When I was married, we vacationed in Ocean Grove, NJ. When I last visited everyone seemed to be from NY, a lot of trendy little shops and stores were added that weren't there before. www.oceangrovenj.com

Main Avenue was the best! "Camp Meeting" every year and the 'tent colony' around the grand auditorium that hosted great revival meetings, and the annual choir festival and barbershop quartet competitions. Camp fires on the beach, beach volleyball tournaments and OGBP (Ocean Grove Beach Patrol) Lifeguard swim meet and rowing competitions provided more than enough reason to want to be there...
www.oceangrove.org www.oceangrove.ws

Has anyone visited lately? What's going on at Asbury park?

Ocean Grove was once a 'closed' Methodist church community, (One Square Mile for God) and had its own police and city services. As late as the early '80's "Blue Laws" were in effect, meaning that all the shops and stores were closed on Sunday. There were NO alcohol sales in the town. You used to have to park outside the town on Sundays and even after they lifted that sanction, you couldn't bathe in the surf, or walk on the boardwalk until after 12:00 Noon...when church let out. At one point OG merged with nearby Neptune township for police and sanitation. Now, I think it has become a 'neighborhood' of Neptune. I haven't been since 2002. A lot of good memories, and a few bad remembrances.

If you've been or go...keep me posted.

NJ Turnpike, Exit 7A (Great adventure) I-195 to 33 into the 'Grove'
Or Rt. 130 North (Long way) to I-195 to 33 another scenic route is to come along the shore front by way of Bradley Beach, Avon by the sea and Sea Girt.

Atlantic Highlands are nearby as is Freehold (Bruce Springsteen) and 'The Amboys'. Longport was the home of a U S President--and is a chichi place too. Monmouth raceway and more within a short drive.

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I grew up around there. About 5 miles up the road in Oceanport. When i moved home after the army i lived in Bradley Beach (which borders Ocean Grove to the south) and for a while i commuted from Allenhurst (just across the lake from Asbury) to NYC.

The Grove is a great town. When i was growing up and someone said "so and so lives there" it would always be met with "are they half-dead, crazy-head, or newlywed?" Meaning that the only people who lived there were old, just married and buying a first house, or (this was the '80's) just released from a closing mental hospital and staying in one of the old hotels turned boarding house.

In the late 80's and early 90's it started to change a lot for the better and slowly became the gay capital of the Shore. Asbury Park always had the gay bars and clubs but no one actually wanted to live there back then. Since OG is a dry town it worked out that people lived in OG and played in Asbury.

There are a lot of day-trippers and weekenders from Manhattan and from North Jersey but most people at the beach are from surrounding towns. That part of the Shore has a large year round population. It's not like the towns on Cape May that empty out Labor Day weekend. You don't really run into that until you get south of Point Pleasant.

Asbury Park has been going through an amazing transformation over the last three years. It really started about 10 years ago with the gay community but really took off 3 years ago when the city finally got the redevelopment schedule worked out.

Some pictures?

Ocean Grove is actually part of Neptune Township and is owned by the Methodist Camp Meeting Association (that doesn't mean you have to be Methodist to move there).











The Great Auditorium is the center of Ocean Grove.


























Summer "tents" - rent by the week or month.








Looking across Wesley Lake at Asbury Park.

WOW - very nice pics. I've never been to or heard of this place but it looks like a Jersey Gem.

I'm sure the architecture and urban lifestyle offered by this town will turn Ocean Grove into a very trendy spot...if it has not done so already.

Those summer tents remind me of the Grove in Pitman, NJ which was also founded as a Methodist summer retreat (although the ones in Pitman are a lot nicer and have less of a "barrack" look).

Thanks.

Yes, all those towns, including Asbury Park have become incredibly pricey.

To be fair, i took those pictures in October two years ago. In the summer when the tents are set up and connected to the kitchens and the windows show screens instead of boards the whole scene is much more pleasant.

This old place looks really cool. My relatives from Jersey City used to refer to it years ago as "Ocean Grave" because of all the old people who lived there. Looks like it has gone the way of a lot of other Jersey shore points now priced in the stratosphere--

Belmar is at the bottom of the map. I think the original poster said it . . . take 295 north to Trenton. Take 195 east to "Shore Points" and 195 ends just on the Belmar outskirts. It's an hour from Cherry Hill or 1:15 from Center City. From SP i normally go up 95 to Route 1, over the bridge then jump on 29 South in Trenton for a mile until it turns into 195 east.

It's great in the summer because all of the beach traffic is going the other way.