The Casino: Where Asbury Park and Ocean Grove Meet. Photo by Paul Goldfinger
By Paul Goldfinger, editor
In the July 14, 2011 issue of the triCity News is a review of a new restaurant on Cookman Avenue called “Toast.” It is an unsigned article which contains this quote, “…what really interests us is the potential of Toast to bring a whole new creative class of people from Montclair to Asbury Park–and that demographic is what we’re always after. It’s what revitalized our city. Such people are a natural fit for our wonderfully bizzaro city of Asbury Park.” Really??
So let’s get this straight: The “revitalization” of Asbury Park requires a demographic that is so wonderful and special that it needs to be imported from Montclair, the place where “Toast” opened its original establishment.
I guess this might come as a surprise to all those ordinary citizens who have been working so hard and for so long to bring back a place that began its comeback before any fancy folks started their gentrification efforts. Maybe most of those who struggled to get AP on its feet might not share the author’s vision that a “bizzaro” community is what is desired.
What does this have to do with Ocean Grove? Well in the Grove we have a wonderful mixture of demographics including many of the sorts of creative people that triCity would like to attract from Montclair.
Maybe the folks in AP and at the triCity News might want to look across Wesley Lake to OG to find the kinds of people who could help support the revitalization of our Asburian “sister city” (as it was called many years ago.)
I bet that most of Asbury’s citizens want a town where a variety of people come together to further the renaissance that is currently in progress. Unless AP wants to become toast, it needs to find a different message than the “bizarro” one quoted above.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE