4th of July, Asbury Park

by Daniel Wolff

  While it looked like a case of local boys make good (Henry's daughter, a councilwoman, recused herself from the deal), the Vaccaros were actually only responsible for a third of the project. The bulk of both the financing and the construction went to Carabetta Enterprises of Meriden, Connecticut. The Carabetta family, which had built and managed thousands of federally subsidized apartments across New England, now controlled a sixty-four percent interest in Asbury's rebirth. In essence, the city had sold its shoreline to a private developer.

  The idea was to proceed in stages. To start, sixteen town houses (each going for around $150,000) would be built in the south part of town on Wesley Lake. As construction began, Manager Addeo announced, "Things are looking up." Then, in September 1987, the nearly completed town houses burned down. Two local subcontractors were arrested for setting the fire; they claimed the Vaccaros' paychecks had been bouncing. "It just means we take a larger step forward," Sebastian Vaccaro announced, promising to start work on fifty new and improved town houses. Meanwhile, Carabetta began tearing down the old Jefferson Motel at the beach end of Fourth Avenue. The two condominium towers scheduled to rise there were going to hold a total of 224 luxury residential units, with prices ranging from $115,000 to half a million.

  And that was just the beginning. The plan called for the other two thousand apartments to be ready for occupancy by 2003. With that many high-income residents, Asbury would indeed change character. The problem of the "socially disadvantaged," of the poor and the colored, would be solved: they'd be pushed out. The "new Asbury" would once again be middle and upper class. City property values began to rise just on the prospect, the net worth nearly tripling between 1985 and 1991. In November of 1988, the council unanimously granted Carabetta's Ocean Mile Development Group a twenty-year tax abatement.

  Three months later, the Vaccaros had to pull out of the deal. Despite claims to the contrary, their model of redevelopment, the Berkeley-Carteret, hadn't turned a profit in three years. The brothers gave a number of reasons: construction on the beachfront had made it inaccessible, sewage and garbage spills had ruined Asbury's beaches. In April of 1989, they stopped making payments on their bank loans, and that fall, Joseph and Salvatore Carabetta agreed to buy them out. The Toms River bank that had taken a flier on the Vaccaros now loaned the Carabettas $12 million.

  Meanwhile, Asbury Park had elected its first African-American mayor: former police chief Thomas Smith. Far from changing the city's emphasis on "boardwalk, boardwalk, boardwalk," Smith had helped approve and continued to support the redevelopment plan. But even as Asbury piled all its chips in one place, the speculative real estate boom of the 1980s was coming to an end. Soon, Carabetta Enterprises began to implode.

  Joseph Carabetta blamed "the five or six year depression in the Northeast." The Asbury Park Press refused to hold anyone respon­sible: "The right things just didn't happen to the Carabetta organization." Nor did the Carabettas do the right thing. Starting in 1990, their management company had been diverting rent money from its federally subsidized projects to prop up its corporate finances. The way a source at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development described it, Carabetta had "raped" its project accounts. In May 1991, their local source of capital, the high-flying Toms River bank, went under altogether: the largest bank failure in New Jersey history. In Asbury, construction stopped. Owing the city almost $450,000 in taxes, defaulting on $13.6 million in loans, Carabetta filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 8, 1992. At the same time, the developer refused to give up its exclusive rights to build on the waterfront. Which left the decaying skeletons of the unfinished condos: a daily reminder that Asbury's shore was being held hostage.

  If you walk down past their jagged shadows, you come to Convention Hall. On this Fourth of July, the high church of the Merchants' Vision smells of damp and piss. Back in 1986, when the Vaccaros were flush, they announced their plan to refurbish the hall, bringing in "name acts" and building a recording studio in its theater area. The idea was to capitalize on the "music image of the city," as Henry Vaccaro told the New York Times, adding, "Rock music has kept Asbury Park on the map."

  He mostly meant Springsteen. In 1984, Born in the U.S.A. had created an international sensation, selling 18 million albums worldwide. With its American flag cover and its title song (based on Ron Kovic's Vietnam memoir, Born on the Fourth of July), the record made Springsteen not only a major star, but also a patriotic figure. Depending on how you heard the record, he was either extolling traditional American virtues (see Ronald Reagan's attempt to claim the rocker as his own), or extending his Asbury Park vision of a broken promised land. As Springsteen led the longest-running and highest-grossing concert tour in rock history, the city's fame grew. The year Vaccaro announced he wanted to build on Asbury's music image, Springsteen released a best-selling compilation of his live shows, and another kid from the area, Jon Bon Jovi, went platinum with his album Slippery When Wet.

