Ocean Avenue parking glut at 8:30 am on an OG Sunday. ©

Paul Goldfinger,  Editor@Blogfinger. net

It’s Sunday, July 26, 2020, at 8:30 am.  The beach is closed and so is the downtown. There are no discernible CMA events now, although later this morning there will be a Great Auditorium service attended by 100* spaced out worshippers.  And there will be a service in the Boardwalk Pavilion in 30  minutes, but so far that venue is nearly empty.   This does promise to be a terrific beach day,  but not for another four hours.

Normally when I come down to the boards on a Sunday at 8:30 am, there are plenty of parking spaces, but now there are far fewer available spaces than usual. There are quite a few walkers on the boards, but nothing approaching a crowd.

Granted this is one of the 4 peak weekends of the season, but something is missing from the equation.

I have to assume that many of those spaces were reserved yesterday or even on Friday.   Someone told me that the diagonal spaces on Ocean Avenue are supposed to be for beach tourists, since many Grovers walk to the beach.

But this strikes me as needing an explanation.  Any ideas?

Since Pres. Badger of the CMA has been sounding off about Ocean Grove parking in the Coaster and the Asbury Park Press, it seems that this conversation is incomplete.  He never mentions the CMA programming when he discusses the “diverse parking requirements of OG.”  (Coaster July 23, 2020).

This is Camp Meeting Week starting today, so is that an issue? And he has been very nonspecific when mentioning that “the number of people coming to the beach has increased dramatically this year.”  But has the number on the beach really increased dramatically, especially when that number is restricted and normally it is not?

He also blames those who are renting in town. This is what he said: “Summer rentals  in OG have to be for at least 31 days, and that has brought more cars into OG.”    So he thinks that those who rent for one month or more would bring more cars than from those who would have rented for less than 31 days.  Really?  Does he have any proof of such assertions?  Or is he reading tea leaves at the OG Tea House?

The reason Blogfinger keeps blabbing about parking here, is that parking is an endlessly fascinating problem, now with a “nationally recognized” planner prowling about town and gaining data despite all the variables and shifting sands. It is an issue that has defied solutions over the years, even as OG has become more and more popular, with more and more cars, and with a little help from our friends: the free parking explorers from A. Park

Read the comments from our parking article the other day regarding the Coaster piece.  Ray Sutera said that trying to provide more spaces is not going to work, but we at Blogfinger have been saying for years that a real solution  would involve reducing the numbers of cars coming to town—basic math, worthy of an SAT question.  We could make things much better by reducing the sucking sound of tourism coming into the Grove and redefining  the very nature of our version of “small town America.”

We need to change our priorities as is suggested by THE CHIMES, a group from an era when going to the beach did not require programming.

“If there’s a cloud above,

if it should rain we’ll let it”

“Heaven is in your eyes.”

THE CHIMES

The CMA petitioned * the Governor to allow more than 100 visitors at services in the GA,. but evidently that request is currently denied.