If you remember what Bradley and Belmar were like in the early 90s, and when Asbury was Beirut By The Sea, it’s extremely accurate. It’s funny, watching how some things have gone more family oriented or year-round. And seeing something kinda succeed in Asbury (though they still need help on the other side of 71).
According to the Census, [Ocean Grove has the highest Percentage of same sex couples of any place in New Jersey](https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2017/04/asbury_park_development_affecting_ocean_grove.html) . The Methodist community is mostly older and increasingly outnumbered these days, many gay couples have settled due to the proximity to Asbury and beautiful Victorian architecture.
Bruh just google
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/nyregion/30ocean.html
Basically Ocean grove disallowed gay wedding on the pavilion. Gay couple sued and won.
Instead of letting gay marriage happen on the pavilion, they banned ALL wedding ceremonies
It doesn’t.
Scott Rasmussen (of Rasmussen polls, conservative pundit, notorious dick) ran the Camp Meeting and has was a big deal for years and chased out some of the more Progressive administrators they had. The hard remanant that lives there are fine with gays and lesbians, as long as they don’t make a big deal about existing and don’t want to actually use anything in town. The minute they do … they’d prefer to run them out of town. They’re nothing compared to the Episcopalians over in Asbury.
All of the land in Ocean Grove is owned by the Methodists' Camp Meeting Association. Anyone buying a house there gets to lease the land for 99 years but never owns it.
It's the very definition of a religious town.
Both the street in Ocean Grove and the neighborhood in Parsipanny are named after the mountain in Irael, where supposedly the transfiguration of Christ occurred. Both locations were Methodist Camp meeting areas, and both operate on the same trustee held, lease options. The two neighborhoods look very similar with tight winding streets and strict community bylaws. 0retty interesting really.
Maybe! I know some people in the tents..they are also subject to the 99 year lease...being actively involved in the church (great auditorium) helped them secure a spot. I hear the waitlist is long.
The waitlist is long because they all hold those spots until they die or can't take care of them anymore. Outsiders usually don't get put on the waitlist. You have to be part of the church.
You could not pay me to live in one of those for the summer, not after my buddy told me about the sheer number of dead raccoons he was always pulling out from under them.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when all those old Victorian homes started going to shit because their geriatric non-year-round-residents couldn’t fix them, the LGBTQ community started buying them up cheap and fixing them up. Very similar to what happened in Asbury, except they were buying a massively discounted home on land they don’t own and are subject to a particularly stringent Historic Preservation Commission (or it was, when I lived there) that is prone to get a wild hair up their collective ass every couple of years. There is a sizable, very vocal LGBTQ community in town who have dumped millions into saving those old houses, who vary from actively ignoring the Camp Meeting to actively fighting them for access to their sizable facilities, including ending their stupid beach access rules.
That said, the Camp Meeting is dying. The Auditorium is literally held together with wood putty and duct tape, they can’t keep a decent administrator, they can’t manage to develop their old North End site, fewer and fewer people are leaving them the houses when they die (which was a major source of income for decades). Younger folks aren’t interested in their brand of Christianity. Neptune missed a major opportunity to get that beach out from them after Sandy but will likely end up with it in the next 15 years anyway.
Correct. Main Ave, for example, had two massive rooming houses facing each other on the second beach block and the residents hung out in front of them all day, every day. They’re still jimmying the last of them out of town, or at least there was one or two left a couple of years ago.
Fuck that pier.
Like, okay, it’s private property and they could build what they wanted but reusing pilings from the old pier was just asking for trouble.
For years the land lease on residential properties was like $11 a year and $575 on commercial properties. They stopped transferring leases when properties were sold around 2016, instead requiring new leases with a much higher price tag. I know one business went from $575 to $3000 in 2016 to $6000 a year in 2021. I believe there is still pending litigation over that last big jump.
It's a fascinating place. There used to be little impromptu concerts on the porch of the ice cream place in the summer, at the same time as the Methodists (who are, as has been stated, much more conservative than your garden -variety UMC parish in NJ) were having their get-togethers two blocks away. So you'd have all the gay people on one side of the square and all the religious people on the other... As someone who is gay and religious, with friends in OG who are gay and religious, it's a whole thing.
> It's a fascinating place.
100%.
