a. This magic moment:
2 days after Labor Day the OG beach is hot, sunny and nearly empty. Some say that September is the best time to go to the beach. Paul Goldfinger photo 9/5/18 ©
September 5, 2018. Paul Goldfinger photo ©
The day after Labor Day is magical, year after year, because you wake up and find Brigadoon: much fewer people, plenty of parking, some leaves on the ground predict the September Song or September in the Rain, no kids around, sometimes a breath of autumn (but not today,) and perceptibly less cars on the roads including definitely fewer with New York plates.
So let’s celebrate with Marvin Gaye:
b. Site stats: September 3, 1,114 visits. Most popular topics: Are you crazy? Jason Tramm triumphs, Nonsense and hot air from the HOA breakfast, and musical moments in the Great Auditorium. And 19 foreign countries visited the site including Serbia, Sweden, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Belgium.
And a sample link from last year:
An old photo from the BF archives. A portrait of Eileen in 2013. I bought that hat directly from China on an impulse. But when it came I hated it. Eileen wore it once in Ocean Grove, in this portrait:
2015. Blogfinger portrait. Eileen the hat check girl.
AL SIMMONS:
As an OG people watcher, I look for certain indices as to what’s going on over time. For example, in 1998, there were few small children and teenagers seen around town. Now, happily, that is much different.
One index I like to study are the types of cars which, according to my subjective observations, are increasingly high-end. This goes with the increased demographic of well-to-do second homers.
The license plate index has shown a progressive increase in the number of NY plates seen within the Grove, as has also been noticed in Asbury Park. This observation has nothing to do with driving skills; it is only a reflection of demographic changes.
The second part of the license plate observation is that there are more NY plates seen in the vicinity of Ocean Grove—on the highways and shopping parking lots. These NY drivers tend to be more aggressive in their driving techniques—tail gating, cutting in and out, speeding, talking on cell phones and otherwise being obnoxious.
There’s some risky driving within OG, such as speeding, running stop signs, going wrong on one way streets, and not stopping at intersections for pedestrians and even for crossing guards, but I don’t see any license plate correlations with such bad driving habits in town. —Paul
Mmmm never heard the term Benny before but will keep my ears open. Not going to defend NY. drivers or say much about the affinity for N.J. drivers to pass on the right -a regular occurence on the GSP.
However you are correct about not being a true NYer. I was born in Bergen County. Raised in CT, we regularly lamented about those “horrible Massachusetts’ drivers”!
We are really enjoying the post Labor Day calm and being able to pull up in front of the cottage and unload my Wegmans groceries.
Lori: Did you ever hear of Benny’s? “Benny is a pejorative term used by year-round residents of the Jersey Shore to describe stereotypically rude, flashy, loud tourists from North Jersey and New York.”
But my reference was not about NY plates in OG, but rather the NY cars all over the place at the shore, and they are excessively aggressive, rude, and dangerous.
You meet them in the Wegman’s parking lot where they misbehave every day.
But you can’t be a real New Yorker, because your skin is too thin.—-Paul
I must take umbrage with the last line of your” Magic Moment” in Wassup. There was an inference that “now” there would be less cars with NY license plates and that would be a good thing.
Of course I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean me since I live on Broadway, the favored thoroughfare for day trippers, Academy buses and trucks. It’s the street where drivers feel it’s OK to barrel up the road in speeds they could never achieve on the narrow side streets of our town; I see these vehicles and they don’t have NY license plates.
My car does; I live here and in Manhattan. The influx of cars each summer, many of which are one-day-only-beachgoers parking on Broadway are almost always from elsewhere in NJ.
I would suspect when you see a car with NY plates, the owners of the vehicle either own a cottage here or are renting a house in which case the owners of that property are not in residence so the cars should be an even exchange.
Streets with inns and hotels do have to deal with extra cars and traffic but at least the cars can’t speed up the street the way they do on Broadway.
Thanks to the Neptune Police Dept. for the HUGE sign stating this is a RESIDENTIAL AREA, SLOW DOWN, SPEED LIMIT 25mph has helped quite a bit.