Fantasy parking garage in OG. Another symptom of OOGPDS.
From Linda:
Neptune/CMA clearly missed the boat. Using eminent domain, they could have taken the property from the Jersey Shore Arts Center to Broadway. Then, built a 3 story parking garage with easy access to Route 71. Charge for parking.
Run shuttles to beach and auditorium.
Of course, this paid lot for visitors would bring in millions of dollars if the visitors were offered no free parking in Ocean Grove, the entire town for resident parking and friends or family of residents (with special passes).
Editor’s note: This sort of idea is nothing new. Here is a link to a Blogfinger post from 2014 which has something similar to say, only better:
Found on the window of a Grover’s car parallel parked legally. July, 2018
By Paul Goldfinger, MD
At first glance this may seem to be a Dead Sea Scroll. But actually it is a note left on the windshield of an Ocean Grove resident. The resident had been away and left her car for two weeks parked near her home. The writer mistakenly seems to believe that he is somehow entitled to have the parking space in front of his house reserved for him.
He also seems to be psychic, seemingly assuming that the car could not possibly belong to a Grover. “We’re tight on spaces here.” The writer’s tone is pleasant, but the content is not, since he assumes that the owner is neither “kind” nor “considerate.” The writer is more than mistaken—-the writer is delusional and a victim of OOGPDS (Obsessive OG Parking Derangement Syndrome.)
In another incident recently the owner of a building on Lake Avenue, who rents his apartments to Airbnb customers, was screaming (according to an eye witness) at people who wanted to park nearby, accusing them of being Asburian interlopers who shouldn’t park in OG “for free.” He wanted the spaces for his renters.
We have been posting a steady stream of “games people play” as they fight the “parking wars” in the Grove. The craziness that people engage in is well known including innovative ways to save spaces, putting cones or other objects in spaces, taking advantage of handicapped spots or driveways to save spaces, creatively spacing cars to get two spaces out of one, or fixating on those who park in the Grove and then march into A. Park
In another recent incident, a woman set up a chair in a parking space, reading a book while protecting the space, waiting for her out-of-state visitor to arrive.
The bottom line is that people in Ocean Grove do something that most residents of other towns do not do: they obsess on parking issues when the town is crowded, or even when it is not. I lived in about seven different towns before moving here, and I never gave parking a second thought. Now I find myself strategizing to get and keep a space, while later getting to drive somewhere such as a grocery store or a pharmacy, and then returning to find a space (fat chance!)
Many Grovers are incapacitated, held captive, by the parking quest, leaving their cars irreversibly parked all weekend. They exhibit obsessive/compulsive behavior, watching the coming and going of parkers and trying to figure out what they are up to (“I bet they are going to the Beer Hall in Asbury where they will make noise on the roof and then weave back to the Grove noisily to find their vehicles and to make me miserable. at 3 am”)
One person I know leaves her car parked all weekend while taking cabs to and from work. Another changed her church so as not to have to drive on Sunday in OG.
The end result of the syndrome, besides obsessive-compulsive behavior is paranoia, hysteria, delusions, crazy eyes, anger, anxiety, condescending speech (“Try to be considerate,”) aggression, depression, self-pity, fantasizing (eg throwing someone’s motor bike into the Lake,) xenophobia, or Asburyphobia. It is tempting to see young people parking in the Grove on a Saturday night and imagining that they are a bunch of dissolute dot.com millionaires or perhaps some gays going to the Empress, or horney 20 somethings heading to the land of milk and honeys. Or maybe you have noticed some other manifestations of this syndrome. Please comment below.
The OOGPDS (Obsessive OG Parking Derangement Syndrome) can be disabling and can be cured by selling your car. Just walk or take public transportation to get around. You can also buy a parked car. You can see a psychiatrist, but if he has a place in town, he may also be suffering from the disease. Or you can, as some have done, get disgusted and move to Spring Lake or even Seaside Heights where they have parking lots.
