Wednesday, June 18, 2008

My Tranquil Seaside Neighborhood







Ocean Township relishes its diversity, its felicitous range of class, ethnicity, and housing stock. On Ocean Avenue the old Victorian mansions of generations past jostle with the geometric modern cliches and bombastic Versailles-like manors. Deal was a summer getaway for presidents (e.g., Garfield) and the W.A.S.P. rich, and the Deal Country Club prohibited Jewish members. The Jews bought land from the WASPs and founded their own Hollywood Country Club next door at the turn of the last century. Tradesmen, who served the rich, built modest bungalows and craftsman jewels next to the railroad tracks. Meanwhile, two little towns popped up nearby: Interlaken and Wanamassa, named after an extinct Native American tribe. The tracks divide Interlaken and Wanamassa too, and when you cross Wikapeko Avenue going west from the Loch Arbor and Interlaken beaches, housing prices drop two to three times at least.

We live in Wanamassa, which, it is apparent, was settled by Irish, Italian, and Greek tradesman who found economic opportunities and home ownership. Even today you can bilk the rich in Deal for 10-20% more for any job.

Unique to the area is a confluence of Jewish denominations and sub-ethnic enclaves and their concomitant rivalries. The Ashenazis from West, Central, and Eastern Europe were followed by, and, in many cases, pushed out by, the Sephardic Syrian Jews, who now dominate New York's Garment District, the richest swaths of Brooklyn domestic real estate, and Deal's gorgeous leafy multi-million dollar properties. The ubiquitous eruv practically surrounds the entire town; you can dine on Glatt Kosher sushi and Chinese, and Jerusalem Pizza is a top hangout. The
eruv is a tightly strung cord surrounding blocks and properties, which permits the symbolic extension of the home outdoors, so that one can push baby carriages and carry money on the sabbath. The summer sees Brooklyn take over the town, which practically becomes a parking lot of Mercedes, BMWs, Ferraris, and Porches. The temples rival Hearst Castle and mikvahs dot the commercial thoroughfares. No one drives on the Sabbath. Deal is a graveyard in the winter when the crowds return to Brooklyn.

As Ocean Township, formerly forest and farm, spread westward, it offered new enclaves for Egyptian Sephardics, who built their own synagogues because they could not pray with the Syrians. There are more than ten synagogues in the area. Not least, Williamsburg and Crown Heights have their satellites. Hasidic Yeshivas are everywhere, as are sable shtreimels, long beards, young male Yeshiva-bochers in black and white, with their dangling tzizit, cigarettes, cellphones, and baseball gloves. All the houses around the Yeshiva at the edge of my neighborhood are dorms for the rebbes and their restless teenage students, whohave cut a path from their brick school to the 7-Eleven to the baseball diamond across the street.

Wanamassa. The other side of the tracks. I bought a modified "high ranch," a version of the Cape salt boxes that dot the entire neighborhood like the shelves of a warehouse. The properties are so small, some without adequate driveways, that cars and work vans line both sides of the street. On the leafy upper-middle-class streets just several blocks north, the streets are clean of cars and no one would dare to park a van anywhere. Some folks cherish their vans for lack of garage space.


Who would guess that an overwhelming diversity graces this former oasis of Irish Catholic Wanamassa. A gay male couple with a rainbow flag lives across the street. A whorehouse and former drug mart sits next door. An FBI special agent whose wife homeschools their four kids guards our little corner. I'm a Yale Ph.D. refugee from the academy who is a santero.

Nowadays, with quality-of-life statutes and norms in New York City, you can walk down the street and not be attacked. In sleepy Wanamassa, by contrast, you can witness dramatic events seen only on reality shows. One morning last summer, heavily-armed SWAT team took out the brothel next door and carted away the mini-drug-kingpin with the shaved chest and bold tattoos. Last week two drunken neighbors fought each other in the street with baseball bats. One Saturday evening, I drove around the corner to deposit cash in our Wachovia ATM. While writing out the deposit slip, the car behind me started honking and the bozo behind the wheel yelling for me to move it. When I raised both arms in quizzical surprise, he gunned up alongside me and commenced a river of obscenities. When I told him gently to get the fuck out of here, he popped his buff body out of his black compact as his wife clawed at him to stay in the car. The air filled with music as "faggot," "pussy," "motherfucker,"and "asshole" issued from the mouth of this local opera singer with the shaved head. Pumped up and rocking back and forth like a dynamo, this raging bull drenched my passenger-side window with a cascade of spit, which I later had to wash off with a high-powered hose. Perhaps fearful, but actually more astonished, I called 911, having closed the windows to avoid the deluge. "Pussy, faggot! He's calling his mother," the troll yelled in between ever-bigger lugies. And then, just as suddenly as he had arrived, he got back into his car and pealed out. I'm sure his wife was relieved.

Meanwhile, the monster pickup behind me pulled up next to me. The muscular driver, who had witnessed the whole thing, leaned out the window and asked me, "so, how long are you going to be at the ATM?" I guess this was simply a normal event to him. "I'm on the line with 911; didn't you see what just happened?" I asked. "Well, I'll just let you get on with your business," and he drove off.

Soon, a squad car showed up. The young professional officer, still with pimples, told me there was nothing he could do as he had not witnessed the incident.

So, I was left to return home and wash the car. Just another day in Wanamassa.

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