Who knew? Tillie has legs! And now he's riding a bike!
Frankly, I hadn't known that Tillie existed below the collar and that oh-so-stylish necktie. At least, stylish for its time.
There he was on a penny-farthing bicycle, which is in fact age appropriate - Tillie is well over 100 years old. (The name penny-farthing comes from old British coins - the penny, or front wheel, being rather large, and the farthing, or rear wheel, being quite small.)
This new version of Tillie - Tillie 2.0? - showed up just before the pandemic, and briefly graced a number of the bicycles that were available in Asbury's bike share program. Sadly, the bike share did not survive the pandemic. The scooter share also went on hiatus for a while, but it's back, and there are scooter-share scooters everywhere. We can only hope Tillie 2.0 and his bike-share bikes will come back as well, some day soon.
It's hard to explain how important Tillie has been for Asbury Park. For many years, through thick and thin, the good times and the bad, Tillie has been our icon. He does have some competition from various references to Bruce Springsteen, usually involving the words Greetings From Asbury Park. Our parade of identity might actually profit from some new recruits - I'm fond of the dolphins who swim on various facades of Convention Hall - but for now Tillie is the smiling face of Asbury Park.
And so it's probably even harder to explain that Tillie is actually a migrant from Brooklyn - Coney Island, to be precise.
His older cousin, Funny Face, graced Coney Island's Steeplechase Park for many years. George C. Tilyou, owner of the Coney Island park, opened another steeplechase in Asbury Park and decorated it with Tillie, a kinder, gentler version of Funny Face, whom I frankly find a bit scary.
A large mural rendition of Tillie currently graces the Wonder Bar, where he kindly presides over Yappy Hour, a Happy Hour for dogs and humans (only the humans get alcoholic beverages). The Wonder Bar mural is actually the third incarnation of Tillie as a mural. Tilyou's was the first, and then came the famous mural on Palace Amusements, which was removed from its site when Palace Amusements was demolished; it then spent nearly two decades hanging out at the city's sewage treatment plant, and in 2021 was transferred to a storage site just north of Convention Hall.
Here's a picture of Wonder Bar Tillie.
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| Presiding over Yappy Hour at the Wonder Bar. |
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| Yappy Hour explained. |
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| Commerce in Convention Hall. |
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| Tillie, king of souvenirs. |
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| Tillie at Palace Amusements. Note the utility wires. |
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| Tillie as a towel, with a t-shirt thrown in. |
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| Iconographic options on Convention Hall. There are more. |
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| Tillie everywhere: The side of the bike basket. |
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