Asbury Park: Pictorial History in Brief

The 1920’s saw a lot of development in Asbury Park, including this casino. Unfortunately, unlike other buildings that were redeveloped in the past decade, the casino still seems to be just a frame of a building now.

The decline of the prominence of Asbury Park began in the Depression, and competition from shopping and amusements in other parts of New Jersey continued its decline. When my husband first took me on a tour of Asbury Park in the early 1990’s, it looked quite decrepit. In the past decade, however, buildings such as the Paramount Theater below were redeveloped. I posted another shot of the Asbury Park theatre in 2010, with a bit of its history. You can visit some cool shops like this one inside the convention hall and beside the boardwalk.

Pictured above is the Berkeley Carteret hotel, with the famous Tillie face in the foreground on the Wonder Bar. The hotel has a bit of personal history for me: when I was pregnant with my first child in the 1990’s, my brother-in-law knew the caterer who was working at the hotel during Passover. So he invited us to come and enjoy the bountiful buffet at the hotel. Unfortunately, I had morning sickness and could only eat the cucumber salad.

One of the amusements near the Asbury Park beach is this gigantic chess set.

Asbury Park Jewish history is one of the synagogue Sons of Israel: in 1904 the Orthodox Jewish community in Asbury Park incorporated as the Sons of Israel. My husband’s family belonged to this synagogue; sadly, it needed to sell the synagogue building and move out of Asbury Park in the 1980’s.

Interview with Iola Caplan: Iola Caplan is a friend of mine who now lives in Highland Park, New Jersey. In this interview, she talks about living in Asbury Park in the 1950’s and 60’s, including living through riots in 1967. She relates that the Hillel School also got its start in Asbury Park.

Red Beach Chair at Asbury Park Beach

This red beach chair photo may make it appear that there is hardly anyone at the Asbury Park Beach on July 4th, but in truth it was quite crowded on the beach. I hope to write a pictorial, historical post on Asbury Park in an upcoming post.

Rudbeckia with American Flag

I was in the mood to do something creative this morning, so I took a photo of an American flag (similar to this U.S. flag photograph, both shots were taken at the Asbury Park boardwalk last year) and imposed it over a recent shot that I took of the rudbeckia in my garden. I used a mask in Photoshop to get the background of flowers to appear under the flag. The difficult part is the edges – one carefully has to go around and eliminate all the sky edges from the original photograph.

Happy Fourth of July.

Here are the two original photos used to create the image above:

The top one of rudbeckia or black eyed susans was taken in my front yard. The bottom one depicts a U.S. flag flying on the Asbury Park boardwalk.

Bird with Speckled Breast

What kind of a bird has a speckled breast? I found out that some thrushes do, but this bird is a juvenile robin. Makes sense, since last summer I asked the same question about the speckled breast. Thanks, Michelle, for identifying my young robin.

Just last week I saw baby robins in a nest; when my daughter and I checked on Saturday, they were still in the nest, cawing away, and just a bit bigger. She counted four baby robins.

Do you know of a bird with speckled breast?

The photo shows a blue robin egg. Then the robin babies are born, and they depend on mama and papa robin. After a while, the baby robins get more feathers and fly off from the nest. A young robin is a bird with speckled breast. The mature robin has a red breast. I’ve seen robins with worms in their mouths. I’ve also seen them eating my raspberries.

Review with Raritan Avenue Traffic

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• The photo of Raritan Avenue traffic is one of three local business images featured on When Small Business Owners Should Ignore Social Media.
• I’ve been following Phyllis’s blog about her son, Sam, who has acute myeloid leukemia. Refuah Shlayma – healing wishes and prayers to you, Sam.
• Jewaicious wrote about Nora Ephron‘s books and movies: “but no matter the genre, they always speak of women, independence, perseverance and realizing potential.”
• I probably won’t try this until fall, but Fun with Egg Roll Wrappers: How to Make Edible Salad Bowls, Flatbread Crackers and Garnishes by Laura seems like a fun project to do with my daughter. And maybe my middle son who loves crackers.