They called it a flash mob. That would be stretching the concept.

Still, the vinyasa flow sequence performed by about 30 members of Evenflow Yoga at the Red Bank International Flavour Festival Sunday seemed a fitting tribute to the emergence of the sun after a day of rain.

The yoga enthusiasts wore pink as part of the Pink Bank celebration going on in Red Bank and neighboring towns this week.

Dark clouds broke and thousands of hungry people poured into the Red Bank International Flavour Festival Sunday.

redbankgreen‘s Stacie Fanelli and John T. Ward were there, cameras in hand. Were you?

To enlarge the photo display, start it, then click the embiggen symbol in the lower right corner. To get back to redbankgreen, hit your escape key.

As the headline suggests, the weekend that awaits is jammed with the potential for good times.

We’ve got the fifth Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, this one making a migration from fall to spring.

We’ve got one of the inaugural events of this year’s weeklong Paint the Town Pink festivities to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.

And capping it all off, rain or shine, is the first-ever Red Bank International Flavour Fest, an outdoor celebration of the wide variety of cuisines available year-round at Red Bank restaurants.

And Mother Nature appears to be in a mood to cooperate.

Details, as they used to say when that was still a two-syllable word, are just below.

SATURDAY: Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale
Location: all over town. Maps available at the Red Bank Public Library and at many of the participating homes.
Time: Officially, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but sellers can set their own hours.

From an email update from Beth Hanratty, president of the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which has hosted the event since 2010:

lots of records, books and air conditioners

SATURDAY: Pink Hat Tea Party
Pilgrim Baptist Church
172 Shrewsbury Avenue
Doors open 10:30 a.m., Event 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Don’t miss this important Paint the Town Pink event, presented by Riverview Medical Center. Gather all the special women in your life to join us for an educational and entertaining Pink Hat Tea, with a hat and apparel fashion show courtesy Geneva’s Boutique of Neptune, a speacial presentation from Adi Smolinsky, M.D., a Riverview Medical Center OB/GYN, education about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of the importance of annual mammography, and more! Refreshments will be provided by Jameson’s Ultimate Southern Cooking Restaurant in Neptune. Don’t forget to wear your pink hat!

*Pink Sale Event. Deck your pink all year long with our exclusive Paint the Town Pink gear and goodies for sale at this signature event.

This event is FREE but registration is required. RSVP: 1-800-DOCTORS

SUNDAY: Paint Everything Pink Community Day
Riverview Medical Center parking lot
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Pink your town, pink your house, pink your family. Everything is pink at our family-centered, free Community Day! Featuring many of the same pink “zones” families have come to expect as well as exciting new ones, this year’s event will feature:

Kids’ Fun & Games: Rides, arts and crafts, face painting – all the things your kids have come to love! And don’t miss photos with Dr. Bernard from the Pawsitive Action Team at
K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital.

Pink it Yourself Man Cave: In line with this year’s theme of Men in Pink, our “man cave” will offer the men in your life an area just for them. Activities will include DYI demonstrations from the Home Depot, interactive games, and of course our exclusive Real Men Wear Pink t-shirts.

Rockin’ Country Thunder 106.3: Bring out the country in you! With live music from a local country artist, this local-favorite station will have you dancin’ in your boots. Your kids will love our pony rides and everyone can enjoy some good old fashioned root beer!

And that’s not all! Enjoy some snack-food favorites and other sweet treats, and beverages from a number of local pink partners, and don’t forget to stop by our educational tables to pick-up important information about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of raising awareness of the importance of annual mammography.

Special Pink Cotton Candy and Snow Cones presented by Arrow Limousine.

SUNDAY: Red Bank International Flavour Festival
White Street Parking Lot
12 p.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine

Here’s the National Weather Service forecast:

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind between 10 and 13 mph.

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind around 9 mph.

Like the past two autumn Oysterfests, Red Bank Flavour’s new International Flavour Fest on Sunday will bulge at the belt line of the White Street parking lot. (Click to enlarge)

It’s panning out to be a busy spring for Red Bank Flavour.

