Ocean Grove demographics—changing for the better. Paul Goldfinger photo. © June 26, 2015.   Click to enlarge.

By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger

Ever since we first moved to OG, 2002, I have been interested in the town’s demographics. The census produces dry data, so it doesn’t really wrap it’s numerical mitts around the actual life of a town.

I wanted to know who lives here, who are the newbies, and what trends are developing. Would it be possible to deduce what kinds of people are living here or even visiting here, and how is it all changing over time?  Can we use indicators derived by just looking around ?

My first impression of the Grove was when I went to a medical conference at Jersey Shore around 1990.   It was after they introduced heart surgery there, and Archie Roberts, MD, the former Columbia University quarterback turned cardiac surgeon was presenting a seminar.   I arrived early, so I drove due east to the ocean. “What kind of place is this.?” I thought. It was winter, and I didn’t see a soul.

It seemed so gray and dreary. I parked facing the ocean and took a nap. Then I left, quickly forgetting the town called Ocean Grove.

When we bought a weekend place here in 1998, we did so because our son was renting in the Grove, and we had been observing the town and could see a positive evolution.

Some of the early signs that I noticed included young men in boat shoes and no socks buying the NY Times at the newsstand on Sunday mornings.   I also saw that more kids and teenagers were visible in the summer.   When we moved near Firemen’s Park, I watched the sorts of dogs that were being walked and by whom. Young families appeared in the Park and played soccer and Wiffle ball. Girls did  somersaults. Little boys and girls rode bikes and wore helmets.  One dad, who had purchased a Victorian home for weekends, was running after his daughter, teaching her to ride a 2 wheeler. And read the labels:  Tommy Bahama is on the beach.

I thought that money was coming into town, and you could see how new owners were improving their run-down homes. Many of the streets looked pretty crummy until, all over town, change was apparent.

Relax with Tommy Bahama on the OG beach. June 26, 2015. Blogfinger photo ©

This all looked like a positive development, but it wasn’t just money–it was diversity. I met all sorts of smart and interesting people moving here and I saw that even the tourists seemed to be more sophisticated as time went by.  I met university professors, artists, Broadway stage directors,  medical school faculty members, authors, actors,  lawyers,  newspaper editors, nursing instructors,  book publishers, healthcare experts, radio personalities,  tech innovators, and even a guy who used to be starring in the Fantasticks—Sullivan Street Playhouse in the Village—-and so many more.

Ocean Grove was growing in popularity every year, and the indicators pointed in the same direction. You really didn’t need a weather man to tell which way the wind was blowing.*

And there were other indicators to identify gentrification, and I believed that it was a good thing to a point, especially when no one , I thought, should be able to build a McMansion in the Grove, and the town had so much history, period architecture and cultural infrastructure that it couldn’t become the Hamptons which once had been mostly potato farms.

But I also enjoyed watching the cars. I can’t fix a car, but I love cars, and you could see the gradual upgrading of automobiles in the Grove. Around me are a bunch of ultimate driving machines: BMW’s. There are two Z-4’s on my block alone. Another second homer around the corner has a BMW M-3, a powerful racing sedan. A new red Porsche 911 convertible sailed down Main Avenue yesterday.

A Mercedes CLA 250 on Mt. Tabor Way last week. Blogfinger.net photo ©

Such cars were rare in OG, but now you can find Corvettes, Jaguars, Lexus, Mercedes, and many other elegant and high performance vehicles parked on our narrow streets and without garages. There’s one Grover who drives a Rolls Royce, but that is truly rare.

Of course, most cars here are ordinary sorts of vehicles, but it’s fun to look at the indicators that reflect people.  It seems like we have inevitable change in our town, but it is the kind that enriches and adds dimension to a place with  a historic foundation that I believe most of  us want to preserve.

But if we are not vigilant, the effort to keep OG’s fragile roots and foundations  alive could be lost.  Rev. Osborn, who founded OG went to Australia and founded another religious community called Ocean Grove. Today it is a haven for surfers.

Ocean Grove: Let’s keep it!  Blogfinger photo June 22, 2015 ©

* Bob Dylan quote from the “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

BOB DYLAN:  “Where Are You?”   From his album Shadows in the Night