Developer Bart Blatstein’s earliest memories of the Jersey Shore are of pomp and splendor. “It was beautiful,” he says, referring to the 1960s.
“At night, people got dressed up for the boardwalk. The older women would put on their best jewelry and get pushed around the boardwalk in rolling chairs...” he recalls fondly, pausing briefly to explain what the heck a rolling chair was. (Picture Cinderella’s carriage, but made of wicker, with an open roof.) “It was quite the scene.”
The decades that followed were not kind. There were periods of mobster violence, long-lasting reputational damage courtesy of early-2000s MTV and $37 billion in devastation from Superstorm Sandy. In popular awareness, there’s no doubt the Jersey Shore has a beloved-but-bad rap.
