Gentrification Down the Shore

MOLLY VOLLMAN MAKRIS is an associate professor and program coordinator of Urban Studies at CUNY-Guttman Community College. Her work investigates the intersections of gentrification, urban education, and the lives of youth. Her previous book, Public Housing and School Choice in a Gentrified City: Youth Experiences of Uneven Opportunity won the AESA Critics Choice Book Award.
 
MARY GATTA is an associate professor at CUNY-Guttman Community College. She is a leader in research on gender, workforce development and policy. Her latest books are Waiting on Retirement: Aging and Economic Insecurity in Low Wage Work and All I Want Is a Job! Unemployed Women Navigating the Public WorkforceSystem.

Chapter 1
Seasonal Gentrification 
    
 
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Asbury Park, New Jersey-a small beachfront city on the Jersey Shore- was booming. Considered a dynamic new resort community, it was a place of leisure with live entertainment, an arcade, and sprawling boardwalk, along with 200 hotels[1] and restaurants. Even in its earliest days, Asbury Park had a reputation as quirky and unusual with cheap amusements, “wild attractions,” and vendors selling international items perceived as exotic[2]. But not everyone enjoyed access to the amenities Asbury Park had to offer. While they toiled as waiters, entertainers, desk clerks, busboys, dishwashers, and housekeepers in the establishments that attracted vacationers to Asbury Park, workers of color were not welcome on the beaches or permitted to live on the beachfront East Side of the city. As the century wore on Asbury Park became an illustration of some of the macro social and economic structural changes occurring in cities across the United States with its own beachfront twist.  While Asbury Park was experienced as a popular vacation destination in the early twentieth century for White tourists, by the second half of the century the city lost its glamour as a beach vacation destination. As late as 2000, the city was still synonymous for many with violence, drugs and crime.
Yet in 2019 Asbury Park’s narrative has shifted again—named among the coolest small towns in America the city has multimillion-dollar beachfront condos attracting the attention of Hollywood stars and national media attention as a travel destination. Summer days in Asbury once again mean tourists strolling the boardwalk, basking in the Jersey sun, and dining by the Atlantic Ocean. But under a mile away from the seasonal crowds, many of Asbury’s long-time residents live below poverty and struggle for their share of this prosperity throughout all four seasons of the year. 

This book captures a story of Asbury Park, which serves as an illustration of seasonal gentrification. This distinctive form of gentrification is explored throughout the book. Gentrification is a term employed with increasing frequency by urban dwellers, researchers, and journalists since its first use 55 years ago. While the definitions differ and debates exist over whether it should be defined based on its “causes, outcomes, or everyday character”[3] an inclusive definition from Gina Perez describes it as:  
In regard to seasonal gentrification, Perez’s definition still fits but warrants more delineation. In Asbury Park, a seasonally gentrifying city, the growing gentrifier population (largely tourists and second home owners) flood the city most during the tourism season to take advantage of the beach while long-time residents (many low income people of color) struggle to survive economically year-round as Asbury undergoes this transformation. While there has been much written on gentrifying cites and gentrification’s impact on long-time residents, there has been scant attention to what happens when a city seasonally gentrifies. This book aims to expand the gentrification literature by looking closely at the particularities of this process when it occurs in a beach-community city. We know very little about what happens when the gentrifying populations are largely seasonal and thus less invested in year-round institutions and needs (such as the success of the city workforce, educational system, and inequities). In this book we employ the lens of intersectionality--- the overlap of identities and discrimination across race, class, gender, sexuality and other identities. We utilize a framework of intersectionality to help explain how residents and businesses impact, and are impacted by, seasonality and gentrification. In Asbury Park there are deep historically-rooted socio-economic and racial divides to be explored alongside a long history as a space for LGBTQ visitors and residents. These groups play varying roles in seasonal gentrification and in its impacts. Using in-depth qualitative research our book illustrates that while the gentrification may be seasonal, its impacts will be lasting.

