Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. For me - as for most Philadelphians, I suspect - the phrase "down the shore" conjures up images of that stretch of sand south of Atlantic City: clams at Smitty's in Somers Point, cover bands at Ocean Drive in Sea Isle, piping hot pizza at Mack & Mancos on the Ocean City boardwalk. This is the terrain of my earliest childhood memories - all sandcastles and sea-breeze and saltwater taffy - and later, the site of my misspent youth (is anyone else old enough to remember Quarter beers at Kelly's in Margate? ). It never really occurred to me that there was more to the Shore. Yes, I had friends who summered on Long Beach Island - places with evocative names like Loveladies, Harvey Cedars and Barnegat Light. And of course there was the quasi-fictional Jersey Shore of Snooki and The Situation which I could safely disdain from a distance. But the idea that there was an undiscovered place on New Jersey's coastline that might hold somethi...