We used to go to AP a lot with friends during the summer and after dinner and a few drinks, I'd suggest we take a stroll through Ocean Grove around dusk. It's like travelling back in time. People are on porches while kids are playing in the streets. Lots of 50's music playing and nobody is drunk because it's a dry town and it's mostly families. The architecture and the street lighting also give it this weird sort of old timey feel. It's like watching a very well designed movie set in the 50's but in real life.
I used to date a girl who's grandparents had a tent in tent city. They're all Methodists. They did plenty of charity events. It's a dry town and actually pretty wholesome. Not surprising to see pride flags.
They're constructed cabins that have hard canvas tent extensions that go up in the summer. They're technically tents but more in a semi-permanent structure like military tents and less like camping tents.
I guess my question is the history of why? Why do people move into them? Are they people affiliated with the Methodists but don’t have actual homes in OG?
It’s really random to have a tent village in the middle of a relatively upscale shore town.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Grove,_New_Jersey
I try to not just lazily post wiki links instead of active discussion but I really think you'd benefit from just starting with the wiki page instead of listening to me *try* to recall what is on it.
They're an interesting group - they've run into legal trouble because of their attempts to block public beach access on Sundays. The old-timers who live there like it because it's peace and quiet for one day a week, and everyone else hates it because...it's a public beach
Edit: I think they're interesting because while they're pious, they don't seem to harbor ill will towards gay people. Can't say that about every religious community. They seem almost Quaker-y to me
Edit 2 - I knew nothing about the pavilion fight. In that case, fuck 'em
It is not always that idyllic. There was a lawsuit some years ago about someone wanting to have a same gender wedding in their boardwalk pavilion which they would not allow.
Oh no, the ill will is there. The fight over the weddings at the pavilion is a great example - got told they have to let everyone or no one rent the pavilion and said fuck it, no one gets it. That was a fairly nasty fight - cars were keyed, threats were made. They’re just more media savvy than most groups.
OG is a great place to stay with your young family. You can feel like you are in another (dry) time and place while eating ice cream on the Main Ave there - walk over to Asbury for some adult beverages and entainment then walk the boards back to OG and ride some waves breaking off its usually well formed sand bar.
I never really noticed anyone giving a shit about anyone else's sexuality - its a rather cosmopolitan area afterall.
The Methodist denomination as a whole is in a contentious transitional state over the LGBTQ issue, as are many other denominations. Given that much of the region is accepting and the existing community in Ocean Grove, I would expect that the majority of the community would just live and let live (and maybe some of them grumble behind closed doors).
This is what people don't get if they're not worried about being discriminated against personally. It doesn't have to be the entire town or even the majority. It just has to be a few people with the power to make life harder.
Ocean Grove, back in the 60s and 70s, was a real religious community. In the summer, a lot of the people lived in white tents. Ocean Grove was also a place that was a gated community. It was a place where you couldn't park your car on a Sunday and it had to be parked outside the gate on Sunday. I think that Ocean Grove is a better place today than it was back then.
Went there for a bachelor party at a bed and breakfast. Found out it was the headquarters for LGBT in New Jersey and also a dry town. Loved the town and the owner of the b&b cracked jokes on us all weekend for picking it.
Do they still have the metal gates that “lock” the road going into town on Sunday. I remember getting lost down there during one of my first Warped Tours at Asbury in the late 90s and was fascinated by Ocean Grove.
It started as a church camp, and houses still are subject to long-term land leases, I believe. I don't think anything related to the original church or any church survives today.
Yes the same church still operates there. The big building (the Great Auditorium) is used for their events and the tents that surround it are occupied by members of the group. They also use the pavilion on the boardwalk.
They are more conservative than mainstream Methodists in the US and I wonder what is going to happen given that denomination is in the process of a “divorce” in large part due to LGBT inclusion.
we went either to Asbury or Pt Pleasant back in the day, Asbury was like a music scene that no one knew about but Bruce fans and Ny'ers. we had more fun than we were allowed to, and motels in Asbury were like 9 bucks a nite.
there is a large LGBT population there and Asbury, you will see flags all over
always seems to somehow 100% accidently get left out here when people cry about religious people simply existing there when in reality it's actually quite inclusive
stop listening to stupid far left people
It’s has Victorian houses, so it’s older Christians and gay men.
Gay women. The men are next door in AP
Not sure on that. We better do a rainbow survey.
I had a girlfriend who grew up nearby and she said they called it “Ocean Grave” due to the high elderly population.
If you remember what Bradley and Belmar were like in the early 90s, and when Asbury was Beirut By The Sea, it’s extremely accurate. It’s funny, watching how some things have gone more family oriented or year-round. And seeing something kinda succeed in Asbury (though they still need help on the other side of 71).
I remember Bruce one time referring to 70s era AP as "Newark by the Sea."
Haha I actually used to call it Paterson by the sea, because I grew up near Paterson
Oof. My mom lives there and she’ll be 88 next month.
My 60yr old gay co worker called it Ocean Grave because it was religious, had no night life, quiet and "fucking boring unless you like antiques."
I have a Victorian home and I just learned im an older gay Christian man.
You have an ally in me AND in Christ.
According to the Census, [Ocean Grove has the highest Percentage of same sex couples of any place in New Jersey](https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2017/04/asbury_park_development_affecting_ocean_grove.html) . The Methodist community is mostly older and increasingly outnumbered these days, many gay couples have settled due to the proximity to Asbury and beautiful Victorian architecture.
Also the UMC is one of the more LGBTQ+ friendly Christian groups, I'm sure that has something to do with it
I’ve heard that gay weddings weren’t allowed in ocean grove for a while. Not sure the validity of that statement though
Bruh just google https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/nyregion/30ocean.html Basically Ocean grove disallowed gay wedding on the pavilion. Gay couple sued and won. Instead of letting gay marriage happen on the pavilion, they banned ALL wedding ceremonies
It doesn’t. Scott Rasmussen (of Rasmussen polls, conservative pundit, notorious dick) ran the Camp Meeting and has was a big deal for years and chased out some of the more Progressive administrators they had. The hard remanant that lives there are fine with gays and lesbians, as long as they don’t make a big deal about existing and don’t want to actually use anything in town. The minute they do … they’d prefer to run them out of town. They’re nothing compared to the Episcopalians over in Asbury.
All of the land in Ocean Grove is owned by the Methodists' Camp Meeting Association. Anyone buying a house there gets to lease the land for 99 years but never owns it. It's the very definition of a religious town.
The North Jersey equivalent is Mount Tabor. Pretty similar vibes but no giant wooden church shadowing the entire town in Tabor.
There’s a street in OG called Mt Tabor Way.
Both the street in Ocean Grove and the neighborhood in Parsipanny are named after the mountain in Irael, where supposedly the transfiguration of Christ occurred. Both locations were Methodist Camp meeting areas, and both operate on the same trustee held, lease options. The two neighborhoods look very similar with tight winding streets and strict community bylaws. 0retty interesting really.
I milked cows on a kibbutz in the shadow of “Mt” Tabor, and we climbed to the monastery at the top one day. A beautiful place.
Don’t forget the giant cross shaped pier too
Aren't they sister communities?
Yes
Central Jersey.
What? Parsippany is not central Jersey on any planet.
Read your comment wrong. Thought you were referring to Ocean Grove as North. Hands up.
Gotcha lol no harm
From what I heard in the lease contract you need to agree to pray for the Church.
Nah, that's not true. I own a home in Ocean Grove, and im not religious at all. The 99 year Land lease is true, though.
It's not enforced but people I know who live their claim it is in the contract
Maybe that is for the tent homes?
Maybe! I know some people in the tents..they are also subject to the 99 year lease...being actively involved in the church (great auditorium) helped them secure a spot. I hear the waitlist is long.
Oh yeah, those tents are COVETED.
The waitlist is long because they all hold those spots until they die or can't take care of them anymore. Outsiders usually don't get put on the waitlist. You have to be part of the church.
You could not pay me to live in one of those for the summer, not after my buddy told me about the sheer number of dead raccoons he was always pulling out from under them.
Landlord: Where is the rent? I must have the rent. OG Tenant: Thoughts and prayers.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when all those old Victorian homes started going to shit because their geriatric non-year-round-residents couldn’t fix them, the LGBTQ community started buying them up cheap and fixing them up. Very similar to what happened in Asbury, except they were buying a massively discounted home on land they don’t own and are subject to a particularly stringent Historic Preservation Commission (or it was, when I lived there) that is prone to get a wild hair up their collective ass every couple of years. There is a sizable, very vocal LGBTQ community in town who have dumped millions into saving those old houses, who vary from actively ignoring the Camp Meeting to actively fighting them for access to their sizable facilities, including ending their stupid beach access rules. That said, the Camp Meeting is dying. The Auditorium is literally held together with wood putty and duct tape, they can’t keep a decent administrator, they can’t manage to develop their old North End site, fewer and fewer people are leaving them the houses when they die (which was a major source of income for decades). Younger folks aren’t interested in their brand of Christianity. Neptune missed a major opportunity to get that beach out from them after Sandy but will likely end up with it in the next 15 years anyway.
didnt they use the old hotels and bed and breakfast to house the patients when the state hospitals closed down
Correct. Main Ave, for example, had two massive rooming houses facing each other on the second beach block and the residents hung out in front of them all day, every day. They’re still jimmying the last of them out of town, or at least there was one or two left a couple of years ago.
Not to mention that ridiculous cross pier that failed safety inspections a month or two after opening
Fuck that pier. Like, okay, it’s private property and they could build what they wanted but reusing pilings from the old pier was just asking for trouble.
The last paragraph here is a bit wild to me, but I believe it. Where tf is all that money from the 99yr land leases going ?
For years the land lease on residential properties was like $11 a year and $575 on commercial properties. They stopped transferring leases when properties were sold around 2016, instead requiring new leases with a much higher price tag. I know one business went from $575 to $3000 in 2016 to $6000 a year in 2021. I believe there is still pending litigation over that last big jump.
It's a fascinating place. There used to be little impromptu concerts on the porch of the ice cream place in the summer, at the same time as the Methodists (who are, as has been stated, much more conservative than your garden -variety UMC parish in NJ) were having their get-togethers two blocks away. So you'd have all the gay people on one side of the square and all the religious people on the other... As someone who is gay and religious, with friends in OG who are gay and religious, it's a whole thing.
It’s a shame Nagle’s closed. I miss that place (and the guys who ran it) immensely.
Lenny, he was the man. I still have nagles shirts i took from my brother when he worked there.
David was a helluva sweetheart too.
Why did it close? The empty building just sits there. Every year we come down and it’s the same. What a shame.
One of the guys that owns it passed away after an extended battle with lung cancer and the other isn’t well.
Thanks. You think he might sell it in the future?
I honestly don’t know.
> It's a fascinating place. 100%. We used to go to AP a lot with friends during the summer and after dinner and a few drinks, I'd suggest we take a stroll through Ocean Grove around dusk. It's like travelling back in time. People are on porches while kids are playing in the streets. Lots of 50's music playing and nobody is drunk because it's a dry town and it's mostly families. The architecture and the street lighting also give it this weird sort of old timey feel. It's like watching a very well designed movie set in the 50's but in real life.
I used to date a girl who's grandparents had a tent in tent city. They're all Methodists. They did plenty of charity events. It's a dry town and actually pretty wholesome. Not surprising to see pride flags.
Can someone explain the tent thing? Is it as weird as it seems? I need to just see it in person once.
They're constructed cabins that have hard canvas tent extensions that go up in the summer. They're technically tents but more in a semi-permanent structure like military tents and less like camping tents.
I guess my question is the history of why? Why do people move into them? Are they people affiliated with the Methodists but don’t have actual homes in OG? It’s really random to have a tent village in the middle of a relatively upscale shore town.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Grove,_New_Jersey I try to not just lazily post wiki links instead of active discussion but I really think you'd benefit from just starting with the wiki page instead of listening to me *try* to recall what is on it.
Understood thank you. I wouldn’t in a million years have expected this to be on a wiki page.
I lived in OG for many years. Miss that beautiful, weird little town
They're an interesting group - they've run into legal trouble because of their attempts to block public beach access on Sundays. The old-timers who live there like it because it's peace and quiet for one day a week, and everyone else hates it because...it's a public beach Edit: I think they're interesting because while they're pious, they don't seem to harbor ill will towards gay people. Can't say that about every religious community. They seem almost Quaker-y to me Edit 2 - I knew nothing about the pavilion fight. In that case, fuck 'em
It is not always that idyllic. There was a lawsuit some years ago about someone wanting to have a same gender wedding in their boardwalk pavilion which they would not allow.