The promotional partnership of borough-based bistros, bars, boites, bakeries, breakfast nooks, banquet halls and better take-out vendors heralded the turn of the season with the return of the Dine Downtown campaign in March. Then in April, the culinary alliance presented a special Broadway in Red Bank showcase that reinforced the notion of the town as dinner-and-show destination.

On Sunday, the Flavour pack joins with Red Bank RiverCenter and a host of local and corporate sponsors for an event with a broader, even global, reach: the first annual Red Bank International Flavour Festival.

Dublin native Steve Reilly and Shore reggae masters Random Test help lend a global vibe to the Red Bank International Flavour Fest, this Sunday afternoon on White Street. 

Presented in the White Street municipal parking lot (scene of September’s Guinness Oysterfests) from noon to 7pm, the rain-or-shine shindig is pitched as “an international culinary experience” that also boasts “international beer and wine,” plus family-friendly activities and a full menu of live music on two stages.

Some 30 of Red Bank’s most proactive purveyors of fine foodstuffs will be offering attendees samples of their wares, as “culinary cultural attaches” for the likes of France (Bienvenue), Ireland (The Dublin House), China (Temple Gourmet), Thailand (Siam Garden), Mexico (SurfTaco), ever-eclectic America (Dish) and points well below sea level. There’s also the expansive international vision of Gary the Soupmeister and Readies, plus gourmet pizza (with other Italian favorites) and the kind of sweet-tooth diplomacy that recognizes no national borders. A full listing of participating vendors (with website links) can be found here.

In a further flavourful twist, the featured entertainment also carries with it an World vibe, with an International Stage showcasing reggae partystarters Random Test, Dublin-born rocker Steve Reilly, Latin/ Salsa showstoppers from The Funktion, and a round-the-world performance by the students of Red Bank’s Kathryn Barnett School of Dance. An All-American stage features local favorites Quincy Mumford and Kirk & The Jirks, as well as Bon Jovi-likes Runaway (take it here for a detailed music schedule and links).

Admission to the Red Bank International Flavour Festival is $5.00 for adults (kids 12 and under free), with proceeds benefitting Red Bank RiverCenter and the Red Bank Regional Buccaneer Athletic Foundation.

The Flavour keeps on lasting, all this spring and throughout the summer, as the grassroots alliance plots the return of the monthly Red Bank Food and Wine Walk promotions, the first of which pounds the pavements on Sunday, May 20 — and about which more to come in the paperless pages of redbankgreen.

Closing in on a celebration of its centennial, Fair Haven is having some trouble tracking historical time capsules, the Asbury Park Press reported Wednesday.

With food, fireworks, music and other details of the June 16 public celebration squared away, borough officials are trying to determine whether to assemble a time capsule for posterity, and wondering past time capsules are accounted for, the Press reports.

From reporter Larry Higgs’ account, referring to “other time capsules buried in the borough 36 years ago, during the nation’s bicentennial in 1976:”

“We’re not certain what the status of time capsules in Fair Haven are,” said Theresa Casagrande, borough administrator, after Monday’s council meeting. “We’re looking to dig up some historical knowledge, and see how many are buried and whether it is appropriate to open them.”

Officials haven’t decided if a time capsule will be buried for the borough’s centennial this year, filled with artifacts depicting life in the borough in 2012, she said.

“I know we did find a time capsule in the cellar of borough hall that was never planted as part of the school project (in 1976) and returned it to the school,” Casagrande said. “(Historian) Pat Drummond seemed to recall there was a time capsule at Bicentennial Hall as part of that celebration.”

That time capsule remained unopened until it was returned to the superintendent of schools, she said.

“There was one in 1976 … buried across the street somewhere in Memorial Park,” said Mayor Benjamin Lucarelli. “The question is, is it time to open it, or time to put down another time capsule?”

