Remembering the riotous heyday of Asbury Lanes

The story of the original Asbury Lanes will sound familiar. It’s a tale many have heard over and over again in the last decade, with varying levels of creativity and heartbreak. And it’s the special time, place and feeling that photojournalist Michael McLaughlin has captured in his 400-page book about Asbury Lanes, Lightning in a Bottle. The name is fitting, as both the venue and the book captured something that is as fleeting, dangerous and beautiful as electricity flying through the sky.

McLaughlin will celebrate the release of the book on December 19, accompanied with an art show hosted by Juicy Jenn Hampton at her Parlor Gallery on Cookman Avenue, in Asbury Park.

Asbury Park is the booming resort city on the New Jersey Shore, whose waterfront was famously designed in the tradition of French Beaux Architecture, while much of the city instead took influence from Victorian architecture. But perhaps it was more famous for its political corruption and era of economic despair, becoming best known as a coastal ghost town. Technically the bowling alley opened in 1966. It survived Asbury’s famed downturn in the 1980s and ​’90s, largely buoyed by the gay community that kept any lights on in town throughout that era, along with a few rock clubs – most famously The Stone Pony. 

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But young blood came into the city in the form of restauranteurs, artists, skateboarders, and tattoo parlours – creatives who saw the ruins not as danger but as potential. The Lanes was taken over in 2003 by the type of folks who saw a gamble worth taking. It was the perfect hang out for Mike McLaughlin, The Lanes’ unofficial documentarian who first got into punk during the late ​’70s, when NYC radio stations would mix The Ramones and The Clash into the classic rock format, and a friend who moved to California and would send him back mixtapes. By 2000, he was a staff photographer for the Asbury Park Press, shooting at places like The Stone Pony, The Saint and Brighton Bar in Long Branch.

“Asbury’s rebirth was very gradual and not at all consistent. It started with some artsy spots, shops, and a few small places that would occasionally have music, aside from The Pony. However, the music scene was almost entirely a ​‘come in for the show and leave quickly’ crowd. In the early 2000s, there was another mini renaissance on Cookman Ave, with a few good shops, galleries, and one or two places that occasionally hosted live music. Though that didn’t last long, it was what spawned The Lanes,” McLaughlin remembers. ​“The Lanes went the distance long enough to truly create a scene that not only drew people into town for shows, but also brought many to settle there – opening businesses, restaurants, and really investing their time, energy, money, and creativity into our little city by the sea. 

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It established itself as an independent music venue, with an aesthetic that mixed mid-century with dirty punk rock, and soon became a cultural destination. One block from the famed boardwalk, and not far from NYC or Philly. It was a destination for alternative acts willing to play a second city. It was primarily punk, but like the genre itself, became a home for any of the various types of music and art that thrive in the underground – from the folkiest to the most hardcore. The denim, Chuck Taylors, traditional tattoos, and the occasional hot rod of the era even leaned into Springsteenian nostalgia. 

There were raucous slam pits and pile-ons without the heavy-handed security. But there was also poetry, off beat dance parties, film fests, art shows, graffiti and burlesque performances. On lonely winter nights that the rest of the urban landscape seemed deserted, the Lanes would be a lively beacon of late-night revelry, buckets of tater tots or surf flicks. 

“Throughout the eleven years that I shot at The Lanes I was working full-time doing photojournalism and sports photography, often shooting 10−20,000 photos a week for clients that wanted the photos delivered as soon as possible. Aside from loving music and loving photographing music, it was also my release – my therapy – so I’d go and let loose there whenever I could and go back to work the next day, often with no time to edit the photos from the shows, and never with enough time to look back in my archives at the body of work I created over all those years,” laughs McLaughlin as he reflects on the era.

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Run by then Cry Baby Gallery owner Jenn Hampton, it was where locals The Gaslight Anthem played in 2008 shortly before the release of The ​’59 Sound, which launched their global rock career. In 2011, Shepherd Fairey pasted his mural of Joey Ramone, Johnny Rotten, Joe Strummer, Glenn Danzig, Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins on the side of the building. She recalls how seeing the infamous John Doe, Jello Biafra and Keith Morris grace these bowling lanes was surreal.

