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Two days ago, I moved out of New Brunswick and into a beautiful oceanfront apartment in Belmar. Though New Brunswick will always have a special place in my heart, having lived there for five years, I’m happy to leave that city behind. One can only take so much dirt and crime and shady people. While the Armpit of America has more than its fair share of these things (hence the nickname), Belmar is a safe haven from such deviance. Or at least it’s relatively safe compared to elsewhere in the state.

Saturday afternoon, I rented a U-Haul and the woman and I brought all my stuff to the new place. After spending a couple hours unloading (somehow the two of us were able to carry two couches up a flight of stairs), we drove back to return the truck. We didn’t get back to Belmar until 10:30, at which point my roommate, his girlfriend, and three of our friends showed up. We ordered a giant pizza from 3 Brothers Pizza and spent the next couple hours setting up. Since we didn’t have cable, and still don’t as of right now, we tapped into my DVD collection. The Robot Chicken Star Wars episode and Yellow Submarine were the DVDS of choice. Though we talked about hitting up the bars, everyone was too tired and sweaty from moving to go out, so we just hung around until 2:00 before going to bed.

Sunday was spent shopping around at the saddest little Shop Rite (hard to explain but it’s just depressing) and K-Mart and finishing unpacking and everything else. When it was dinner time, we decided to try something different and went to Kaya’s Kitchen, a completely vegetarian restaurant run by hippies.

Though skeptical at first of a place that puts tofu in everything, I was blown away. For an appetizer, we got vegetarian buffalo wings, which were really just chunks of tofu covered in buffalo sauce. Hard to believe, but it was wonderful. Though they can’t really compare to actually chicken wings, the sauce was the best buffalo sauce I ever had. Instead of the typical Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and butter, this was a magical mix of spices and flavors I’d never experienced before. For my meal, I got enchiladas, which were stuffed with some kind of fake meat that tasted like real meat. It definitely exceeded my expectations. My only complaint about Kaya’s Kitchen is that the service was really slow. My guess is the hippy waiters and waitresses go into the kitchen to smoke up every 5 minutes.

Later on, a bunch of people showed up at the apartment, which can be expected when you have a beach house. After drinking some homemade pina coladas, we were juiced up and ready to go out. We started out at Connelly’s Station. Though fun, we soon left to go to Bar A. What better place to celebrate the end of summer? After hanging out there for a while and pointing and laughing at all the Jersey trash (excluding ourselves of course) we walked back and called it a night.

We spent today straightening things out some more, walking around, and hanging out on the beach. The beach was fun, especially when this obese guy stripped down to a speedo and went in the water. Somehow we managed to regain our appetites and got some ice cream.

We ended the day by going to The Headliner in Neptune, where those Jersey Shore brats often frequented. Thankfully, they weren’t there tonight. The main draw was the B-Street Band, a Bruce Springsteen tribute band. They played on the bar’s outdoor deck, drawing a huge crowd of dancing cougars dressed in outfits their daughters would be too self-conscious to wear.

And here I am now in my new bedroom. It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been living in Belmar for 48 hours and experienced this much already. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories to share with you all, so stay tuned. Or better yet, put in your e-mail address in the spot in the upper right corner so you can get all of my new entries sent to you as soon as I write them!

Anyway, I’m now getting ready to go to sleep to the sound of the nearby ocean waves. Jealous?

This entry was posted on September 6, 2010 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Bars, Belmar, Food, Jersey Shore. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Bars, beach, Belmar, Bruce Springsteen, cover bands, drunk, Food, Jersey Shore, Personal