Note: Feature originally posted February 13, 2005.

Asbury Park is a story that writes itself — a once-shining, premier tourist destination along the Jersey Shore, now in a confounding state of dilapidation and neglect. We slid through a gate and stood upon the retaining wall of Wesley Lake, a small, narrow body of water separating the decay of Asbury Park from the suburban prosperity of Ocean Grove, a Methodist enclave — a close-at-hand, visual testament to the 1960’s race riots and the white flight that followed. The looming casino overhead, rooftop collapsed and windows broken, an indication of the imploded tourist-fed economy that ultimately begat the downward spiral into financial oblivion. Corruption. Real-estate scandals.

“You could cut this chain and open the flood gates,” Maat scoffs, looking down from the retaining wall. I hopped down into the shallow water and mud three feet below and took a photograph. A good fifteen feet above us, movement — an elderly woman and a man in his late-twenties, looking down on us, thankfully without suspicion.

“It used to be beautiful,” she said without prompting, seeing that we were clearly documenting a place in decay. “I spent my entire life here. I’m giving my nephew a tour. Did you ever hear about the swan boat? It was really quite magnificent — it would take you all around the lake. People were always out at night, along the boardwalk, in the casino. There was a big carousel right over there.”

“When did it all change?”

“Well, after the riots.” She pauses.

My grandmother has similar stories of growing up in Benton Harbor, Michigan, thirty minutes from where I grew up — a town rife with the the same history of race riots and white flight to enclaves of relative privilege just across a small body of water. She and her brother retain to this day the same naive, generational racism that many of their age group share — and that many, excluding myself, justify as “just an age thing.” As the woman standing fifteen feet above me continued to talk, I grasped her distance from this ideology that, in so many instances — including Detroit, East St. Louis, and innumerable others — alienated the blacks from the whites and left crumbled urban economies in their wake. The towns left are exoskeletons of what once was.

Walking around the casino, it was plain to see the grandeur that once was, even though it was now boarded up with painted, weathered plywood. Through the broken windows stories above, you could see the sunlight streaming through the collapsed rooftop.

“This is one of the most beautiful abandoned buildings I’ve ever seen.”

Down the boardwalk, the buildings that are left are empty. Their once-vivid paint has faded to pastel and their windows boarded and painted over by locals to resemble active, cartoony storefronts. Locals grasp onto the Asbury Park-native Bruce Springsteen, who derived a great deal of inspiration from the decay of Americana, especially within his hometown — and pay homage to the local icon by painting a crude rendition of him standing alongside a 1960’s automobile in a leather jacket, the artist having spent extra time on the details of his face (although it admittedly looks absolutely nothing like him).

The state government, quite aware of the plight of Asbury Park, declared the oceanfront Convention Hall and Paramont Theater state landmarks — paired in one large building at the opposite end of the boardwalk from the casino. If you search Google, you’ll find that the town is genuinely optimistic that the Convention Hall and Theater will bring in a boost in tourism to put the town back on the map, but there’s little evidence to suggest that either have made an impact outside of their immediate surroundings. Across the street is a building demolition in progress, most likely for several years, with another optimistic sign pledging “High-End Condo Development.”

Fifty feet from the entrance of the Convention Hall is the shell of a Howard Johnson hotel, sign rusted and paint faded, and with every gust of ocean wind comes the gut-wrenching stench of urine. Two people are sitting inside the hotel restaurant, most likely eating something of very questionable quality. An aged veteran sits in his motorized cart a few feet away, staring at us. This area is popular with joggers, speed-walkers, bicyclists — anyone who wants something to look at without people to bump into.

We walked past more painted storefronts and up Cookman Avenue, a street I had earlier seen photographs of when doing light research on the area — ultimately trying to decide whether-or-not taking the two hour train ride from New York would end-up with me being stabbed and mugged for my camera — and up past an overgrown lot of a demolished building, its tile floor reading “PLAZA” still intact. A bar across the street covered in Miller Lite promotional signs normally printed with messages like “LADIES DRINK FREE ‘TIL 10PM” were advertising opposition to local zoning laws. A few blocks of lower-income housing led to a city park, empty, and the Metropolitan Hotel, covered in signs reading “KEEP OUT” and “FOR SALE” — the paint cracking, the structure crumbling.

But downtown Asbury Park is different — and quite isolated — as the arts and gay communities are pumping money into galleries and storefronts (there’s even an organic coffee shop, which is physically just down the street from an abandoned strip club called “Club Phoenix”), an investment that is showing some promise, if even only for a few city blocks.

These investments — arguably, I understand, but very seemingly — straddle the line between capitalist venture and a genuine love for a place that should be so much more than it has become. The realization that Asbury Park’s downtown revitalization is the gateway to a sustainable waterfront attraction is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for them — and with that, ultimately, the pipe dream that Asbury Park could become, with enough investment from the various parties, the next Provincetown, Massachusetts or Ogunquit, Maine; a modern resort town.

And I’m sure that the elderly woman with whom we were speaking appreciates that drive. She and so many others have held onto hope, foolish as it seems, for countless years, dreaming that one day their boardwalk will be populated once again, creating new scores of memories for a new generation of visitors. The reality is that when Asbury Park lost its soul — and the same goes for Detroit, Benton Harbor, and all the others, countless as they are — everyone in America, even if they’d never heard of the place in their life, lost a part of themselves with it, whether-or-not they’ve ever realized it.

“It’s like they always say in the south,” the woman laughs. “We will rise again!”