Cases of new books await distribution at River Road Books, above. Soul Kitchen, below, will serve as a giver site. (Click to enlarge)

By DANIELLE TEPPER

Book fans know that when they fall in love with a story, their immediate reaction is to tell someone so they, too, can fall in love with it. Remember how you first heard about The Hunger Games or Fifty Shades of Grey? Word of mouth is the spark that starts the fire and, sometimes has the ability to ignite a full force blaze that’s pretty hard to ignore.

That’s this concept that inspired World Book Night, a campaign designed to introduce the joy of reading to those who can’t afford or are perhaps even a little intimidated to pick up a new novel.

Launched in the United Kingdom a year ago, World Book Night is now coming to the United States, with some 5,000 towns and cities expected to give away almost half a million free books. Among those bibliophilic volunteers are River Road Books in Fair Haven and Red Bank’s own pay-what-you-can JBJ Soul Kitchen. Here’s how it works: publishers of 30 specially-produced paperback titles have agreed to make up to 20 copies of each available to stores, individuals and organizations that wish to give them away. For free. All the books are to be handed out Monday night.

When she and her partners heard about the event, “we laughed about it at first,” said Laurie Potter of River Road Books. “We thought, ‘how are they going to accomplish this?’ But it’s been so well organized.”

And when Potter reached out to get Soul Kitchen involved, manager Ryan Timmons knew it would be right in tune with the overall community mission of the restaurant, he tells redbankgreen.

“We’ll hopefully be able to stock a couple of our cubbies and run it as a book exchange for our in-need guests,” he said, referring to a large, bookcase-like shelving structure that dominates one wall of the Monmouth Street restaurant. “I’m not looking to just take 300 books and give them out, I want 50 people to come in, take a book, return it and take another one,” he said.

“This restaurant gives us an opportunity to talk and meet people; that’s all it’s here for, ultimately. The goal is to put people together.”

Potter says the titles were carefully chosen to allow some variety, and include provocative books that the volunteers are passionate about and would be excited to give out. “Books that could really impact your life, that could maybe turn you into a reader,” she explained.

The list of page-turners includes H.D. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. All the authors have waived their royalties to help make it happen.

While River Road Books is the designated pick-up location for local distributors, anyone in the community had the opportunity to go online and register to become a giver. These givers will then be able to bring their books to nursing homes, prisons, VA hospitals, etc.

“They’re not meant for resale; they’re only for this occasion,” Potter said.

Guests explored the second-floor New Jersey Room, above, where uniforms produced by the Eisner factory were on display.  (Photos by Stephanie Schroepfer. Click to enlarge)

By STEPHANIE SCHROEPFER

Seventy-five years after moving into his former digs, the Red Bank Public Library honored Sigmund Eisner with a house party Saturday.

Light guitar music and tables laden with food for 200 guests set a festive mood as guests meandered through onetime parlors, checking out vintage Army and Boy Scout uniforms produced by Eisner’s Red Bank factories,.

“When the Eisner’s lived here, it was a home. Now its a home for people of all ages and backgrounds,” said Mayor Pasquale Menna.

Menna said he found the history valuable, but not as valuable as the home this library now provides for the community.

Whether they come to do job-hunting research online, to socialize or even just to snooze in a comfy chair overlooking the Navesink River, “it’s all valid,” he said.

“It’s a home for people who live in the neighborhood. No one knows what the role of the library will be years from now, but everyone needs a home and this is one.”

Terry McCue, a 45-year borough resident whose drawings of the Eisner manse and other old homes are featured on notecards sold by the library, said visiting regularly “keeps me handy. Gives me a night” out.

Eisner great-granddaughter Deborah Rutter was among six descendants of the industrialist and philanthropist on hand, and said she learned a lot about family to make her trip down from Connecticut worth the effort.

“I’m overwhelmed by the history, photos and memorabilia,” said Rutter.

“My great-grandfather Sigmund thanks you; my grandfather Monroe thanks you; my father Robert thanks you; and I most certainly thank you,” said Sigmund’s granddaughter Jan Eisner.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony opened the New Jersey History Room, with its special collections of Red Bank, Monmouth County and state history.

With new addition to the collections and the historical tradition of the home, library director Mary Faith Chmiel said she hopes for “another 75 years here, at least.”