  Asbury Park once again had a national profile, but not as a model of deterioration nor of post-Vietnam urban renewal. The depressed little resort town had become a rock 6k roll landmark. Fans who had never been within a thousand miles of the city knew to turn left off Kingsley to find the Casino. Asbury was an icon, a miniature. Shake it, and the real-life landscape disappeared in a swirl of music.

  The Vaccaros could never take advantage of "the music image." They went under without accomplishing much more than getting a new roof put on Convention Hall. Joseph Carabetta then signed a deal to build an "entertainment center" on the beach and, through his connections, tried to get Michael Jackson's family involved. As the Carabettas and the Vaccaros sued and counter sued, what commercial value there was to the Shore Sound tended to go elsewhere. On this Fourth of July, there's a free concert by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, but it's up at Monmouth Park. Convention Hall stands empty. The posters stuck to its walls advertise ROAD WARRIORS WRESTLING NIGHT: GRANDMASTER TOO COOL AND VAMPIRO.

  Across from Convention Hall is Atlantic Square Park, with a larger-than-life statue of a man, bronze hat in hand. It's James Bradley, the last private developer to own Asbury's waterfront. This morning, over Bradley's shoulder, Sunshine Amusements is setting up kiddie rides, FUN POWER it reads on one trailer and, in pastel pinks and blues, THE TUNA CAN. Along the length of the boardwalk, where the Ferris wheel used to compete with the Steeplechase, these are now the only operating rides. And they're just here for the weekend. Two black kids in do-rags sit at the foot of Bradley's statue. A carny man hands them free passes, and they move along.

  Past Convention Hall, the boardwalk's been ripped up for repair. You can look down and see the crisscrossed beams of the bulkheads, designed to break the impact of the waves and retain the upland. Despite these— and the stone jetties and groins— the latest estimates say over three hundred thousand cubic yards of sand get transported north off the Asbury Park beaches each year. The coastline would be losing two feet annually, except the Army Corps of Engineers keeps pumping sand back onto the shore. Between 1998 and 2000, they dumped 3.1 million cubic yards.

  South of Convention Hall is the Howard Johnson's. Dusty boxes of saltwater taffy sit next to dusty postcards of girls in bikinis. Overhead, on the restaurant's roof, is the Arthur Pryor Memorial Bandshell. Down a ways, one of the concession stands has been converted to the HOUSE OF GOOD INTENTIONS HEALTH MINISTRY. Not far from it is Madame Marie's: a closed-up concrete booth. The sign for READINGS— TAROT CARD— CRYSTAL BALL remains, probably because Springsteen mentioned it in "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)." In the song, Marie gets busted for telling fortunes better than the cops.

  Down the boardwalk is the former Ocean Mile Sales Center. Through its dirty plate-glass window, you can see an old model of Carabetta's proposed waterfront development. Tiny condo towers rise around tiny parking lots. Blue awnings the size of matchbooks shade little balconies. Some have fallen off and lie on the ground. Some of the model people have fallen over, too.

  On a table
by the beach, volunteers have arranged red, white, and blue trophies for the sand-castle competition. The miniature-golf course is covered in sand; PLAY GOLF now reads I AY GOLF. Kitty-corner down the street, The Stone Pony stands against a background of eyeless boarded-up motels. It's one of the few functioning reminders of the city's rock 6k roll past, and Springsteen has dropped by from time to time to make surprise appearances. The marquee promises Hot Tuna on July 18, Marshall Tucker on July 20, Nils Lofgren (a member of the E Street Band) on August 18.

  The sun's trying to break through. Up the beach comes a black man with the build of an ex-football player. He's shirtless, with shorts, sandals, and a big straw hat. As he strides along, slamming into the sand with each step, he waves his arms and swears.

  An official-looking white guy shouts at him from up on the boardwalk: "You cursing?"

  The black man turns to face him. "I'm talking to myself."

  "Well, you can't be throwing F's around in public."

