Surprises were many during last week’s trip to the coast of New Jersey. The central theme of this expedition, as it turns out, was “reality vs. expectation”; I went to New Jersey anticipating the clichés, (dirty cities, dirty oceans, decay, rude people) and found almost the reverse to be true. Asbury Park is a town in a visible, albeit gradual, state of recovery from its troubling post-1970 decline. And, although a recent USA Today article would tell you otherwise, the recession is neither bringing the city to its knees nor is it hindering this progress, from what I can tell.

We made our way to the Jersey coast on a Thursday afternoon, via the hour-long train ride from Newark on the Long Branch line. I found the cities along this route to grow in their charm as we got further away from Newark. Inspired by the view from the train alone, I hope to make my way back some day to Red Bank, Monmouth, and Long Branch. Each seemed to have kept most of its early-mid twentieth century charms, forgoing too much of the over- and re-development so characteristic of American communities. To be sure, there is some of this to be found here, but one can still get a sense of the old-world-by-the-seaside charm.

The best comparison I know to make to convey the Jersey coast impression is 1950s Disney seaside town. The far end example of this would be Ocean Grove, NJ, where we visited a swap meet on a mild Saturday afternoon. That village’s tent cities and preserved architecture harken directly back to 1950s innocence, and Joe and Frank Hardy are likely on a case somewhere in the vicinity.  Probably no surprise that the Beach Boys were playing at the local performance center the night we were visiting.

Asbury Park itself, meanwhile, has lost much of the grime, crime, and gritty decay that I heard much about from 1990’s-era visitors. A deliberate, though gradual and organic, sense of recovery has taken hold of this once glorious, then decimated, seaside resort town. While the Palace Amusement park is gone, the green shoots of attractions are popping up: great restaurants that appear to be thriving (Langosta Lounge is a stellar example), independent boutiques, plans to preserve remaining milestones (the boardwalk Casino building, for example), and the ongoing, growing cultural scene. Lots of galleries have sprung up where there were once vacant shops. The fabled music scene, so meaningful to the Springsteen fan in all of us, continues to surge forward. We were witness to but a few of the live music offerings over a two day period alone, and each was memorable…especially those performances by String Bean’s blues band on a Thursday and Sikamor Rooney at Asbury Lanes on a Friday, both with guest appearances by local hero Nicole Atkins.

Returning to the USA Today article mentioned earlier: the Recession, from that point of view, has brought the region’s growth to its knees. However, I think Asbury Park is a living example of the power of media to distort. While the recession may have hampered the ability for developers to build the condo fortresses that, to some, speak of prosperity, I believe the recession has prevented the sort of outsized, overreaching growth that got our nation’s economy into its current mess. Instead, Asbury Park seems to be taking back itself, one city block and one successful independent business at a time. Perhaps this could serve as a microcosm for how our nation as a whole will move to renewed prosperity: forgo the focus on big, bottom-line kind of numbers, such as a large multi-unit real estate developer might like to see, and, instead, focus on street-level, door-to-door, sustainable growth.

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