Creepers

4

Asbury Park was founded in 1871 by James Bradley, a New York manufacturer, who named the community after Francis Asbury, the bishop who established Methodism in America. Bradley chose the ocean resort's location because it was convenient to get to from New York to the north and Philadelphia to the west. Methodists established summer homes there, attracted by the shaded streets and the grand churches. The city's three lakes and numerous parks were ideal places for strolls and family picnics.

By the early 1900s, the mile-long boardwalk was the pride of the Jersey shore. When thousands of vacationers weren't lying on the beach or splashing in the water, they ate salt-water taffy and visited the copper-and-glass carousel house or else the Palace Amusements building, where they rode the Scooter, the Twister, the Tunnel-of-Love boat, a merry-go-round, and a Ferris wheel. Ignoring the Methodist foundations of the community, many also went to the ornate casino that now occupied the southern end of the boardwalk.

Through the first World War, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, and most of the second World War, Asbury Park flourished. But in 1944, symbolizing what was to come, a hurricane destroyed much of the area. Rebuilt, the resort strove for its former greatness, straining to keep it during the 1950s and almost retaining it during the 1960s when rock concerts filled the boardwalk's Convention Hall. Walls that had felt the swaying chords of Harry James and Glenn Miller now reverberated with the pounding rhythms of The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones.

But in 1970, Asbury Park could no longer resist its decline. While rock and roll was a force of the times, so were Vietnam, anti-war protests, and race riots. The latter stormed through Asbury Park, smashing windows, overturning cars, looting, and setting fires that spread until the flames gutted the community. Thereafter, local families fled the devastation while vacationers migrated to newer spots along the shore. In their place came the counterculture: hippies, musicians, bikers. Then-unknown Bruce Springsteen often played in local clubs, singing about the desperation of the boardwalk and the urge to head down the road.

In the 1980s and 1990s, political instability and real-estate bankruptcy doomed efforts to rebuild the community. As more residents fled, entire blocks became uninhabited. The Palace Amusements building, dating back to 1888, practically synonymous with Asbury Park, succumbed to the wrecking ball in 2004. The decaying boardwalk was deserted, as was the famous Circuit in which bikers and hot-rodders once cruised north on Ocean Avenue, sometimes at sixty miles an hour. In the old days, they veered west for a block, then roared south on Kingsley Avenue, slid east for a block, and resumed their race north on Ocean. No more. Gone. A visitor could stand all day in the middle of Ocean Avenue and never fear being struck.

The rubble and ruin resembled the aftermath of a war zone. Although 17,000 people claimed to be residents of Asbury Park, it was rare to see any of them in the blight of the beach area where, a hundred years earlier, a multitude of vacationers frolicked. In place of carousel music and children's giggles, a loose piece of sheet metal banged in the wind, a clang of doom from an uncompleted ten-story condominium building. Evidence of the city's dismal renewal effort, the project ran out of money. Like the historic buildings around it-the few that remained-the development was abandoned.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.