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank’s Townwide Yard Sale returns in three weeks, leapfrogging to spring from its customary early-fall time slot.

Usually held in late September, the event this year occurs on May 5, and organizers expect the spring haul-out to stick, as borough residents and bargain hunters alike turn their attention to the important tasks of offloading unwanted junk and buying, um, someone else’s junk.

“September is just a hard time, with kids going back to school, the Jewish holidays and other activities,” said Beth Hanratty, president of the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which has hosted the event since 2010. After four fall editions of the sale, “the feedback we got was that spring was more the season for yard sales, with other towns holding theirs, spring cleaning an all that,” she said.

As in recent years, the event is a benefit for the Friends group, which functions as an independent fundraiser for the library and typically nets about $600 from the voluntary $10 registration fees, after expenses. The money helps support a writing program, artists’ workshops, book purchases and more, Hanratty said.

Not part of the event this year is an annual book sale by the library, which in the past has consisted of a Friday night soiree followed by the sale itself on the day of the yard sale. Organizers found that managing the two simultaneously was a bit too much, and that the night-before reception and sale were popular enough to stand on their own, Hanratty said. They’ll return in November, she said.

The yard sale typically attracts about 120 participating homes, and thousands of shoppers.

The library, at 84 West Front Street, will once again serve as the staging area for yard sale participants who wish to pick up helium balloon and locator maps showing all the participating addresses. The event is nominally from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., though participants can set their own hours. In the event of bad weather, it’s up to the individual participants whether to avail themselves of an unofficial May 6 rain date; no announcement of a rain-out will be made.

Here’s a fact sheet about the event: 2012 Town Yard Sale Fact Sheet

And here’s the registration form: 2012 Town Yard Sale Reg Form

Meanwhile, don’t forget about Saturday’s 75th anniversary celebration of the library’s occupancy of the former Sigmund Eisner mansion. The event, with a ribbon-cutting for the New Jersey History Room, runs from 2 to 4 p.m., with a birthday cake and other kid-friendly activities in the children’s room from 2:30 to 3:30.

By JOHN T. WARD

The naughtiest read to hit book circles in recent years debuts in stores Tuesday, and at least one Rumson grandmother is dying to know what her friends think of it.

Not to find out if it’s safe to read herself, mind you. The woman, a self-described “relatively conservative person in dress, manner and otherwise,” who insisted her name not appear here, has already devoured the racy ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ and is eager to read the next two entries in the trilogy, both of which are also scheduled for mass-market publication in coming weeks.

“I’m going to have to renew my blood pressure medication,” she tells redbankgreen.

In the meantime, she’s anxious to know how opinion divides among her friends as some of them dig into the novel, a sexually explicit tale of domination and submission.

“I have a group of friends who were horrified that I was reading it,” she said.

‘Fifty Shades’ has given rise to both high expectations and a viral case of whispering in bookshops like River Road Books in Fair Haven, where several female customers said, yes, they plan to read it, and no, they would not be caught dead being quoted saying so.

The novel, which evolved from a fan-written take of the popular ‘Twilight’ television series, was previously available as a self-published book, but with limited distribution. Random House, having paid author E L James a whopping sum, is bringing it out by the pallete load as a paperback from its Vintage division.

River Road Books, the only independent bookstore in Monmouth County, has pre-orders from at least 60 customers, the most it’s had for any title since the height of Harry Potter mania, said co-owner Karen Rumage.

“We started getting calls about it about six weeks ago, and we were kind of like, what?” store co-owner Rumage said last month. “And then we started getting more calls, and more calls.”

The books weren’t yet in the store Monday. Rumage said a shipment was expected to arrive Tuesday morning, with books available for pick-up starting at 1 p.m.

The anonymous Rumson woman tells us she spied her daughter-in-law reading the book and feigning nonchalance. When the elder woman informed the younger that she knew what it was all about because she’d read it, “she said, ‘you DID?’ She turned beet red.”

River Road Books is offering redbankgreen readers ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ 20 percent off on Tuesday. Just mention rbg.

By STACIE FANELLI

Victor Rallo stands on a chair dangerously close to a table stocked with dozens of fragile wine bottles. He’s changing a lightbulb while employees circle him laughing.

“He’s definitely a jack of all trades,” says his cousin, Bryant Rallo, general manager of Basil T’s Brewery and Italian Grill on Riverside Avenue in Red Bank.

