In a local physical rehabilitation center. Two rehab therapists talking about the end of summer:
Female rehab therapist 1: You know, I stopped going to my beach this summer.
Female rehab therapist 2: What beach?
Female rehab therapist 1: My local beach in Long Branch. It’s ridiculous. They charge you by the hour to park your car. You want to lay out from ten to six, it’ll cost you almost twenty bucks! Forget that.
Female rehab therapist 2: So you mean you just stopped going to the beach?
Female rehab therapist 1: No, I went to Ocean Grove instead. They’ve got free parking, the beach is nicer, and plus they’ve got all those cute stores.
Female rehab therapist 2: Hey, that’s a good idea. I’ll have to remember that next summer.
Going to the OG beach free of all parking worries. Jean Bredin photo from our “Girls in Their Summer Clothes” series. 2015 .
A rainy May day in Ocean Grove. Photograph of parrot tulips by Eileen Goldfinger 5/5/17 Blogfinger.net Click for the “Jack and the Beanstalk” effect. Title lyric quote* from “April Showers.”
“Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers
If you want the things you love
You must have showers
So when you hear it thunder
Don’t run under a tree
There’ll be pennies from heaven
For you and me”
BILLIE HOLIDAY From the album: Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia. “Pennies from Heaven” is from the 1936 movie of the same name. Music by Arthur Johnston; words by Johnny Burke. First performed in the film by Bing Crosby.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net May, 2019 re-post.
Remember the Coneheads? Jane Curtin and Dan Aycroyd. Well, that name has taken on new meaning, because ice cream fans in the Grove, not having Nagles to stand in line for, will now find Days open every day through the season.
We went there today and were behind a family from France who were ordering ice cream and coffee.
How ironic, because when they asked the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live where they were from, they said, “France.”
Bonjour. Visitors from France order at Days. Paul Goldfinger photo. Dave is behind the counter.
SARAH McLACHLAN “Ice Cream.”
“Your love
Is better than ice cream.
Better than anything else that I’ve tried
And your love
Is better than ice cream…”
Lifeguard instructions on the OG beach. July 22, 2020. By Jean Bredin. Blogfinger.net. Click to enlarge.
Jean Bredin, Blogfinger staff: “Several years ago my husband Jack was pulled out in a rip tide. He was going down for the third time when a lifeguard (John) appeared before him, pushing his board for Jack to hang onto.
“You got caught in a rip tide” were his words.
“To this day, we will be forever grateful for the life guards”
This Blogfinger image is from the 2013 Lifeguard Tournament. Paul Goldfinger photograph
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.
