Using postcards from the late 1800s on, Asbury Park recounts the history of one of New Jersey's most popular summer resorts. Here are more than two hundred spectacular views of Asbury Park as a thriving city for both businesses and vacationers. Shown are hotels of all descriptions, unforgettable downtown shops, and the beachfront--a beautiful city carved out of sand dunes and pine forests.

With the release of his 2007 album, Magic, Bruce Springsteen again proved his status as one of the greatest songwriters in American history. For over three decades, Springsteens musicwith his trademark poetic lyrics and his ability to find glory in the struggles of everyday lifehas attracted fans and critics from across the globe. In this book, author Jeffrey Symynkywicz shows that a large part of Springsteens enduring popularity is the deep sense in which his music connects to something essential to human experience. Springsteens music, Symynkywicz suggests, helps make sense of the many threads of our livesincluding our experiences of sin and redemption and of faith and hope. With a clear and inviting style, Symynkywicz treats each of Springsteens albums as a chapter, exploring the history and context of Springsteens music and the ways in which his songs express these spiritual themes.

When New York brush manufacturer James Bradley founded Asbury Park in the late 1800s, he could hardly have imagined the course his seaside resort would take. Named for Methodist Episcopal bishop Francis Asbury, it was originally a Christian resort awash in Victorian architecture. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Asbury Park's beach, boardwalk, restaurants, theaters, hotels, and amusements attracted thousands of vacationers every year. Later, the town gained a reputation as a gritty music mecca, known for the clubs where Bruce Springsteen got his start. All along, Asbury Park has had a unique ability to draw people to it, evidenced by the thousands of postcards sent home from the town each year.

Asbury Parks Early History James A. Bradley James A. Bradley was born on Valentines Day, 1830, at the Old Blazing Star Inn in Rossville on Staten Island in New York. He was the son of Adam and Hannah Bradley. He was baptized a Catholic. When he was only five, his father died from alcohol related problems. Two years later, his mother married Charles Smith and moved to Cherry Street in the Bowery. In those years before the Civil War, the citys population was exploding. The lower east side was the first stop for tens of thousands of immigrants to America. The original buildings had no heat, light, or running water and few windows until the late 1960s when the state enacted laws that forced landlords to improve living conditions. On hot nights, you could see tenants sleeping on fire escapes to get relief from summer heat. In 1837, the year they moved, a general economic panic had taken over the city. In that year over 100 firms went under, railroads fell, banks collapsed and building construction stopped. The citys working class crowded into tiny tenement apartments. The poor sewer system and primitive health services led to massive outbreaks of typhus and cholera. Bradleys stepfather set up a notions store selling groceries, meat, clothing, shoes and other items. Bradley was only seven years old at the time. He and his stepfather had a peddlers wagon, their favorite spot was down on Catherine Street outside the new specialty store, Lord & Taylor. Bradley obtained his early education in the New York public school system, and in later life continued his education through self-directed reading. At twelve, Bradley worked as a laborer at William Daviss Paper Mill in Bloomfield, New Jersey. As a teenager, Bradley hung with a rowdy immigrant crowd. He soon developed a fondness for wine. By the early 1840s the Bowery became more of a pleasure zone. Small hotels offered free vaudevilles to attract customers including ventriloquism, dancing, circus acts and comics. Young Bradley loved the shows, he tried to attend at least three a week. At thirteen, he witnesses the development of one of the most popular styles of the day; the minstrel show. They played reels, jigs and told down-home plantation jokes. Negros were barred from Bowery theaters, but minstrel shows became the rage. Bradleys mother decided that her teenage son was learning too much too last. She sent him to Bloomfield, New Jersey where a friend from her childhood owned a farm. He spent a year in Jersey milking cows and feeding chickens. He disliked it intensely. Twice he ran away and was caught trying to catch a ferry back to the city. Finally, at age sixteen, he returned to the lower East Side. Upon returning, he apprenticed as a brushmaker in Francis R. Furnolds factory in New York City. He was made foreman at age twenty-one and remained for seven years. It was hard work in a cramped space that stunk of hog bristle and glue. The animal hair had to be washed by hand, dried in a hot room, bleached, sorted for length, shaped, tied, glued and inserted into a handle. Depending on the type of brush, a man might make six to eight dozen a day. The hours were long and when work was over, Bradley had to return to his crowded, narrow tenement apartment. During this period, Bradley married Helen M. Packard, daughter of Lewis Packard from Boston. Helen was an educated Rutgers student and a staunch Methodist. The two of them resolved to start their own business and through self-discipline, managed to save one thousand dollars. In 1857, they completed payment on a lot uptown. Then, borrowing the capital, the twenty seven year old Bradley launched his own brush company, Bradley and Smith, located in Pearl Street in New York City. It became a very successful enterprise. Bradley was a vigorous, large built man, rough in appearance, but full of energy. While his wife kept shop, he was upstairs cutting, shaping and gluing brushes. Later in life, Bradl

