MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS: THE JERSEY SHORE  July 9^th 2015   bY Calvin Schwartz

It’s the old proverbial; who better to write an article on memories of the Jersey shore. My ‘involvement’ begins before I was born, when my parents went to the Buena Vista, a Belmar hotel, for the weekend as WWII was slowly winding down in late 1944. They stayed in the attic; nine months later I arrived. When I was ten, my parents started renting a bungalow in Belmar for August. That first summer of ’55, I discovered the pinball arcade, navigating the dust underneath the machines for lost coins, the Shark River Jetty, its meditative properties and the olfactory sensations of the boardwalk, in part, which smelled like a telephone pole back in Newark.

The essence of the shore begins about six to ten blocks away from the sand and beach.  Somehow only in Jersey, with the flatness of the geography of shore towns, from a distance, you can see the end of New Jersey and America; the vast blueness of ocean and sky meeting. That view is priceless and exciting. It’s that first shore sighting; a giant window to memories and new daily beach badge experiences. Yes, the beach badge, with its convoluted pin affixed to bathing suit. If only a season badge someday.

As I interviewed a diverse group of Jerseyans, many mentioned unique shore smells. Author Karen Kenney Smith, remembering a summer week spent at Asbury Park’s Atlantic Hotel liked the “musty smell of the tired carpet.” Moist ocean air everywhere contributed. Rock on Radio personality Danny Coleman focused on the panoply of boardwalk smells. They were pure Jersey food on boardwalk smells but, “Pizza aroma was everywhere.”  Musician Carmen Cosentino still loves the smell of “peanuts on the boardwalk.” He explained somehow it mixes with the salt air of Jersey’s Atlantic Ocean and has this additive effect of making you want peanuts even more.

I’m not sure how I started talking about the hair-do of the Jersey shore but maybe we have our own home-grown style. Insurance industry analyst Susan Michelle’s grandmother’s friends always had their hair in a net sitting on the beach with cigarettes dangling from lips. A card game was always going on. Carmen’s thought on hair, “Jersey women had the strangest hair-do; it looked like a bee-hive.”   Kathy Sinnott’s grandmother left the beach every day at 3PM to prepare for happy hour.

“And what happened when you left the Jersey beach to go back to your houses?”   Kathy showered outside in the backyard in unique wooden showers with plank floors. It was to get rid of the sand fast. Susan used outside showers too or sometimes just a quick hose down on the back lawn covered with neatly manicured weeds and occasional crab grass.

I drifted into a serious line of questioning; parents and kids. Yes the Jersey shore fostered a special life-long bond and memory pool with relationships of kids to parents. Back then, people knew you as a kid and who you belonged to. Kathy remembered long talks with her Dad sitting on a porch or backyard before heading to the boardwalk. You always saw kids with parents hanging together. The shore was built for kids and parents. Retired Pharmacist Jack Cobin told about grandmothers sitting on benches and watching kids carefully and mother’s telling you not to go into the water for an hour after eating. “Kids in the neighborhood hanging out was like the Wonder Years; a naïve innocent time,” Kathy added. Writer and blogger Kevin Cieri thought, “Family time was playing Skeeball together.” Billie Jo McDonald, with more recent memories of the shore, would walk her children to the beach in November and wait for storms. For the homeschooling kids, they’d spend the first day of school on the beach.  “It got to be that the kids could read the riptide. The Jersey beach was a grounding spot.”

Food is Jersey definitive. Everyone remembers. It was the Good Humor ice cream truck. For me in the 50’s, it was a bakery truck driving up and down the beach streets with bread and cake stuff out of the rear.  I heard recollections about Syd’s, Vic’s, Zelbe’s, Max’s and The WindMill for hot dogs.  Despite the admonition of Thomas Wolfe that you can’t go home again, The WindMill is still purveying hot dogs today.  Also mentioned as a memory were soft-shelled crab sandwiches and salt water taffy right out of the local ocean; it tasted better indigenous. Kohr’s Custard in a cone; Karen once dropped her cone and to this day it’s always in a cup for her. Sandwiches were always taken to the beach, sometimes packed in shoe-boxes. French fries came in brown paper bags with small wooden forks and vinegar instead of ketchup.