Asbury Park Today: A Story of Differences
In 2016, when we began our research, Asbury Park (population about 15,500) was experiencing renewed attention. The “Coolest Small Town in America”[5] is once again known for its quirky feel and beachfront beauty. On any given summer day, the city is flooded with LGBTQ owners of old Victorian homes, hipsters enjoying brunch en masse on Cookman Avenue, and well-heeled families from New York City and the surrounding area filling the boardwalk with their beach gear and strollers. The city is divided along a railroad track that is symbolic of the larger East Side-West Side division. The rapid gentrification of the East Side-closest to the ocean- is visible and on the minds of residents across the city. Asbury Park, however, is still the poorest city in its county and its Black and Brown residents continue to experienceexclusion from popular East Side amenities. As one community activist explained, “once you get off the train like you can definitely see it. You can look on one side and it looks a whole lot brighter than the other side and it’s like once you even get off the train, like all signs are pointing to go to this way. Stay away from that way!”          

Similar to other cities, the railroad tracks are not just a geographic boundary. There is also a palpable social and emotional schism exemplified by the tracks. While the East Side is rapidly gentrifying the West Side is home to a largely socio-economically disadvantaged Black and Brown population. As one young Black man from the West Side explained about the emotional difficulty of crossing over this line, “It's tough to make it across the railroad tracks, because now you've got all this new stuff going on. Besides the apartments that they're building, it's beautiful …over there by Cookman [East Side], you've got a sense of hope.” 

While on the East Side residents complain about new luxury development, privatization of the beach, and the lack of parking, residents on the West Side worry most about crime and lack of educational and employment opportunities. In a diverse community like this one it is not surprising that there are ethnic tensions and palpable frustrations that surface around issues of education, employment opportunities, housing, and race. As one West Side resident summed it up in a focus group:
   
This summation captures a great deal of the tensions we will explore in this book. This is a town where you can purchase a $25 martini and sip it at a bar overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, while just a few blocks away residents live below the poverty line and complain of the noise of gunshots. We heard repeatedly about the lack of new development on the West Side. As one activist put it, “Yeah my issue is whose term is ‘redevelopment of Asbury Park?’  The first issue with that is when I hear redevelopment of a city, I would anticipate that the entire city, the four quadrants, that redevelopment would be happening everywhere. It is not.” And yet this was matched with fears that development on the East Side will drive up rents and lead to displacement throughout town. 

The gentrification described by residents on the ground is supported by the numbers. Between 2010 and 2017, the Black/African American population in Asbury decreased by 11.1 percentage points, while the White population has increased by 7.4 percentage points. In 2010, 16% of Asbury Park’s population had a bachelor’s degree or higher and by 2017 this number climbed to 23%.[6],[7] Those with less than a high school degree decreased from 26% to 16% of the city’s residents in those same years.[8],[9] There has been an approximate 6 percentage point increase in employment in management, business, science, and arts and a 6 percentage point decrease in employment in natural resources, construction, and maintenance between 2008 and 2017. [10],[11] Thus, Asbury is becoming whiter and less Black/African-American and it now has more white collar residents with higher education.
 
While there are new homeowners in Asbury Park, it is unlikely that long-time working-class residents are the city’s new homeowners. In a city with a median household income of $39,324,[12] between 2007 and 2017, the reported average home loan applicant annual income was $180,036,[13] and by 2017, the median value of an owner-occupied home was $335,500.[14] Rents are also increasing. The proportion of rental units renting for $500-$999 decreased from 29.7% to 19.9% between 2008 and 2017, while the percentage of units renting for $1500 or more increased from 16.9% to 26.3% of all rental units.[15],[16] Further, between 2010 and 2017, 43.1% of home loan applications in the city were made for non-owner-occupied homes.[17]

Certain populations may be more at-risk of displacement or losing their representation in the community. Between 2000 and 2017, African-Americans without a high school diploma fell from 33% to 16% of the city’s population, while the proportion of African Americans with bachelor’s degrees increased by just over 1 percentage point, to 9.5%.[18],[19]Meanwhile, the proportion of White residents with college degrees increased by 29 percentage points, to 48%. Children younger than nineteen fell from 32.6% to 25.3% of the city’s population, while the proportion of middle-aged residents grew.[20],[21] Yet even as vulnerable populations may be leaving the city, poverty rates remain incredibly high. In 2017, the senior poverty rate in Asbury Park was 18.1%, and child poverty was 49.5%, up 4.6 percentage points since 2008.[22],[23]

While the numbers clearly demonstrate gentrification, there are two weaknesses within the quantitative data on Asbury Park’s changes. The first is that seasonal gentrification is more difficult to quantify than gentrification elsewhere. This is because many seasonal gentrifiers are vacation homeowners and long- and short-term rental residents. They are counted in the geographic area of the Census where they own their primary homes, not in Asbury. Therefore, our numbers are likely to not include a seasonal, higher-income portion of the city’s residents and are likely to underestimate shifting demographics. This points to a common data lack that can influence policies and more active regulation around affordability because the higher-income population may be under-estimated or misunderstood by local government and policymakers.