  There aren't more than eight people on the whole stretch of beach and boardwalk.

  "I'm talking to myself." The black man looks the white guy over, then goes on. "I'm fishing with my kids. They say I need a goddamn beach badge. Ain't nobody in the water! Since when do you need a goddamn beach badge to fish?"

  "That's the rule."

  "Whose rule?"

  The two men stay a certain distance apart, shouting at each other from boardwalk to beach.

  "In most towns," the white man says, "you can't even fish where people are swimming."

  It's still early in the day, but his voice has an edge as if he's been yelling at people for hours. For years. The black man sounds the same way, as if he reached his limit long ago.

  "It's a damn public beach!"

  "And I'm the president of the Asbury Park Fishing Association." Announcing his title seems to calm the white guy. He stands with his hands on his hips. "I'm not gonna bust your stones. Buy one badge: four dollars. I'll let it cover your whole family."

  "Fuck that. It's a goddamn public beach!"

  The black guy goes striding away, waving his straw hat, throwing his arms out, cursing. When he gets back to where his family sits, he looks back at the official to make sure he's being watched. Then he slams down into his chair, picks up his rod, and keeps fishing.

  Out in the low surf, the lifeguards are practicing rescues. Two men row a dory along the tops of the swells, their oars flashing like some nineteenth-century etching. Down at the south end of the beach is the Casino, its entrance framed by stone pillars and topped by green sea creatures. Most of its windows are broken.

  Behind the Casino, there's a sign: ASBURY PARK'S SUNBEACH. This is the Mud Hole: the one part of the beachfront where the "colored" used to be allowed. It sits in the lee of the city's sewage treatment plant. On that boarded-up tower is an official warning about asbestos. Near by, someone's scribbled, "This was our place."

  Take a few steps out of Asbury into Ocean Grove, and the boardwalk's suddenly clean, the hotels open. People are eating in a little family restaurant so quaint it feels Amish. On the walls hang hand-tinted pictures from the past century and a clipping about Springsteen returning to The Stone Pony. All the customers are white.

  If you look back from the Grove, across Wesley Lake to Asbury Park, you see the tall, aqua-green wall of the Palace. Six-foot lettering advertises the Skooter Ride, and ten-foot cartoon images show white couples laughing in red and orange bumper cars. On the east side of the building, a plastic sign says FUN FOR ALL, with a huge hand-painted mural of a roller coaster detailed in spent neon. Walk around front toward Asbury Avenue, and you see the two Tillies: big loony faces. The signage reads PA A E FUN HOUSE. Cracks split the wall. A part of the roof has collapsed.

  For the three summers that the Vaccaros ran the Palace, it became the home of the Asbury Park Rock & Roll Museum, featuring memorabilia from Springsteen, Bon Jovi, the Asbury Jukes, and others. But in January of 1989, desperate for cash, the brothers closed the Palace and began selling off its contents. They contracted to have the hundred-year-old carousel dismantled and put up for auction. Some of the carved horses drew estimated prices of $40,000; the whole set of seventy was said to be worth a million dollars. Meanwhile, a group called Friends of the Palace Carousel tried to raise the money to keep the merry-go-round in Asbury "in the interest of preservation."

  What they were trying to preserve, one organizer said, was "a memory of a time when life was a little slower." One witness to that time, Stephen Crane, had used the merry-go-round as a symbol not of slowness, but of nineteenth-century repression: old America holding its younger generation back, denying the possibility of change, keeping its young lovers spinning in useless circles. But what the preservationists wanted to save was the memory of that time. For decades now, Asbury had been marketing itself as a throwback to simpler times, to old American values. As preservationists rallied around the antique carousel, across the street welfare families watched from peeling cinder-block motels.

  The auction eventually took place, with the merry-go-round machinery going to a Mississippi water park called Wonderland. The Vaccaros went on to sell the Ferris wheel, the dark rides, and the shooting galleries. A decade later, the Asbury Park Press announced that the Palace building itself was in danger of collapsing, and a "Save Tillie" campaign started up. By now, the preservationists were mostly Springsteen fans. They, too, were trying to save the memory of a time: the memory of a rock 6k roll landscape. Tourists would be drawn, the argument went, to what remained of the place Bruce had been born to run from, the "death trap."