“Yeah, and parle Italiano perfecto,” Victor Rallo jokes.

The owner of Basil T’s and Undici Taverna Rustica in Rumson, Rallo travels to Italy up to eight times a year, surfs in Puerto Rico, skis in the west, enjoys what he calls “absent-minded photography,” and now, has written his first book.

“Napoleon Wasn’t Exiled” is a journal of wine and food tasting done in Italy by Rallo, a self-trained wine expert and certified sommelier. He also took all the photographs.

“I decided to write a book because I teach a lot of classes and speak to a lot of people, and they say, ‘Can I come with you? Where should I go? What should I do in Italy?’ And it’s often difficult to put it in words after the fact,” said Rallo.

The book is written in layman’s terms for the sake of de-sophisticating wine and making it something everyone can enjoy, he says. It’s also a tribute to Rallo’s ancestral home; as the title makes clear, Rallo believes that Napoleon Bonaparte had it made when he was forced to spend some time chilling on the Tuscan island.

“Supposedly, Napoleon was exiled to Isola d’Elba,” he said. “It’s a hoax. Napoleon wasn’t exiled on Elba. It’s too beautiful. He had a palace, he lived on the beach.”

Rallo, a 48-year-old Fair Haven resident, signed copies of his book for customers at Basil T’s last Thursday evening. This Thursday, he’s scheduled to hold another signing at Dearborn Market in Holmdel.

“When it hits best seller on the New York Times, we might have to pencil a few more in,” said Preston Porter, Rallo’s social media chef, who maintains hundreds of vlogs on YouTube in which Rallo teaches viewers to make most of the recipes made at his restaurants.

“He’ll tell you that you could make it at home, but we can probably make it a little better and you’ll be back for it,” Porter said.

Rallo, a self-proclaimed “wine boss,” credits his Italian roots for the existence of his restaurants.

“About 10 years ago, we switched all of our wines to only Italian wine because I’m Italian and I just think it’s an unbelievable country,” Rallo said. “What I do every day is true to Italy, the heritage and the culture. That mobster, Jersey Shore thing is absolutely for TV.”

Basil T’s is currently in its 25th year, Undici’s in its fifth and the Rallo Wines website in its second. Rallo was also an original owner of Zebu Forno, which opened near the Red Bank train station before his partner, present owner Andrew Gennusa, suggested a move downtown.

Rallo has left his mark on today’s Zebu via a mural by Gregg Hinlicky that he commissioned. Other pieces of art by Hinlicky are all over the walls of both of Rallo’s restaurants.

Rallo’s travels are reflected in Basil T’s menu, according to Ronald Emmons, who said he has been dining there for  “17 years and four months.

“There’s a freedom to this bar because Victor and his brother [Bobby] have a handle on culinary adventures that’s unmatched,” Emmons said.

When he’s not on one of those adventures, Rallo spends time with his wife, three children and three dogs. The newest addition to the family is a white Labrador puppy. Name? ‘Vino.’

Local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott, below, with a custom-branded Eisner lightbulb in the second-floor New Jersey Room of the Red Bank Public Library, once the home of industrialist Sigmund Eisner. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

On April 15, 1937, the Red Bank Public Library – for decades an itinerant but growing collection of books and archival material – finally found a permanent home, relocating from a downtown storefront to a mansion at 84 West Front Street.

Three months earlier, the heirs of Sigmund Eisner – mass-manufacturer of uniforms for the Army, the Boy Scouts and other organizations  – had donated their late father’s mansion overlooking the Navesink River to the library.

The shared hope of H. Raymond, Monroe and J. Lester Eisner was that the house would provide a warm and dry place for reading, but also that it would function “as a bit of a museum, too,” says local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott.

Next month, the library will celebrate its 75th anniversary in the house with museum-like displays that highlight Eisner and his transformative impact on Red Bank as an industrialist and philanthropist.

The event, says McDermott, “is completely about” Eisner.

The ornate first-floor parlor of the Eisner mansion, above, and an undated photo of Sigmund Eisner, below. (Click to enlarge)

Valued at $25,000 at the time, the house was donated partly furnished, according to a Red Bank Register account of the opening. Wicker chairs provided welcome indoor seating overlooking the river.