“I am so grateful that Asbury Lanes called upon Mike to find inspiration in this unassuming bowling-alley-turned-music-venue, performance space, art gallery and community watering hole,’’ Hampton offers in her foreword. ​“In those pages, I am returned to a time and a place that feels like a dream, within a dream. I am grateful that Mike was compelled to document this special chapter in Asbury Lanes’s history, allowing us, the supporting characters, to be able to live in the moment and enjoy every beautiful, messy and surreal moment, some of which you can find in the pages of this book.”

Lightning in a Bottle is an incredible volume of work that documented not just the place, but the time. For most of the decade that McLaughlin shot, everyone had a camera in their pocket, but early smartphone photos taken in low-light look like cave scrawlings in comparison to McLaughlin’s lens. 

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“I’m not looking for the perfect shot of the singer or guitarist. I want to tell the story of the entire show – covering the band, the crowd, interactions between musicians and fans, bandmate dynamics, and more. So, one photo from a show on a page just didn’t work for me. I wanted to tell the full story of The Lanes,” he explains. ​“The way I designed and laid it all out, I faced some pushback from my grad school professors. They thought it should be a more traditional photobook; like one photo per page with a clean layout, focused solely on the music, and considering a broader audience beyond just those who had attended.”

But McLaughlin is more of a stubborn punk idealist. ​“I told them it’s not a photobook, it’s not: ​‘Here’s Mike McLaughlin’s photobook,’” he explains. ​“It’s everyone’s book – I just happen to be someone who documented it all, but it was everyone’s experience. I wanted it to be part photo book, part punk zine, part high school yearbook, part family album – all Lanes. I wanted everyone to write their thoughts or memories to share, and I specifically wanted them all handwritten, to be part of the book.”

The venue played a significant role in bringing people back to the city, which started as a blessing and later became the curse. ​“The Lanes went the distance long enough to truly create a scene that not only drew people into town for shows but also brought many to settle there – opening businesses, restaurants, and really investing their time, energy, money, and creativity into our little city by the sea,” he continues.

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By 2013, Asbury was bouncing back from Superstorm Sandy and thriving (Obama and Springsteen both went there and said so). The Great Recession was over. It was the shiny new toy of the New Jersey Shore – wildly more diverse than other resort areas, steeped in nostalgia, safe for families, but edgier than nearby, cotton candy boardwalk towns. With investors heavily invested, the big Asbury Park comeback that had faced fits and starts for 15 years was actually happening. A development firm named iStar had purchased Asbury Lanes and rumors of what might happen to the venue swirled around the circle pit. 

Doors closed for renovations in 2015 and Hampton was told she would be brought back to manage the new incarnation. 

She was not. 

The firm put out messaging that the renovation would ​“astonish fans of the Lanes” for keeping the spirit of the town.

It did not. 

The ​“new” Lanes opened as a corporate venue, restaurant and bowling alley, without much of its original grit. Hampton found she was locked out of her own Lanes social media accounts as they were commandeered by Bowery Events, the company that owns many of the biggest venues in NYC and Philly. Small venues can’t hang in real estate realities of today. There are similar stories in every scene, in every city. The gentrification of a decade ago almost seems quaint at this point, making the timing of the book so ideal.

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“Ironically, that same creative energy and community emanating from The Lanes is what put it on the hipster map of major media outlets’ ​‘Places to Be’ sections, leading to an influx of developers and investors wanting to make it the next trendy destination, which ended up draining much of the original vibe that drew people there in the first place,” says McLaughlin. ​“While Asbury now has more money, prominence, and tourists – except for a few stubborn, relentless individuals keeping the flame alive, all of whom came out of the Lanes – the town has lost much of its soul.”

Lightning in a Bottle by Mike McLaughlin is available to pre-order online. A corresponding exhibition at Parlor Gallery opens on December 19, 2025.

Jon Coen is a writer and documentary maker. Follow him on Instagram.

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