Asbury Park, N.J. faces Memorial Day weekend with caution in the state with the second-worst outbreak in America.
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Joe Bongiovanni has been patrolling Asbury Park’s wide beaches for more than a half century, beginning as a lifeguard when he was 18 and now, at 70, as Beach Safety Supervisor. He has seen vicious riptides and beach brawls, hurricanes and circling sharks, rough surf rescues and even a few marriage proposals.As the Memorial Day weekend ushers in the summer season, the 75 lifeguards, beach ambassadors and cashiers working for Bongiovanni all wear face masks.
But what does safety first look like when the enemy approaches unseen and unheard, like a dark spirit in the night claiming hundreds of lives a day? For months the answer has been to wash your hands and avoid each other. No touching, no hugging, no getting too close. That’s a tough ask at the beach, where the whole point is to be together in a sea of people, to be carefree and forget about all the things you spend the rest of your time worrying about.
For beach towns, there is no alternative to the strict guidelines if they want to salvage even a sliver of a normal summer. “Give me a blizzard. Give me a hurricane. Give me 10 of those. This thing is an unknown and that’s what’s scaring everyone,” Moor said Friday as he walked the boardwalk under a clear blue sky. “I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody.”
“People want the fresh air and to be on the beach. Any time the sun shows its face there’s a lot of traffic coming into town,” Holmes, a native of Galway, Ireland, said with a lyrical Irish accent that camouflaged the concern he feels about the coming season. Owner Eddie Catalano, who started the business 16 years ago, is limiting the number of workers inside the stand. Typically he would have five or six teenagers scooping and selling ice cream on each shift, but he’s keeping it to two or three to start the summer to meet distancing guidelines and ensure that his workers are safe.
What if? That question hangs around every corner at the shore. The only hope, most people feel, is that everyone does their best to keep things as safe as possible. The messages are everywhere. On the highway heading to shore points, an LED display targets younger beachgoers: “Going down the shore, bro? Practice social distancing.” Most are paying heed for now, but some dismiss the warnings and say the state is overreaching.
Amonte said he was planning to move to Tampa, to “get out of a Democratic state and to be part of a Republican freedom state.”
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