The Jersey Shore has come a long way since Hurricane Sandy. Nowhere was that more evident today than Belmar, where Governor Chris Christie cut the ribbon on the town's new $8 million boardwalk.

Five years after its first star-studded induction ceremony, the New Jersey Hall of Fame is in limbo. Final voting for this year’s class of inductees has yet to take place and the annual induction ceremony, typically held in early June, has been indefinitely delayed.

It’s good to see normalcy come back to parts of the Jersey Shore. The latest welcome return was Asbury Park’s annual Light of Day festival, which filled the seaside city with music fans this past weekend.

The township of Montclair officially renamed a street in tribute to Yogi Berra on Saturday, and as the Yankee great might have put it, even though he could not attend, he was honored to be there.

Immense piles of garbage. Mold-remediation trucks. Boarded windows. Police roadblocks. These are the sights that greeted us on Saturday as we drove into the waterfront borough of Highlands on a mission to help with the post-Sandy cleanup.

Most of us hate to work on the weekend—especially a beautiful sunny Saturday in September. Then again, when “work” means hanging around with a video crew on the beach at Long Branch and Asbury Park, why complain?

There were no show-stopping moments at Saturday night’s New Jersey Hall of Fame induction ceremony, no surprise appearances by Annie Oakley, Samuel I. Newhouse, John Dorrance, Wellington T. Mara, Sarah Vaughan or Christopher Reeve. That would have been quite a coup, since each of those new inductees is long dead.

From soup to Superman to the Super Bowl-winning Giants, the Garden State’s impact on contemporary culture is clearly evident in the 2012 class of New Jersey Hall of Fame inductees, announced today.

A president, a vice president, a sharp-shooting woman, a horn-blowing man, a blustery football coach and the father of political cartooning are among the 50 New Jerseyans nominated for the fifth class of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

The passing of Clarence Clemons, however sad, is a reminder of how special it is to be from New Jersey.

The New Jersey Hall of Fame inducted its newest class Sunday night. The evening may have lacked the star power of past ceremonies, but it certainly had plenty of sincere and touching moments.

It’s been a long time since I committed a crime more serious than jaywalking. Yet there I was in Ridgefield recently accused of that most dastardly offense: “Failure to inspect.”

The power that draws moth to flame drew me back to my old fitness group earlier this week. And it burns.

Here’s one of the stranger suburban rituals. It happens every Memorial Day Weekend with the official opening of the Montclair Beach Club, the lovely private pool that straddles the border of Montclair and Clifton.

It was not my intent to go to the final home game at Yankee Stadium. But in the end, I couldn’t resist.

I woke my teenage daughter at 6:10 am Wednesday to watch the sun as it inched its way above the horizon off Bay Head. Such moments down the shore are too precious to sleep through.

At about 3:30 Sunday afternoon, Bruce Springsteen fans across New Jersey were digging out their rain ponchos as fierce thunderstorms smashed down on the Garden State. But by the time Bruce took the stage at Giants Stadium that evening, the rain had ceased and a cool breeze prevailed. Even the weather gods know who’s the boss.

Time is running out. There are just 20-something regular season games remaining at Yankee Stadium. Yes, the big ball yard is two rivers away from New Jersey, but the Yanks always have had deep roots in the Garden State.

We skipped Montclair’s Independence Day Parade this year for the first time since our kids were infants. But there was one July 4th ritual I would not pass up: Our annual parent-daughter softball game.