What I'm Looking At Today: A Few Houses in Asbury Park

We are down in Asbury Park for the Holiday weekend, but now that we are beach house homeless, we're staying at the Berkley.....went for a walk around town and looked at a few of the houses that we knew well.

Sunset lake in the center of Asbury Park

This is the old P.T. Barnum house. One of the grand old Victorians that line many of the streets in AP

The house belonging to our friends Patsy and Billy, they really transformed this place.

This is the Crane House where the Red Badge of Courage was written.....I regret not buying this house, but Ric said it felt crazy inside......nothing that a few walls being moved wouldn't have fixed, but alas it was not to be.....the selling price at the time for this and the carriage house was a whopping 100K.......those were the days!

This is a great house on Sunset Lake that's unfortunately owned by the town crank and self appointed historian....it could be a showplace but has been in a state of disrepair for at least 15 years....

Just a brightly colored Craftsman on a side street.

This is the house we ended up buying. It was a rooming house for 26 people......and a true disaster, a few years of work and it became a pretty great house. We sold it back in 2006, it's still our blue and white scheme, but they took down our flag pole. We lived in what was called the drug store and on any given afternoon you'd see dozens of fancy cars driving down the street and dozens more dealers supplying the needy....that ended when we would water the lawn for 4 hours every night and waved as they drove by.

I remember one morning, I was in the kitchen making coffee and looked out the window and a swat team motioned that I should get down......lol, poor Ric, but it soon quieted down and became pretty civilized.

Our friend Brian and James' old house, the trees have all grown in nicely. We were all pioneers back in the 90's and early 2000's but it has changed a great deal now......fun to see that the houses we put so much time sweat and tears on are all being mostly kept up......

Happy Labor Day