Casagrande said officials have to determine if that is a different time capsule or the school time capsule found when the basement of borough hall was being cleaned out.

There may be one more problem. The instructions for opening one of the time capsules may be inside the time capsule, he said.

The magazine’s ranking is based on cultural offerings in towns of 25,000 or fewer residents.  (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Smithsonian Magazine calls Red Bank the third-best small town in America in its May issue.

On a list of 20 small towns towns rich in culture, the town came in behind only Great Barrington, Massachusetts and Taos, New Mexico, the magazine reported.

That gives Red Bank bragging rights over places like Princeton (number 12) and Key West, Florida (16) –not to mention the thousands that didn’t make the list.

Here’s the magazine’s entry on Red Bank, by reporter Susan Spano:

William Count Basie grew up and got his musical chops on Mechanic Street in Red Bank. In the early 1920s he moved to Harlem and the rest is jazz history, to the tune of the “One O’Clock Jump.” His hometown on the south bank of the Navesink River about 25 miles south of Manhattan went through some lean, mean times after that, but has since made an astonishing cultural and economic comeback, linchpinned by the refurbishment of the 1926 Carlton Theater, now the Count Basie performing arts center, a venue for ballet to rock to Willie Nelson. Cafés, galleries, clubs and shops followed, along with farmers markets and street fairs, attracting people from well-heeled Monmouth County and the Jersey Shore. Town folk (pop. 12,200) went to work on neglected old homes with good bones, the landmark Victorian train depot was restored and the silver was polished at the Molly Pitcher Inn, named for a Revolutionary War heroine who is said to have brought water to thirsty soldiers serving under George Washington during the Battle of Monmouth County. The Navesink got a spiffy waterfront park, the setting for jazz concerts in the summer and iceboating when the river freezes; string quartets and youth choruses perform at the Monmouth Conservatory of Music, while the Two River Theater Company stages new plays and musicals. It all adds up to a model for small-town renewal.

And here’s its explainer on the methodology:

To help create our list, we asked the geographic information systems company Esri to search its data bases for high concentrations of museums, historic sites, botanic gardens, resident orchestras, art galleries and other cultural assets common to big cities. But we focused on towns with populations less than 25,000, so travelers could experience what might be called enlightened good times in an unhurried, charming setting. We also tried to select towns ranging across the lower 48.

Nancy Adams, who heads up the downtown promotion agency Red Bank RiverCenter, tells redbankgreen she was “pleased, but not surprised” to find the town rated so highly, in part because the magazine had previously singled out Red Bank seven or eight years ago, “so I knew we were on their radar.”

And because she doesn’t live in town, the Maplewood resident said she is frequently exposed to the outsider’s view of Red Bank “as a great place to have dinner or see a show or just hang out. But when you’re here all the time, you may not get that.”

Adams said she expects to begin working the designation into marketing materials for the special improvement district she oversees.

Dan Mancuso, a 22-year borough resident and real estate broker who serves on the planning board, said he’s not surprised by the ranking, given the town’s shopping, dining and entertainment offerings. “I easily see myself being a Red Bank resident for the rest of my life,” he said.

Here’s the full list:

1. Great Barrington, Massachusetts

2. Taos, New Mexico

3. RED BANK

4. Mill Valley, California

5. Gig Harbor, Washington

6. Durango, Colorado

7. Butler, Pennsylvania

8. Marfa, Texas

9. Naples, Florida

10. Staunton, West Virginia

11. Brattleboro, Vermont

12. Princeton, New Jersey

13. Brunswick, Maine

14. Siloam Springs, Arkansas

15. Menomonie, Wisconsin

16. Key West, Florida

17. Laguna Beach, California

18. Ashland, Oregon

19. Beckley City, West Virginia

20. Oxford, Mississippi

The recent opening of Lucki Clover, above, in a Broad Street space vacated last September, is seen as one of many indicators of a strengthening comeback.  (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Without question, the losses have been significant.

