gilbert, Kadlecek added, “I love telling stories. “I’ll be a happy woman if I can continue to spend my days writing stories that offer a bit of reprieve and encouragement to folks in a world that's often full of really hard things.” Already she is editing her first manuscript in a mystery trilogy she conceived for Random House. Due next winter, “Sitting on a Mile” follows a quirky religion reporter who is, in Kadlecek’s own words, “looking for good news and a good man.” |
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