Paramount Theatre (Asbury Park, New Jersey)

The Garden State Film Festival is a film festival in the United States held in Asbury Park and Cranford, New Jersey. which debuts more than 200 independent films annually over four days each spring.The festival was founded in 2002 in Sea Girt, New Jersey by Diane Raver and Hollywood actor Robert Pastorelli. Pastorelli and Raver mounted the first festival in 2003. As of 2017, the executive director is Lauren Concar Sheehy.The festival pays tribute to Jersey's legacy as the birthplace of the American filmmaking in Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratories, to Fort Lee, home to America's first motion picture industry, and participants frequently include a New Jersey tie. The festival is one of Asbury Park's major cultural and economic forces. In 2021, the festival began including screenings at the century-old Cranford movie theater in Cranford, New Jersey.

Asbury Park Convention Hall is a 3,600-seat indoor exhibition center located on the boardwalk and on the beach in Asbury Park in Monmouth County, New Jersey. It was built between 1928 and 1930 and is used for sports, concerts and other special events. Adjacent to the Convention Hall is the Paramount Theatre; both are connected by a Grand Arcade. Both structures are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Asbury Lanes located in Asbury Park, New Jersey is a vintage bowling alley and bar with live performances ranging from live musical acts, burlesque, hot rod, dance parties, film and art shows. It is one of the many historic music landmarks located within Asbury Park. These include The Stone Pony, the Wonderbar, the Saint and the Fastlane.

Mrs. Jay's was a popular bar and restaurant located in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It was founded by John and Ida Jacobs and was located on Ocean and Second Ave., the current location of The Stone Pony. John and Ida started by selling hot dogs to tourists in 1922 at the Second Avenue location, but with the help of their daughter Jeanette and son-in-law Murray Wiener, eventually purchased the seasonal snack bar along with the property and established a family restaurant naming it Mrs. Jay's. John and Ida also opened Mrs. Jay's Beer Garden located on Ocean Avenue to the left of the restaurant serving 2% beer until the end of prohibition in 1933. Starting in 1965, Mrs. Jay's Beer Garden briefly offered Go-Go dancing as entertainment, but a dancers see through blouse resulted in a police raid and the quick demise of Go-Go at Mrs. Jay's.The Wiener's sold off the restaurant in the 1970s keeping only the beer garden, which by this time had become a popular music scene and bikers hangout. In 1974, the new owners of the restaurant building converted it into the nightclub known as The Stone Pony. Steven Adler from Guns N' Roses wore a Mrs. Jay's T-shirt during the "Paradise City" video. Many bikers drank here and a very large number of motorcycles can be seen parked in front of Mrs. Jay's Beer Garden in photos. Since Mrs. Jay's was an open-air establishment, it was open during the summer months. Mrs Jay's served mostly beer in pitchers or mugs and hotdogs and often featured live music. After a change of ownership in the early to mid-1980s, Mrs. Jay's Beer Garden fell on hard times and eventually the venue closed around the end of the decade, a victim of the disintegrating Asbury Park beach front area. During its existence until its final closing, it played host to many of the local scene's most popular bands and solo artists, capitalizing on the seaside shore town's nightlife scene. Bands such as the Tim Ryan Band, The Z Band, The Mango Brothers and The Acme Boogie Company were among the many local talents that regularly could be found on the stage there, with entertainment seven nights a week. Sometime later, the beer garden structure was razed with the empty lot being acquired by the Stone Pony for use as an outdoor concert venue.

The Stone Pony is a music venue in Asbury Park, New Jersey, known for launching the careers of many New Jersey music legends, including Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. The club opened in 1973.

Paradise is a gay nightclub in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It is known for its fundraisers and drag shows, most notable of which is the annual Miss Paradise pageant. The club is integrated with the Empress Hotel; both are owned by record producer Shep Pettibone. Paradise's 1999 opening is credited as one factor that improved Asbury Park's struggling economy and drew the LGBT community back to the city after a period of local unrest. The venue is a popular Jersey Shore destination in the summer, and it has received praise for its welcoming atmosphere. After several months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Paradise reopened its outdoor pool and bar area in summer 2020.

SS Morro Castle was an American ocean liner that caught fire and ran aground on the morning of September 8, 1934, en route from Havana, Cuba, to New York City, United States, with the loss of 137 passengers and crew. On the previous evening, Morro Castle's captain, Robert Willmott, had died suddenly, and his place was taken by Chief Officer William Warms as a strong northeast wind was developing under heavy cloud. At 2:50am, a fire was detected in a storage locker which burned through electrical cables, engulfed the ship in flames, and plunged it into darkness. Response by crew, Coast Guard, and rescue vessels was notably slow and inefficient, with empty capacity in the lifeboats. The decks were too hot to stand on, smoke made breathing difficult, and passengers were forced to leap into ocean swells where swimming was impossible. By mid-afternoon Morro Castle was abandoned and the survivors were landed on the shores of New Jersey by an assortment of craft. The cause of the fire was never established, though an overheated funnel and certain points of cabin design and electrical circuitry were noted. A theory of arson by a crew member has attracted support over the years, albeit without any concrete evidence. The high casualties are chiefly blamed on the crew's incompetent handling of the emergency.

The Empress Hotel is a popular gay resort located in Asbury Park, New Jersey.The Hotel opened as a luxury resort for vacationing families in the 1960s. It was a successful resort, attracting the likes of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.In 1980, the Empress was featured on the picture sleeve of Bruce Springsteen's hit single "Hungry Heart", which depicts a photo of Springsteen standing near a phone booth on the Asbury Park boardwalk, with the hotel visible in the background. Bruce Springsteen was an early employee of the Empress, where he worked a busboy during the summer of 1962. By the summer of 1976, Asbury Park was in a state of decline, albeit the Empress Hotel remained a popular establishment. During a New York Times interview, the hotel's manager boasted: "all of our 101 rooms are taken!" Unfortunately, by 1988 the hotel was struggling for business, and closed shortly after. A strip club, Extreme Fahrenheit, opened in the building in 1993. It became notorious for drugs and prostitution, and was eventually closed because of lewd conduct.In 1998, Shep Pettibone bought the abandoned building and opened the Paradise Nightclub inside.The nightclub lured crowds of gay travelers away from Fire Island and instead to the beaches of Asbury Park. The hotel portion reopened in August 2004, and is very popular among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender travelers in New Jersey.In 2008 a dining establishment, the Ketchup Grill, opened inside. A clothing store, Esphera, catering to gay beach-goers, was added to the ground level in 2008 and is open during the summer months.The hotel also features a gift shop, lounge, nightclub and outdoor pool.

New Era was a ship that wrecked on November 13, 1854, with the reported loss of about 150 lives, off of present-day Asbury Park, New Jersey, coincidentally at almost the identical location the SS Morro Castle ran aground in 1934 after a devastating fire that had killed 137 crew and passengers.

Tillie is the nickname of two murals of a grinning figure that were painted on the side of the Palace Amusements building in Asbury Park, New Jersey, United States. Tillie is an amusement park "fun face", painted during the winter of 1955–1956. The name Tillie is likely a nod to George C. Tilyou, owner of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, New York, which featured the Steeplechase Face, similar grinning face signage.

Palace Amusements was a historical indoor amusement park in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It was built in 1888 and expanded several times over its history; but after a worsening economic situation in both Asbury and the country in the mid-1980s, it went out of business in 1988. Several efforts were made to save the structure, including its hand-carved carousel, murals and decorations, but in 2004, after an independent structural inspection, the building was deemed unsafe (it had already been damaged in several areas) and was ordered demolished. A local grassroots organization was able to save several pieces from the building, including the famed Tillie mural.

The Metropolitan Hotel was a 180-room historic structure located at 309 Asbury Avenue in Asbury Park, New Jersey and was one of the last large hotels operating in Asbury Park before it closed in 1989. In September 2007, it was announced that the Metropolitan Hotel had deteriorated to a point in which restoration or rehabilitation was no longer a possibility. The hotel was demolished in early March 2008.The most recent structure was not the original, although a hotel had operated on the site under this name since the 1880s. The main structure was a Spanish Revival style built in a rectangle, with a four-story hip roof, central pavilion, two-story porticos with fluted Doric columns, and balustrade and enclosed porches. Decorative touches included the stucco surfacing, parapet roof and canales. The metal marquee was a later addition, and there was a newer motel wing on the east side of the property. The motel annex was razed in early December 2009. Longtime owners Martin and Sylvia Weinblatt received $2.25 million for their hotel when they sold it in 1987 to Jersey City developers Karim Ahmed Elsaid and Gomaa Elsaid, who filed for bankruptcy protection the next year. The Metropolitan is currently owned by a group of Morristown investors called 309 Corp., who purchased the property for $150,000 in 1993 (from a group that acquired it from a bank for $10,150 earlier that year). 309 Corp had planned to open the 38-room hotel annex to people who needed housing in Asbury Park while they sought financing, but the city turned down their request because of changed zoning laws.The Metropolitan was listed on the Monmouth County Inventory of Historic Sites, and was located in the Grand Avenue Institutional/Professional historic district.