Over the past six months, as the global, national and regional economies have struggled to emerge from the wreckage of the 2008 credit meltdown, Red Bank’s retail market has continued to absorb hard-to-shake-off business departures.

Primas Home Cafe. Willy’s Cheesesteaks. Soapmarket. Later this month, Surray Luggage, a Broad Street fixture, will hold a liquidation sale.

But more so than in the recent past, the downtown real estate market has been marked by two noteworthy trends: faster refilling of storefronts, and the end of several key, longtime vacancies.

What’s it all add up to? In a word, recovery, says at least one downtown Churn watcher.

Among new stores yet to open is Femme By Ashley, a lingerie and swimwear shop owned by Ashley Dupré. (Click to enlarge)

Jay Herman, a principal in Downtown Investors, which owns a dozen properties in the district, tells redbankgreen that demand is “absolutely” on the upswing. He attributes that to the end of a national bottoming-out, and to the interplay of five local elements: retail, restaurant, residential, office an entertainment.

“The downtown is leading the way,” said Herman, who recently broke ground on an expansion for tenant Morgan Stanley on Linden Place, just steps from Broad Street. “We are finding more success than is true nationally.”

Or regionally, for that matter. Herman says anyone driving Route 35 from Hazlet to Brielle and looking at the shopping centers “will find that the success in filling vacancies is not what is in downtown Red Bank.”

Here’s a lookback at some of the key activity in Red Bank’s main business district over the past six months.

• Print shop AlphaGraphics moved to 68 White Street, former home of Cigars Plus, and quickly saw the space it vacated in the City Centre Plaza, at Maple Avenue and West Front Street, leased to Yo Mon Yogurt, a self-serve frozen yogurt business owned by Michael and Jennifer Mann of Little Silver. AlphaGraphics is open for business and Yo Mon is under construction.

• David Banegas, an action painter who already had a gallery in Delray Beach, Florida, opened a new gallery/live-painting studio into the space vacated five months earlier by clothing store Bella Mystique, at 43 Broad Street.

• Nina’s Waffles & Sweets opened at 15 White Street, in a space recently vacated by Filakia Children’s Boutique.

Yestercades, a retro electronic gaming parlor, opened at 80 Broad Street, filling a giant, gaping hole that had defied filling since the failure, in 2007, of f LJ’s Total Man/Today’s Woman clothing store.

• Barefoot Bride, a gown shop that had called Fair Haven home for more than 45 years, moved to the 2,000-square-foot storefront at 65 Monmouth Street, former home Rob Amend and Michael Yavorsky’s of Red Ginger Home furnishings, which relocated to Broad Street more than a year ago.

• LoBoudoir Photography, which offers the latest in must-have hubba-hubba personal imagery, joined its sibling CLB Photography and Mike Hernandez Jr.’s Sounds to Go DJ service to take over the storefront at 21 East Front Street, a glass-fronted space last tenanted by the chic furniture seller Design Front, which left in 2009.

• Two dress shops moved in days apart, and one storefront apart, on Monmouth Street in November.

Jessy Krol’s Emilia took over 28 Monmouth, vacated in early August by Cocoon, an accessories retailer. Then,  Rue Royale Couture, specializing in prom and pageantwear, took over at 24 Monmouth, formerly held by Polish tableware dealer Adams Imports.

In between those two was David Levine Salon, which relocated to 69 Monmouth, former home of Cheveux Salon, leaving a yet-to-be filled vacancy at 26 Monmouth.

• Also on Monmouth, in the shop that formerly housed Miss Sherri’s Honey Child Music, Josephine More opened Innovative Nails.

• Kravings Frozen Yogurt opened at 90 Broad, filling another of the downtown’s most persistent vacancies.

Remember Altamonte Imports? Yeah, neither does Google. That was the last tenant in the space. Kravings owner Jill Pecoraro, bouncing back from the failure of another fro-yo franchisor with which she had contracted, shifted gears to create the new brand and outfit the gleaming, green-tiled space, which debuted in February.

