July 4, 2018 parade on Main Avenue. Paul Goldfinger photo. © Click for more gams. (This word is from a long extinct language spoken by peoples who once populated the place where New Jersey now exists.)
By Paul Goldfinger MD. Editor Blogfinger.net. Repost since 2022.
Despite being ignored by the Neptuners, the Camp Meeting, the Home Groaners, and the Chamber of Commercials, the town of Ocean Grove, with its history as well as its changing demographics, now has a recognizable and mixed culture of its own, distinct from the historic theocratic and monochromatic one which now is defined by religious programming and tourism.
That newly evolving culture is inhabited by second homers, neighbors, families, porchers (the alfresco crowd,) retirees, renters, gays, teenagers, twenty-thirty somethings, Asbury Park aficionados, small children, beachers in season, artists, writers, pickle ballers, singles, gardeners, surfers, fishermen, home cooks, athletes, musicians, minorities/people of color, bicyclers, and others. Most of them can be called “secular.”
It’s too bad that this dynamic mix in the Grove isn’t identified as an actual community. If it were, those who actually live here could surface as the “OG Underground” and wear T shirts because they are now the majority in the Grove.
Blogfinger has been photographing and writing about this group since our founding in 2009, but it has yet to be formally recognized by Neptune Township at the Mother Ship. Their cultural blurry vision could be corrected if the Grover majority were to exert some pressure.
We have tried to shine a light on the Grove as a place where people actually live as opposed to a place that sometimes looks like a State Fair ground, where events are held for the benefit of tourists, merchants, religious leaders, sellers of junk, and British car mavens. If the mix in this town, including the special CMA component, were recognized and polished, this could become one of the most fascinating small towns in America.
At least Asbury has a focus on cuisine, youth, art, and music, and they are attracting Grovers to their culture because of the deficiencies in ours.
And Jean Bredin, with her “Around Town With Jean” series on Blogfinger has been uncovering that Grovarian cultural evolution.
THE YOUNG RASCALS:
Anything the CMA does is stale. Nothing is forward thinking and nothing is done for the people that actually live here.
Their singular goal is programming literally and figuratively.
Where’s the investment in the town? It certainly doesn’t reflect the demographic.