Talk:Spring Lake, New Jersey

The town contains some beautiful large victorian homes. Its also VERY Irish.

Patti Smith

Got a source for this? Just seems to be a random add with no evidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Terrapin7 (talk • contribs) 06:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

her article mentions she lived in New Jersey during her childhood, but in Woodbridge, not Spring Lake. I'm going to remove it unless someone can source it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clamster5 (talk • contribs) 15:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I'm a little skeptical about Louis Freeh too. Not that FBI people ever advertise where they live anyway.Terrapin7 (talk) 18:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm doubtful I'll find a source for it, but Louis Freeh does in fact live in Spring Lake, as his house is just down the street from mine. Clamster 21:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it. That's quite a commute to he's got to his day job in Wilmington though. ;)Terrapin7 (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Irish percentage

I see Clamster5 reverted my revision, but the reason I undid it is that I hadn't first seen the number 6 reference after the second mention under Demographics. Seemed legit to me, but if you prefer the certainty of the Times piece, by all means. Guess it all depends on how you define "place." Terrapin7 (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Shark Attacks and Jaws

I'm removing the reference to the 1916 Shark Attacks "inspiring" Jaws due to contradictory evidence on author Peter Benchley's own Web site, www.peterbenchley.com. If you click on "Exclusice Interview" and scroll down to the questions that reads "What influenced you to write JAWS?", he answers, "In 1964, I read about a fisherman who had caught a 4,550-pound great white shark off Long Island, and I thought to myself, 'What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn't go away?' That was the "seed" idea of JAWS, but I didn't actually pursue it until 1971." While it's true that Steven Spielberg's film version briefly references the 1916 attacks through the Martin Brody character, it is not at all accurate to say that either the film or the book were specifically inspired by the attacks. The Capuzzo book only repeats that brief onscreen reference and offers no hard evidence of an "influence" on Benchley, despite the CBS writer's factual leap.Terrapin7 (talk) 22:02, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

From Benchley's introduction to the novel: "In 1964, I read an item in a newspaper about a fisherman who harpooned a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island. I remember thinking at the time, Lord! What would happen if one of those monsters came into a resort community and wouldn't go away? I tucked the item into my wallet and, for the time being, forgot about it."

From the correction to a 2001 New York Times article about shark attacks: "Correction: September 8, 2001, Saturday - An article on Wednesday and one in the New Jersey section on Sunday about fears over sharks referred incorrectly to the inspiration for the 1974 novel Jaws. Its author, Peter Benchley, says the book was not inspired by attacks off New Jersey in 1916."

From the New York Times' obituary for Peter Benchley: "It was while working as a freelance writer that he was invited to lunch by Tom Congdon, an editor at Doubleday, who asked if he had any ideas for a novel. In fact, he had. As he later described it, he said, "I've been thinking about a novel about a great white shark that appears off a Long Island resort and afflicts it." The idea came from a news article he had read about a fisherman who caught a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island in 1964. Having spent many hours fishing off Nantucket with his father, he knew of sharks, and he believed he knew how to tell a story."

From The Guardian's obituary for Peter Benchley: "All the while he was haunted by a magazine article which he had read about a 2,064kg great white shark caught by a fisherman off Long Island in 1964. This jelled in his mind with a piece which he himself had written about life in a similar resort, and he began to wonder about the effect a shark would have upon such residents."

Explanation as to why the 1916 attacks are constantly though inaccurately cited as the inspiration for Jaws, from HistoryVsHollywood.com: "Even though Jaws is not based on a true story, most news outlets continue to cite the inspiration for Jaws as being the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks, despite the Jaws author denying the claim. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that in the movie, Roy Scheider's character Brody (Amity Island's Chief of Police) urges the mayor to close the beaches, stating, 'And there's no limit to what he's gonna do! I mean we've already had three incidents, two people killed inside of a week. And it's gonna happen again, it happened before! The Jersey beach! ... 1916! Five people chewed up on the surf!' Second, the movie shares a number of similarities with the 1916 shark attacks along the Jersey Shore, which claimed four lives and left a teenager injured. Like in the movie, the first two victims were killed inside of a week. The shark then killed two more people in Matawan Creek, an estuary that connects into Raritan Bay. In the film, the shark kills a man when it swims into a nearby estuary."

The rules on this site unequivocally state, "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." I think the above links more than count as verifiable. A poorly reported blog post on CBS's Web site, doubtless written hurriedly by an inexperienced summer intern for whom fact-checking is a foreign concept, does not. Please stop repeating this myth. The 1916 attacks have no connection to Jaws. Bordwalkbill 18:30, 15 October 2015 (UTC)