The house had been home to Eisner and his wife, Bertha Weis, a member of a well-established Red Bank family. An Eastern European immigrant who “came to Red Bank as a peddler,” Eisner set up a sewing machine in a rented house near Broad Street and eventually built an manufacturing empire that employed 5,000 people at its peak during the first World War, said McDermott.

Eisner’s complex of factory buildings at the West Front Street and Bridge Avenue was reported to be the largest uniform factory in the world, she said.

Some of that property is now the home to the Galleria at Red Bank, a collection of restaurants, shops and offices. Another portion, on the northeast corner of that intersection, is home to the Antique Center of Red Bank.

Antique Center owner Guy Johnson is lending some of his collection of Eisner and old Red Bank memorabilia to the library display, including uniforms and a lightbulb branded with the Eisner name, probably for use in the factory, McDermott said.

The event will also highlight the reopening of the library’s New Jersey History Room. For many years, an ornate front room trimmed in ornate Gothic woodwork served as the repository for reference and archival materials about Red Bank, Monmouth County and the state. But the rarity and delicate condition of some of the materials, including one-of-a-kind atlases and directories, called out for a dedicated, controlled-access space, said McDermott.

That space is now a second-floor room of several hundred square feet that is open to the public from 2 to 4 p.m. each Tuesday afternoon, and by appointment at other times. McDermott said it is available to anyone, and is particularly helpful to people interested in researching family and property histories.

McDermott herself has been immersed in the materials as she assembles the exhibit, she said. And one regular visitor, a volunteer in the effort to put together the exhibit, has been known to exclaim, while going through old photos, “Oh my god, that’s my great-grandfather,” McDermott said with a laugh.

The goal of the exhibit is to create “a kind of timeline” about Eisner, a philanthropist who left money in his will to his factory workers, as well as to a host of churches of various persuasions, said McDermott.

“He didn’t have any barriers,” she said.

The building got a $1.6 million renovation in 2007, reopening after a problematic 15-month closure in January, 2008. In the interim, the library operated out of retail space donated by Hovnanian Enterprises.

Here’s an article from the January 6, 1937 edition of the New York Times announcing the donation of the house to the borough: Eisners deed house to library

And here’s the announcement about next month’s event:

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, from 2 – 4 PM, the Red Bank Public Library will celebrate 75 years as the Eisner Memorial Library with a Ribbon Cutting and Reception in our newly restructured New Jersey History Room.

Our New Jersey Collection contains many unique and valuable items pertaining to the Library, the Borough of Red Bank, and Monmouth County. The Library building itself is a special place, having been previously the home of Sigmund Eisner, businessman, civic leader and philanthropist, and his wife Bertha, an influential businesswoman and civic organizer. Presented to the Borough of Red Bank in January 1937, the former mansion was opened as a Public Library on April 15, 1937, thanks to the generosity of the Eisner sons, Raymond, J. Lester, and Monroe Eisner.

Please join us on April 14, as we celebrate this historic anniversary in our beautiful building on the Navesink River. For more information, please feel free to contact the library at 732-842-0690.

Michael Zapcic with Thomas Mumme, left, during Thursday’s live ‘SModcast’ at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. Below: Kevin Smith on the center monitor during a taping earlier this week in Red Bank. (Photo below courtesy of Robert Bruce. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Michael Zapcic had the “really surreal” experience earlier this week of walking past Madison Square Garden, glancing up at the massive Jumbotron and seeing a commercial for ‘Comic Book Men,’ a new cable show in which he appears as himself: a self-described comic book geek.

“I’m like holy crap! It’s them! It’s us!” he recalled Thursday, in the tone of an average, fedora-wearing citizen spotting a caped man flying overhead.

Life in the mini-Gotham that is Red Bank may never be the same.

Only, yeah, it will be exactly the same, because ‘Comic Book Men’ is a reality show, one focused on the daily interplay of three employees of  “possibly the world’s most famous comic book store” – Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash on Broad Street, where the show is set.

Over six episodes, four opinionated, superabsorbent sponges of superheroism – Zapcic, Ming Chen and Walt Flanagan, plus original store manager Bryan Johnson – spend a lot of time  “just arguing about stupid movie plot points, which happens every day without cameras anyway,” says Chen.