Amusements on the beach boardwalk were endless; every town from Asbury Park to Point Pleasant had pastimes. For me, if I behaved during the week and watched my infant sister Hildy, the family would go to Asbury Park on Saturday. The merry-go-round was mostly magical. I never grabbed the brass ring.  Pinball in the arcades was prolific on boardwalks, Ocean Avenue or in memory. Today, the Pinball Museum in Asbury Park captures the particulates with vintage games like the Gottlieb and Williams machines. And back to the future with an original game, the baseball pinball where you can even adjust the pitch speed. Susan remembers the ‘Grabber Machine’ which she played all summer long trying for that elusive big prize; one year she won and still talks about it. Ironically, the other day, a local television news story focused on that machine. They reported the machine is programmed (fixed) to not yield a winner until all the prizes inside were paid for. Bingo had its fans in Bradley Beach. And of course Palace Amusements and Tillie and Seaside stirred memories.  Music wise, it’s easy for me to write about The Upstage Club in Asbury Park, open from 1968 to 1971 (I’ve been researching it) where the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, Vini Lopez and Steven Van Zandt started out. And you played volleyball on the beach even under the light of the silvery moon.  Film maker Chris Eilenstine remembers, “There was always something to do.”

There is a life cycle to the Jersey shore. Many towns had pavilions where little kids hung out, sometimes with arts and crafts. Then teen dances sprung up in those VFW or religious halls after a day of listening to transistor radios on the beach. Jack reminded that Loch Arbor beach, adjacent to Asbury Park, became a college hang out.  Shore towns sometimes mirrored different ethnic enclaves. Humorously, Carmen told me that his father bought a house in Bradley Beach and when he dated a Bradley Beach girl, he was instructed by the date to hide his crucifix under his shirt; a scene right out of the movie ‘Goodfellas’ (celebrating a 25^th anniversary) Chris, to this day, says “I love the diversity, the great culture play, small town feel and originality of the Jersey shore and you can hop on a train and be in New York City in an hour.”

Pondering a good visual to portray the Jersey shore when I was listening to the Everly Brothers sing ‘Bye Bye Love’ in 1955, I just thought of the movie ‘The Summer of ’42.’ Jersey shore was small towns, simple beach structures, like on the island in the movie. Stores were basic and general. Painted paper sale signs hung on windows; beach chairs and umbrellas on the sidewalks creating impulses to buy. Movie theaters boasted they had air-conditioning, were mostly double feature and had that beach dank damp smell.  I want to say I saw ‘Now Voyager’ starring Bette Davis down the shore one summer.  Some towns were regal with their Victorian architecture; I’m thinking Ocean Grove and Spring Lake. Jersey shore is old and historic.

There’s a paradox to the crowds and long lines of summer; the solitude and introspection of the winter months at the Jersey shore. Some towns turn off traffic lights in winter. Back in college, I used to get the key to my friend’s beach house in Bradley Beach and go there to study. It was cold but eerily quiet and productive. David McMahon, from 40 Foot Hole Studios, would rent a shore house for the winter for its ultimate peace and solitude. “I love the winters down there. I’d just bundle up and sit by the ocean.” That’s the other side of the shore; the down winter time; something which provides a unique identity. You can be in a state with eight million neighbors but find this spiritually special desolate shore place in a world all by itself with few winter neighbors and even fewer year-around pizza establishments.

And finally what is that common denominator that makes the Jersey shore unique, memorable and passed down from generation to generation?  It’s the people of Jersey who’ve won their independence from New York and Philadelphia these past years. New Jersey is hot culturally and media wise. Just look at national pop culture; The Soprano’s, Boardwalk Empire, Jersey Shore, Jersey Housewives, Garden State, Jersey Boys; and of course Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi globally. What really is that bond that puts the whole state together then and now; that matrix of shared pride and experience; that place we all rushed to re-build after Sandy and showed our resilience to the world? It’s the Jersey shore. And I still remember it like it IS yesterday.

