Category: Notable Locals

Episode 65: Bradley Hoffer & Porkchop Save Christmas

November 28, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
Asbury Park art community, Porkchop and Bradley Hoffer, both of whose works feature prominently on the world famous Wooden Walls Project on the Asbury Park Boardwalk and who just this week saved Asbury’s Christmas by creating the remarkable 17 foot high Christmas Tree Sculpture, named “The Giving Tree”, now on display in Convention Hall. We encourage you all to go down and check it out!

Episode 64: Tim Donnelly

November 16, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
Photo by Wes Orshoski
This week, with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio, Amy & Joe talk to Tim Donnelly, who together with Danny Clinch, is a founding partner of the wildly successful Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park; which wrapped up its third iteration this past September. We talk to Tim about the festival, and its connection to his history of activism with the Surfrider Foundation and working his way around the county on tour with Lollapalooza.

Episode 63: Sam Herried’s Journey From Alaska to Asbury

November 2, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
Amy Quinn and Joe Walsh talk to Sam Herried with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio. If you have not ridden a mountain bike on a Glacier Range in Alaska on your way to work, well neither have we. But today we are talking to Sam Herried, native of Fairbanks, Alaska, and PhD researcher in glaciology, who has. We talk to Sam about funding, conducting and publishing glacier research as a citizen scientist, all while holding down a barista job at the world-famous Asbury Roastery on the boardwalk. But as you will hear, Sam’s many other interests proved too fascinating for us to stay on just one topic–so we grilled him about training for 100km ultramarathons, how does one play piano, drums and sing at the same time? and are there outdoor cats near the Arctic Circle? So many things that we might need to bring him back for a part II.

Episode 62: Surfing and KYDS

September 26, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
Amy Quinn and Joe Walsh talk more surfing as we talk to Rodney Salomon from KYDS Asbury Park (which stands for Konscious Youth Development & Service) and Christian May from the Asbury Park Surf Club with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio. We learn how Rodney and Christian teamed up to get the kids of Asbury Park (or Neptune or Long Branch) onto their beaches, into the water and up on a board. This is not as simple as it sounds, as you will hear.

Episode 61: Surfrider

September 15, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
This week Amy Quinn and Joe Walsh talk with Mike Castellano and, making her encore appearance on Asbury Pod, Diana Pittet—both from the New Jersey chapter of the Surfrider Foundation—with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio. We find out what the Surfrider foundation does—which is everything from beach clean-ups and sponsoring Asbury Park’s Family Day at the Beach, to activism in support of beach access and regulation of pollution from plastics.  Surfrider also provides an army of volunteers in support of the upcoming Sea Hear Now Surf Music and Art Festival in Asbury Park—and we also hear Amy Quinn wish very hard out loud that someone would introduce her to Ani DiFranco.

Episode 60: Amy Russo from Toast

September 8, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
This week Amy Quinn and Joe Walsh talk Peace, Love and Pancakes with Amy Russo, founder and driving force behind Toast Restaurant here in Asbury Park. With the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio, we talk to Amy about the birth of Toast, its expansion from Montclair to Asbury Park and now Red Bank—what’s it like to get a rave review in the New York Times when you least expect it, and how the pandemic has affected her business.

Episode 59: Kiwanis Club of Asbury Park

August 18, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
This week we welcome Sarah Bloom and Michelle Grezner of the newly re-chartered Kiwanis Club of Asbury Park with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio. We get right to the heart of the matter in this one and to find out what is Kiwanis? What do they do? We were hoping that they would be mysterious and creepy like freemasons. But no, to our great disappointment we found out that they seem to be non-secretive, inveterate do gooders who might just be your nice neighbors and whose organization you might want to join after hearing this episode.

Episode 58: Local Artists George Bates & Courtney Pasterchick

July 18, 2021 asbury-pod Notable Locals 0 Comments
We took a little, unplanned break earlier this month, so we are glad to be back.
This week we welcome artists George Bates and Courtney Pasterchick with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio. George and Courtney recently completed works for the 13 Artist Mural Project here in Asbury Park, one of the public art initiatives which — together with the Wooden Walls Project on the boardwalk, and other endeavors — has made Asbury Park the public art juggernaut it is today-with plenty more to come.
We talk to Courtney and George about the role of public art, the business of art, and the training, commitment and practice required to become a successful artist (hint: it’s a lot).

Episode 57: Jimmy Bruno & Kiki Tomek, Asbury Park’s most nonchalant gay-rights heroes

June 18, 2021 asbury-pod Local Government, Notable Locals 0 Comments
This week, as we observe Pride Month here in June, Amy & Joe talk with longtime Asbury Park luminaries with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio. Our guests are former Asbury Park city clerk Kiki Tomek and Jimmy Bruno– former Deputy Mayor of Asbury Park, former Board of Education President and Vice President, longtime Little League president and coach, and retired Asbury Park Firefighter. The duo became unlikely icons of LGBTQ history when they licensed and performed the first (and at the time still illegal) gay marriage in the state of New Jersey on March 8, 2004 and expedited the state’s march to marriage equality.

Episode 56: Tee Gates, Asbury Park’s first Black woman Fire Marshal

June 6, 2021 asbury-pod Local Government, Notable Locals 1 Comment
This week Amy and Joe, with the help of Ming Chen from A Shared Universe PodcaStudio, welcome Tee Gates, the first Black Woman to serve as Fire Marshall for the city of Asbury Park—which is apparently a family tradition. She also is the daughter of the first Black Female Police Officer to serve in Asbury Park. We talk to Tee about her 32 years in and around the Asbury Park Firehouse and find out what responsibilities the Fire Marshall has. Other important take-aways include, remembering to keep your propane tanks outside, never to chain your fire doors and that, inexplicably, there is no women’s restroom in the Asbury Park Firehouse.