DRIVING JERSEY: HAMMONTON

DRIVING JERSEY: THE PINE BARRENS

DRIVING JERSEY: GINO VALENTI

DRIVING JERSEY: TATTOO GURU

What we discovered is that tattoo, despite all the sound and fury in much of the imagery, is actually a delicate walk, an introspect into permanence and representation and ultimately, a very intimate brief encounter with someone who marks you for life.

The Pines Barrens, the cradle of the Piney culture is an anomaly in the Eastern part of the United States.  It is the largest untouched wilderness east of the Mississippi.  In the late 1970s, fears of urban sprawl prompted Congress to pass an Act to protect the Pines and today the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve contains approximately 1,100,000 acres of land, and occupies 22% of New Jersey's land area.

These simple farmers knew a thing or two about the immensity of life because they too created it, from the seed to the soil to the sun and they were humble before the power of existence and we believe there is no higher intention, no better reason for religion, for faith and no finer practice of both than being in awe together.

It's something about the under-dog, the believer, the dreamer in him that connects him to the state for me.  He is a lifer.  He has never given up on his fantasy and he has tasted it from time to time, enough anyway, that at 76 years old he is still reaching for it.

DRIVING JERSEY: LORD WHIMSY

Whimsy introduced himself as Allen, Allen Crawford and Lady Pinkwater as Susan. When our AD Ryan Bott walked in and said "hey, Lord Whimsy, I'm Ryan," He smirked charmingly and said, "you can call me Allen." He is indeed as noble looking in person as he is in photographs, yet in the flesh he comes off more as a cross between Wallace Shawn and Kermit the Frog.

The boardwalk culture of Seaside has always intrigued me for its innocence and indulgence.  There is no denying that the boards and beaming neon, the games and food, the bars and beaches invite families and fools for love and lust, alike. 

DRIVING JERSEY: SEASIDE HEIGHTS

For over a decade Helbing has been leading a weekly weekend hike of 15 to 20 miles around the state. He welcomes all hikers. Participants come from as far south as Delaware and far north as Vermont. The day we caught up with Helbing, there were some 25 others along for the adventure. And he gets paid nothing for this.

DRIVING JERSEY: MIKE HELBING

Who isn't fascinated by gypsy culture and bellydance? It's the mystery stuff of childhood stories and legends. It's a romantic vision of life. It's ancient and biblical. It's a free and freewheeling rambling culture and art. Anyone who has ever paused on the way to the office or to school or even to home and heard the faint sounds of distant music and smelled the sweet scent of lilacs or incense in the air, and thought to deviate, to follow and investigate, knows the lure of the lore of this sort of "freedom."

DRIVING JERSEY: TRIBAL DANCE

ARTS

The Barnegat Inlet has been the scene of many wrecks and mishaps through out the centuries and even today.  The work of a towboat team can surely be treacherous, but there is a flipside...on this beautiful, clear uneventful September day we were treated to that other angle, the long, sometimes monotonous hours shared between a captain and mate.

DRIVING JERSEY: THE BALLAD OF LIGHT BLUE AND BURGANDY

DRIVING JERSEY: JAKE IN WINTER

We ran into D’Arcangelo at the docks, as he was preparing to go out fishing and trolling the water around the bay jetties for shrimp.  It was below freezing with winds gusting to 30 mph, D’Arcangelo laughed when I suggested it might be too cold for him to wade waist deep in the chop around the lighthouse.  He muttered something about appreciating life through experiencing all earth’s conditions and jumped in.

DRIVING JERSEY: COWTOWN

RODEO

When the idea came up to travel down to Pilesgrove, to take in the Rodeo, I took the opportunity...as much to re-imagine how the West fit into my childhood, as it was to find out how it fits into New Jersey today.

"Born To Run" had come out two years earlier and Bruce had already had his face on the cover of Newsweek and Time Magazine in the same week, but there was still something of the rising star, the local-boy makes-good about him.  The best kept secret was already being shouted from the rooftops, but the locals were still holding on.  The stories that were later told about "that night" in Red Bank are part of the pantheon of Jersey rock history.

DRIVING JERSEY: BRUCE

In Jersey we have an almost tragic love affair with summer.  Despite the disturbance and delays it causes, Jerseyans embrace the summer enthusiastically and madly love it until the bitter days of September when karma catches up again, and snatches it from us for all the complaining we’ve done about summer’s children, tourists, shoebies.  We can and will spend the next three seasons regretting, looking forward to and talking about...summer...our greatest love...the one we can’t live with or without.  Driving Jersey thought we could all use a reminder of the good times we've all shared with our old love SUMMER. This is a treat to help you through, a preview of our upcoming episode Driving Jersey: Summer.

Photography by DJ Contributor: Marc Steiner

DRIVING JERSEY: MOUNT ZION

Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Eatontown was built between 1845 and 1846.  James K. Polk was President.  Abraham Lincoln was just setting up his law practice.  It is the oldest church in Eatontown.  Prior to the construction of the church, outdoor prayer meetings were held in the area, which for many years was called "Little Africa" or "Negro Hill."

The Cinnamon Snail, the brainchild, fathered by Adam Sobel first hit the road in February of 2010 and has been serving healthy, socially conscious gourmet meals and deserts around New Jersey ever since.  Sobel, himself, is a character ripe for recounting.  He is something of a mixed media artist, what used to be referred to as a renaissance man.

DRIVING JERSEY: CINNAMON SNAIL

DRIVING JERSEY: ROLLER DERBY

This holiday season we at Driving Jersey decided to travel the state to connect with as many people as we could, to ask them seasonal questions, but there’s no escaping the fact that many Jerseyans and Americans are living through difficult times and the holidays would therefore be different.

DRIVING JERSEY: THE HOLIDAY DRIVE

DRIVING JERSEY: JOHNNA WHITE

Johnna White volunteers at the SPCA animal shelter. At a time when time is impossible to come by, White volunteers hers, two or three days a week, two or three hours a day to cat socialization at the center, which in her words, means, she "plays with the cats." But according to the folks at the SPCA, cat socialization, is one of the most important things non-staff can do for these animals to prepare them for adoption.

DRIVING JERSEY: VINELAND

The concept was to create a significant work of art through the involvement of a diverse community. The hope was and continues to be that public art projects bring communities together, foster pride and inspire revitalization.

DRIVING JERSEY: ROCKIT!

On any given day or night some twenty or so kids, mostly long-haired boys in jeans and tees and mod girls gather there to play, practice and live the lifestyle of the rock musician.  The emphasis is on learning all aspects of performance.  Musicians and singers are matched in multiple rock bands that meet for six 90 minute rehearsals.  The endgame is a three hour epic rock show on the Count Basie Theatre stage. 

Since 1950 the theater, started by Joseph P. Hayes, has entertained and inspired summer audiences.  The space, originally a converted mechanic's garage, was infused with Hayes’ show-must-go-on spirit.  And here's another part of the story of Jersey that I love, no surrender, never-say-die, refuse to go quietly or to go at all.  Indeed, part of the mystique, of Surflight was, is its indomitable, enduring whimsy. 

DRIVING JERSEY: SURFLIGHT

DRIVING JERSEY: JAWS

Certain movies have this effect on us, this power over us.  Perhaps no film has ever shaped our recreational lifestyles, our connection to the environment, like the movie Jaws.  Before it, our fears of the water were based in drowning, but after the summer of 1975, an overwhelming phobia of sharks permeated the consciousness of a generation of Americans.

DRIVING JERSEY: EDUCATION

We followed Mrs. Rogers back to her old school to visit after being away from her home away from home for a decade.  And just like a teacher, she brought a child, her granddaughter to tell her the stories...to offer one more series of lessons.

During the 2008 Presidential Election Season people seemed to have a passion for participation.  There was a sense that barriers were being broken down and truly, anyone, any qualified person could run and be elected President.  Driving Jersey, along with Marc Steiner of Agency NJ, traveled around New Jersey and the entire North East asking folks what they would do if they were given the power.  We even asked the next generation of Americans, 1st graders.  Four years later, we’re asking the same question and we returned to ask the same kids for their new 2012 platform.  Here’s what they had to say and stay tuned to hear more responses, in the future, from other people presidents.

DRIVING JERSEY: THE AMERICAN DREAM PART 1

I had always been a big believer in the idea of the American Dream. I was an American Dreamer, which today seems more like an admission, a confession, than a declaration. I was raised to strive for it, to seek it and to expect to achieve it.  I clutched my travel mug each day and embraced the drudgery of a morning commute to the city, to a desk job in the sky for a paycheck that I thought would eventually lead me to the promised land of my cultural DNA.

DRIVING JERSEY: THE AMERICAN DREAM PART 2: LAKEWOOD TENT CITY

It was during our exploration of the distance between the American Dream and the American reality that we decided to visit Lakewood Tent City.  More a village than a city, this super rural community that sprung up a handful of years ago because of a need for shelter for a few, is now home for some 90 or so people.

Before Hurricane Sandy, many small towns along the Jersey Shore, were only known by those who lived there, summered there or got lost there. 

“If it wasn’t for Sandy,” one resident remarked, “no one still would’ve ever heard of Union Beach...we kinda liked it that way.  Now everything is changed.”

Many of these small shore towns were originally, strictly, or mostly made up of vacation cottages, with little to protect them from the rages of mother nature.  Such is the case with Union Beach, NJ.  Where whole blocks of homes were reduced to their foundations, where residents retreated to their roof tops and cars during the storm because their four walls were filling with water.  Indeed, everything is changed.

Driving Jersey’s first journey into Union Beach was just days after Sandy, riding along with the Ken McKeel and Tina Craig Thorp from the SPCA.  Few were permitted to travel into areas like Union Beach, but the Monmouth County SPCA was on a humanitarian mission to help residents care for their animals and to locate pets that had been separated from their owners.  Driving Jersey captured the horror and the humanity in this effort. 

In mid-November we returned to Union Beach and met up with photojournalist Marc Steiner.  Steiner grew up there, on a street like many in Jersey and America, where neighbors are as close as family, where memories intersect and are shared and now, where tragedy rips things apart...but not people, not friends. 

“As if we couldn’t get any closer,” Steiner said, “the hurricane actually brought us all closer.”

Steiner’s mother and father still live in the house he grew up in, are still active in local committees and activities.  When the water suddenly rushed at Union Beach during Sandy, Steiner’s folks were hurried out their backdoor to safety, by a neighbor.

Steiner, the lensman, armed only with an iPhone for this assignment, gave us a tour of his town and gave us his perspective on the past, present and future of the shore.

The monumental task of rebuilding and restoring our towns, homes and lives continues. Seek a local assistance organization to help or donate to or ask your neighbor if they can use a hand.  Every effort affects everyone else.  Music for Driving Jersey: After Sandy: Part 2 was performed by Jon Francis and Helena Espvall.

Photo by Marc Steiner

This is the story of our towns, our blocks, our neighbors, our friends.  This is us.  We are you.