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[upbeat jazz music] [upbeat jazz music fades] - Hey, everybody, welcome to Chat Box.

I'm David Cruz.

It's summer in the city and nothing says summer here, like rock and roll and diners.

We're gonna celebrate 'em both today, a little bit later on with nj.com, with food writer, Pete Genovese.

But we start today with New York Times reporter, Nick Corasaniti, whose new book "I Don't Want To Go Home" is an oral history of the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, where I did some time over 20 years ago.

It's a tale of rock and roll in a honky tonk city by the sea.

It's a pleasure to welcome, Nick Corasaniti, to Chat Box.

Nicholas.

Hello.

- How you doing?

- So "I Don't Want To Go Home," is a Southside Johnny tune.

He's got as strong, if not a stronger direct connection to the Pony than even Springsteen, no?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, what really started the Stone Pony is that the Jukes set up as the house band there.

It's where they got their start, you know, in 1974, 1975.

And the Jukes being the house band at the Pony is what brought Bruce Springsteen over to the Pony to hop up on stage and play, which he would then do countless other times, probably close to a thousand other times.

And it was really the Jukes that established the scene at the Pony.

People were coming from all over because the Jukes were this new sound, this bar band sound with horns and rock roll and soul and R&B and they did it differently.

And that really is what kind of sparked the Stone Pony to ride the wave of that kind of music.

- In fact, am I right, that Springsteen never officially appeared on the marquee?

It was like never Bruce Springsteen at the Stone Pony, but he was more a jump on stage kind of guy?

- Completely.

You know, there's a phrase around down here that says Bruce might show up.

It's even on T-shirts.

And that really started back in 1974, 1975.

It was never advertised as Springsteen is going to play here.

He was friends with Southside, you know, he was friends with Stevie Van Zandt, who was writing and managing and playing with occasionally the Jukes.

- [David] Yeah.

- And later he was friends with cover bands that were playing there and he'd hop on stage.

He famously once, right before the Born in the USA Tour, you know, which would launch him into mega stardom on par with like Michael Jackson and no one else at the time, the first show ever that the E Street Band did playing that music live was at the Stone Pony in a night that was supposed to be a John Eddie concert.

- And he called and said, "Hey, I'd love to try this out.

You know, John, is it okay?"

Bruce always asks the artist like, "Can I hop up with you beforehand?"

He doesn't presume anything.

And so John was like, "Yeah, man, but I'm opening."

And so he said, "Okay."

And that was one of the most famous shows in Pony history.

- We should also note Asbury Parks place in jazz and soul music.

I mean, that was mostly a West Side, Black thing.

Springwood Avenue particularly comes to mind.

It's mentioned a lot in this book.

I know Ella, Ellington, Basie all played Asbury.

And that's an often overlooked aspect of the so-called Jersey Sound.

I mean the Jukes and Bruce, that sole sensibility, the horns, the vocals, right?

- Completely.

I mean, a lot of the artists would go across the tracks and if they couldn't get in, 'cause they weren't 21 yet, they'd stand outside of places like The Turf Club and listen to these legendary acts like Ella, like Duke Ellington, if they were around at the time and got influenced from there.

You know, Gary Tallent was one of the few musicians who was actually playing there.

But you can hear a lot of that blues, that gospel and that soul in some of Springsteen and Southside's music.

I mean Bruce just did the Soul covers.

So it heavily influenced the music that become the quote, unquote, "Sound of Asbury Park" on the east side.

And the West side of town was vibrant.

I mean, it brought Sam and Dave to Asbury Park for the first time.

And Springsteen, Southside and Stevie all say that one of their most important musical influences of their entire career are Sam and Dave.

- We should also say Bruce Springsteen writes the forward for this book.

How hard was that to get?

- I just asked.

I think as he says in the book in our interviews, it's a place of importance to him as is Asbury Park.

And when he was experiencing monumental success after "Born to Run," "The River," and eventually, "Born in the USA," he still wanted to come back to this scene.

Like the people that were there were interesting to him and important to him.

He didn't care about LA yet, he didn't really care about what was going on in New York City.

It was this scene that he grew up in.

It was such a vibrant music scene and it kind of sustained him.

And so, it comes across, I think very clearly in the forward exactly what that means.

And I think that's why he put pen to paper there.

- Yeah and Asbury Park, like other towns, I'm sure across the country that are kinda rock meccas, there's a whole community that grows up around the music.

And when I was there, I really felt that from Asbury.

Talk about the first heyday of the Pony, the seventies, right?

It was a local bar first, organic to the city, really from the soil of Asbury.

- Completely.

You know, the owner, Jack Roig, decided he wanted to open a bar, right, in 1974.

This is post-riots.

Asbury is not necessarily a happening town right now.

It had experienced a lot of flight.

And he says, "I wanna open up a bar."

He tells his agent, "I don't want it to be in Asbury Park."

First thing he does is shows him a bar in Asbury Park.

Without even [indistinct], he buys it.

That becomes the Stone Pony.

And he didn't even necessarily wanna get into the music business.

They just kind of stumbled into it.

You know, it's been described to me by everyone from, you know, Stevie to Southside to Skid Row, as like it was a local bar with a really good stage.

And that's kind of what it was.

It was cover bands a lot, at first.

The cover band scene was kind of what the bar band scene was.

And what really changed is when the Blackberry Blues Band, which will become the Jukes and Southside, and Stevie and a guy named Dave Myers, went to Jack and Butch and were like, "We wanna take over your least popular nights, but we want to play what we want, no covers.

Or if we're doing covers, we're doing the covers we want to do, not top 40."

And that started what would become the sound and that started what would become the Pony.

You had a bunch of different bands that would start to find their own sound, find their own groove, like Cahoots, The Shakes, [indistinct], Lord Gunner.

These would all become massive bands in that scene in the seventies.

Bruce would come and play with all of them and kind of give it his stamp and with the Jukes at the top and everyone else kind of feeding that energy, that's how the Pony really started going.

- Yeah and the nineties now saw a different Stone Pony though, right.

More of a punk scene?

- Completely, it was punk, it was alternative, it was jam.

When the Pony closed in the early nineties due to bankruptcy and insurance issues.

- Yeah.

- Another guy bought it named Steve Nasser and he hired Tony Pallagrosi, who was actually a former Juke and his- - [David] That's right.

- Company to book concerts there.

And it started to become a little bit more of a venue and a little bit less of like, your kind of local bar with a good stage.

So they were getting massive acts, like Green Day, Weezer, Hole.

They brought the Warp Tour.

And that brought a lot of punk and it brought a lot of jam.

They got Mo there a lot, bands like Guster, the Spin Doctors.

And when I was talking to Kyle Brendle, who's still at the Pony and who was helping book back then, he was saying there's a very interesting thing about how rough Asbury was in the nineties and the kind of fans that like that, right?

And it's punk because they kind of almost feel comfortable when it's a little bit more dangerous and a little more edgy.

And then jam will follow the Grateful Dead into the middle of the desert.

Like they will go anywhere.

So if it's this rundown, beat up, hollowed out town on the Jersey Shore, they'll go there.

So those were the two kind of genres of music along with some pretty interesting Indian alternative rock like say, Dramarama or [indistinct], that really started to blossom in the nineties.

- Then the resurrection in 2000, 2001, with Dominic Santana.

He was the Jersey City restaurateur around the time that I was the editor of the Local Weekly.

He is really the unlikeliest character to own a rock and roll club.

He's more Gloria Gaynor than Graham Parker.

And it was only by happenstance that he came across the place.

Talk about his years there.

- Well, I think you had a pretty big role in bringing him down there in the first place and showing him that.

And he recalls saying like seeing the place, taking the number down and wanting to buy it, not remembering it, and then while it was still closed, driving up one day and seeing a bus full of tourists come over from Asia and they were taking pictures of it because it was part of a Bruce Springsteen Tour and he couldn't believe that.

So when Dominic reopens it, he tries to bring it back to the original Jack and Butch era a little bit.

But it's still a music, right?

It's not open seven days a week.

It's not open during the day as a bar, it's still a venue.

And he brings back some of the artists like the Southsides and John Eddie, but they start to mix in what's popular then.

And one of the things that was really starting to boom then was emo, that would eventually become arena rock for like the mid aughts.

- [David] Yeah.

- And so that really started to sustain the music scene there.

But Dominic kind of blended both the early scene and even some of that Springsteen energy with what was happening in the nineties and with what popular music was at that time.

- And the resurgence of Asbury that was promised by the Pony was not immediate and the development kind of stopped around the mid-2000s along with the subprime mortgage crisis.

That was another slow period for the club, yeah?

- Yeah, it was one of the many ups and downs here.

Like if you look at the mid to late eighties, there was a whole redevelopment project that basically went bankrupt.

- [David] Yeah.

- And it left us with that skeletal C-eight building along the ocean that was like this ruined remnant of promise that, you know, saw it through the bottom and then- - [David] I remember it well.

- Yeah, and in the early 2000s, it seemed like, okay, maybe things are starting to climb back.

Subprime knocks it down, great recession knocks it down again.