The second weakness within the data relates to Asbury Park’s size. Since the city was home to between 16,118 (2010) and 15,511 (2018) residents during the period studied, Census Bureau demographic, employment and income estimates for the city sometimes have large potential margins of error. To reduce margins of error, we typically use American Community Survey 5-year data estimates, and potential margins of error are not large enough to affect the greater trends we identify nor the conclusions we draw regarding gentrification. However, where we look at data on smaller subsets of the city’s population or housing market, potential margins of error can be substantial.[24]

The “Other Side of the Tracks”
In addition to the uneven redevelopment of the community and shifting demographics, while there are no signs (as in the past) expressly prohibiting it, low-income residents of Asbury Park’s West Side also experience other less tangible signs that continue to exclude them from opportunity on the East Side today. As chapter 5 explains in more detail, we were told that they often do not use the beaches until the evening when they are no longer required to pay for admittance. Other residents told us that they never visit the beach because of the high cost of parking on the East Side and the police scrutiny they report that they experience on that side of town. As one resident from the West Side explained of the East Side, “It’s too much racist...Because if you go down there, ‘You’re not dressed right. You don't look right. What are you doing this way? Why are you over here? You know they are stopping, they’re asking for ID.’”  

And unlike the past, today, many of the Black and Brown residents struggle to find employment on the burgeoning East Side of town. As will be explored more in chapter 3, the new service sector is staffed, at least front of house, largely by White middle class millennial hipsters not adults of color from the West Side. While the city is experiencing redevelopment with new hotels, restaurants, stores, and bars this development is not creating substantial employment opportunities as it once did (albeit under segregationist policies). If you pop into many of the coffee shops, trendy bars, or fashionable boardwalk shops in Asbury Park you will likely find a hip White employee staffing the visible positions (or a hip young person of color-a dynamic we will explore more in chapters 3 and 4). Additionally, while Asbury Park is now oft ranked among great beaches and destinations, it was also ranked in the top 50 worst places to live in the nation due to its poverty rate, crime rate, typical household income and high cost of living.[25]  The city and thus this story are complex, nuanced, and intersectional. 

A New Caliber of Living
Asbury Park is experiencing a moment. In 2019, boardwalk development is moving full speed ahead while activists (like Save Asbury’s Waterfront[26]) push back against private pools and privatization of the beachfront. The most expensive development in Asbury Park, the 17-story Asbury Ocean Club was described by its branding and marketing firm as “offer[ing] a new caliber of living on the Jersey Coast"[27] and by the chief executive officer of the developer iStar as “bring[ing] a whole new meaning to living both the beach life and the high life.”[28]

Current listings in this development are between $897,000 and $5,980,000.

As one community activist explained:  
Not only are high-rise condominiums moving to the oceanfront, but other changes have occurred that have a more micro-effect on day-to-day living. For example, the city has a much-discussed ban on aggressive panhandling, which was criticized as unconstitutional and as unfair to the socioeconomically disadvantaged.[29] In 2018, a smoking ban for the beaches was passed that was cited by the deputy mayor as “excessive”.[30]

Gentrification has not raised home values in the city’s mostly Black southwest neighborhoods yet, and over the last decade, people of color have been poorly represented among the city’s new homeowners. As Figure 3 illustrates, home purchases between 2007 and 2017 have been uneven across the city, with census tracts 8070.03/.04 on the East Side experiencing very different home purchasing than those on the Southwest Side (tracts 8072 and 8073). Northwest Asbury (tract 8071, an area which experienced early gentrification and gut renovations) has also seen a lot of activity.[31]

Black and Hispanic homebuyers made up just 5% of loan applicants in the East Side census tracts and 10% in gentrified 8071. Even in tracts 8072 and 8073, where Black residents have historically been a large majority, people of color were just 35% and 34% of loan applicants, respectively.[32]

Black homeownership has fallen in all five Asbury Park census tracts since the turn of the century, and the Census Bureau estimates that, as of 2017, there were no Black/African American homeowners in Asbury Park’s two seaside census tracts.[33] The number of Black renters has also fallen in the gentrified census tracts 8070.03, 8070.04, and 8071, while remaining essentially the same in the city’s southwest.[34] As illustrated in Figure 4 and Figure 5, African Americans contribute much smaller percentages of the city’s population, in all five census tracts, than they did two decades ago.

Demographic disparities are part of the policy discussions in the city but much work remains. Beth McManus, Asbury Park’s external affordable housing consultant, explained in triCityNews, “Asbury Park is one of the few municipalities that are interested in going above and beyond their affordable housing obligation.”[35] The City’s Planning Board adopted a new housing element for the master plan (which will need to be approved by a state judge and then enacted by council). There is a political consensus behind this plan demonstrating the commitment. This plan will allow for increased densities in certain areas with 15% set-asides for low and moderate-income housing. In the downtown business district, it will loosen non-resident parking requirements and allowable height restrictions for 10% low- and moderate-income housing set-asides. There will also be additional incentives for more affordable housing on the West Side in the Springwood Avenue and Washington Avenue redevelopment areas.[36] When it comes to the waterfront, however, this work is even more challenging. That area of development is part of the binding agreement with the official waterfront developer, iStar. iStar, a New York City-based real estate firm, took control of waterfront redevelopment in 2009 after many stops and starts and no redevelopment. iStar now pays into a city fund which can be used for affordable housing but does not include set-asides in their projects. Affordable housing activists are pushing for an amendment to this agreement to ensure affordable housing in the area “where more than 50 percent of the City’s new development will be created.”[37] The city is also currently looking to purchase land to prevent the master developer, iStar, from building 16 townhouses on the beach.[38]

This is a moment where the city’s future is uncertain, but its believers and activists hope to maintain its funky vibe, socio-economic and racial diversity, its reputation as a safe powerful hub for the LGBTQ community, and to see a West Side that is vibrant, safe, and supportive of longtime residents of color with improved employment opportunities for these residents. At the moment, several questions remain… with the eyes and capital of developers and wealthy out of towners in play; can Asbury Park resist the path of its East Coast neighbors like Hoboken, NJ, the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, or Williamsburg, Brooklyn?  We argue that with historically rooted racism and capitalist interests at play there will need to be continued proactive explicit public policy implementations to carve a path that won’t just reward the advantaged and hurt those most vulnerable:
   
Seasonal Gentrification and Labor
Asbury Park’s story is not just about gentrification, it is about what happens when a city seasonally gentrifies. Since its original use by Ruth Glass in 1964, gentrification has become a term so frequently used that scholars have begun to question the worth of the very term itself. As the authors of Gentrifier state, “myriad diverse urban issues have been subsumed under the gentrification umbrella.”[39] And yet, despite this attention, the relationship between gentrification and the local labor market is a significantly under-researched area of the gentrification literature. 

There has been a great deal of attention paid to the impact on property taxes for local government, crime rates, revitalized streets, improvement in physical infrastructure, and the preservation of historic properties resulting from gentrification.[40] Critics of gentrification have painstakingly, highlighted the social costs of neighborhood change, its effects on political power and quality of life for long-time residents, the resultant policing of people of color, and how the displacement of low and moderate income households exacerbates affordable housing problems, destroys long-standing social ties, can lead to homelessness, and cause the resegregation of urban housing markets and inequality within and between schools.[41] Scholars have examined the causes of gentrification from the individual to the market to the role of the state.[42] However, what is missing from much of this literature is the connection between jobs and gentrification-- specifically, how employment is affected for local residents who remain in the community during- and post-gentrification. 

Complicating our research even more is that there is a dearth of studies on seasonal gentrification. We define seasonal gentrification as a particular kind of gentrification in which there is a transition of a low-income or working-class community to middle class or upper-class second home and vacation destination (for both day –tripper and seasonal visitors). These seasonal homes and businesses catering to vacationers (such as hotels, boardwalk stores, and restaurants) are used by the in-comers more heavily during certain months of the year, which affects all areas of development (e.g. education, employment opportunities, and the types of amenities that open). Seasonal gentrifiers differ from long-time residents in their socio-economic and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Extant research examining related phenomenon in mountain towns/ski tourism has defined “amenity-led migration” or migration for pleasure[43] and there has been research into the related phenomenon of wilderness gentrification.[44] Perlik has demonstrated how technology has enabled more of this movement towards second home ownership, as individuals can maintain networks in the central metropolis from a seasonal home. [45] He describes that while it might seem a rural phenomenon, it stems from an urban outlook that “dwelling in the mountains is not a tendency of rural life but an urban attitude in provenance and character.”[46] Paris[47] argues that
The growth of second home ownership is conceptualized as a form of gentrification... Household investment and consumption strategies, fueled by greater mobility and hyper-consumption capacities in rich countries, are seen to be at the core of this rapidly evolving phenomenon (p.292).
 
Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore is within the larger New York Metropolitan area (and transportation network) making it an ideal location for urban dwellers with this “urban attitude” to get away or own a second home less than two hours by train or car from NYC. While it is more affordable than gentrified New York City or the Hamptons, those who can vacation or own seasonal homes in Asbury Park generally have significantly more economic capital and ability for consumption than do local residents. There is also a racial shift, which is occurring with the gentrification of Asbury Park as long-time residents who remained in Asbury Park throughout the century are largely people of color and the newcomers are majority White. Like other cases of gentrification, race is a component that cannot be overstated.[48]Other beach communities have experienced these racial changes as property values at the beach increase. There has been an increase in development and demographic shifts in historically African-American beach towns such as the Sea Islands in North Carolina and Sag Harbor Hills in the Hamptons.[49] As income gaps widen, technology continues to advance, and there is increased wealth in global cities like New York[50] and urban living continues its popularity[51] there will be increasing instances of seasonal gentrification and with it displacement in larger metropolitan areas. This research contributes to the literature by offering insight into the seasonal gentrification of a beach city.

While Asbury Park has always, in some ways, been a city divided into haves and have nots and along racial lines due to its history of segregation, a tourist economy, and its hospitality sector, what is occurring in the 21st Century is a marked change from its history. Particularly since in recent generations Asbury Park was not the tourist destination it is (again) now. The amount of capital coming into the community has increased exponentially and more wealthy residents are purchasing homes while the service sector hospitality jobs are not creating sustainable employment paths for long-time residents of color. This is particularly poignant in the context of seasonal gentrification. As the city gentrifies, the jobs are also often seasonal, and they are in the restaurants, hotels and boutiques where a key aspect is the “brand” that is being sold.  As we explore more in Chapter 3, for many West Side residents, regardless of education and training, they may not be able to achieve the aesthetic labor often needed in these jobs. In the older seasonal order, White tourists expected and welcomed servile labor from Black workers.  But in the new order, creative class tourists, we found, may expect something else, the “cool” mixologist bartender or the hipster coffee barista. West Side residents today express that they do not feel they have access to these jobs. They face legitimate significant barriers which will be explored in this book that stem from today’s particular systemic inequities, with additional competition for many of these jobs from White educated millennials. This differs from other beach town/seasonal labor communities because in Asbury Park there is less of a dependence on summer employment via the United States Department of Summer Work Travel Program, colloquially known as J1 Visa workers, in Asbury Park, theoretically opening opportunities for local youth. Yet the ways that aesthetic labor surfaces in Asbury within the additional context of seasonal work and inequality, is central to the impact of gentrification on long-time residents of color. 

Those who support new economic development in urban spaces often tout the increased opportunities for employment. It is known that economic change in a community brings new retail businesses.[52] Yet, gentrification is associated with industrial restructuring[53] and as a result people move towards jobs and new residents create competition for employment.[54] In her study of Williamsburg, Curran showed that gentrification led to a loss of industrial blue-collar work. Lester and Hartley argue that gentrification actually plays a part in speeding up the change from production of goods to the service sector and Meltzer and Ghorbani[55] found that while gentrifying neighborhoods experience a growth in employment opportunities long-time residents actually lose jobs in their own census tracts. In looking at amenity-migration, Argent et al.[56] found that the creative class in Australia is attracted to high amenity rural areas but there was no association with employment creation. 

Yet, there is still limited empirical research into the specific ways that gentrification affects employment opportunities for long-time community residents and little focus on seasonal gentrification and its influence on employment, resident perceptions, and quality of life. In this book we explore how seasonal gentrification has specific compounding effects that may not be seen in other gentrifying communities particularly when it comes to quality of life issues and the lives of children. The current gap in the literature around seasonal gentrification makes it difficult to develop effective employment and training policies in gentrifying cities and to create housing and development policies, which fully benefit local residents. In this book, we address this gap and contribute to the scholarship on gentrification, race, intersectionality, and employment. 

Our Ethnographic Journey
We chose to investigate the New Jersey Shore town of Asbury Park to better understand the connection between jobs and gentrification, specifically in a community that is experiencing seasonal gentrification. This small, 1.6 square mile, seaside city in the New York Metropolitan area provided an ideal case study. Asbury Park’s history —both in terms of economic development and race relations—makes it a particularly interesting context in which to examine gentrification and employment.  

It is with this lens that we developed our study. This book represents a multi-year, multi-method project exploring the impacts of seasonal gentrification on workforce opportunities and lived experiences for the residents in Asbury Park. Over the course of three years[57] (2016-2019) we conducted in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observational research in Asbury Park. Participants (N=81) included 18 community activists or educators involved in the West Side of Asbury Park, 34 workers (or potential workers) from the West Side community of Asbury Park, 13 Asbury Park employers (including developers), four government representatives, three tourists/former residents, and nine seasonal employees working on the East Side. All the employers, save one, were White, of the 34 workers from the West Side only one identified as White-alone and the rest identified as people of color, and the community activists were half White and half individuals of color. All interviews and focus groups were recorded (when permission was granted) and transcribed and double-coded (separately by each of us).

In addition to interviews and focus groups, we spent countless hours observing and participating in ethnographic observations of Asbury Park life. We ate at restaurants, stayed at hotels, listened to music at concerts, attended conventions and festivals and rallies, sunbathed at the beaches, attended meetings of city government, and walked throughout the East and West Side. We had many formal and informal conversations with city officials, residents, workers and tourists. Both of us came to this project with prior experiences in Asbury Park. Like so many ethnographers before us, our interest in the city stemmed in part from our time in, and knowledge of, the city. Mary Gatta lives about 15 minutes from Asbury Park and has witnessed its seasonal gentrification over time. She was able to build on her own networks and local knowledge as we developed this book. Molly Vollman Makris—was herself one of the many visitors from North Jersey drawn to the beach and community in Asbury Park—and she was able to use her New York City/North Jersey network to help us delve deeply into that perspective. Yet, we are not community residents, and as White middle class professionals, we acknowledge our privilege and outsider status in Asbury, and in particular on the West Side of town. For this reason, we rely heavily on the voices of Asbury Park residents throughout the monograph. It was always apparent to us that the true experts would be the people of Asbury Park, NJ. One exchange from a focus group with West Side residents perfectly demonstrates the expertise of the community in comparison to our research background:
   
We concluded our research when data saturation was reached and then triangulated our findings with more in-depth census data analysis and respondent validation. We worked with quantitative data consultant, Shawn McMahon, to analyze U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Zillow, Inc. data. After finishing our initial analysis, we also looked closely at the work of Raia-Hawrylak[58] on children and their parents in Asbury Park and the article Revitalization Greetings from Asbury Park by Chris Pomorski[59] which triangulated our findings. This book is, as far as we know, the only in-depth ethnographic study of a seasonally gentrifying city and its impact at the local level.  

Shining Light on All of Dark City
To share our journey into Asbury Park we have organized this book in ways that detail the richness of our interviews and participant observation, while ensuring that the stories are grounded in critical sociological frameworks and analysis. We begin by chronicling the history of the city, nicknamed The Dark City, with a keen racial lens in order to highlight how inequality was embedded in the city from the start. We then share the lived experiences of the workers, residents, visitors and businesses and clients, along with our own observations in order to reveal what is occurring every day. Lastly, we highlight a path forward to ensure that residents like the ones we worked with in Asbury Park, have access to good jobs and economic opportunity.   