• Kramer Portraits, which for the past 10 years had occupied a narrow storefront next door to the Jade Garden take-out Chinese place on Broad Street, took one of the two storefronts at 8 East Front last month. That’s the former Kislin’s Sporting Goods building, which vacated in 2005 and had no successor tenants.

As reported by Retail Churn last week, Vizzini & Company, a furniture dealer, plans to leave its anchor space in the Galleria at Red Bank on the West Side to take the second of the two storefronts, ending the building’s seven-year drought.

• Hair stylist Salon Concrete has signed to take over half the space at the 5,600-square foot 123-127 Broad Street, said salon owner Christine Zilinski. For years, the building was home to Surray Luggage, which moved to the opposite side of Broad several years ago.

• In news that broke on redbankgreen and gained national coverage, Ashley Dupré, whose infamous romps with Eliot Spitzer torpedoed his career as New York’s governor, plans to open a lingerie and swimwear store called Femme by Ashley at 15 Broad Street, a stylish storefront recently vacated by children’s boutique Lavish Kids. Outfitting of the store is underway, with an eye toward a May opening, we’re told.

• Jr’s West End, the Long Branch late-night hamburger and sandwich restaurant launched five years ago, plans to expand into the former home of Zuleyka’s Kitchen at 17 West Front Street.

• After five months of downtime, popular Red Bank coffee mainstay Zebu Forno reopened at a new address on March 1: 12 Broad Street  just a few doors down from the storefront it occupied for a decade at 20 Broad.

• Jonathan Erdelyi, a 30-year-old national racing champion, rolled out Red Bicycle Studio at 27 West Front Street. The 975-square-foot storefront was last occupied by Down to the Felt, a retailer of parlor games now operating out of 182 West Front, according to its website.

• Sunkissed Airbrush Tanning opened in a tiny second-floor space upstairs from That Hot Dog Place, in the alleyway beside the Dublin House on Monmouth Street in Red Bank.

• Lucki Clover, a women’s clothing and accessories store, opened in half the space formerly taken by Zebu Forno, at 20 Broad. The other half is set to be the home of a Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries, setting up an interesting potential hamburger war with Jr.’s, not to mention existing restaurants.

• Workers were seen doing early prep work recently in the planned home of Subway Café, a 28-seat “hip” variation on the sandwich shop chain’s usual offerings, at 60 Broad Street, in a long-vacant space between the Red Bank Nail Salon and Hip & Humble Home furnishings.

• 12 Monmouth is being outfitted for Ice Costume Jewelry, which hopes to open in just a couple of weeks, store manager Ashely Goral tells Churn. The space was most recently home to Soapmarket, which vacated in January to become an online-only retailer.

• Elio Ventrella’s The Glam Bar hair styling salon – blowouts, no cuts – opened for business, after a glammy red-carpet style opening party. (That’s the salon’s designer lounge at right.) The salon replaces Butterfly Fine Arts at 116 Broad.

• Lucky Break Billiards and Café, opened at 14 West Front Street.  The gaming parlor, with five pool tables and a shuffleboard table, is situated within steps of five bars.

By JOHN T. WARD

As go Red Bank’s Independence Day fireworks, so go Rumson’s.

For five years, the two towns put on simultaneous, mirror-image fireworks displays just miles apart on the Navesink River.

But the decision announced Wednesday by the KaBoom Fireworks organizing committee to shelve the Red Bank show in all likelihood means there also will be no fireworks anchored around the Oceanic Bridge between Rumson and Middletown this year, Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl tells redbankgreen.

“We’re probably not going to be able to go ahead,” he said.

Operating as one of the shore’s best little secrets, the Rumson show was an exact replica of the KaBoom show except for the size of the shells, which were smaller. The shows were synched to the same timer and music track.

Unlike the Red Bank show, however, Rumson’s event was financed by the private Rumson Foundation, with a relatively small group of well-heeled donors picking up the cost.

