First part of this is Seaside:
These videos concentrate on the most picturesque destruction, near the piers and the houses smashed in and together near the beach, but it looks as if many Boardwalk buildings did survive, and building toward the Bay side survived. Only these pictures and videos are staying away from such scenes with relatively less destruction.
For instance, at the very end of this video the camera sweeps rapidly over some pretty undamaged terrain, including a baseball diamond notably free of sand:
I’ve noticed that a lot of footage that’s labeled “Seaside Heights” is actually of somewhere else, nearby. One popular shot shows a new inlet, cutting across Island Beach next to a bridge – that’s the Mantoloking Bridge, in Mantoloking, much farther north. Another shot shows a big rectangular hotel with a red roof and a swimming pool in the center, with a big expanse of sand next to it that has gas-main fires. That’s not Seaside, either. A lot of the aerial shots show some narrow strip of land with devastated houses and lots of trees around them – that’s not Seaside, either. Another popular shot shows rows upon rows of close-packed little “shoebox” cabins surrounded by sand. The packing is denser than Seaside, and is alomost certainly South Seaside Park.
I’ve been trying to catch a glimpse of my wife’s family’s houses, and haven’t seen them, which is reassuring in a way, since they’re convcentrating on destruction. There are lots of shots of ruined Casino and Funtown Piers, but I notice that the “Castle” behind Casinio Pier seems intact, and that’s where the 1910 Carousel is. Funtown Pier may be gone, but many of the Boardwalk stores behind it seems to still be there. Lots of housesx near the beach got pushed way down the block, off their foundations, but buildings west of Boulevard seem to be intact, if waterlogged. Shots of houses surrounded by water seem to be from the Barnegat Bay side of the island, and may be salvageable. When the camera swings northn of the Boardwalk, thyere vappear to be areas re;latively intact. There’s a huge amount of destruction, which will cost a fortune to replace, but it doesn’t look “total”, as the news stories are making it out to be. There’s a kernel remaining around which the town can rebuild.
Did the cast of “Jersey Shore” get swept out to sea? That would be nice. Even just “Snooki”-that wold be a positive!
Unfortunately, no. As a veritable plethora of stories points out:
1.) They’re alive, and being sought out for comments on the situation (but not The Situation)
2.) Their Beach House, despite its proxomity to the beach, has survived.
3.) Snooki’s Tweets to Joan Rivers have been posted online.
Newspapers are also bad on locations and general geographic notions, but television seems to be worse. I actually heard, “… across from Long Island, in Manahawkin, NJ, the Atlantic has burst its banks …”.
Haven’t seen the picture, but sounds right to me. Although it could also be Ortley Beach, if the reporters were shooting around Seaside Heights.
That’s on the west side of the Boardwalk, so its chances of survival would have been better.
The primo carousel of my childhood was the Freeman Carousel of 1955-c.1990, larger and more magnificent than the Moreland Carousel. Its dismantling for the sale of its animals was the event that prompted Professor Moreland to launch the rescue of the Casino carousel.
(indoors, in the Freeman Arcade, destroyed by fire in 1955, including the vintage carousel that my parents grew up riding)
There were much smaller (“kiddie”) carousels in the open air on both Casino and Funtown Piers, and they seem to be the ones described as lost this time around.
Hello: I am truly heartsick about Seaside Heights. Does anyone have confirmation that the historic Floyd Moreland Carousel on Casino Pier has been destroyed. Any info you can provide would be appreciated. Thank you.
My earlier statement about the Moreland carousel was based on a text message I got that I’m cnow onvinced was a mistake – it looks as if the carousel on Funtown Pier is gone.
The building at the base of Casino Pier that houses the Moreland Carousel looks to be intact on the aerial photos, and I know it’s got those locking garage-style doors. It looks as if it survived. In fact, from the photos, it looks as if Floyd Moreland’s Carousel Shop, which stands in a separate, vulnerable-looking building south of Casino Pier, has survived intact, as well. I’ll bet all the fragile stuff inside hasn’t even been damaged.
Most of the Boardwalk between Casino and Funtown piers looks as if it’s intact, whereas most of the rest of the boardwalk has been devastated.
Here are some new pictures. Notrice the tenth one down showing the surviving carousel building and boardwalk.
Forgot to include the link:
Actually, in that first straight-down shot you can see the roof of the building containing the carousel, which is under the circular portion that showes up as a gray circle within the darker rectabngle at the bottom of the picture. The building appears to be completely undamaged.
Oh my God. I just noticed, in that tenth picture down, that if you look at the lower left corner of the picture you can see still-undamaged stuff on Funtime Pier, including the life-sized T. Rex at the “Jurassic Park” jeep safari ride.
I truly appreciate the information you found out. I can see the building where the Floyd Moreland Carousel was housed in the photo. Yes, it does appear to be intact. If there are further updates, then please post. I will too if I find anything out that is concrete. missjennie
South Seaside Park shows no damage whatesoever!!!
http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2012/11/post_hurricane_sandy_south_sea.html
Nitpick: It’s “Toms River”, not “Tom’s River.” It was named after someone with the last name of “Toms.”
I talked with someone from Seaside Park this weekend who’d been back there. He confirmed that South Seasidde Park is prety much intact – the dunes “did their job” and weren’t swept away, as they were a mile north, leaving cottages there often untouched.
Unfortunately, although the big building at the base of Casino Pier looks intact on aerial and satellite photos, the waves went in through the front, and the Floyd Moreland Carousel is “in pieces”. I hope some of it can be salvaged. In addition, although the Carousel Shop appears undamaged and untouched in photos, the store actually closed in October, and is likely empty. On a positive note, the Lifeguard stations along the Boardwalk seem pretty much intact, as does The Sawmill. But the bathhouses on either end of the Boardwalk are either destroyed or slated for destruction.
I’ve been wondering about how Lucy fared. Lucy is the giant elephant statue in Margate (south of Atlantic City), built a century ago to publicize real estate sales. There were two other such elephants built in the NJ-NY area, but Lucy is the sole survivor, and has managed to stay around by the skin of her tusks.
After hearing about the devastation in AC, I wondered how sshe was doing.
Apparently she came through almost unscathed:
There was some damage, but they’re selling special T-shirts (that read I’m still standing! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!) to pay for repairs
Yahoo Image Search…+by+hurricane+sandy+lucy+the+elephant+re+opened+on+saturday+nov+10+the&p=lucy+elephant+margate+sandy+hurricane&oid=734dc7c11a65bbf7adc75821b730c8fc&fr2=&fr=yfp-t-701&tt=…%2Bby%2Bhurricane%2Bsandy%2Blucy%2Bthe%2Belephant%2Bre%2Bopened%2Bon%2Bsaturday%2Bnov%2B10%2Bthe&b=0&ni=21&no=28&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=1256dkt0s&sigb=14457v1re&sigi=121f9nc3t&.crumb=G.kSrW0OssH
Incidentally, I talked to my mother, the Queen of the Penny Ante Gamblers, and she visited AC for Thansgiving (a week after the freakin’ storm!) Despitwe what I’d heard about water in the casinos and the devastation of the Atlantic City Boardwalk by Sandy, she told me that there was no visible damage, and, as far as she could see, the boardwalk was still there.
I don’t know how I missed this – Apparently I was misinformed. The Floyd Moreland Carouswel survived Sandy, intact. It’s over a hundred years old, and still there: