From the Ridiculous to the Sublime.

I was stationed at Ft. Monmouth from May to September of 1973, just eight or ten miles (or two or three beers!) from the boardwalk in Asbury Park. We went to school from midnight to six in the morning, slept from seven to noon, and hit the beach. I was tired for five months.

Back then, Asbury Park was a thriving, vibrant, exciting shore town. In the eighties and nineties, through mismanagement and corruption, it declined precipitously, and is just now slowly and painfully recovering.

To this day there are still large areas of empty lots and abandoned construction projects within spitting distance of the pristine Atlantic Ocean. Undeveloped land like this is priceless elsewhere on the shore.

The patient got off life support and may still live:

Asbury Park is just north geographically and a million miles philosophically from Ocean Grove.  We love to walk in the little downtown and around the Great Auditorium, especially among the tents of the 150-year-old Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, still occupied in the late spring, summer, and early fall.

The aforementioned superb facilities across the street from the Great Auditorium: