WHAT’S FOR LUNCH? MRS. ROONEY’S HOT DOGS
What’s For Lunch? There’s always Mrs. Rooney’s hot dog stand in Sea Bright. PieHole stops by. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
WHAT’S FOR LUNCH? HOT DOGS IN SEA BRIGHT
Hot dogs from the cart of Frances Rooney, below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
It’s noontime on a gorgeous, late-summer day in beautiful downtown Sea Bright, and PieHole is hungry.
What’s for Lunch? Plenty, and more to choose from every month, it seems, on this back-from-the-brink spit of sand. You’ve got pizza, seafood, Japanese and more, at places ranging from beachware casual to near elegance, all within a one-mile stretch of Ocean Avenue.
But it’s not just food we’re craving. We’re nursing a palpable, please-don’t-ever-end yearning to make this day of blue skies and soft breezes just keep going and going. Sitting down indoors just seems… criminal.
So, hello, Mrs. Rooney.
SEA BRIGHT: ROONEY BUILDING APPROVED
The Ocean Avenue lot where Frances Rooney, seen above in April, has sold hot dogs from a cart since 1977 will become Rooney Plaza, below. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Mrs. Rooney selling hot dogs indoors?
To Sea Brighters and other passersby, the idea that Frances Rooney, the hardy weiner merchant who sometimes defies the pleas of her children not to go out in arctic weather, would no longer ply her trade in the elements might seem unnatural.
But with the planning board’s approval Tuesday night of a four-story, mixed-used structure on her gravel lot at Ocean Avenue and Surf Street, it may happen, she told redbankgreen.
A LOOMING END TO HOT DOG DAYS
A photo of Frances Rooney, left, earlier this summer dishing out dogs at her Sea Bright mainstay to a family from Michigan. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
For decades it’s been a warm-weather certainty that, if the sun is out in Sea Bright, its beams are hitting Frances Rooney’s stainless steel hot dog cart.
She’s made a seasonal home at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Surf Street stuffing buns with franks and slathering them with all the fixings to generations of customers.
It may not be such a sure thing for long.