And it's really once like Madison Marquette and I start to come in and they're willing to spend money initially and take a risk and actually do it, right.

Like there was so much that was done on spec and they do it, they get it over the finish line.

And then you start to see the rest of the town start to climb out.

- [David] Yeah.

- But at the same time, I like in Asbury's, I call Renaissance and stuff like recovery, but kinda like Detroit, too.

They're these cities that built back on their own.

They weren't necessarily like blessed by developer, they wouldn't brought in with cookie cutter.

They had community groups that really reinvested in and brought the place back.

And I think in Asbury, the biggest group is not music fans.

It's actually the LGBT community.

They really invested in here in the nineties and the early 2000s and started to have people coming back.

And then the musical energy kind of kept that going and built it forward.

And that's why I think today, the Pony's still there, yeah.

But this is still a music town.

There's Stages at the Wonder Bar.

There's Danny Clinch's Gallery, which hosts amazing live shows that are very intimate.

You have the Asbury Lanes, it's like a Brooklyn Bowl.

The House of Independence is about to reopen.

Brian Fallon's gonna do that now for a local band that got huge and he's coming back to reopen that.

So it's an amazing place to see how, no matter the generation, there's been musicians flying the flag of Asbury Park and it's still happening.

- Yeah, "I Don't Want To Go Home" is the book.

Nick Corasaniti is the man who gathered all those voices.

Nick, good to see you, man.

Enjoy your summer.

- Good to see you, too.

And thanks, David.

- Nothing caps a night a rock and roll better than the local diner, preferably at 3:00 AM.

Pete Genovese is living the dream.

He is the food and features writer for NJ Advanced Media.

And Pete joins us now.

Pete, welcome to the show.

- Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

- I can't imagine the drudgery of your job.

- [laughing] Well, you know what?

You're probably the first person that ever said that because I constantly, I get, "You have the best job in New Jersey."

You know, I go around New Jersey, travel all over New Jersey, eat on the company's dime.

Can't get any better than that.

Well, not always.

I mean, they don't see the driving, they don't see me stuck in traffic on the Parkway or Route 80.

They don't see the long days.

And there's a lot of eating.

I'm just not going to one restaurant.

- [David] Right.

- I might do four to five at a time.

And then you have to go, you have to take photos, you have to sometimes interview the owners, go back and write the story.

So it has its moments, but there's a lot of drudge work involved.

- [David] Yeah.

- But it is a pretty good gig, I will say that.

- Yeah.

You know, it's true because people are like, "Oh, you were at that big press conference, or you're covering the convention," and you're like, "Yeah man, We had to work till two in the morning, you know?"

So yeah, you're right about that.

Every job is a job, ultimately.

- Yes.

- But I love reading your stuff.

- I appreciate that.

- You had a recent piece ranking New Jersey's remaining 24-hour diners, which caught my eye.

I mean, Jersey was once well-known for its 24-hour diners.

I mean, I live in Jersey City.

In my town alone, when I was coming up, we had the VIP, the Flamingo, the Colonette, the Tunnel Diner, and just across the city line in Bayonne was the Broadway Diner.

And then just across the line was the Coach House Diner in North Bergen.

And all of them were 24-hour diners.

Now, none of them are 24-hour diners.

What happened?

- Well, I mean, I did a story in 2020, in the fall of 2020, at the height, the pandemic year.

- [David] Yeah.

- And there were only, as far as I could tell, there were only three 24-hour diners.

A lot of the 24-hour diners, I'm not sure of the number, but there were certainly dozens.

I mean, you mentioned just a bunch right there in Hudson, they scaled back their hours because of the pandemic.

So in the fall when that story ran, the headline was, you know, "Is this the death of the 24-hour diners?"

And again, I only counted three.

So when I did the story this year, four years later, there were 16, which I found.

And I got a lot of comments like, "Only 16?"

Well, to me, 16 was a sign of hope since there were only three- - [David] Right.

- Just four years.

Now there are 16.

And maybe more in the next couple of years, maybe more former 24-hours will become 24-hours.

So for me to find 16 was a good thing, I thought.

And so I went to every single one and ate like five dishes at each, plus always a slice of cheesecake 'cause if you're a true diner, you have to make good cheese, right.

And then rated them from 16 to one.

And it's funny, and I still get it, you mentioned the Broadway Diner.

People were insisting it was a 24-hour diner.

There's a sign out front.

- [David] Yeah.

- [indistinct] There's a sign out front that says 24-hours, and I think on the website, 24-hours.

Well, they're not.

So I drive all the way up there.

Let's say I live in Southern Ocean County.

I drive all the way up to Bayonne because everyone was telling me it's a 24-hour diner.

