Article: Seaside Heights: Town brings an edginess...

[kiddynamite]

Some commentary for those of you who frequent the illustrious Seaside Hts...

Seaside Heights: It takes all kinds

Town brings an edginess to the Shore

Sunday, July 06, 2003

BY JUDY PEET

Star-Ledger Staff

Latinas in tight skirts and stiletto heels giggle as they pass barefoot white boys in doo-rags. Jersey girls with astonishing cleavage flirt with wanna-be gangstas, while Gap families discreetly gape at Asian goths and sari-clad Indian mothers clutch children to their hips.

Barkers shout jeering come-ons in heavy Russian accents. Over-stimulated children scream. Teenagers in the piercing booths shriek.

Bells, whistles, sirens, gunshots, hip-hop, heavy metal, vintage rock and roll, polkas, squawks, breaking glass, calliopes, crying babies, laughter. Strobe lights, neon, spotlights, kliegs. Suntan lotion, sweat, popcorn, salt air and deep-fried everything permeates the air.

A perfect night at Seaside Heights, where summer on the boardwalk is a glorious assault on the senses.

Every year, Seaside politicos announce things are going to change. The boardwalk will be safer, cleaner, more politically correct. There will be fewer brawls, more cops, a more family friendly atmosphere.

But traditions die hard at Seaside Heights, home to the last great gasp of tacky midway decadence by the sea.

A town could gate the beaches at night, and Seaside has. A town could post a cop every 5 feet, and Seaside does. It could discourage the grifters, arrest the drunks and roust the gangs, but nothing, it seems, stops the march of humanity that defines this brief stretch of New Jersey beach.

The boardwalk has been sleazy for so long, it's becoming hip.

"I can understand if the town fathers want to get crime or drugs out of Seaside, but they should rethink trying to Disneyize this place," says former Badfinger rock drummer Ken Harck, a sideshow memorabilia collector and entrepreneur who moved his urban-based Brothers Grim sideshow out of Chicago clubs and onto the Seaside boardwalk this year.

"Anybody can do Disney. Everybody does Disney. But Seaside has a realness that is impossible to duplicate, that sense of unrestrained fun that's just decadent enough to work," says Harck. "This place rips and tears."

You want genteel? Go to Bay Head or Cape May. You want a gritty good time where mother and son can share multiple piercing, where clothing is extreme and sometimes optional and where people-watching is a cross-gender, cross-cultural lesson in attitude, come to Seaside Heights.

That doesn't mean Seaside Heights doesn't have its more wholesome side. The beaches, considered among the best on the coast, are, by day, all any Brady Bunch could want.

In the early evening, the boardwalk is a mecca for families, ones with young children and ones with adolescents who have outgrown the "baby rides" at Point Pleasant.

But, when the sun goes down, it has a goofy edginess that can't be found anywhere else.

MTV understood the authenticity of Seaside and brought its Summer Beach House here not once, but twice, a distinction the network failed to bestow on other Beach House sites, including Malibu, Cancun and the Hamptons.

"We're funky. I like funky," announces Peggy Cudla, whose church has been raffling off a new car on the boardwalk every year for the past 30 years.

The church is Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The prize, a new silver Corvette sits, as always, in the middle of the boardwalk next to Psychic Readings by Diana.

"We see and hear everything," Cudla said. "People thinks it's sleazy here, but I love it. I never felt scared, and I meet people I would never in my life get to meet otherwise."

In the 1950s, Seaside was a family place, little different from Point Pleasant, Asbury Park or Long Branch up the coast. But as the century marched on, Point Pleasant tarted up its image, Belmar clamped down on the party animals and Asbury went belly-up. The riffraff, with nowhere else to turn, turned to Seaside.

They meshed surprisingly well with the working-class families who came to Seaside for the rides, games and food. But many people still thought it wasn't a night until the first fist-fight broke out.

Over the years, town fathers tried image upgrades. During the hippie era, they banned wearing ponchos, imagining, no doubt, a drug cornucopia underneath.

They outlawed cruising in cars and going barefoot on the boardwalk. They leaned on long-hairs, skinheads, punkers and gangs.

Still, they kept coming and an uneasy truce developed. Police here show surprising restraint. They don't care how you look, as long as you spend money and stay out of trouble.

According to the 2001 state crime report, Seaside Heights had more violent crimes per capita than anywhere else in the state.