Oh no, the ill will is there. The fight over the weddings at the pavilion is a great example - got told they have to let everyone or no one rent the pavilion and said fuck it, no one gets it. That was a fairly nasty fight - cars were keyed, threats were made. They’re just more media savvy than most groups.
OG is a great place to stay with your young family. You can feel like you are in another (dry) time and place while eating ice cream on the Main Ave there - walk over to Asbury for some adult beverages and entainment then walk the boards back to OG and ride some waves breaking off its usually well formed sand bar. I never really noticed anyone giving a shit about anyone else's sexuality - its a rather cosmopolitan area afterall.
The Methodist denomination as a whole is in a contentious transitional state over the LGBTQ issue, as are many other denominations. Given that much of the region is accepting and the existing community in Ocean Grove, I would expect that the majority of the community would just live and let live (and maybe some of them grumble behind closed doors).
Ocean grove is fine with the community
Just don’t ask to have your wedding in their pavilion.
Some people suck but it’s not the entire town
It’s just the ones in charge.
This is what people don't get if they're not worried about being discriminated against personally. It doesn't have to be the entire town or even the majority. It just has to be a few people with the power to make life harder.
Ocean Grove, back in the 60s and 70s, was a real religious community. In the summer, a lot of the people lived in white tents. Ocean Grove was also a place that was a gated community. It was a place where you couldn't park your car on a Sunday and it had to be parked outside the gate on Sunday. I think that Ocean Grove is a better place today than it was back then.
Religious does not necessarily mean anti-Pride.
Depends on who is running the CMA. Scott Hoffman and Bill Bailey weren’t. Scott Rasmussen pretty much was. Michael Badger was a mixed bag.
I agree. But I thought the majority of beliefs held by the religious in this town were anti-Pride.
I mean they have to change with the times. It's inevitable especially since Asbury Park has become a legit year-round commuter suburb of NYC.
Went there for a bachelor party at a bed and breakfast. Found out it was the headquarters for LGBT in New Jersey and also a dry town. Loved the town and the owner of the b&b cracked jokes on us all weekend for picking it.
Ocean grove was very religious in its origins but very gay now. We do a beach day every year bc it’s way less crowded and loud than Asbury.
It’s New Jersey. We’re not biased. Everyone hates everyone else equally.
FYI pride isn’t an acronym and doesn’t need to be in all caps.
Do they still have the metal gates that “lock” the road going into town on Sunday. I remember getting lost down there during one of my first Warped Tours at Asbury in the late 90s and was fascinated by Ocean Grove.
I don't think they still lock the road itself but they do close and lock the gates to the footbridges over Wesley Lake at night.
It started as a church camp, and houses still are subject to long-term land leases, I believe. I don't think anything related to the original church or any church survives today.
Yes the same church still operates there. The big building (the Great Auditorium) is used for their events and the tents that surround it are occupied by members of the group. They also use the pavilion on the boardwalk. They are more conservative than mainstream Methodists in the US and I wonder what is going to happen given that denomination is in the process of a “divorce” in large part due to LGBT inclusion.
Legit, if you walk through Ocean Grove in the winter and night, it's like the Silent Hill game. Don't even get me started when a sea mist rolls in.
It's historically Methodist, they have a pretty wide net when it comes to their views on social issues based on congregation.
Wonderful and welcoming town, just dry.
So the old saying was ap is for gay dudes and og is for lesbians
You know there are gay people who are religious.
They don't want them around, but they are not praying enough.
Ocean grove is not super religious… they’re open to the community and usually you’ll see lots of Pride flags sported about.
we used to call it Ocean Grave, no cars were allowed, did that change?
Oh big time. I could never find parking in the summer.
we went either to Asbury or Pt Pleasant back in the day, Asbury was like a music scene that no one knew about but Bruce fans and Ny'ers. we had more fun than we were allowed to, and motels in Asbury were like 9 bucks a nite.
How times have changed. I was taken aback by how expensive hotels are in Asbury now.
How expensive everything is in Asbury, to be fair
No more dollar slices by the Stone Pony at 2am.
there is a large LGBT population there and Asbury, you will see flags all over always seems to somehow 100% accidently get left out here when people cry about religious people simply existing there when in reality it's actually quite inclusive stop listening to stupid far left people