Monmouth Beach Cards

Description: The Stone Pony glows under a churning Van Gogh sky. The carousel building, the casino, the boardwalk — all of it lit against a crescent moon above the Jersey Shore. Bruce Springsteen played that stage a thousand times. It looks like a dream because it was one.

Description: The rock jetty juts into Van Gogh's sea. Street lamps glow along the boardwalk, the pavilion stands lit at the end of it, and the swirling Atlantic goes dark blue into the crescent moon. Avon-by-the-Sea at its most painterly.

Description: SANDY HOOK NEW JERSEY: horizontal bands of color over Gunnison Beach's dunes as a cargo ship passes on the horizon. The barrier peninsula where the Jersey Shore meets New York Harbor.

Description: The Sandy Hook Lighthouse beam sweeps over dune grass and figures on the shore. Manhattan glimmers across the water while an old Fort Hancock bunker sits quiet in the foreground.

Description: The Premier Jersey Shore Resort — Convention Hall rising behind the boardwalk, couples strolling in mid-century style, the Atlantic wide open beyond them. Asbury Park before the decline, before the revival, before anyone called it cool.

Description: The pavilion sits at the end of the boardwalk, houses line the beach behind it, and the ocean takes up everything else. Avon-by-the-Sea is the New Jersey shore town that never tries too hard. That is its entire appeal.

Description: A female surfer on the beach in Belmar NJ.