I’m in a barber shop on South Street. “Alright, young man, what do you want me to do?” the man with the scissors asks. I tell him to make me look a little better than I do right now.
He crouches down, peers at me in the mirror across from the swivel chair. “Buddy, this is a comb, not a wand.”
The house where a fifteen year old Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen watched The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, Freehold Township, New Jersey, Polaroid SX-70 (all photos July 2023)
I had made it up to Monmouth County after a few days of wandering around the backroads and shoreline of New Jersey. I more or less planned to get my fortune read at this little place by the beach but other than that didn’t have a lot of rules. The film had been battling me since Philadelphia to the point I was whispering to the camera when I tried to make a photo like a pitcher mumbling an oath to a fastball in the last inning. I can only describe it as a type of psychic assault, which I know isn’t dramatic at all.
Custard Castle, Mays Landing, New Jersey, Polaroid SX-70
Along the way there was a lot of beauty and some moments of real peace. I was thankful to be able to take time off and and just let the world spin where it wanted. I ended up staying a few days in this big old 19th century house in Bay Head. They had a rack of bikes out front and you could just hop on one and ride around, and a big walk-in closet stuffed with beach chairs and brightly striped towels so you could go down to the beach.
Absecon, NJ, SX-70
I pinned a pass on the side of my pink flamingo bathing suit and strapped a chair to my back and wandered the block over to the ocean one morning. I was one of the only people there. It felt like being on the edge of the world. The seawater was so sharp and salty and cold that it knocked the breath out of me. I swam out a bit and looked back at the beach, so bright I had to squint. The tides were strong and it took me a while to get back. A man was playing with his little daughter right up in the wet sand, and he asked me if I had seen the dolphins that had swum by while I was out there.
Silverball Arcade, Asbury Park, NJ, SX-70
I ate a lot of pizza and eggplant parm and custard. There are ice cream places everywhere in New Jersey, it was incredible. I became convinced we need an ice cream revolution in Mississippi, with local stands every five miles or so. It’s a million degrees in the summer and we need some kind of respite. I can’t really think of a downside.
The film had sort of settled down so I could play around in one of the most fun places I’ve ever been, the Silverball Arcade. For a pretty nominal sum you get an all-you-can-play wristband to this treasure, which is half-museum, half-arcade. The museum part is that some of the games there reach back nearly a century—bright chrome balls clacking off wood and rubber while bells chime.
Silverball, Asbury Park, SX-70
There are signs on every machine explaining when they were made and even the local high scores. I watched a little kid play PONG with his grandfather right by where I made this photo of a KISS pinball machine, which was nestled between cabinets dedicated to Star Trek and just general carnival rip-offery, takes on Tarzan and Star Wars and Conan by incredible, anonymous creators. You can play everything, touch everything, just play Centipede and Donkey Kong or Mortal Kombat, it all works.
I spent twenty minutes glued to Eight Ball Deluxe, my favorite pinball machine, and it felt just like I was still in ninth grade waiting for my sister to finish her ice skating lessons.
Madam Marie’s, Asbury Park, SX-70
I was on the boardwalk, half waiting in line to get my palm read when a giant guy the size of Captain America stormed out of the tiny parlor of Madam Marie’s, his girlfriend clutching his arm and trying to calm him down. He was hollering “I just want to get my lottery numbers! I don’t see why it has to be so dramatic!”
The oracle, eyes narrowed, looked sullen and jittery. Everyone had sweat pouring off of them from the summer sun. I decided to keep walking down the boardwalk to buy some postcards.
The Carousel, Asbury Park, SX-70
So while Joe was wielding his scissors in Freehold, trying to make presentable, he asked what I was doing up his way. “I can tell from your accent that you’re not from around here,” he laughed, because no one in there could really understand what I was saying. “You know what I’m doing here,” I said. He smiled a little bit, then pointed at the big window in front of the shop. “So one day I’m standing here, cutting hair just like I’m doing yours, and this fellow wearing a leather jacket rides up on a motorcycle, even had a sidecar attached to it. Flashes me the peace sign.”
Then he told me a few stories, all the while methodically snipping along, buzzing and brushing. As he dusted my gleaming neck with talcum powder, he said “go next door to Federici’s.” I said thank you, then walked a few doors down and had some eggplant parmigiana, maybe not the best of my life, but then again, may be.
Freehold store window, Polaroid 600
Freehold store window, Polaroid SX-70
I drove West out of the Township, then turned South, and a while later crossed the Delaware, listening to a song written and re-written around the year I was born, one built like a Cadillac, welded and constructed out of the most primal bits of rock and roll music, then sanded and polished until it looked like that New Jersey beach by the icy salty Atlantic—so bright and true you can’t hardly look at it without squeezing your eyes shut — my ears ringing, throat raw from singing, happy to be alive, thankful to be in this world.
“WINGS FOR WHEELS” is a chapter of GORJUS, a dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, held fast with instant film. This one is about my great hero Bruce Springsteen, son of New Jersey, weaver of America, storyteller to the world, on the occasion of his 74th birthday, hallelujah and may he live forever.
If you liked what you saw and read, if you maybe felt a twang in your belly while you looked it over, then this is for you, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider sending this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see an archive of Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
This is excellent stuff, David
Felt like Murakami goes to South Jersey this week. I love your writing and look forward to reading each dispatch.