The Wonder Bar and Yappy Hour
Near Asbury Park, New Jersey
Just look for Tillie. That is how the Wonder Bar tells you where it is, because a giant grinning clown face beams from its wall at the corner of Fifth and Ocean. That face is a loving replica of the original Palace Amusements Tillie, an homage rather than the real mural, but it has become a landmark all its own.
The Wonder Bar is a boardwalk-era nightspot that was reborn in the two thousands, when a musician and his partner bought and renovated it into a live-music room right beside the Stone Pony. It carries a slice of rock history too. Bruce Springsteen and the saxophonist Clarence Clemons are said to have first crossed paths near here in September of nineteen seventy-one.
But the Wonder Bar is best known today for something gentler. Its fenced patio, called Tillie's Landing, hosts a dog-friendly happy hour known as Yappy Hour, where off-leash dogs run and their owners drink, summer afternoons by the sea. It is one of the friendliest scenes on the whole shore.
