What if the July 1970 Riots in Asbury Park NJ didn't happen? Would the town not have declined so badly in the 70s and 80s? Perhaps it would've developed into a countercultural hub like Harvard Square or Berkley. And what of the music scene?
Even if the riots didn't occur, the Jersey coast was already in rapid decline, thanks to this thing called the automobile. As such, vacationers in the US Northeast by the 1960's were already travelling well outside the US Northeast on summer vacations, a thing that also contributed to the decline of the Borscht Belt resorts in the Catskill Mountains of upper New York state.