First, our apologies to Deborah Harry for blowing her cover—if that’s what we’re doing. But surely all flame-haired singers and actresses who patronize the Red Bank Post Office on Broad Street know that some day, one way or another, they’re gonna get outted.
It seems the frontwoman for Blondie has a house on The Green. Records on file in Freehold show that Harry paid $1 million for a 2.1-acre property on Shadow Lake in the River Plaza section of Middletown in April, 2003. The seller was the Edwin J. Dobson III Trust.
OK, so this is three-year-old news. But searches in Google and area newspaper archives turn up just one reference to Harry’s domicile buried deep in an article about a fundraiser that ran last September in one of the Greater Media weeklies. And OK, so one of Harry’s neighbors tells us, in a what-cave-do-you-live-in tone, that Harry’s been a fixture in these parts for way longer than than three years. Still, her presence is news to us and every one of the other townies we asked about it, so we’ll score this as a mini-scoop. And we eagerly await a torrent of clicks from Blondie fans for whom no scoop is too mini.
But we digress. The property is nominally on West Front Street, but if you want a peek at the house, take a canoe, because you can’t see it from the road. It’s at the end of a long private drive that disappears into the woods. Other than trees and gravel, a cluster of mailboxes (there are three other homes back there with Harry’s) is pretty much all there is to look at.
Local mail delivery, of course, doesn’t obviate the need for an occasional visit to the post office, which is where redbankgreen got onto Harry’s semi-secret. A couple of weeks ago, just seconds after Max Weinberg left the facility in gym shorts, dark socks and loafers (think "Conan skit"), a postal service employee who clearly couldn’t contain herself announced to a long line of customers that Debbie Harry was also someone who "comes in here all the time."
And really, knowing that the place has become a virtual East Coast branch of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who could ever again grumble about the wait for stamps?
For those readers wanting more than just a fleeting glimpse of a parcel-toting Debbie Harry—or her mailbox—Blondie’s Road Rage Tour with The New Cars (formerly, The Cars) skids into the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel on Saturday, June 10.
