Main Avenue, Ocean Grove. PG photo. Click once to view full screen; then back arrow.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
Saturday, June 23: It seems that Ocean Grove is coming alive in a major way, and it’s only a Saturday in June. For those of you who didn’t get here today, there were sunshine and happiness all over the place, from porch gatherings, beach goings, bike riding, barbecuing, schmoozing and yakking, eating (specifically hot dogs at the GA and strawberries at the Auditorium Pavilion), ogling, shopping, fiddling (Violin Academy of OG in the pavilion), making (out), posturing, perambulating, playing, and parking.
It seemed like a perfect storm of people, fun, and energy at this rejuvenated Jersey Shore beach town, energized by evolving demographics.
Each year since the turn of the century, the Grove has become more and more alive, as if it now has reached a critical mass and has turned a corner. If anyone ever again calls it “Ocean Grave,” he should be tied up and paraded down Main Avenue by a band of teen- age girls in bikinis, the Kazoo Band from Days, the kids violin ensemble, the commenters from Blogfinger, a couple of drag queens, and finally fifty or more screeching children with their dogs. (If you want to suggest other participants in this “turning the corner parade,” just comment below.)
This summer will probably be pretty wild, so hold onto your hats, your beach chairs, your bikes and your martinis, because OG has arrived.
Meanwhile, here is the tail-end of the Strawberry Festival at about 7 p.m. in the Auditorium Pavilion. The audience for the evening concert (The B Street Band—only three letters away from E—–an actual rock concert in the GA) is starting to arrive, the water sellers are setting up, live classical music drifts off among the ocean breezes, all mingling with the voices of happy people all over the place.
OG has definitely rounded a bend and is facing a bright future.
June 1, 2017. This year the Strawberry Festival is to be held on Saturday, June 24. —Paul
Reblogged this on Blogfinger and commented:
this is a fun celebration of June 1 in Ocean Grove—-2012 By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
Thank you OGHA for all of your hard work prior to my arrival. I bought my house in OG last year and could not be happier. I am grateful to those whose hard work and perseverence has made OG such a wonderful place for me and my family!
Thank you Paul. I bit my tongue, and walked away, but you posted everything I wanted to say.
Recently, while cleaning up my basement I came across a poster that adds credence to the end of the 1990’s as a date in Ocean Grove’s turnaround.The poster announces a “NEW YEARS EVE 2000 OCEAN GROVE CELEBRATION listing: CAMP MEETING ASSOCIATION, CHAMBER of COMMERCE, HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, HISTORICAL SOCIETY,as sponsers with a TOWNSHIP OF NEPTUNE logo. The image of the GA indicates the event was held there. I recall a huge snowstorm forced cancellation of the next year’s celebration.
Paul, Thank you for setting the record straight on the OGHOA’s contribution to turning Ocean Grove around. I have been a HOA member since the late 1980’s and witnessed first hand the long, hard fought battle by its leadership pressing Municipal, County and State governments and Boards to enforce existing Laws, Rules and Regulations. Even NEW State Legislation was passed during Gov. Whitman’s time (thanks to Neptune’s friend Sen. Palia) that funded buyouts of some of the worst places “warehousing” the unfortunates dumped there. The OGHOA successfully lobbied the Township to include zoning restrictions and higher standards on commercial, hotel and condo development into the 2000 Master Plan. The lasting value of that effort alone has resulted in an upgrading which makes the Grove so attractive.
ken.
Opinionated: You don’t know your OG history, and your assertion cannot be backed up by facts. In 2002, a scientific study was published in the Journal of Historical Geography (28,4 (2002) 589 by Prof. Karen Schmelzkopf of Monmouth University. She reviewed Ocean Groves’s history in great detail.
The turnaround that began in the 1990’s, according to her, could be totally credited to the OG Homeowner’s Association, at that time a group of 1,000 with an aggressive group of leaders. I cannot give you chapter and verse now, but below is a paragraph from that paper.
“By the end of the 1990s, the HOA had fulfilled many of their goals: property values
had risen, the number of deinstitutionalized had been dramatically decreased, crime had dropped, and tourists were coming back to Ocean Grove. Financially comfortable
empty-nesters and retirees, along with professionals, academics, and artists in their
twenties and thirties including a growing gay population were moving in.”
As for my observations, I have seen this town become livelier, more beautiful, more interesting, and more diverse every year since about 2000. It seems to me that it is peaking now—thus the reference to “turning a corner.” The truth is that the corner has been gradually turning, as you point out, for some time, but change is accelerating and maybe we should celebrate the change and analyze it properly and fairly.
As for looking like any other shore town, Ocean Grove has NEVER looked like any other shore town, and our citizens are, hopefully, committed to keeping it unique.
My opinion: The moribund path of this town toward its ocean grave was reversed some 15-20 years ago when some courageous gay people saw the value of its architecture, intimate setting and visual charm. They homesteaded here, bringing in money, pioneering friends (gay and straight), investment. That change singly reversed the decay, and initiated the renaissance we see today.
You feel “Ocean Grove has arrived”? In my opinion, OG is becoming less and less what it was meant to be – a unique shore town dedicated for spiritual rest and renewal. Why must OG become like all the other shore towns?