  Heading inland past the Palace, you walk by former hotels: the Belmont, the Atlantic. Folded-up wheelchairs lean against entranceways; the front yards are gated and dusty. Out on their broad porches, sitting in the still spotty morning sun, are the old and the infirm and the poor. Across the way, where Heck Street intersects, the once-white 150-room Metropolitan Hotel rots quietly.

  Most of the big private houses through here have been converted into multifamilies: a half dozen mailboxes hang by each front door. This is part of the dead space, which only grew after Carabetta declared bankruptcy. During the Clinton years, the net value of Asbury Park real estate dropped by almost thirty percent. When the market hit bottom, a property-management company started running a shell game in this area. It would buy the old houses cheap and then sell them to out-of-town straw buyers who often didn't know, or care, what they'd bought— only that they were guaranteed a profit. In return for kickbacks, realtors would give unrealistically high appraisals of the properties, and then a wholesaler in Freehold would issue mortgages. The straw buyers would then turn around and convey sixty percent of the title back to the property-management company. Before the FBI closed in, the company had bought over $3 million of Asbury's dead space, which they'd parlayed into more than $9.25 million in mortgage money. Meanwhile, the buildings stayed firetraps; the roofs leaked; renters lived without heat or electricity.

  In the distance, from the direction of the shore, come the drum rolls of the Ocean Grove Fourth of July parade. They echo down church row: Grand Avenue. The 1949 synagogue is now the First French Speaking Baptist Haitian Church. Past the Iglesia Presbi-teriana, Cookman Avenue intersects. This end of the city's former shopping district is mostly boarded up and shut down. There are bail bondsmen and a medical-supply company and one functioning haberdasher called "Mr. Fashion: For the Man Who Cares." Carl Williams runs Mr. Fashion. He sits with a large-print Bible in his lap and, behind him, a glass cabinet displaying black felt hats and ruffled, sky-blue shirts. He's a former mayor of Asbury Park.

  In the newspapers, Williams has described Asbury Park politics as "a let's-make-a-deal kind of thing." In 1993, Williams— a black man— announced his campaign for city council on a reform ticket. He was offered a $30,000 campaign donation and was told it came from "the same place everybody else gets it." Turning the cash down, he won anyway. The victory marked the end of City Manager Addeo's thirteen-year reign. (
Thomas Smith, by then, had moved on to become a state assemblyman.) But Asbury's latest version of reform didn't last long. A few months after the election, new mayor, Dennis Buckley, was arrested for buying cocaine in a local bar. A string of leaders followed, including Williams, but redevelopment remained paralyzed. Describing city government in the late nineties, the Asbury Park Press wrote, "Something like chaos has taken hold." If you ask Williams, he'll tell you Asbury's downslide began long before that. Bible in hand, he explains that the city's fall from grace started when James Bradley sold the beachfront, and "men started taking women into the parks, and there was band music on the beach."

  Across the street from Mr. Fashion, the yellow-brick Steinbachs building stands on its own peninsula. It's been boarded up for twenty-two years. In front of the temp labor center, a few people sit on benches, waiting. Next door is the walk-in medical clinic, then the old bus station. The shoe store on the corner is called Extreme. Above it, on the second story, behind the windowless brick wall, is where the Upstage used to be.

  Before Cookman ends at Main, there are some signs of revitalization. In an August 2000 article headlined MOVE OVER, FIRE ISLAND, HERE COMES ASBURY PARK, the New York Times announced that "urban gays" were leading a local revival. The old Victorian cottages up by Deal Lake were being bought and restored. Here on Cookman, you can peer into gutted storefronts and see the massive old support beams that used to span this rubble. The buildings are being converted into art galleries and restaurants and retro shops where you can buy 1950s-era turquoise vinyl couches.

  This activity ends at Main Street. As you cross the tracks, Lake Avenue starts being called Springwood. And soon you see block after abandoned block, the weeds waist-high.

  This is an old battlefield.

  Here, protesters massed, heading for police barricades and the east side of town. This is where grocery stores were looted and burned. Unlike the boardwalk, this area owes its emptiness to a pitched battle: people fighting over what the past meant, how to divide up the present, and what the future might hold. Nobody died here, not directly from the fighting. Lots of people died here.