Ming Chen mans the mic. The podcasts have a prominent role in ‘Comic Book Men.’ (Click to enlarge)

The show is the brainchild of Middletown-raised filmmaker Kevin Smith, who owns the 15-year-old store and participates in each show during podcasts – known in the sprawling Smithian ‘smerchandise’ empire as ‘SModcasts’ – that bookend each episode.

The SModcasts, normally taped in the store at a poker table strewn with Surf Taco crumbs, were recorded on a specially built set elsewhere in Red Bank in recent months.

There’s also lots of interaction with customers, some of them from overseas, looking to buy and sell comic books, toys and tchotchkes.

Red Bank resident and sage “pop culturist” Robert Bruce is in it, too, offering an appraising eye for rarities: comic books, action figures, toys and more.

“His focus is on the most obscure things in the world,” says Zapcic, who apparently butts heads with Bruce in the show, as in real life.

At some point, a faux Batmobile is expected to pop up, too.

It’s basically a “character-driven show,” Zapcic said during a redbankgreen interview that doubled as a SModcast Thursday. “The producers “basically pointed the cameras at us and said, ‘be funny.’”

The Stash staffers own up to being totally amped about their debut Sunday night: Ming says he’s had trouble sleeping. But what excites him most, he said, is that the natural comedic chemistry of his colleagues Flanagan and Johnson will finally be on display for all Gothamites to enjoy.

“These two guys are so damn funny, and without even meaning to be,” said Zapcic.

“That’s the key part. They’re not trying,” Ming said.

AMC, home of ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad‘ and ‘The Walking Dead,’ launches the series at 10 p.m. Sunday.

For more about both the store and the show, tune into redbankgreen‘s ‘smodcast’ interview of Chen and Zapcic here. Click on ‘Smodco Morning Show #80.’

Two cast members of the play, which trains a lens on the urban African-American experience, are scheduled to appear at the Red Bank Public Library tonight from 6 to 7 to 9 p.m. to meet the community and salute Black History Month.  (Above photo by T. Charles Erickson. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Here’s a stocking-stuffer idea that’s as local as they come.

A series of note cards by Red Bank artist Terry McCue honors the borough’s history by preserving, in pen-and-ink,  some of its most noteworthy buildings.

And the proceeds from the sale of the cards go to support an institution that occupies one of those structures: the Red Bank Public Library, which makes its home in the former Sigmund Eisner mansion on West Front Street.

McCue’s drawings, done over several decades, were the product of a twist in a long career in the graphic arts that took many, she tells redbankgreen.

Now 89 years old, she’s been a sketcher of window displays for New York department stores; a draftsman at Fort Monmouth; a creator of ads for the now-gone Vogel’s department store in Long Branch; and a designer of sheets and towels – not to mention a mother of six, grandmother of 11, and wife to her husband, Martin, a former Red Bank borough clerk and volunteer firefighter.

The 40-plus-year resident of Pinckney Road says the series of drawings came about after she made a drawing of the house next door as a gift when the owner moved away. Displayed in the recipient’s new home in Rumson, it was spotted by Realtor Gloria Nilson, who hired McCue to execute illustrations of homes for clients.

“The agents would give them as gifts to buyers,” McCue says.

That set her on the path of house illustrations. When she had time, she started doing drawings of old Red Bank buildings that caught her eye. Working from photos she’d take from several angles, “with close-ups of the details.”

Among the buildings committed to paper: the former Anthony Reckless Estate, now the Woman’s Club of Red Bank; the train station; the Dublin House; and the John Stout House, now the office of Red Bank Family EyeCare on East Front Street.

“I like the old buildings,” McCue says. “They’re there, they’re settled. They look like they ought to be there.”

Some of the homes McCue had hoped to get to were torn down before she could draw them, including the Rullman House, built in 1805, which the borough demolished in 1999 to create Riverside Gardens Park, and the Thomas Morford House, destroyed by the developer of what’s now a bank across the street from library.

Still, “eventually, I had a collection” of about a dozen, McCue says. The library once mounted a show of the drawings, but they sat gathering dust in a closet at her home until recently, when she pulled them out and donated them to the library. She signed over the copyrights, allowing the library to use them as it wishes.

“They’re just beautiful drawings of architecturally significant buildings,” said library director Mary Faith Chmiel. “They make great little gifts for people who used to live in town.”

Bundles of six note cards and envelopes are available at the library, with a suggested donation of $10.