Labor Day Weekend, September 3-6, 2010

Labor Day Weekend in Monmouth County. We sleep and go to the beach in Ocean Grove and eat and drink in neighboring Asbury Park.

Hurricane Earl passed to the east on Friday:

But the rest of the weekend was as beautiful as we’ve ever seen it:

We watched the remnants of the storm during happy hour on Friday evening from a new place in the Asbury Park Convention Hall building:

Then we ate at Brickwall, which is always solid, then had ices at a new Ralph’s on Cookman Avenue and drinks at a new bar on Bond Street.

The boardwalk area in Asbury Park is getting more and more stuff, including another new restaurant. There were fireworks on Saturday.

You’d think that Asbury Park has been hit hard by the economic downturn, and it has, but only somewhat. Esperanza is/was a big project right off the boardwalk that was designed to replace a stalled development, but Esperanza itself stalled around 2008 or so. Today the site looks the same as it once did, just smaller. Here’s what was there in 2004:

Here’s what it looks like today:

And off of Cookman Avenue is something I’m labeling the Cookman Avenue Piling Field/Tree Farm:

Some artists have taken to decorating the pilings and using them for site-specific works. The “tree farm” tag comes from a frustrated resident of the neighboring development.

But even with those things, Asbury Park is as busy as we’ve ever seen it. The restaurants were all crowded and people were all over the boardwalk all weekend. I think the key isn’t to rely on large development but rather encourage a critical mass of small businesses. I don’t know if those failed projects were subsidized by taxpayers but if they were, it was a bad deal.

You forget how much Asbury Park has evolved. Here it was the first time I visited, which was only back in 2004 — keep in mind that this was on Saturday afternoon of the Labor Day Weekend:

And here was Monday afternoon of Labor Day weekend this year:

And that second set of images doesn’t even scratch the surface . . .

August 2010

A going-away dinner for a friend at Old Shanghai Deluxe in Manhattan’s Chinatown (by request — she was going to miss Chinese food like that).

New Long Island City items: Hook and Ladder 66, The Foundry, Metropolitan Building (funny story — I attended an art opening many years back and assumed for all this time that the people lived there and that this wasn’t actually an event space), Taxidepot (combines LIC’s two biggest industries — taxis and the film industry), Tom Cat Bakery (that’s where your bread comes from) and Z Hotel.

A page for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel compiles the ever-evolving billboards along Vernon Boulevard that are visible from the Manhattan-bound tunnel entrance (more to come as I get to them):

We already went over Washington, D.C.

Lucy the Elephant in Margate, New Jersey:

Laziza and Kabab Cafe in Astoria, Queens:

Tagging along with Jen on a work-related function at La Plaza Cultural in the East Village; never been inside there so I was excited about that:

Also, an aborted outing to the Prospect Park Bandshell.

Washington, D.C., August 13-15, 2010

A summer weekend in D.C. visiting a friend . . .

Dinner on Friday at Birch & Barley.

Saturday at the National Museum of American History. I remembered the anecdote about Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington from one of Daniel Boorstin’s books, so I was excited to see it in person again (a summation of the story can be found here in the section about The National Experience volume — it’s a great story if you’ve never heard it):

Michelle Obama’s inauguration gown is on display, too:

And of course Archie Bunker’s chair:

And Bill Clinton’s saxophone!

We ate at Spike Mendelsohn’s Good Stuff where the president has a burger named for him before heading down to Nationals Park to see the Diamondbacks beat up on the Nationals. Everyone was geeked about Stephen Strasburg, but that was before he tore his arm ligament:

I really love the president mascots:

On Sunday, we had the Nuevo Latino Dim Sum Brunch at Café Atlántico:

This was shortly after Spain won the World Cup, and I’m not sure if José Andrés is still on observing a self-imposed no-octopus rule:

We ate ice cream at The Dairy Godmother in Alexandria, where the president also visited:

We took the bus back to New York from the palatial Bolt-Mega terminal at the future CityCenter DC.