Though that funding would appear unaffected this year, “we’ve lost the economy of scale” of buying two shows from the same provider, Garden State Fireworks, which saved both shows 10 to 15 percent off the fee they would otherwise have paid, Ekdahl said.

But of greater concern, he said, is that Rumson can’t absorb even a small fraction of the crowd that the Red Bank cancellation might steer its way, he said.

The Rumson event, which typically drawns 15,000 to 18,000 spectators, mostly to the area of the Oceanic Bridge, “couldn’t take even 10 percent” of the estimated 100,000 that Red Bank draws, Ekdahl said.

Ekdahl said the foundation’s board has not met to decide the fate of its show, but he expects it to be cancelled.

“We did it for five years, at no cost to taxpayers, and everybody loved it, so it’s kind of sad, actually,” he said.

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank’s largest public event, the annual KaBoom Fireworks show, is off for 2012 and facing steep barriers to a return, organizers said Wednesday morning.

The nonprofit show’s executive committee, after several months of mulling, concluded about a week ago that the costs and challenges of staging the event, which draws an estimated 100,000 visitors to the borough each July 3, could not be met this year, chairman Tim Hogan told redbankgreen.

“It was a victim of its own success,” Hogan said, with increasingly bigger crowds  drawn to what was billed as the fourth-largest Independence Day fireworks celebration in America in terms of the number and size of shells lofted into the sky above the Navesink River.

“It was a big event,” he said. “It was a challenge to control the crowd and make sure we were providing security to the folks who came.”

An armored personnel carrier was on hand in 2011 as authorities promised to crack down on unruly behavior after several brawls broke out at the 2010 fireworks.  (Click to enlarge)

Organizers have faced rising hurdles in recent years, said Hogan, the president of Riverview Medical Center, one of the event sponsors.

Growing crowds spurred drunkenness and sporadic brawling in the streets, with fights breaking out in 2010 and again in 2011, and dozens of arrests.

The borough government, under tight fiscal restraints, stopped donating police and cleanup services three years ago, saddling the event with an additional $60,000 or more in yearly costs.

Coordination with New Jersey Transit on train scheduling brought thousands more visitors into town, adding to both the crowd size and the need for security, Hogan said.

Meantime, raising money from the private sector became harder as the broader economy struggled to recover from the housing crisis of 2008. Hogan said the 2011 event, in his first year as chairman, started off with a $40,000 deficit from 2010, and though some $360,000 was raised last year, the event just broke even.

Most of the funding came from large donors, including Springpoint Senior Living, which owns the Atrium at Navesink upscale seniors residence on Riverside Avenue; Meridian Health, parent of Riverview Medical Center, where Hogan is president; and Wells Fargo Bank. On-site donations by attendees were relatively paltry, generating less than $15,000 last year.

The organizers themselves, Hogan acknowledged, may have overreached, in 2010 expanding what used to be a one-day event into three days of carnival rides and other attractions that didn’t draw adequate crowds.

In addition, downtown merchants complained that the event caused them problems with rowdy partiers who were more interested in using restaurant and store bathrooms than in spending money.

But the final nail in the event’s coffin may have been the daylong rain that imperiled the show in 2011, said Hogan. The fireworks went off, but turnout was about half of prior years, underscoring for organizers just how fragile the endeavor was.

The show “got big and ambitious, and when the weather doesn’t cooperate…” he said, trailing off. “We saw the effects of that last year.”

Does he see a comeback for the show in 2013? Hogan said the event “can only be successful with community support. There’s a lot of forces that need to come together” to make the event – which he termed “hard to manage, hard to fund” – work.

It’s a full-on sight-and-sound spectacular: the annual night-after-Thanksgiving Santa Claus train ride into Red Bank followed by the parade to Broad Street, the downtown light-up and the Holiday Express concert.

For the 18th consecutive year, it was all once again best experienced perched on dad’s shoulders while wearing a funny hat.

redbankgreen photographer Peter Lindner was there. Were you?