It’s heavy. It’s not my brother or a hard rain but the old Upstage Club in Asbury Park, NJ, USA  A Memorial?    April 12, 2015       By Calvin Schwartz

This op-ed or whatever it is, structurally, is best designed to be that stream of almost absurd consciousness that I’ve grown accustomed to these past few literary years. Suddenly, last summer, I heard The Everly Brothers singing ‘Bye Bye Love’ in a pinball amusement place on Ocean Avenue in Belmar, New Jersey. It’s 1957 and my parents rented a bungalow for August. If I behaved all week, watched my three year old sister Hildy, walked her in a stroller around the block every weekday morning, then when my father came down by Jersey Central rail train on the weekend, the family would go to Asbury Park’s boardwalk on Saturday night. My first experienced love of the city.

I’ll get to the Upstage. What I’m doing now is creating the background to suggest I am eminently qualified to deliver all kinds of coinage (two cents) about the city of Asbury Park and this special place on Cookman Avenue that launched a thousand musical ships, future careers and dreams. Well maybe not a thousand. Let’s cut to four years ago. Suddenly, during the summer of 2011, I became a journalist covering all aspects of Monmouth County life. The epicenter of that life for me was Asbury Park. I’ve covered the President visiting the boardwalk, Zombie Walk, Jersey Shore Dream Center (food pantry & kitchen), NJ Hall of Fame Induction, Light of Day, Hurricane Sandy, Asbury Lanes and Dr. Sketchy, all the historic music venues, Asbury Park Musical Heritage Foundation, Asbury Park Comedy Festival, Bamboozle, Food Bank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties, Jersey Shore Arts Center (the old Neptune High Building, hmmm?) and have spent countless days and nights, seemingly full-time becoming a denizen of the boardwalk.

As much as four or five times a week, I absorbed music all over the city; even a collection of indigenous drummers, percussionists and hula-hoop purveyors on the boardwalk, before police would chase them away, all reveling naturally in self-expression before a setting summer sun. Yes, the ingredients of a real music city.

A few years ago, I got off a tour bus in Asbury Park, part of the Springsteen Symposium at Monmouth University, and heard local historians/journalists(Jean Mikle and Stan Goldstein) talk about Bruce, Convention Hall and the Stone Pony. Later, we stood in front of a building signed ‘Extreme,’ (back in 2001, the first floor was a shoe store) the top two floors, windows extant but covered over with concrete, like deliberately sealing a part of its past; a sarcophagus perhaps. They explained the hidden floors were the old ‘Upstage Club,’ founded by visionaries Margaret and Tom Potter, where Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, Little Steven Van Zandt, Vini Lopez, Garry Tallent and Danny Federici were all regulars from 1968 to 1971 until it closed permanently. The door was padlocked and the last four decade history was explained to the group. Actually there is no history just endless abandonment and rumors that it might be torn down for condos. Back then, it was an almost all night (no alcohol) club where creative young musicians performed and explored until early morning hours. It was all for music’s sake; a brilliant concept and launching pad of expression and destiny. How synchronistic; the granddaughter of Margaret and Tom  Potter, Carrie Potter Devening, published this wonderful book, ‘For Music’s Sake’ giving the history of the Upstage Club.  I was haunted standing there, looking up, imagining what it must’ve been like all those years ago with incredible musical talent that has gone on to the global stage. This was my first ‘Upstage’ exposure and the early particulates of the molecular energy that birthed my love affair with the building, its history, founders and supporters.

I was smitten with sentimentality and history. On several occasions, over the years, around midnight,(like the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere)  I went to Asbury Park on a meditative sojourn, stood outside the Upstage Club, looked up to a snow flurry or a starry summer sky and dreamed what was and what could be. I took pictures of the silence of the building and posted on social media. That’s when Carrie Potter Devening saw my posts, pictures and we became friends.

My dream collection process was accelerated; why couldn’t Asbury Park take its place as an international music destination so that one day it would be impossible to find a parking space on Cookman Avenue in the dead of winter; the city would be frenetic and alive with the sounds of music and the Upstage Club would again become that creative purist musical mecca. If you want to make it in New York, you have to make it at the Jersey shore first. If the club was crowded, I’d even sit on the floor, stare at vintage art on the walls and dreamily listen to music until 4 am, with just a cup of espresso. The music closed my eyes to dreams. I remember Robert Kennedy’s quote, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” The streams of consciousness remind me of a scene from Henry Fonda in ‘Mister Roberts.’ What’s this I hear, that so many in the Asbury Park concentric circles of commonality, are letting the concept of Margaret and Tom Potter, musical creativity and even the brick and mortar of the Upstage Club disappear.

