BOXES 136-137: New York, New Jersey, Ohio.

The River was released in October 1980, but in late May or early June of 1981, when I took this photo in a Manhattan record store, it was clearly still a big item. I had seen the River Tour that coincided with the album in Milwaukee, Chicago, South Bend and Madison, and would be able to catch a late leg of it in Cleveland later in the summer--and sadly, didn't take any pictures of the shows or the friends I went with. But I did take a few pictures of Asbury Park, NJ,, which I visited twice that summer, as this post will explain.

My first time on the Jersey Shore was with a friend and fellow Springsteen fan from Sheboygan named Greg. On this trip, which was Greg's first visit to the East Coast, I took more pictures of famous New York locales than I usually did. That said, I can't identify the location of the first shot below--obviously a park, maybe the small one adjoining City Hall. But the second shot hardly needs labeling: it's part of the World Trade Center, late in the afternoon:

Possibly just by turning around, I took this shot of a 1907 Gothic Revival office building, known as 90 West St. (damaged during 9/11 but now restored as a residential building):

And here is Greg on the observation platform atop one of the Twin Towers, with Staten Island in the background:

On another day we walked through Little Italy when it was getting ready for a street festival, with the WTC in the background. The shot following shows a scene in or near Chinatown (I haven't been able to ID the exact street):

I see that we visited, or stayed with, Ed and Elaine Foster, who had bought a 19th-Century townhouse in Hoboken (where Ed was teaching at Stevens): here is Elaine in their back yard. At some point during the trip, my slides show, we were in St Patrick's Cathedral:

And then we visited Asbury Park, to check out all the legendary Springsteen locations along and off the boardwalk of this at-the-time rundown but still colorful--at least along the ocean--town. And we discovered, just to the south of Asbury Park, the astoundingly well-preserved Methodist "camp"/town of Ocean Grove, all wooden Victorian-to-early-20th-Century buildings. I thought I had taken a good number of photos that day, especially of places with Bruce associations, but they aren't in the slide box--maybe they will turn up sometime. For now, the only photo I have from that day is one taken after dark of the famous Asbury Park merry-go-round building on the boardwalk:

Back in Manhattan, we visited the Brooklyn Bridge, as you can see reflected in this shot of Greg wearing mirror shades; in one of the lenses is another Sheboygan friend, Jim, whom we had met up with in NY:

My slide box also contains three overexposed photos of Manhattan streets which I'll include here because (to me) they have a dreamlike quality. The scenes are Chinatown; Broadway (near the Strand Bookstore) looking toward Union Square; and a Village side street. For a more conventional photo I'll add a shot of the Temple of Dendur at the Met Museum:

My only other NY photo from this trip is of the interior of a church I haven't been able to identify--let me know if you recognize it. On our drive back to Wisconsin we stopped at the chain of waterfalls in Pennsylvania's Delaware River Gap:

The final slide in the box is of this sunset--maybe somewhere along the highway, unless I took it in Sheboygan just to use up the roll:

At least I can say with certainty that the first shot of the next roll was taken in Sheboygan: it's Holy Name Church, across the corner from my house, on a foggy day:

I evidently didn't stay very long in Sheboygan, but drove back to Ohio to spend time with family. Besides seeing Bruce at the Richfield Coliseum with Jim and Dottie I went with them, my nephew Jamie and my mother one day to the Cuyahoga Valley south of Cleveland (now a National Park) to ride the Scenic Railway that had opened in 1972. Here is the train arriving, with Jamie in the striped shirt awaiting it and Jim on the right taking a photo:

Here's a closer shot of the engine (which I see from the Railway's website has been replaced with a diesel engine):

Along the ride we could see pedestrians on one of the bridges over the Cuyahoga. Jamie seems to be enjoying the ride.

Another family-friendly tourist site in the Cuyahoga Valley is Hale Farm, a museum-restoration of a 19th-Century Ohio farm. Here you see Jamie testing out some ancient machinery, and then the Hale family manse:

Later that summer I returned to New York, where Gloria and Jeffrey (see preceding BOXES) were visiting as well. At one point, after I'd raved about Asbury Park and Ocean Grove to them and Foster Hirsch, the four of us planned a driving trip along the Jersey Shore that would take us as far south as Atlantic City. Our leisurely route took us to Red Bank and then along Ocean Avenue, the coastal road.

I'm embarrassed to say that I have no idea where the first few photos of that trip were taken--and Foster and Gloria don't remember either. But the places are fascinating: first, the open-air swimming pool of what looks like a seaside resort from maybe the turn of the 20th Century:

Did we crash the pool or just stop to take a look? Nobody remembers! And were the next two photos taken at the same location or at a second or even a third place? One picture shows an indoor pool, not only drained but seemingly abandoned, though the lighting indicates that this would have been a quite upscale place once upon a time. The other picture shows what looks like a classroom, because of the chairs, but the windows and the very strange mural suggest something else:

I cannot identify the next shot either, but it looks like a public building, like a library or courthouse. I've searched the Internet for photos of buildings in the Red Bank area but no luck so far.

But the next three shots are more clearly of mansions on the Jersey Shore, with the third house being findable on Google Maps, thanks to the street signs: it's in Allenhurst, just north of Asbury Park:

And here are Foster, Gloria and Jeffrey waving at you from in front of the spectacular Asbury Park landmark that contains both a movie palace, the Paramount, and a grand Convention Hall:

In the dim light I was able to get this shot of the Paramount interior:

The Convention Hall faces the Boardwalk, which runs along the whole eastern side of Asbury Park and at the time still had a few relics of its honky-tonk past. We spent much of the afternoon there and probably swam in the ocean as well. At one point one of us noticed "THE BOSS" sprayed or chalked on a vacant wall and persuaded me to stand in front of it.

And here is a photo of Foster looking out to sea. We decided to stay overnight in Ocean Grove, where we found rooms at an attractive old hotel. My room was only $10 for the night--true, the bathroom was down the hall, in the old European or boardinghouse style, but the ocean was 100 yards away. and the next morning I could get out of bed and jump into the Atlantic waves in 5 minutes' time.

The next two shots give a glimpse of Ocean Grove. The first shows the 1894 Great Auditorium; the second is a row of buildings leading toward the Auditorium.

After we registered for our rooms we went back to the Asbury Park Boardwalk, where I took this photo of one of its grander structures, the Casino:

You've seen the photo of the carousel building that I took on my first visit; now here are my friends enjoying--to varying degrees?--the ride on the merry-go-round:

I'll finish this post with a shot of one of the horses all by itself. We continued down the coast the next day--I remember stopping at the amusement park on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights, and sailing a catamaran on one of the inlets in the area (or rather riding as Jeffrey and Gloria handled the sail). One night we stayed in Atlantic City and strolled its epic-sized Boardwalk--the Boardwalk of Monopoly fame! But I took no photos of any of that part of the trip--an absence which now mystifies me as much as some of the photos I did take. Later yet that summer, probably around Labor Day, I went out to Los Angeles once again, but I'll report on that visit in the next post.