Puff piece

Saturday, November 01, 2014

The Star-Ledger ran a puff piece on Asbury Park just prior to an election of no confidence in the current administration – and included Madam Marie’s as a lure for the upscale population city father’s hope will repopulate the one-time working class resort.

This has always been a sale pitch designed to make the place attractive to “a better class” of people, and it seems the media is going along with it – most likely for the advertising dollars.

This pitch comes at a time when the place is filled with vacant lots and a shortage of off-Boardwalk eateries in a town that is currently known for its music, its gay hotel and a funky way of life serving as bait in a game that will later become bait and switch once the upscale people move in and there is no room for “artists.”

Indeed, the one off Boardwalk sports bar/eatery is so overcrowded that after five on some nights you have to wait an hour or more to get seated with prospective upscale people spilling out onto the street like street gangs of old.

One owner of a somewhat funky place on Cookman complained about the city’s plans to upscale the community, noting that it would only draw in people who already have homes elsewhere and merely want summer residences.

“They won’t invest anything in the community,” she said. “They won’t care about the schools or the services. They will come here in the summer and then leave.”

The puff piece in the newspaper – like several others in more local papers – clearly was placed to help influence an election in which voters want to throw the city father’s out because of their persistent misguided vision of what Asbury Park is supposed to become, and put in officials that will look to create a more legitimate city rather than a playground for the wealthy and perhaps void the monopoly of the developer who currently gobbles up property to build it.