A New Jersey icon reels
Sandy devastates shore’s towns, boardwalks
SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. — It is one of the icons of America, the backdrop to a thousand stories — the place where Tony Soprano’s nightmares unfolded, where Nucky Thompson built his Boardwalk Empire, where Snooki and The Situation took reality TV to the ocean’s edge and where Bruce Springsteen conjured a world of love and loss and cars and carnival lights and a girl named, incongruously, Sandy.
But after the storm of the same name passed through last week, the seaside towns of the Jersey Shore have been upended, and some of the boardwalks have been pushed into the sea.
And those who live there, those who spent their childhood weekends there and those who experience its stories from afar are asking different versions of the same question: What happens now?
“This is just a heartbreaking experience seeing all these places we love that are just decimated,” said Jen Miller, a blogger about the Jersey Shore who lives in the Philadelphia area. “It’s just what you do every summer: You go ‘down the shore.’
“The pictures are awful; my heart breaks looking at them,” she said. “I run on all these boardwalks. I go over that bridge between Belmar and Avon. It’s one of those things you think will always be there. And now it’s not.”
All along the state’s 127-mile coastline, the storm wrecked communities rich and poor, from multimillion-dollar homes in Bay Head and Mantoloking to blue-collar bayfront bungalows. Boardwalks were trashed, a roller coaster dumped into the ocean. The worst damage was nearest the ocean, but winds and water wrecked homes several miles inland as well. Damage assessments were still being made, but thousands of homes were affected.
“Who ever thought they’d see a roller coaster in Seaside Heights in the ocean?” Gov. Chris Christie asked. He vowed to help rebuild the shore, while cautioning it might not look exactly the same.
For many people, the Jersey Shore is much more than a place; it’s an identity, a brand. It’s the place where Christie got into it with a heckler last summer while eating an ice cream cone as he went out for a stroll with his family.
It’s also the economic engine that powers New Jersey’s $35.5 billion tourism industry.
The real Jersey Shore is the setting for MTV’s Jersey Shore reality show about a group of foul-mouthed, hard-partying 20-somethings, which has enshrined big hair, fist-pumping and phrases such as “Come at me, bro” as part of Jersey pop culture.
A young Jon Bon Jovi shot one of his first music videos atop a restroom pavilion on the Seaside Heights boardwalk in 1985, across from the Sand Tropez clothing stand and Lucky Leo’s arcade; Richie Sambora played the guitar solo to “In and Out of Love” in a Seaside Heights lifeboat.
“It’s gone,” Bon Jovi said on NBC’s Today show, hours before he and Springsteen were to headline a televised concert Friday to raise money for storm victims. “The entire Jersey Shore that I knew is gone.”
That Jersey Shore is a blend of competing aromas: the fried dough of zeppoles just before the powdered sugar goes on, the extra garlic on pizza slices, the salty spray coming off the ocean and the smell of the chemical protectants sprayed on pier pilings to insulate them from water damage.
It’s where the click of spinning prize wheels, carnival barkers’ shouts and the “pop” of breaking water balloon games compete for attention with boom-box rap, pop and heavy metal from strolling or skateboarding teens.
“When you’re a teenager and you get your driver’s license, the first thing you do is get in the car and drive down to Seaside Heights,” said Marilou Halvorsen, a lifelong shore resident who, until recently, worked for the company that owned the now-wrecked Casino Pier in Seaside, where the remains of a roller coaster sit half-submerged in the ocean.
“You walk on the boardwalk, you get an ice cream cone, you take your kids on their first carousel ride: Whether you’re young or old, these are memories that are part of your life in every stage of your life,” she said. “This is the skyline of the Jersey Shore. It’s a special place, a historic place.”
Atlantic City built the world’s first boardwalk as a way to keep guests from tracking sand into beachfront hotels. A small portion of that Boardwalk — now uppercased as a formal street name — was destroyed in the storm, although the Boardwalk in front of the nine oceanfront casinos remained intact.
In Wildwood, the widest beaches in New Jersey — a half-mile from the boardwalk to the water in some spots — helped protect the famous boardwalk amusements in what is routinely voted as the Jersey Shore’s most popular beach. Will Morey, president of Morey’s Piers, said his rides sustained some electrical damage from flooding, but nothing that won’t be fixed well before Memorial Day.
Morey said it is at least theoretically possible for wrecked attractions such as the Casino Pier in Seaside Heights to be rebuilt by next summer, provided state government cooperates with expedited permits and minimal red tape.
The pounding surf wrecked part or all of boardwalks in Belmar, Sea Girt and Point Pleasant Beach. Walkways in Asbury Park, about which Springsteen often wrote, and Ocean City sustained lesser damage.