LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY. On the Ocean Grove beach. 2015. Paul Goldfinger photo.
OG boards, 2023. Paul Goldfinger photo. Paul Goldfinger portrait. Click once to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger, MD, Editor, Blogfinger.net 2015. Re-post.
Ever since we first moved full-time to OG, 2002, I have been interested in the town’s demographics. The census produces dry data, so it doesn’t really wrap its numerical mitts around the actual life of a town.
I wanted to know who lives here, who are the newbies, and what trends are developing. Would it be possible to deduce what kinds of people are living here or even visiting here, and how is it all changing over time? Can we use indicators derived by just looking around ?
My first impression of the Grove was when I went to a medical conference at Jersey Shore Hospital around 1990. It was after they introduced heart surgery there, and Archie Roberts, MD, the former Columbia University quarterback-turned-cardiac surgeon, was presenting a seminar. I arrived early, so I drove due east to the ocean.
“What kind of place is this?” I thought. It was winter, and I didn’t see a soul. My ideas of the Jersey Shore were Seaside Heights and Long Beach Island.
The town seemed so gray and dreary. I parked facing the ocean and took a nap. Then I left, quickly forgetting the town called Ocean Grove.
When we bought a weekend place here in 1998, we did so because our son was renting in the Grove while he joined the photo staff of the Asbury Park Press, and we had been observing the town and could see a positive evolution.
Some of the early signs that I noticed included young men in boat shoes and no socks buying the NY Times at the newsstand on Sunday mornings. I also saw that more kids and teenagers were visible in the summer.
When we moved near Firemen’s Park, I watched the sorts of dogs that were being walked and by whom.
Even Grover dogs provide indicators. Today (11/2/24) we saw a German shepherd mixed with a Husky. Wow!
Young families appeared in the Park and played soccer and Wiffle ball. Girls did somersaults. Little boys and girls rode bikes and wore helmets. One dad, who had purchased a Victorian home for weekends, was running after his daughter, teaching her to ride a 2 wheeler.
And, read the labels: “Tommy Bahama” is on the beach chairs.
Racial varieties appeared. I met a Chinese family who own a 4-family home near me. And an Indian family came to enjoy our town in summer. African Americans were showing up more often, although I haven’t met one who owns here. And I met some Hasidic Jews strolling over from Bradley Beach.
I thought that money was coming into town, and you could see how new owners were improving their run-down homes. Many of the streets looked pretty crummy until, all over town, change was apparent.
Relax with Tommy Bahama on the OG beach. June 26, 2015. Blogfinger photo.
This all looked like a positive development, but it wasn’t just money–it was diversity.
I met all sorts of smart and interesting people moving here and I saw that even the tourists seemed to be more sophisticated as time went by. I met university professors, artists, Broadway stage directors, medical school faculty members, authors, actors, lawyers, newspaper editors, nursing instructors, book publishers, physicians including heads of departments, healthcare experts, radio personalities, tech innovators, and even a guy who used to be starring in the Fantasticks—Sullivan Street Playhouse in the Village—-and so many more.
Ocean Grove was growing in popularity every year, and the indicators pointed in the same direction. You really didn’t need a weather man to tell which way the wind was blowing.*
And there were other indicators to identify gentrification, and I believed that it was a good thing to a point, especially when no one , I thought, should be able to build a McMansion in the Grove, and the town had so much history, period architecture and cultural infrastructure that it couldn’t become the Hamptons which once had been mostly potato farms.
But I also enjoyed watching the cars. I can’t fix a car, but I love cars, and you could see the gradual upgrading of automobiles in the Grove. Around me are a bunch of ultimate driving machines: BMW’s. There are two Z-4’s on my block alone. Another second homer around the corner has a BMW M-3, a powerful racing sedan. A new red Porsche 911 convertible sailed down Main Avenue yesterday.
A Mercedes CLA 250 on Mt. Tabor Way last week. Blogfinger.net photo .
Such cars were rare in OG, but now you can find Corvettes, Jaguars, Lexus, Mercedes, and many other elegant and high performance vehicles parked on our narrow streets and without garages. There’s one Grover who drives a Rolls Royce, but that is truly rare.
Of course, most cars here are ordinary sorts of vehicles, but it’s fun to look at the indicators that reflect people. It seems like we have inevitable change in our town, but it is the kind that enriches and adds dimension to a place with a historic foundation that I believe most of us want to preserve.
But if we are not vigilant, the efforts to keep OG’s fragile roots and foundations alive could be lost.
Rev. Osborn, who founded OG went to Australia and founded another religious community called Ocean Grove. Today it is a haven for surfers.
Ocean Grove cottage: Let’s keep it! Blogfinger photo June 22, 2015 ©
As for the Camp Meeting Association, we knew about them and we enjoyed many of the elements which they brought including a spiritual sense of the town, church bells, pop entertainment at the Auditorium, classical and high-end religious music, and some practical matters such as ground rents.
But somehow the CMA didn’t want to admit that it is merely one component in the fabric of this unique small American town. And that continues to concern me as you can tell from many of our posts about OG cultural issues.
But now that OG continues to evolve with diversity, the CMA climbs out of its place and expands, seeking to transform the town into a” Christian Summer Resort” with newly planned winter events as well.
In 1869-1980 it was predictable, but now the Camp Meeting Association reveals itself to be an aggressive force clashing with the evolving LGBTQ+ community specifically and with the secular, residential community which is now the largest demographic in town.
The Neptune Committee at the mothership is run by politicians of one party, and they act as if they represent the bulk of the town while the CMA represents the Grove.
However although the CMA may have influence, it has no real power since they have been elected to nothing.
The only way that we can get representative government in the Grove is to bust up single party rule at election time for starters.
The Neptune form of government needs to change to one of districts representing parts of town such as OG and we need to have direct elections of a mayor who will represent we-the-people.
Kate Campbell and Dominic Hauser: Theme from the TV series Laverne and Shirley