By LINDA G. RASTELLI
Everywhere you look on Monmouth Street, it seems, change is underway. Businesses coming and going. Major alterations. The vendor churn can sometimes seem as bustling as the foot traffic.
Red Bank News, the newsstand that’s been a fixture on Monmouth Street for decades, changed hands recently. But even in the midst of store makeovers galore, new owner Michael Bonney won’t be altering much.
A 38-year-old Asbury Park resident and daily reader of three newspapers (the Daily News, the Post and the Asbury Park Press), Bonney has added packaged pastries and coffee to the store’s offerings.
That’s about it. Otherwise, the store’s mainstays are still newspapers, magazines, lottery tickets, tobacco, and candy — the types of small pleasures that have kept it going for 50 years (by one estimate) or 70 (by another).
However long it’s been in business, “the place just needs a little TLC,” Bonney says, pointing out the new coat of green paint and the newly-created corridor where he’s removed a large rack. When a customer remarks that she preferred the old layout, the former No Ordinary Joe’s manager is diplomatic.
“You can’t please everyone,” Bonney says.
Bonney was a patron of the store when it was owned by Angie and Joe Patel, who own Eiffel Liquors on farther west Monmouth Street.
“I used to come in here for my papers, and the store owners’ son joked, ‘You should buy this store,’” he says. “I laughed, but that planted the idea in my head.”
He’d been thinking about opening something on Asbury’s Cookman Avenue, within walking distance of his home. Eventually, he decided he liked this idea better, and bought the business in March.
The store’s customers skew north of 30, the age at which polls say people no longer buy newspapers, but there’s a strong younger contingent as well, Bonney says.
Among the more-established clientele is Art Kamin of Fair Haven, an adjunct instructor in English and Journalism at Brookdale Community College and former editor of the now defunct Red Bank (later, Shrewsbury) Register. He stops in every day to pick up the Home News-Tribune and Hackensack Record.
“I look at them online, but it’s nothing like holding and reading an actual newspaper,” Kamin says.
Kamin, who’s also a New Jersey Press Association past president, says the place has a special appeal that has endured for decades, with all the coming and going of bundled newsprint, gum and cellophane-wrapped Te-Amo cigars.
“All the owners have made some changes, but the place still has character, as far as I’m concerned,” he says.
What’s most important, he adds, is that “a Red Bank treasure” has been preserved.
Love this place. One of the few places downtown where I can find anything I can a) afford and b) actually use. The Pharmacy and the Diner top that shrinking list of other great, super useful places for people who don't earn six or seven (or eight or nine) figures.
As more and more Tiffany's types stores come in and our downtown increasingly becomes the playground for our ultra rich Rumonsites, I thought I'd list a few of the stores I find really lacking and wish we had. I'm excluding places like hardware stores that are sadly impractical in the age of Home Depot. I'm thinking of shops that can still do well in a downtown. Just dreaming, really.
1. A good fish store
2. A small open-late grocery with fresh veggies.
3.Bookstore. (chain, independent, I don't care)
4. a place to get a good loaf of fresh bread. Like one of those old skool Hoboken bakeries.
5. A (cheap) Indian restaurant
BFrank: I'm with you on the bookstore.
grocery - 6 Brothers & Sisters by the train station
bread - Zebu
Funny, I love Zebu and eat there all the time, but for some reason I don't think of just popping in there on my way home from work for a loaf to go with my soup. My brain has it pigeonholed as more of a sit-down lunch type place. Must rethink.
As for groceries, there are several good ones on Shrewsbury Ave (the green one with no sign is a particular neighborhood gem) but I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that - just that there doesn't seem to be one right downtown.
cant sell enough apples oranges and bananas to cover the rent down there. But I do have to agree there are some good grocery stores on Shrewsbury avenue, from Catherine Street down to Oakland there at least six.
hey, I didnt mention Health benifits….oops, DARN IT!
another fantastic addition to Monmouth street is Michael himself …
CRNMBTL