This revised and expanded edition of Daniel Wolff's classic study of Asbury Park, New Jersey tells the tale of the city's first 150 years, guiding us through the development of its lavish amusement parks and bandstands, the decay of its working-class neighborhoods, the spread of its racially-segregated ghettos, and the effects of recent gentrification.

A colorful history of Asbury Park, New Jersey, provides a chronicle of the evolution of the seaside resort town from its founding as a religious commune through 130 years of social, cultural, and musical development, offering tidbits of local history, profiles of the celebrities who passed through, its decline into blight, and the potential for its future. Reprint.

As rock critics have noted in the past, Bruce Springsteen's songs exist in a world of their own--they have their own settings, characters, words, and images. It is a world that even those who know only a handful of Springsteen's lyrics can instantly recognize, a world of highways and factories, loners and underdogs, hot rods and patrol cars. And it is a world that stretches far beyond the New Jersey state line. Indeed, Springsteen's attention to the ideals and struggles of ordinary Americans has significantly influenced American popular culture and public debate. As a rock-and-roll troubadour, "the Boss" speaks not only for his many fans but to them, and often with a directness or sincerity that no other performer can match. But what can be said of the fans themselves? Why and how do they relate to Springsteen's words and music? Based on three years of ethnographic research amid Springsteen's fans, and informed by the author's own experiences and impressions as a fan, Daniel Cavicchi's Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to a particular singer/songwriter and his songs, and of how these attachments function in people's lives. An "insider's narrative" about Springsteen fans--who they are, what they do, and why they do it--this book also investigates the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text oscillates between fans' stories and ideas and Cavicchi's own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. It challenges the stereotypes of fans as obsessive, delusional, and even mentally ill, and explores fandom as a normal socio-cultural activity. Ultimately, this book argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behavior that enables us to shape identities, create communities, and make sense of the world--both Bruce's and our own.

Bruce Springsteen: An Illustrated Biography offers fans an intimate look into the life of this beloved artist, including photos of The Boss, both on stage and off, and 10 removable pieces of memorabilia.

Long before he sold 120 million albums globally in a career that has endured artistically and commercially like no other performer's in the rock era, Bruce Springsteen was a working-class New Jersey kid with a dream and a guitar. By the time he was 16, he was playing ShopRite openings and school dances around his hometown of Freehold. For many, high school is where the garage-band dreams die, but time spent fronting a band called Steel Mill in the heyday of Asbury Park's Upstage scene gave him the courage to sidestep college and put his name out in front, soon enough making him “The Boss” to his band. After five more years spent working diligently on that dream, Springsteen had landed the dueling Time and Newsweek covers that made him an instant household name on the strength of his album Born to Run. Bruce Springsteen FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Boss investigates Springsteen's superstar Born in the U.S.A. album and tour, the dissolution and reunion of the E Street Band, the legal wrangling that held up 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town, the group's postmillennium resurgence, the untimely passing of core band members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, and more. This indispensible read, packed with countless images of rare memorabilia, is a volume Springsteen fans will treasure.

Makris and Gatta engage in a rich ethnographic investigation of Asbury Park to better understand the connection between jobs and seasonal gentrification and the experiences of longtime residents in this beach-community city. They demonstrate how the racial inequality in the founding of Asbury Park is reverberating a century later. This book tells an important and nuanced tale of gentrification using an intersectional lens to examine the history of race relations, the too often overlooked history of the postindustrial city, the role of the LGBTQ population, barriers to employment and access to amenities, and the role of developers as the city rapidly changes. Makris and Gatta draw on in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observation, as well as data analysis to tell the reader a story of life on the West Side of Asbury Park as the East Side prospers and to point to a potential path forward.