Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ!!!

Oh, werd?
Today I did not hang sheetrock in Eric's living room or spackel (spackle?) it or sand it. We were supposed to hang, spack-ul, and sand it, but due to unforseen circumstances, we could not hang it, spackall, or sand it. This is good because I don't know how much help I would have been.
Eric: Hmm... should we get the quick dry or the heavy duty?
KPd.: Um... the green one.
Eric: Let's see... gallon or pint...?
KPd.: Uh... I guess... if you think you'll need more than three pints... get the gallon?
Eric: 120 or 150 super fine sand paper?
KPd.: Fine is.... um... fine.
Eric: You have no idea what you're talking about do you?
I did get a sneak peak into the lives of the truly suburban New Jerseyans. (Middletown, USA!) Monkey in the middle with tennis rackets and a hockey stick! Who says the suburbs are boring?
After several rounds of 'throw the vortex football over the tree,' it was time to swing into Redbank, and thus begins my tour of the north end of the Jersey shore.
It was interesting to see how different shore towns have evolved. Redbank has gone through several key redevelopment stages.
1) Sketchy 80s shore town.
2) Sketchy 80s shore town with artists and musicians.
3) Gay shore town.
4) Hip shore town.
5) Fair trade antiquing destination.
6) Fair trade antiquing destination with Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash.
It actually was pretty cool, but the main drag was very rich left wing -esque. Nice toy stores though!
The next shore town we checked out was Asbury Park, NJ. This down and out locale's new slogan is 'where the city meets the sea' which loosely translates to 'housing projects with a shoreline'. It's actually pretty tragic to see the gem of the Jersey Shore this wrecked. Huge abandoned steel and concrete buildings stand crumbling on pilings over the beach. This used to be where people flocked to the shore to ride carousels, play skee ball, and walk the boardwalk. In the late 70s, this was where Bruce Springsteen cut his teeth and my dad learned to play pinball. Then, the city overreached and went bankrupt. Now, a block from the beach, one can view this spraypainted conversation:
Graffiti 1: KillazEyes!
Graffiti 2 (with an arrow pointing to Graffiti 1): is a bitch!
Graffiti 3 (with an arrow pointing to Graffiti 2): Fuck you!
The city is making a comeback of sorts though. WPLJ was holding a local battle of the bands at the Stone Pony to see who would open for Bon Jovi at Giants Stadium. (Does it get any more Jersey than that?) The waves at the beach were great for boogie boarding, and people were paying to enter the beach. Finally, construction materials and vehicles hovered menacingly around the colossal old steel pier buildings. The gorgeous skeletal remains of old Asbury looked to be surrounded, and who knows what will be built to replace them?
Up the road, in Long Branch, the answer was clearly AS MANY LUXURY CONDOS AS POSSIBLE! Winding Woods! Shore Points! Pine Beach! Sea Breezes! Runaway Beach! (That's a dumb name for a luxury condo complex on the edge of a sea wall that is prone to flooding.. doncha think?) Long Branch is the home of MTOSOASOAT (or some combination of those letters). That is the acronym for the community group formed to protect the last old neighborhood of home owners from eminent domain. The city decided that retirees growing old in the modest homes they purchased decades ago was not the best use of the land. Within months, this neighborhood will be razed. Perhaps if they had stacked their houses on top of each other, built a giant parking lot, and called it "The Pine Breeze Shore Hill Homes... at Long Branch", they would have stood a chance.
My tour of the shore ended at Sandy Hook with steamers. Once upon a time, my dad has told me, you could get all the clams you could eat for a dollar. Now a pint costs 8 dollars. But they are still salty and delicious. And the beer was still cold. And it is still the Jersey shore.