Paradise

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Paradise on Cookman Avenue is the anchor of Asbury Park's gay bar scene and one of the bars most closely associated with the city's LGBTQ+-led revival. Cookman Avenue runs west from the boardwalk and has been the commercial heart of Asbury Park's gay community since the 1990s, when the first gay-owned bars and businesses began the transformation of a declining shore town into one of the most distinctive queer destinations on the East Coast. Paradise operates as the classic American gay bar — a welcoming, community-oriented space with drag performances, themed nights, and the regular programming that makes a bar a neighbourhood institution rather than a tourist attraction. The crowd reflects the Asbury Park demographic: a mix of local residents, summer visitors from New York and Philadelphia, and the day-trippers who arrive on the NJ Transit train from Penn Station for a weekend at the Shore. The bar's character is distinctly New Jersey in the best sense — unpretentious, sociable, and unimpressed by affectation. During Asbury Park Pride in June, Paradise becomes the de facto headquarters of the festival's after-parties and community events.