It is one of the icons of America, the backdrop to a thousand stories â€" the place where Tony Soprano's nightmares unfolded, where Nucky Thompson built his "Boardwalk Empire", where Snooki and The Situation brought reality TV to the ocean's edge and where Springsteen conjured a world of love and loss and cars and carnival lights and a girl named, incongruously, Sandy.
But after the storm of the same name passed through this week, the seaside towns of the Jersey Shore, a place that popular culture has picked to exude Americanness, have been upended, and some of the boardwalks have been pushed into the sea.
And those who live there, those who spent their childhood weekends there and those who experience its stories from afar are asking different versions of the same question: What happens now?
"This is just a heartbreaking experience seeing all these places we love that are just decimated," said Jen Miller, a blogger about the Jersey shore who lives in the Philadelphia area. "It's just what you do every summer: you go 'down the shore.'
"The pictures are awful; my heart breaks looking at them," she said. "I run on all these boardwalks. I go over that bridge between Belmar and Avon. It's one of those things you think will always be there. And now it's not."
AP
Ed Plieninger cleans debris from Superstorm Sandy that washed into his yard on Cedar Bonnet Island, N.J., Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012. Frustration is setting in for some New Jersey residents who are still without power and running low on food. Some residents say too much attention is being paid to the Shore and not enough to working people who are hurting. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Close All along the state's 127-mile coastline, the storm wrecked communities rich and poor, from multi-million-dollar homes in Bay Head and Mantoloking to blue-collar bayfront bungalows. Boardwalks were trashed, a roller coaster dumped into the ocean. The worst damage was nearest the ocean, but winds and water wrecked homes several miles inland as well. Damage assessments were still being made, but thousands of homes were affected.
"Who ever thought they'd see a roller coaster in Seaside Heights in the ocean?" Christie asked. He vowed to help rebuild the shore, while cautioning it might not look exactly the same.
For many people, the Jersey shore is much more than a place; it's an identity, a brand, an attity-toode. It's the place where New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got into it with a heckler last summer while eating an ice cream cone while out for a stroll with his family.
It's also the economic engine that powers New Jersey's $35.5 billion tourism industry.
The real Jersey shore is the setting for MTV's "Jersey Shore" reality show about a group of foul-mouthed, horny, hard-partying 20-somethings, which has enshrined big hair, fist-pumping and phrases like "Come at me, bro" as part of Jersey pop culture.
A young Jon Bon Jovi shot one of his first music videos atop a rest room pavilion on the Seaside Heights boardwalk in 1985, across from the Sand Tropez clothing stand and Lucky Leo's arcade; Richie Sambora played the guitar solo to "In And Out Of Love" in a Seaside Heights lifeboat.
"It's gone," Bon Jovi said on NBC's "Today" show, hours before he and Springsteen were to headline a televised concert Friday to raise money for storm victims. "The entire Jersey Shore that I knew is gone."
That Jersey shore is a blend of competing aromas: the fried dough of zeppoles just before the powdered sugar goes on, the extra garlic on pizza slices, the salty spray coming off the ocean, and the smell of the chemical protectants they spray on pier pilings to insulate them from water damage.
沒有留言:
張貼留言