In Chapter 2: Racial Segregation, Sex, Gender and Rock n Roll: The History of Asbury Park we use an intersectional lens as we briefly trace the past in Asbury Park, demonstrating how the racial inequality in the founding and economic development of Asbury Park is reverberating a century later as the city undergoes seasonal gentrification as well as the intersectionality at play on the ground today. In this chapter, we highlight Asbury’s history as a vacation spot—from the 19th century —and its history of music (and more recent associations with rock and roll stars such as Bruce Springsteen). The popular story of decline and renaissance in Asbury Park masks the stories of longtime residents who remained in the community, which we will share in this chapter. In chapter two we also trace the history of Asbury Park’s reputation as an LGBTQ friendly community, which began before most people are aware. We examine the importance of this population to the community, its role in gentrification, as well as the perils this particular community may face as the city changes.

In Chapter 3 Working While Black we draw on our ethnographic data to discuss the lived experiences of Black and Latino West Side Asbury Park residents who attempt to find work but face many barriers. A companion chapter to Chapter 4, in this chapter we highlight the challenges that residents of color face in securing work within and around Asbury Park. Issues such as limited types of employment in Asbury Park, transportation barriers, information barriers, and criminal records make this process difficult. Here we highlight how spatial, racial, and age mismatch plays a significant factor in securing work and maintaining work and also the treatment of workers. We examine how different racial/ethnic groups perceive their own and others role in the economy (e.g. the role of Latino workers) and we describe who is working on the East Side using an intersectional lens. 

Chapter 4: Owning a Business—The Employers Side features two case studies of operations in Asbury Park that are working to improve employment opportunities for longtime residents, the Kula Café and the Salt School. These two organizations have some important similarities and differences. We examine their intentions, struggles, and successes. In this chapter, we then go on to share the stories of the small business owners on the East Side of Asbury Park and their intentions, struggles, and successes more broadly. We highlight their understandings of the economic development in the town, their experiences hiring workers from the West Side, their goals and visions for the town; and how their experiences and beliefs fit into the larger story and challenges of workforce development.

Chapter 5: A West Side Story paints a rich picture of what it is like to live on the West Side of Asbury Park, while the East Side prospers. We share the stories and the words of residents and educators while looking specifically at issues particular to a seasonally gentrifying community. The themes that arose from our research were around beach access and swimming, amenities, relationships with law enforcement, educational challenges, and community supports for children and families. We examine how the history of Asbury Park, the history and ongoing racial tensions in Asbury Park, and the seasonal gentrification now occurring affect each of these areas. We conclude with the story of Elijah, an in-depth case study of the experiences of one young man coming of age on the West Side, and how his story is representative of so many of the themes throughout the book.

In Chapter 6: Cats are the New Dogs (and Other Stuff That Makes Asbury Cool…and Can It Stay Cool?) we explore the question, “Why do people come here?”  Using our ethnographic data, along with analysis of media pieces on Asbury Park; we explore the current fashion industry, art galleries, grungy punk, tattooed, tourists, festivals, and cat conventions that are drawing visitors and residents. We contrast this “Cool Asbury” where a tourist can snuggle a cat and purchase a Catsbury Park Springsteen t-shirt with the experiences of long-term residents of color who are often excluded from this side of Asbury Park. In this chapter we feature what they have to say about this. We also look at the increasing role of big developers and the real estate industry in feeding off of Asbury’s newfound cool and the commodification of diversity.  We then ask the question, “will all this be both figuratively and literally whitewashed away?”

Chapter 7 Land of Hope and Dreams explores our conclusions and policy implications.  Present day Asbury Park represents the nexus of seasonal gentrification, jobs, and intersectionality. In this final chapter we build on our data, along with conversations with community leaders to suggest a path forward that will help ensure a fairer economy and better quality of life for all city residents.

With this book we hope to advocate for plans that do justice to all members of the community, honors the past and acknowledges the current divide. As one small business owner on the West Side put it:
 
 
Notes to Chapter 1