The idea is to build his neck muscles so he can hold his head high. So they lie Noah supine and briefly pull him up by his hands. His dad says that he quickly becomes a wobble head, so they gently lie him flat again. He also does “tummy time” for the same purpose. He keeps making progress.
When he is older we’ll teach him to play Dr. Hackenbush because he will learn to laugh at Groucho.
“I hereby acknowledge the good hand of God in leading me from the beginning until now.” With these words, written in 1897, Elwood H. Stokes began his autobiographycalled “Footprints in My Own Life” published in 1898 in Asbury Park by the Press of M., W. & C. Pennypacker.
A note on page 8 givesa clue as to why he was inspired to write thisbook. The frontispiece says “Upon these sea-bleached sands I wrote my name, but one swell of the rising waters wiped it out forever; so will the fast flowing billows of time soon erase my name from the records of earth, and the world will pass on as though a generation of us had never existed.”
Stokes (1815-1897) was born into a poor family of Quakers. He had…
2 tablespoons canola oil (may need more for cooking)
1 tablespoon butter
1 ½ – 2 teaspoons Old Bay Seafood Seasoning
Prepare crab cakes
Place crab meat in a large bowl. Gently pick through the meat and remove any shells. Add the cracker crumbs ( I place the crackers in a zip lock bag and pound them with a wooden mallet or rolling pin to make the crumbs), Old Bay and chives.
Gently mix these ingredients together, use your hands, and break apart some of the larger pieces of crab.
In a separate bowl whisk the mayonnaise, egg, and mustard together. Stir this into the crab mixture using your hands. Be careful not to break the pieces of crabmeat.
Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. This will help form the crab cakes and prevent them from falling apart.
Scoop approximately ½ cup amount of crab mixture in your hands and carefully form cakes about 1” thick. This should make 6 crab cakes. Place them on a tray until all cakes are formed.
Cooking crab cakes
Heat a 12” non-stick fry pan or cast iron pan (my preference) over medium heat.
Add the oil and when it begins to simmer add the cakes to the pan. Cook cakes for 4 minutes or until they turn golden. Lower the heat to medium low, add the butter to the pan and turn the cakes over.
Cook them for 4 minutes or until they turn golden.
Serves 3
STUART MATTHEWMAN from the movie Twin Falls Idaho. “Amapola”
Paul Goldfinger photo 2018. Main Avenue looking east, near Firemen’s Park.
Retired:And what about the drivers who don’t stop/slow down at the pedestrian walkways on Main Avenue? They act like they don’t see you – although I know they hear the choice words I give them when they drive by.
This is a serious problem because of the marked increase in traffic volume now that we are in the midst of prime season. I have yelled and pointed at the sign to drivers speeding merrily along Main Avenue while I stand visibly waiting to cross. A pedestrian can only stand in the crosswalk, easily seen, on the side, and hope that some driver will stop. More than half will not, and many are exceeding the speed limit. So don’t assume anything.
The effort last year to set up a police unit to educate scofflaws did not work—very few learned anything from that effort. But the danger is real. The police should set up cameras and send summonses to those who do not stop for pedestrians–no more warnings.
Or else, station police along the way to stop and ticket cars that defy the law, and those signs should be placed at every corner where people cross. As it is, there is inadequate or unequal enforcement of a variety of ordinances in Ocean Grove, but this one is not merely about a parking space. This is about someone’s life. All we need is one pedestrian looking at his phone, and a disaster can occur.
TAYLOR SWIFT “Fearless” But don’t be fearless when crossing Main–be watchful and careful, and no dancing in the street!
“There’s somethin’ bout the way
The street looks when it’s just rained
There’s a glow off the pavement
Walk me to the car
And you know I wanna ask you to dance right there….”
We recently learned that the lawsuit brought by the Warrington Hotel lawyer, aimed at forcing the Township to give back the pre-fire permissions for a boutique hotel, had been dismissed.
The judge evidently ruled that the Township was correct in insisting on only a single family house at that location.
Since then, no work has been done at the Warrington Hotel site–now just a foundation. (see below)
Here is a report of what is happening now after the fire, spreading voraciously along Seaview Avenue, destroyed several homes.
One of the cottages that vanished at the western edge of the fire, adjacent to the historic yellow house at Founder’s Park, will not be rebuilt because the lot has been purchased by the yellow house owner who wants the location as a buffer.
Continuing to move eastward along Seaview Avenue, there is construction underway at one lot.
One of the cottages that was consumed in the conflagration, fronting on Seaview Avenue, is now being built from scratch, with framing now to two stories. The previous Warrington Hotel had a 3 foot easement there out to Seaview Ave., but that easement is now gone and unavailable.
That leaves the most eastward cottage on Seaview Ave. that was destroyed. Evidently, the owner of the Warrington wants to buy that property which would give him an easement from the Warrington location out to Seaview. Evidently the owner refused to sell, but we’re not sure where that story is now.
As for the hotel site itself, even though the zoning allows a single family home, land use law says that nothing can be built there without access to Seaview Ave., because you can’t build on a land-locked lot. Lake Avenue is not a street.
These circumstances suggests that the owner of the Warrington property may not even be allowed to go single family, in which case the lot may now be useless.
And, by the way, we still don’t know if the feds finished the arson investigation or if the Warrington owner has appealed the court case.
The parking math is fairly simple: The two variables are parking spaces and cars. And when there is gridlock, the number of cars exceeds the number of spaces.
One sub-variable is that so many people are now driving huge cars, SUV’s and vans (as in the photo above); the effect is to reduce the number of spaces. If we all bought little cars, as they do in Europe, parking spaces would be more plentiful and easier to navigate.
Far and away, the major variable is the number of cars in town. And unlike other shore towns with parking issues, we have the Camp Meeting Association, which has considerable programming designed for out-of-towners. And we have a Chamber of Commercials which finds it necessary to have large events and to close our downtown streets intermittently. Who does that benefit? So we have more grid-lock events than other shore towns, and we are the smallest.
Part of the calculation is that many times, especially in the “off season,” there are plenty of spaces available for residents, but that doesn’t lessen the problems in-season which is now a minimum of 4 months each year. During that time-span, parking often creates problems for those who live in town, including many folks who pay taxes and others who pay rents to help pay taxes. Why are tourists considered to be more important than residents?
Hey Mayor: What do you say about that?? The mayor of Belmar says that his residents are the most important.
And then there are the games people play which affect the number of spaces. We’ve been reporting on that.
We recently mentioned handicap spaces which are plentiful in the Grove and reduce the number of available (not total) space, and which may be used inappropriately . For example, if a handicapped person has two cars, and has stickers for two cars, his wife may be seen parking one of those cars in the handicap space, but she has no handicap, only the car does. That is wrong!
There are those who say that the parking issues in the Grove are insoluble. And that is definitely true if no one tries to solve the problem. Someone pointed out that less shoppers come into town in season because people hate the “find a parking spot” quest. If so, there should be less cars and perhaps more spaces. Such a dynamic would hurt the downtown shops, but not one of the businesses in town or the Chamber of Commercials has concerned itself with resident parking.
Similarly, less big-time Saturday night shows will result in less cars on those Saturday evenings.
And every time the Township approves a multi-unit building, as will probably happen with the single-family Aurora (applying to become a 4 family site contrary to zoning and the Master Plan) and as happened many times in the past with condo conversions/no parking provided, the number of cars keeps growing while the numbers of spaces pretty much stands still.
Or if the township ignores zoning and allows the North End to become a redevelopment area with a “get-out-of-jail” card to do whatever they want, such as 165 condos and a hotel, there will be fewer spaces available and more cars, even if there is a garage for hotel guests and homeowners.
Imagine what the effect of a hotel alone would be. How about a wedding on a Saturday night? Or the opening of Hooters inside the hotel.
The parking issue is not just that; parking creates a ripple affect that can affect other variables—-such as quality of life for residents—-something which the Township and the local organizations such as the Groaners routinely ignore.
So, if you can’t get a parking space, we wish you shelter from the storm, lemonade in July, and love.
