Thanks for the comments everyone.
As far as the revitalization goes, the northeast corner of town (north of Sunset Lake) has always been a middle-class neighborhood and when the NY queer folk started to move in that's where they were moving. After they established a beach head there they started to move south of Sunset Lake but that's by no means a "bad neighborhood" either. It was just a little run down. But that all started about 10-12 years ago and accelerated about 8 years ago.
Ocean Grove just to the south of Asbury has had a large gay presence since i was a kid and since OG is a dry town there were always bars catering to that crowd across the lake in downtown Asbury.
The downtown renaissance started about 6-7 years ago with niche shops/studios/workspaces carved out of the old commercial stock. It was very slow going at first. The condo "boom" started about 5 years ago and breathed some life into the retail sector.
The demolition on the waterfront just started 2 years ago and has slowed considerably given the current market realities. It will be slow going for the next two years but considering the obscene wealth/cost of housing in all of the towns around Asbury Park, it's not likely that any of this is going to stop.
New Jersey is one the wealthiest states in the country and they need distinct containment areas for the poor people to make all those rich people feel safe. In South Jersey it's Camden, Lindenwold, Mt. Holly, Burlington City, and Woodbury. At the Shore it's Lakewood, Asbury Park, Keansburg, Neptune and it used to include Freehold Boro, the west side of Red Bank, and a big chunk of Long Branch but those places have been gentrified to the point of irrelevance. My point here is that people from those areas were very dismissive of the idea of a "renaissance" and such conversations dripped with racial overtones. Local investors didn't get on board until it was so obvious as to be undeniable. On the other hand, when it comes to home buyers things were a little different. Average home prices were so outrageous that first-time buyers and a lot of renters didn't have much of a choice. It was "buy in Neptune or the west side of Red Bank or move to Toms River"
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Originally Posted by STLgasm
Incredible transformation! Is Asbury Park pretty much in NYC's sphere of influence?
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That's the thing about Asbury - It is and it isn't. The electric trains that go straight to Penn Station only go as far south as Long Branch (5 miles north). Rush hours diesel trains run from Bay Head down in Ocean Co., through Asbury Park, and then, after Red Bank, express to Newark and terminate in Hoboken. If you want to get to Penn Station you switch to an electric train in Long Branch or in Newark. It's only a slight inconvenience but as you head south from Long Branch the line between NYC and Philly becomes increasingly blurry and it manifests itself in a distinct identity.
If you ask people in Asbury "New York or Philly?" 9 out 10 people will say New York. You'll find that most people watch the NYC news even though people in Asbury also get Philly stations. The radio is decidedly New York although most people under 40 (and many New Yorkers) listen to a radio station located just 7 miles north of Asbury. You'll see the NYTimes and Newark Star-Ledger at all the news stands but it's also where you start to find the Philly Inquirer - but even then you'll find nearly everyone in Monmouth and Ocean County reading the Asbury Park Press.
That said, I lived in Allenhurst (just north of Deal Lake) and commuted to lower Manhattan (this is back in '98). For a while I was driving 20 minutes up Ocean Ave. and taking the 35 minute ferry ride that dropped me off a block from my office at Maiden & Water. But that was really tough on my wallet so I started taking the train. I caught the express at 7:18, rolled into Newark around 8:30, caught the PATH to the Trade Center, and usually got to my desk a few minutes after 9am. I looked at apartments in Brooklyn and Hoboken but wasn't into my job enough to move for it. Anyway, the trains run every twenty minutes between 5:30 and 7:30am and they didn't run express as a matter of convenience, it's because after Red Bank they couldn't fit anyone else on.
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