Those numbers are misleading. That year, Seaside had no murders, only 20 robberies and three rapes. Newark, in comparison, had 91 murders, 1,892 robberies and 100 rapes.

But Newark has a year-round population of 275,000. Seaside Heights has a population of 3,000.

Of course that 3,000 swells to 30,000 on a summer night.

Here, authentic isn't always pretty. There is too much plump flesh squeezed into too many tube tops, too little proper hygiene and too many teenagers with something to prove.

Everybody, it seems, has tattoos.

There is an old woman with a starburst on her widow's hump. There are toddlers with water-soluble Spongebobs and Squidwards on their tiny biceps. Even the rent-a-cops have big tattoos and smoke big, fat cigars.

The ultimate tattoo is on a performer in Harck's sideshow, a totally blue man with a sort of jigsaw puzzle covering his entire body. The image is so riveting, it takes a while to notice he also happens to have horns. Real ones, imbedded in the top of his forehead.

"They're Teflon," whispers The Enigma, which the blue man, an underground legend, insists he be called. "Aren't they fabulous?"

Suddenly, two guy in boxing trunks sprint down the boardwalk for no apparent reason. They say they were bored and start trading punches.

There are many Seaside Heights rituals. If you are a teenager, you borrow the best car you can get, detail it until it glows, then cruise Ocean Terrace and the Boulevard, where tick-tacky has been replaced in recent years with a spate of sleek, massive clubs that draw a distinctly different crowd than the boardwalk.

They are trendy 20-somethings, who present a whole different set of problems for this town that is smaller than Christie Whitman's Oldwick estate.

It is no coincidence that a press conference last year -- to announce that more than one-third of all the Ecstasy smuggled into the U.S. is bound for clubs at the Jersey Shore and in New York City -- took place in Seaside Heights.

Many tourists have never seen the Boulevard. They head directly to the oceanfront, where they park, feed 24 quarters into the meter for an evening's protection (they always ticket at the Shore), peer nervously around for muggers and drunks, and scurry to the boardwalk.

Then they walk.

Some start at the north end, where MTV had its beach house last year. Others head south, to Jack and Bills, where drunks on a small stage sing along to The Doors blaring from the karaoke machine and "The Price is Right" is playing on the television over the bar.

People play the arcades, lose money on games of chance, or head for the rides, which are substantially improved, but still not on par with Wildwood or Great Adventure.

Mostly, however, they watch each other.

"We all grew up coming here and we'll keep coming here, because this is where the girls are," says Arjun Kinchen, 20, sitting with his homeboys from Manchester Township.

Carrie Wright, whose fashion choices mix goth and Hello Kitty, says she comes to the boardwalk as often as possible because "I kind of stand out at home in Bordentown. Here, I blend more."

Jim Foster, a retired foreign correspondent and a sideshow buff who came up from Virginia to work at Harck's sideshow, is delighted with his introduction to Seaside Heights.

"It's garish, it's fun and people seem to get the joke here," says Foster, wearing a suit, tie and pith helmet as he sells tickets to the midnight showing of sword swallowers, fire-eaters and men who stick stomach-churning things up their noses.

"Besides, the setting is gorgeous and the girls favor wardrobes you could hold in the palm of our hand," Foster adds. "What's not to like?"

[dogekid]

i love this state

[addicted2drums]

that sums it up perfectly...it ain't called dirty jerz for nothin

[clubgoddess]

SSH is a fkn dump.

[jrzcluba]

im proud to contribute to the club crazed, pill swallowing, getting hammered til u see triple, 20 somethings that frequent the clubs like it was a religion every fcuken weekend

it aint called DiRtY JrZ for notthin

[Guest djluap]

South Beach Nights In Atlantic City!!

Last month's party was such a success, that we decided to throw another one... yuppers it's South Beach Nights in the Living Room at Opa (www.opa1.com located by the Sands Casino and the boardwalk, Atlantic City New Jersey)

When: 27th of March, 2004 Sat. 9pm til 4 am

Where: on the Upstairs Lounge at the Opa bar and grill so Valet your car at the Sands Casino, then make your way towards the boardwalk.. you're not going to miss it..

Who: DJ Lu'Ap with special guest dj's spinning house and trance along with a bongo player banging on miced bongos. All brought to you by GodBEat productions and DJ Lu'Ap Produckshuns (email: djluapnyc80@yahoo.com).

info: dress to impress (no tims, sneaks, jerseys [euro soccer jerseys are ok] it's $10 at the door for guys, free for the ladies

any more questions, post em here or email me at djluapnyc80@yahoo.com

SEE YA THERE!!

[thehype]

Originally posted by djluap

South Beach Nights In Atlantic City!!

Last month's party was such a success, that we decided to throw another one... yuppers it's South Beach Nights in the Living Room at Opa (www.opa1.com located by the Sands Casino and the boardwalk, Atlantic City New Jersey)

When: 27th of March, 2004 Sat. 9pm til 4 am

Where: on the Upstairs Lounge at the Opa bar and grill so Valet your car at the Sands Casino, then make your way towards the boardwalk.. you're not going to miss it..

Who: DJ Lu'Ap with special guest dj's spinning house and trance along with a bongo player banging on miced bongos. All brought to you by GodBEat productions and DJ Lu'Ap Produckshuns (email: djluapnyc80@yahoo.com).

info: dress to impress (no tims, sneaks, jerseys [euro soccer jerseys are ok] it's $10 at the door for guys, free for the ladies

any more questions, post em here or email me at djluapnyc80@yahoo.com

SEE YA THERE!!

SHUT THE FUCK UP

[Bogey]

That was pretty accurate about Seaside

[jrzcluba]

Originally posted by thehype

SHUT THE FUCK UP

well put

[calebb]

Opa!

[liqidtouch]

isnt it funny how he paced Bells, whistles, sirens, gunshots, and hip-hop all one after the other in the description?

also MTV came to the area twice in my opinion not cause of the quality

but cost

wouldnt it be cheaper to do it in that area with just as much publicity?

and what the fcuk is a South Beach Nights In Atlantic City anyway?

south beach is in FL

atlantic city is in NJ

someone give this guy geography lessions please

[trixta201]

What's really good!

Just a brief reminder, The grand opening of Thirsty Thursday's at The Blue Lounge in Livingston is this Thursday!!! DJ Vos will be Spinning the best House, Hip Hop, Reggea, Classics, and Freestyle. 21 and over/No Cover Charge!! Jose Cuervo Tequila presents "The Cuervo Girls" will be in the House. Doors open at 10:30. Dress to impress/no sneakers. Drink Specials and Free CD give aways all night.

In addition, Milieu Entertainment is now hiring for the following positions:

1) Promotions

2) Cars for our rapidly growing Milieu Street Team

(more info to follow soon on The Milieu Street Team)

3) Models for "Lady Milieu"

(more info to follow soon on Lady Milieu!)

For more information please contact me as soon as possible.

Please remember we also have the following events:

Velvet Fridays @ Club NV

HPNOTIC Mondays @ Rhumba

To get on the Guestlist for any of these events, please feel free to contact me.

Let Milieu Entertainment throw you a Party. Whether it`s a birthday, anniversary, going away, welcome home, or company party, we can do it all for FREE. FREE club, FREE DJ`s, FREE Invitations with your name on them, and a FREE bottle of Champange.

Please forward this to all your freinds and include me as well when sending it. Thank you to all for your support.

--

Uncle Larry aka Trixta

President

Milieu Entertainment

www.milieunet.com

201-966-3538

[thehype]

Originally posted by trixta201

What's really good!

Just a brief reminder, The grand opening of Thirsty Thursday's at The Blue Lounge in Livingston is this Thursday!!! DJ Vos will be Spinning the best House, Hip Hop, Reggea, Classics, and Freestyle. 21 and over/No Cover Charge!! Jose Cuervo Tequila presents "The Cuervo Girls" will be in the House. Doors open at 10:30. Dress to impress/no sneakers. Drink Specials and Free CD give aways all night.

In addition, Milieu Entertainment is now hiring for the following positions:

1) Promotions

2) Cars for our rapidly growing Milieu Street Team

(more info to follow soon on The Milieu Street Team)

3) Models for "Lady Milieu"

(more info to follow soon on Lady Milieu!)

For more information please contact me as soon as possible.

Please remember we also have the following events:

Velvet Fridays @ Club NV

HPNOTIC Mondays @ Rhumba

To get on the Guestlist for any of these events, please feel free to contact me.

Let Milieu Entertainment throw you a Party. Whether it`s a birthday, anniversary, going away, welcome home, or company party, we can do it all for FREE. FREE club, FREE DJ`s, FREE Invitations with your name on them, and a FREE bottle of Champange.

Please forward this to all your freinds and include me as well when sending it. Thank you to all for your support.

--

Uncle Larry aka Trixta

President

Milieu Entertainment

www.milieunet.com

201-966-3538

WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM...PROMITING A CLUB IN NORTH JERSEY ON A SEASIDE THREAD???

CALL KEVORKIAN QUICK

[vip-tech]

Some commentary for those of you who frequent the illustrious Seaside Hts...

Seaside Heights: It takes all kinds

Town brings an edginess to the Shore

Sunday, July 06, 2003

BY JUDY PEET

Star-Ledger Staff

Latinas in tight skirts and stiletto heels giggle as they pass barefoot white boys in doo-rags. Jersey girls with astonishing cleavage flirt with wanna-be gangstas, while Gap families discreetly gape at Asian goths and sari-clad Indian mothers clutch children to their hips.

Barkers shout jeering come-ons in heavy Russian accents. Over-stimulated children scream. Teenagers in the piercing booths shriek.

Bells, whistles, sirens, gunshots, hip-hop, heavy metal, vintage rock and roll, polkas, squawks, breaking glass, calliopes, crying babies, laughter. Strobe lights, neon, spotlights, kliegs. Suntan lotion, sweat, popcorn, salt air and deep-fried everything permeates the air.

A perfect night at Seaside Heights, where summer on the boardwalk is a glorious assault on the senses.

Every year, Seaside politicos announce things are going to change. The boardwalk will be safer, cleaner, more politically correct. There will be fewer brawls, more cops, a more family friendly atmosphere.

But traditions die hard at Seaside Heights, home to the last great gasp of tacky midway decadence by the sea.

A town could gate the beaches at night, and Seaside has. A town could post a cop every 5 feet, and Seaside does. It could discourage the grifters, arrest the drunks and roust the gangs, but nothing, it seems, stops the march of humanity that defines this brief stretch of New Jersey beach.

The boardwalk has been sleazy for so long, it's becoming hip.

"I can understand if the town fathers want to get crime or drugs out of Seaside, but they should rethink trying to Disneyize this place," says former Badfinger rock drummer Ken Harck, a sideshow memorabilia collector and entrepreneur who moved his urban-based Brothers Grim sideshow out of Chicago clubs and onto the Seaside boardwalk this year.

"Anybody can do Disney. Everybody does Disney. But Seaside has a realness that is impossible to duplicate, that sense of unrestrained fun that's just decadent enough to work," says Harck. "This place rips and tears."

You want genteel? Go to Bay Head or Cape May. You want a gritty good time where mother and son can share multiple piercing, where clothing is extreme and sometimes optional and where people-watching is a cross-gender, cross-cultural lesson in attitude, come to Seaside Heights.

That doesn't mean Seaside Heights doesn't have its more wholesome side. The beaches, considered among the best on the coast, are, by day, all any Brady Bunch could want.

In the early evening, the boardwalk is a mecca for families, ones with young children and ones with adolescents who have outgrown the "baby rides" at Point Pleasant.

But, when the sun goes down, it has a goofy edginess that can't be found anywhere else.

MTV understood the authenticity of Seaside and brought its Summer Beach House here not once, but twice, a distinction the network failed to bestow on other Beach House sites, including Malibu, Cancun and the Hamptons.

"We're funky. I like funky," announces Peggy Cudla, whose church has been raffling off a new car on the boardwalk every year for the past 30 years.

The church is Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The prize, a new silver Corvette sits, as always, in the middle of the boardwalk next to Psychic Readings by Diana.

"We see and hear everything," Cudla said. "People thinks it's sleazy here, but I love it. I never felt scared, and I meet people I would never in my life get to meet otherwise."

In the 1950s, Seaside was a family place, little different from Point Pleasant, Asbury Park or Long Branch up the coast. But as the century marched on, Point Pleasant tarted up its image, Belmar clamped down on the party animals and Asbury went belly-up. The riffraff, with nowhere else to turn, turned to Seaside.

