DID YOU ALL SEE THIS IN THE LEDGER THE OTHER DAY?

‘Benny’ or not, here they come

Natives grin and share the weekly trip to Shore

Friday, July 01, 2005

BY ANA M. ALAYA

Star-Ledger Staff

The onslaught begins every Friday at New York Penn Station in the sticky, rush-hour mayhem. They come loaded with beach chairs, beer and surfboards.

“It’s easy to spot the bennies,” said Irene Fulton of Old Bridge, referring to the weekend tourists she has been sharing her Friday night commute with for 10 summers.

“They’re messy, they’re noisy, they put their feet up on the seats, and they nearly knock you over with all their luggage. They think this is the party train.”

The relationship between the regular commuters and the “bennies” — vacationers from New York and northern New Jersey who flock to the Jersey Shore every summer — has long been a delicate balance, at times acrimonious, at times affectionate, but never dull.

In other words, while the bennies bring big bucks to the Jersey Shore every summer, they are sometimes considered about as pleasant as wet sand in a bathing suit.

“Generally, bennies have that aura of being annoying,” said Erin Bennett, a 35-year-old art director and comedian who commutes between Manhattan and Brick Township.

A Manasquan native, Bennett has shared her observations online along with other NJ Transit riders who tend to poke fun at the beachgoers’ excessive jewelry and farmer’s tans, while griping about their party attitude.

“The bennies just don’t have the Shore look going,” Bennett said. “They’re decked out to the nines, even on the beaches. Last week I was on the train and there was a gaggle of girls, and they were like ‘look at the thongs I bought.’ And they had matching gold flip-flops!”

Others are more concerned with behavior than attitude.

“There’s proper decorum as a rider, and they don’t follow it,” said Barbara Kilfoil of Cliffwood Beach, as two young men pushed through the aisle one night, letting their golf bags smack into passengers.

Angus Gillespie, a folklorist and American Studies professor at Rutgers University, calls the friction a “classic case of the in group vs. the out group.”

Gillespie said the attitudes about summer tourists goes back to the turn of the 20th century, when Shore residents who made their livings by clamming and fishing would await the influx of tourists who pumped up the local economy.

“They welcomed the bennies for the financial ‘benefits’ that their vacation money brought,” Gillespie said. “Those tourists were easy pickings for fleecing, to be charged high rents for ramshackle beach cottages and to be forced to wait in line at second-class restaurants.”

Others believe “bennie” is derived from the luggage tags of the Shore daytrippers coming via train in the old days, when tags read “BNENY” for Bayonne, Newark, Elizabeth and New York.

Whatever you call them, weekend trippers on the Friday night train are generally oblivious to the terms or not offended.

“Hey, we’re just getting away from the real world,” said Joe Grippi, a 27-year-old bank officer from Brooklyn who shares a house with friends in Belmar, as he rode the 5:57 p.m. New Jersey Coast Line train on a recent Friday.

Grippi has been riding the train to the Shore for a while, but his friend, Mike Franco 3rd, a 25-year-old Brooklyn construction worker whose name is tattooed on his arm so he said he “won’t forget it,” was new to the ride.

“This train stops? I thought it goes straight to the Shore,” Franco said, sending his friend and two Shore-bound young women sitting next to him into a fit of laughter.

For many weekenders, the train is the best option for getting to the Shore in under two hours and avoiding the traffic nightmare on the Garden State Parkway.

According to NJ Transit, which offers fares that include beach admission, weekend ridership rose 30 percent last summer on the Coast Line train from Manhattan to Bay Head, which travels through 10 Shore towns, including Belmar, Asbury Park and Point Pleasant Beach.

For some, the ride is the first chance to unwind from the work week — and the last chance to rest before 48 hours of partying. They drink beer, sleep or watch as the sun begins to set over the Meadowlands marshes, the factories and the sailboat-specked Raritan Bay.

“We start talking about the train ride as soon as we get to work on Monday morning,” said Jessica Goman, 22, of Verona, as she sipped beers with her co-worker, Kelly Russell, also 22, a Point Pleasant native who lives on the Upper East Side. “Every weekend is better than the last,” Goman said.

Michael Cimino, 29, who is originally from Hazlet, has been taking the Friday night train from New York to the Shore for six summers. On a recent ride, wearing a pink dress shirt, khakis and loafers with no socks, he struck up a conversation with Chip Heine, a 26-year-old Michigan native wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt, beer in hand, who was making the train trip from Manhattan for the third time.

Cimino said: “I’m a pretty laid-back guy, but I find bennies to be very loud, arrogant, flamboyant and trying to get noticed.”

Heine replied: “Sounds like my r?sum?.”

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