I sit down, I'm ready to order, sit down, ready to order my five dishes.

I asked the waitress, "Are you 24-hours?"

"No."

I'm like, "Oh my God, I drove all the way up here."

Well, it's like I ordered their world famous pancakes anyway, so I didn't want to waste a trip.

But they're not 24-hours.

So please don't... After you hear this, don't tell me it's a 24-hour diner, despite the sign out front that says 24-hours.

It's not 24-hours.

They close early a couple nights a week.

- There's the old Steven Wright joke.

"Yeah, we're open 24 hours, but not in a row."

[Jake laughs] So let's take the top five from your list.

So give 'em to me and what it is about them that puts them there?

Number five is the State Line Diner in Mahwah.

- Oh, the State Line Diner, well, it was not, I mean, I was rating the diners.

It was food, but it was also service, tradition, atmosphere.

- [David] Yeah.

- And service.

Easily the most colorful waitress was at the State Line Diner.

She was funny.

She said, she took a look at me, I told her what I was doing.

She said, "You're so skinny, I could slap you."

- [David] Yeah.

[laughing] - And then she said, "You're going to another diner after this?"

I said, "Yeah, and then I'm gonna go home and eat dinner and I'll still weigh the stain."

And she said, "Well, when you come back, I hope you're fatter."

So she was... - Well, there's gotta be a book in there somewhere about Jersey diner waitresses, which I think would a good book.

Number four on your list is the Park 22 Diner in Green Brook.

- Yeah, so number four and number three, are both the same owner.

They share an owner.

- Okay.

- And the quality, and you could tell that they pay attention to the quality of their food.

Green Brook, Park 22, and Green Brook used to be the Sunset Diner.

Everybody knew the Sunset Diner.

I had some French toast, [indistinct], of course, the traditional grilled cheese with bacon.

I had that.

Lasagna!

Who orders lasagna in a diner?

That was good.

The French toast with the berries.

Who orders lasagna in a diner?

But their lasagna was pretty good.

And I'm Italian, so I know my lasagna.

- Interesting.

That's number three.

The Park Avenue Diner is in South Plainfield.

I've been there.

I've also been to the Chit Chat.

Who hasn't been to the Chit Chat, I guess, in Hackensack?

They're number two on your list.

- Right so Park Avenue, again, same diner as the Park 22.

Ribeye was probably the best meat dish I had.

You know, I was eating veggie dishes, meat dishes , breakfast, it was a combination of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, my five dishes.

- [David] Right.

- So that ribeye was probably at the Park Avenue, it was probably the best meat dish I had on this entire mission.

Good cheeseburger, good Greek salad.

I'm picky when it comes to Greek salads.

And they had one of the, they had one of the better ones.

I asked the waitress there, "Have you ever seen anyone order this much food?"

She said, "No."

[both chuckle] - And number one- - You probably, you take a look at the photos on the website.

The table was just covered with dishes.

And I told them, "This is gonna sound funny, but I'm gonna order five dishes.

Whenever they're ready, you don't have to bring 'em out one at a time.

Whenever they're ready, just bring them out.

If they're all out at the same time, that's fine.

I'm just gonna sample."

And I took everything home.

- Hmm.

And the Clinton Station Diner in Union Township, is that Hunterdon, right?

Is number one.

- The other Union Township, right.

- [David] Right.

- Right along 78.

And it was funny.

So I reviewed them back in 2004 when they first opened.

And I found it was really hard to try to say something nice 'cause the food was pretty horrible.

So I come back 20 years later and they end up number one on my list.

- [David] Hmm.

- And the cool thing about that diner, of course they have, and you'll see, call up the story, you'll see the photo.

They have the 1924, 1928 Blue Comet dining car as one of their dining rooms.

- [David] Right.

- So you can get [indistinct] to eat.

Yeah, it's very... No other diner has an actual train car in the diner.

- [David] Yeah.

- Roast beef.

You know, another thing I'm picky on, it's gotta be red, rare and juicy.

And their roast beef sandwich met all three of those criteria.

- I gotta put a shout out here real quick to the Andros Diner, number sixth on your list.

I'll always remember the Andros, we were there the night Superstorm Sandy was raging across the state thinking we were gonna do a live shot at 11:00 PM and the power went out right in the middle of our meal.

Ate by flashlight, our burgers, did we?

And we still had to pay the bill anyway, so.

[chuckles] - Yeah.

- Move on.

- Yeah, no, it was funny.

So I talked to the owner when I was there and I never, I didn't identify myself or I don't identify myself when I'm doing these eating missions because you don't wanna be treated special.

- [David] Yeah.

- Or you don't want the owner come up and say, "This meal's on us."

No, I always pay for my food.

- [David] Yeah.

- Always.

So I did talk to the owner, he said, "Back in the fifties, the diner started as the Spotless Diner, which is a great name, the Spotless Diner.

- [David] Nice.

- But now it's Andros.

- Yeah.

- Named after an island in Greece.

- You have to assume that, it's a diner.

It's summertime, right.

So let's talk about Jersey in the summer.

The experiences really run the gamut.

I love summer in the city.

Some people like to camp, Stokes Forest, et cetera.

But the Jersey Shore really defines summer for a lot of people in Jersey.

And from far and wide, I mean Canada, Italy, China.

You're out this week, I think, with "The ultimate Jersey Shore bucket list, 35 essential experiences for summer 2024."

What's your top two or three from these?

- Oh boy.

They're all great.

And it's a range and it covers the whole shore.

You know, Atlantic Highlands all way down to Cape May.

- [David] Yeah.

- Atlantic Highlands has Mount Mitchell Scenic Overlook.

You know, you can question 10 random new Jerseyans on the street, and I bet ya, nine of them have never heard of it, much less been there.

But it's the highest natural elevation along the Atlantic, the entire Atlantic Coast, I if you're not counting islands.

It's a great view of New York, Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the Bay, the Ocean, and Manhattan.

So Mount Mitchell Scenic Overlook.

Ocean City Baby Parade, now a hundred plus years.

It's one of the oldest baby parades.

I call it the single greatest spectacle of the shore every summer.

It's not just babies walking down the boardwalk, their parents make floats, basically.

- [David] Yeah.

- Wagons, trailers and they decorate 'em.

The kids are decorated as fishermen, farmers, mermaids, princesses, and they vie for prizes.

And of course, you know, who's the grand prize winner of the Baby Parade, that's a big deal.

But the actual date's in the story.

But if you have to do, if you go down there and you don't smile at this spectacle, there's something wrong with you, you know?

- Kohr's Ice Cream is on your list?

- Kohr's, of course.

- Yeah.

- I said many times, no Jersey Shores summer is complete without a trip to Kohr's or Kohr's brothers.

They're sort of two sides of the same family.

They started at Coney Island way back in the twenties, and now they have, together, there's about a dozen Kohr's or Kohr's brothers up and down the coast.

But it's just that creamy, smooth, the cream- - [David] Oh, man.

- Legendary flavor, but gimme just plain old chocolate.

- That's the stuff.

That's the stuff.

- And it's on the boardwalk and maybe, it's a hot day and there's nothing more refreshing than soft serve.

- Why do we love the shore so much?

- Well, I think it's in our collective DNA.

I still run across people, I find this hard to believe, who never in their life have been down to the shore.

And I'm not sure like, "Why?

Don't you at least wanna go at least once?"

I think some of it's, they don't wanna deal with the traffic in the summertime.

The crowds.

That's in the summertime.

We'll, go off season when it's even better.

There's less people there.

You have the boardwalk to yourself and the restaurants are still open.

- [David] Yeah.

- So I think it's in our collective DNA, we just can't keep away from it.

There's something about all that sun and sky and sand that beckons.

- [David] Love it.

- I've lived almost half my life down the shore.

I can't imagine living anywhere else.

And like I said, you just have to sort of forget the parkway, the traffic on the parkway.

- Right.

- And you don't go down to, if you live in North Jersey, you wanna spend the day at the shore, don't go down on a Saturday morning.

Yeah, it's gonna take you forever.

The parkway is jammed from like the Union tolls all the way down the seaside and beyond, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Go the night before.

Go crack of dawn.

If you have to leave on a Saturday, go like five, six o'clock in the morning.

But don't leave your house at like nine and 10 o'clock in the morning.

You're gonna sit in traffic half the day.

- Yeah, because unlike a lot of things in Jersey, it's the destination, not the journey when it comes to the shore.

Pete Genovese is the author of "Jersey Diners" and several other books including, "New Jersey State of Mind."

Pete, good to see you, man.

Enjoy your summer.

- Thanks.

I will.

Already am.

Thanks for having me on.

- And that's Chat Box for the season.

Thanks also to Nick Corasaniti for joining us and to you for your support all season long.

We really do appreciate it.

For all of the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, I'm David Cruz.

Thanks for watching.

Schools out for summer!

Enjoy yours.

[swanky jazz music] - [Narrator] Major funding for Chat Box with David Cruz is provided by NJMEP, a partner to New Jersey's manufacturing industry focused on productivity, performance, and strategic development.

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Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.

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