Asbury Park

On Sunday, my husband and I decided to go to the Asbury Park boardwalk. I had read about an arts and crafts fair that was supposed to take place there.
After walking up and down the boardwalk for a while, doing my usual people watching, and exploring some of the shops and restaurants, I asked about the fair. It had been cancelled due to the threat of rain.

Oh well. We had tried. But in the meantime, I took these photos, because in thinking about this blog, and thinking about photography, I really slowed down my pace and studied some of the facades of these buildings. I had been here often as a child, and I have been here on numerous occasions as a parent for basketball games, dance recitals, birthday parties and the like, but those times found me concentrating on the reason at hand, and not as an observer of the places around me.
When we lived in California, we would frequent the Santa Monica Pier, and walk the walk in Venice Beach. We always saw something entertaining.
Yesterday was kind of the same experience.
Below are some of the scenes from the boardwalk.


There were quite a few fishing boats out on the water.
If you want to use the beach, you must buy a beach pass at one of these stands.

Of course, lemonade is always delish-if you like lemonade! It's not my choice of refreshment, but I do like this logo and name!

This building houses the Paramount Theatre, and Convention Center.

Some details of the building. I believe if you click on the images, they will enlarge.

This is where my daughter #1 had her first dance recital.

Daughter #2 played high school basketball here, in the "Battle of the Boardwalk".

This is the old Howard Johnson's restaurant

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I am going to guess that many of you know, or have heard of The Stone Pony. It is right across the street. Here, and at the Paramount, and Convention Hall, are concerts of all kinds.

There is even this little kiddie area for those who want a break from the sand and ocean.

There is also a miniature golf course on the boardwalk.

If I am not mistaken, this is where the rides were when I was a child. I may be wrong, but this is my recollection.

As we were leaving the area, we decided that we should run an errand before heading home. The skies started to change.

In no time at all, we were in a huge downpour. This is the splash as we went through one of the many floods on the way home.

In 10 minutes or so, the sun started to show itself, even though it continued to rain!

I searched for a rainbow, but didn't see one. Eventually everything was still again.

I want to thank everyone again for your thoughts, wishes and prayers for Christopher. We saw him when he came home from his trip, and my husband has spoken to him many times. He will be having another operation at the end of this week. According to the doctors here in NYC, the screw the other doctors used was a tad too big. It has been explained by one of Chris's brothers that those screws are very, very expensive, and so the hospital he'd been at probably only had a couple on hand to use. I guess it was better than nothing, because it might have taken that hospital 12-24 hours to get a better fitting size, and who knows if Chris could have hung on that long??

We have to hope of course, that this next operation is more successful than the last, since the doctors here have told him not to lift his arms higher than his head. Ugh. In the meanwhile, his spirits are pretty good (all things considered) and he is surrounded by his loving, crazy in humor, family.

jenny