They meshed surprisingly well with the working-class families who came to Seaside for the rides, games and food. But many people still thought it wasn't a night until the first fist-fight broke out.

Over the years, town fathers tried image upgrades. During the hippie era, they banned wearing ponchos, imagining, no doubt, a drug cornucopia underneath.

They outlawed cruising in cars and going barefoot on the boardwalk. They leaned on long-hairs, skinheads, punkers and gangs.

Still, they kept coming and an uneasy truce developed. Police here show surprising restraint. They don't care how you look, as long as you spend money and stay out of trouble.

According to the 2001 state crime report, Seaside Heights had more violent crimes per capita than anywhere else in the state.

Those numbers are misleading. That year, Seaside had no murders, only 20 robberies and three rapes. Newark, in comparison, had 91 murders, 1,892 robberies and 100 rapes.

But Newark has a year-round population of 275,000. Seaside Heights has a population of 3,000.

Of course that 3,000 swells to 30,000 on a summer night.

Here, authentic isn't always pretty. There is too much plump flesh squeezed into too many tube tops, too little proper hygiene and too many teenagers with something to prove.

Everybody, it seems, has tattoos.

There is an old woman with a starburst on her widow's hump. There are toddlers with water-soluble Spongebobs and Squidwards on their tiny biceps. Even the rent-a-cops have big tattoos and smoke big, fat cigars.

The ultimate tattoo is on a performer in Harck's sideshow, a totally blue man with a sort of jigsaw puzzle covering his entire body. The image is so riveting, it takes a while to notice he also happens to have horns. Real ones, imbedded in the top of his forehead.

"They're Teflon," whispers The Enigma, which the blue man, an underground legend, insists he be called. "Aren't they fabulous?"

Suddenly, two guy in boxing trunks sprint down the boardwalk for no apparent reason. They say they were bored and start trading punches.

There are many Seaside Heights rituals. If you are a teenager, you borrow the best car you can get, detail it until it glows, then cruise Ocean Terrace and the Boulevard, where tick-tacky has been replaced in recent years with a spate of sleek, massive clubs that draw a distinctly different crowd than the boardwalk.

They are trendy 20-somethings, who present a whole different set of problems for this town that is smaller than Christie Whitman's Oldwick estate.

It is no coincidence that a press conference last year -- to announce that more than one-third of all the Ecstasy smuggled into the U.S. is bound for clubs at the Jersey Shore and in New York City -- took place in Seaside Heights.

Many tourists have never seen the Boulevard. They head directly to the oceanfront, where they park, feed 24 quarters into the meter for an evening's protection (they always ticket at the Shore), peer nervously around for muggers and drunks, and scurry to the boardwalk.

Then they walk.

Some start at the north end, where MTV had its beach house last year. Others head south, to Jack and Bills, where drunks on a small stage sing along to The Doors blaring from the karaoke machine and "The Price is Right" is playing on the television over the bar.

People play the arcades, lose money on games of chance, or head for the rides, which are substantially improved, but still not on par with Wildwood or Great Adventure.

Mostly, however, they watch each other.

"We all grew up coming here and we'll keep coming here, because this is where the girls are," says Arjun Kinchen, 20, sitting with his homeboys from Manchester Township.

Carrie Wright, whose fashion choices mix goth and Hello Kitty, says she comes to the boardwalk as often as possible because "I kind of stand out at home in Bordentown. Here, I blend more."

Jim Foster, a retired foreign correspondent and a sideshow buff who came up from Virginia to work at Harck's sideshow, is delighted with his introduction to Seaside Heights.

"It's garish, it's fun and people seem to get the joke here," says Foster, wearing a suit, tie and pith helmet as he sells tickets to the midnight showing of sword swallowers, fire-eaters and men who stick stomach-churning things up their noses.

"Besides, the setting is gorgeous and the girls favor wardrobes you could hold in the palm of our hand," Foster adds. "What's not to like?"

i love this town........

[zinc]

I would have to compare seaside to a smaller version of coney island..

ny has coney island

nj has seaside

they are similar in a way but hopefully remain true to its roots instead of trying to make it something it is not..I like its raw edge and vibe..but I am not one to go clubbing there..I just hope it stays as is and does not get worse.

[asonofabeachnj]

i love this town........

Everyone loves seaside, that is why we all coming back for more! Seaside good or bad is unique, nothing will ever be similar.