Good lord...how depressing.
On the flip side, I used to go to Asbury Park often back in the 80s and *always* got trapped in Newark on the way home.
[country bumpkin syndrome]...:)
Nobody would ever answer my pleas for directions and help getting *out*....except for one dear, elderly black man.
I even offered him money for his time....he wouldn’t hear of it.
He just said “You drive careful ma’am [I was only 19 and he had to be in his late 60s] and have a safe trip home”, God love him.
There certainly are good people stuck in those areas; a lot of the older blacks in Newark back then had migrated from the South when our cities had a lot of jobs to offer. They themselves did fairly well, but their children (totally disconnected from their Southern roots) were nightmares. Many of the older blacks I worked with back in the 80s were caring for their grandchildren as drugs and crime obliterated that next generation. Very sad; these were hard-working people, nearing retirement, and starting over raising grandchildren (who were starting to encounter the same pitfalls their parents had).
I saw Asbury Park listed on a website of ghost towns - too funny! Twenty years ago they were telling us how it would come back because perverts would make it a “gay Mecca” (even they weren’t stupid enough to present the savages with such targets of opportunity); I see on the website pictures of building that were never completed as reality set in. It showed stretches of boardwalk and strips along the beach, completely deserted...