More streams. There’s a skeleton of a building, concrete pillars and a make-shift fence surrounding the massive property; a project started and quickly abandoned years ago. It’s on Ocean Avenue, a few blocks from Convention Hall. Of course, it’s an eye-sore, but for me it dramatizes a part of the Asbury Park experience. On several occasions, I conducted tours of Asbury Park and explained to foreign visitors, this was actually a commissioned sculpture depicting the future rising of Asbury Park. I can’t remember if I ever finally told them the truth. It doesn’t matter. The only truth is there are so many circles (‘interest’ groups) that want Asbury Park to finally arrive, but with so many different agendas on pastel brick roads.

It’s really not my place here to talk about the haunting history and emotional evocation of this magical place, The Upstage Club; so much has been said, written, talked about on radio or in restaurants up and down our Jersey shore. It’s the lighting of a fire, somewhere (someone) and installation of commitment to keep the concept within the city alive (or perhaps a block away?). Carrie Potter Devening has been tirelessly working for the past ten years to keep it alive; perhaps make it a museum and night club (without alcohol) again. There are efforts to raise money to buy the building, petitions to all those circles rolling around.

In 2012, on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, was the Asbury Angels first induction ceremony. The Angels are people who’ve passed, but contributed much to the rich musical history of the city going back way before Margaret and Tom Potter, who were also inducted that September day.  Music came to Asbury Park basically from the day it was born in 1871. From John Phillip Sousa and the city’s own Arthur Pryor, one of the greatest trombone players, to the clubs along Springwood Avenue on the city’s Westside where the likes of Billie Holiday (who would’ve turned 100 as I’m writing this) Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and many other jazz and blues greats performed, to the Upstage, and right up to today, music is Asbury Park.

I met Carrie at the Angels Induction Ceremony, after her book, ‘For Music’s Sake’ signing in Convention Hall Arcade and later she facilitated my first visit to the Upstage Club. The building owner had graciously opened (for a few) the top two floors, left absolutely intact since 1971, with the walls still replete with unique psychedelic art. In the men’s room, I saw scrawled on the wall, ‘Steel Mill 1971.’(Springsteen’s early band).  There was a strange silence walking around; one of those hard to explain moments. I stopped in front a brightly painted psychedelic wall and posed for a picture by a photographer who took the same picture of Bruce Springsteen just a year earlier, when he stopped by for ostensibly the last time. Sentimentality crosses barriers of time, space and people.

Walking around in the sounds of silence of the Upstage, I asked questions of a few who were there when it mattered. Tom Potter wanted a place with no peer pressure, where you can refine your skills and play music if you were too young to play at bars; the beauty of a non-alcoholic stage and the fact the Upstage was never a business just a club. I wonder who wrote the book of love and if all the ‘circles’ realize this. Jam sessions would seemingly never finish. Vinnie Roslin once started a song and it lasted 140 minutes. Things happened fast at the young club. Sometimes before a band could come up with a name, the band broke up. But those days are long gone. Things are different now; sound, technology, smart phones, fracking and internet.

My impulse as a sentimental journalist (oxymoron?) is to find a way to save this part of Americana and musical history. ‘You Can’t Go Home Again,” by Thomas Wolfe rings in my ear like a troublesome tinnitus. Perhaps you really CAN get home despite his admonition; so I’d like to believe. That’s why I’m doing this writing. Then slowly I turned around, came full circle and an epiphany (it was that strong) slapped sense and sensibility which means inevitability and probability. I heard what one of the E-Street Band members said that The Upstage is only brick and mortar and the memories last forever; some truth and maybe not an evasion. But what’s really important is the future of Asbury Park, NJ, USA. The concept of the Upstage Club must never fade away like an old general. The spirit must endure so today’s young musicians have something to propel Asbury Park into the future and a place where they are nurtured. And the future is slowly getting there. I have that dream of seeing Asbury Park as a global musical destination. Another ingredient is a first recording studio which is now here.  So to my ‘now’ epiphany, if its only brick and mortar, that’s alright ‘Mah’, we just have to keep the concept alive. The Upstage could find a different format if or when all the ‘circles’ decide to let the old tired walls come down.

Sometimes I ask myself, whom I’m going to call now. Ghostbusters or all those ‘circles’ I know of? A few weeks ago, I received an invite to presumably the last walk through of the Upstage. Then the best; I went back to the future when Vini Lopez, Paul Whistler, Joe Petillo, Rich Gulya, Jon Sebastian Brice and Sharon Lasher took the stage with all the holes behind them, paint was peeling from ceiling and walls and they jammed for a last time like there is a tomorrow. A box of plaster pieces for souvenirs rested to stage right; we stuffed our pockets with history; a Berlin wall?  I closed my eyes for a few seconds while the band played on. I dreamed again. Being there fueled my writing this piece. I’ve now said my peace.  One final thought as the clock on my computer approaches 4:44 AM Sunday morning. There’s a wonderful historic building a block from Asbury Park that used to be the old Neptune High School a long time ago. Now it’s the Jersey Shore Arts Center.  I wrote a feature article about them for NJ The Shore Thing last September. Yet another Calvin epiphany hit me a year ago; a new Upstage Club? And I wonder who really wrote the book of love.

Post script:  Watch for acclaimed director Tom Jones’ film about The Upstage Club to be released next year

Carrie Potter Devening book link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/For-Musics-Sake-Asbury-Parks-Upstage-Club-and-Green-Mermaid-Cafe/127404970667418?pnref=story

GoFund Me to raise money to buy the building: http://www.gofundme.com/6d1l6k

Sign the Petition at change.org to save The Upstage Club: http://chn.ge/1aGM1Zs

OCT 9TH OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION for ‘BIG MAN’S WEST’ EXHIBIT AT ASBURY PARK MUSICAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION: A REVIEW By Calvin Schwartz October 15th 2014

Thanks to Terry Camp for lighting my fire and bringing me along and extricating me from my post-surgical shoulder replacement doldrums to get back into the eclectic/electric scene of Asbury Park. I’ve been to the Asbury Park Musical Heritage Foundation (“Where music lives”) on Cookman Avenue often, from its inception several years ago. It is a back to the future place of musical memories and precious history. The old ‘Upstage Club’ which opened in Asbury Park in 1968 and was a launching pad for Bruce Springsteen, members of the E Street Band and Southside Johnny closed in 1971 but its molecules are still upstairs.

The ‘Big Man’s West’ exhibit focuses on Clarence Clemon’s nightclub which opened in Red Bank in 1981 and helped to revive the Jersey shore music scene in its two short years. Rock royalty performed there. The walls of Musical Heritage Foundation are replete with pictures, artifacts and videos grasping those two magical years. Many pictures on display were taken by Bob Wilkinson from Big Man’s West. The work of iconic music photographer John Cavanaugh, who artfully captures the essence of the history of Jersey music, was also displayed. I had a chance to talk to Candy Brown who worked at Big Man’s West; she recalled the magic and energy within those walls, described as “The best kept secret in New Jersey.”

The reception was essential Asbury Park with its diversified guests. I had some quality time with Stephen Bumball, another iconic historian of the city. Tom Gilmour, from Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce continued our dialogue why the city is evolving into that international music destination; the journey towards that vision ever so apparent. And then with Jean Mikle, Asbury Park Press, we talked about the Light of Day Foundation for Parkinson’s research and awareness which takes place in January in Asbury Park with a nearly a week of non-stop music. In the meantime, Jean is soon hopping into a European van and doing the continent again with musicians performing in the international portion of Light of Day. And Jo Bonanno had me promote Rutgers University to his high school daughter. A huge multi-liter bottle of cabernet in the back mesmerized so I partook.

Terry Camp announced the 3rd Annual Birthday Celebration for the Big Man, Clarence Clemons is now scheduled for January 10th 2015 at Bar A in Belmar. It’s an all-day happening of amazing musicians paying homage to Clarence; NOT to be missed. Watch for updates from Terry Camp and Nick Clemons and get tickets early.

The night was still young. Terry and I descended on Langosta Lounge where Pat DiNizio from the ‘Smithereens’ is performing on Thursday nights. Arlan Feiles opened for Pat; the most expeditious way to describe the rest of our night with both Arlan and Pat is, “Wow!”