A visitor saw a large space and parked in this manner. Soon parking glut was upon us. Blogfinger photo. 10/2/21

Paul Goldfinger,  Editor Blogfinger.

So once again our small  town was overtaken by huge numbers of tourists for the Harvest Festival. The streets were closed and the band was loud. Hot dogs were hot, and useless stuff was being sold.

No other shore town has as many mega-large tourist events. Some like Spring  Lake, Bradley, and Belmar have none or one maybe.  Not even Seaside Heights has such useless events.  As Groucho once said, "I love my cigar, but sometimes I take it out of my mouth!"   When will the residents of OG look at what this town has become and then decide that there will be some changes.

Does Neptune ever promote such a thing in Shark River Hills, Mid-town or any where else?  No--they come to the Grove because everyone wants to come here to enjoy our charm, our proximity to the ocean, our friendly people and our architecture.

And regarding the latter, we taxpayers have spent fortunes to bring back our Victorians.  The Township capitalizes on that with the help of their allies--the CMA and the Chamber of Commercials.

These tourists swarm over our town and deprive us residents of the chance to have open access to enjoy our 1/2 square mile.

There is a great deal of money made with events such as today's, so why isn't some of it put towards our property taxes?   Without us, no one would come here.  I was here once in the 1970's by chance---it was the dreariest ugliest  shore town I had ever seen.

It seems to me that we are being exploited, and a class-action suit agains the exploiters might get us some return for allowing out homes to be used like a sort of temporary Disneyland.

And by the way the biggest exploiter at the Mother Ship is running again.  Michael Brantley  is the same guy who was photographed in 2016 trying to push the North End project along by giving a tour to two suits who were shopping around.

His job was not to sell the NERP to developers.   That was for the CMA to do.  Will you reelect him again?

 

Michael Brantley Neptune Committeeman is seen showing the north end to developers. 2016. Blogfinger photo.

 

From HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Grammy winner Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks.