mer home to many wealthy Sephardic Jews, huge estates have names
like “Chez Fleur” and “Belle Mer.” The Deal Casino Beach Club offers
free parking but is restricted to residents. Meanwhile, the police are
kept busy writing tickets on the nearby beach streets, where 2-hour
limits are strictly enforced.
Many streets that once ended in public beach access are now off-
limits, Unger says, because the municipality sold off the street ends to
homeowners (a practice that was stopped only after state intervention).
Despite the exclusivity, Deal is also slated for federally subsidized
beach replenishment.
It is probably safe to say that wealthy property owners want to limit
the invasion of young surfer kids and grizzled fishermen with their
bait buckets and six packs of Budweiser. Many immigrant families
from Newark or Paterson cannot afford the $5 and $8 daily fees at the
lifeguard beaches, so some wait until late afternoon when the money
collectors, mostly college students employed for the summer, leave for
the day.
The few remaining free public access points between the million-
dollar homes are hard to find and fairly forbidding. Unger led the way
down a dangerous pile of construction debris that is the only public
entry point to one lovely stretch at Darlington Beach. “Attention:
Unprotected Beach. No Swimming,” reads a sign. It was plain we were
not welcome, but it was also plain that this nearly empty stretch of con-
tested sand was worth the effort we made to reach it.
The Jersey shore town of Point Pleasant Beach developed a partic-
ularly bad reputation for harassing beach users in the 1990s: Surfers
were told to get out of the water by private security guards, and people
walking along the high tide line were ordered to leave the “private
beach.” Curbs were painted yellow to deter would-be parkers. The res-
idents even posted signs that proclaimed: “Private Property. No
Trespassing” (followed by, in tiny letters, “When Beach Is Closed”).
But in 2002, spurred by the local activism of groups such as
Citizens Right to Access Beaches (CRAB), the State Attorney General’s
office stepped in and forced a settlement that opens the entire beach
“from the water to the edge of the dune” to the public. “The case law is
very advanced,” says Deborah A. Mans, an attorney for the New
52 Jim Motavalli with Sherry Barnes