Off-and-on drizzles and downpours made for a damp day for participants in townwide yard sales in Red Bank and Fair Haven Saturday.

Still, redbankgreen found plenty of plucky sellers and buyers.

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.

By JOHN T. WARD

The building appears to sigh and lean, as though aware of its fate. Inside, nooks and corners that once teemed with the cast-offs of the decades have begun to empty out.

It’s a sad time at Monmouth Antique Shoppes, one of the anchors of Red Bank’s vaunted Arts & Antiques District. Eviction notice in hand, owner John Gribbin has informed his 23 remaining dealers that they, like he, must be out by the end of the month, ending a 29-year run.

“It’s not the best time for me to talk,” Gribbin told redbankgreen Tuesday, as he had also last week. “I’m trying to find a home for me and my dealers, and it’s not easy going.”

More than a dozen of the displaced shops are finding a new home just a few doors east, at the Gizzi family’s Riverbank Antiques. (Click to enlarge)

The wood-frame building, at the southeast corner of West Front Street and Bridge Avenue, was once part of the Eisner uniform factory complex – “a sweatshop,” said Gribbin. Now, it is slated to be razed to make way for the MW West Side Lofts project, a mixed-use assemblage of luxury rental apartments, street-level retail, live-and-work artists’ spaces, a parking garage and a Triumph Brewing Company restaurant.

No permits for the demolition or ensuing construction have yet been issued, according to a borough official. But Monmouth Antique Shoppes and Ambiance antiques, which occupies a neighboring building owned by the lofts developer, have been told to clear out. They were recently given 60 days notice, almost six years after the lofts plan won approval.

Unaffected by the action is Guy Johnson’s Antique Center of Red Bank, which occupies two sprawling buildings, including the giant barn-red structure at the intersection’s northeast corner and a second warehouse opposite Brothers Pizza.

The diaspora has proven to be an awkwardly welcome boon for Carla Gizzi, who runs her family’s Riverbank Antiques business just a block east of Gribbin’s. She’s busily making arrangements to accommodate more than a dozen displaced dealers.

“I feel horrible for John, but it actually enables us to stay in business, and we’re keeping these dealers in Red Bank,” Gizzi said. “We’re consolidating and enabling them to stay.”

Among those making the move are Reggie Hawn and Cheryl Figliola. Hawn, who’s been at the shoppes for less than two years, said she’s “looking forward to the day when we can all reunite under one tent,” reforming a group of dealers with complementary specialties.

“What made us successful here was that we’re all collectors first,” said Figliola, a 17-year tenant of the shoppes. “Everyone found their own niche.”

Gribbin said he doesn’t know where he and other dealers, who together operate as a sort of cooperative, selling each other’s goods when dealers are absent, will wind up. But he sees his business’s departure as part of an inexorable slide toward oblivion for the antiques district.

“As to me, I’m leaving Red Bank,” he said. “This industry has been a major draw for the town, and it’s going away slowly.”

Just across the street, another storefront formerly occupied by an antiques dealer stands empty following the recent departure of Plum Cottage, which relocated to Fair Haven.

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.

Goods were moved and cash changed hands as some 120 homes participated in the fourth annual edition of the Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale on Saturday.

redbankgreen was there for the final fall version of this favorite, which moves to Spring next May 7 5.

Meantime, there’s the book sale today at the Red Bank Public Library, where shoppers can fill a bag with reading material for just $5. Like the yard sale, the book sale is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which helps pay for enhanced programs at the West Front Street facility.

Some 116 residents are registered to participate as sellers in the fourth annual Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, slated for Saturday.

In conjunction with a used-book sale scheduled for Monday, the event is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which helps pay for enhanced programs at the West Front Street facility.

Here’s an announcement that went out Wednesday:

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

Red Bank’s fourth annual townwide yard sale is still more than a month away, but organizers are already looking at the fifth.

A little early to be planning next year’s, you say?

Not quite. The interval between events is getting truncated by four months.

Once this year’s sale is done on September 24 – a change from the previously reported October 1 date – so is its traditional slot in September, says Friends of the Red Bank Public Library member Audrey Oldoerp. The 2012 edition will be held in May.

“It’s just a lot of stuff to have on our plate,” she said. “And we figure May is a really fun time for a yard sale.”

The annual library book sale will also coincide with the new date, said Oldoerp, who co-founded the event with redbankgreen in 2008.

Proceeds will go to the library friends group, which is stepping into redbankgreen‘s shoes as an organizer.

The sale is among the largest in the region, with more than 125 homes participating.

“It is a big thing,” Oldoerp said. But September turns out not to be an ideal time for either organizers or many would-be participants, she said.

“It’s a lot to get going, so we’re thinking having it in the spring will get a lot more people involved,” she said.

This rain date for this year’s event is Sunday, September 25. The fifth yard sale is scheduled for. Saturday, May 5.

Here’s the registration form: rbtys-2011-reg

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

Noticing her neighbors in Fair Haven and Red Bank were finding success with bargain-based weekends, Lori Saybolt decided it was time for business and home owners in Little Silver to unify and get in on the action.

“Other towns have done it and I thought it’d be a great thing to model,” said Saybolt, who helps run the non-profit gift shop The Woman’s Exchange on Church Street  and is president of the borough’s business association. “It just creates a much more of a community experience, so we’re hoping to see a lot more people coming into town.”

Rather than having  the usual sidewalk and yard sales scattered on the calendar, Saybolt went to work pulling them all together for what’s to be the first borough-wide sale, a three-day affair chock full of deals and one ‘Done Good‘ cause.The event gets started Thursday morning with a downtown sidewalk sale.

While shoppers are taking advantage of specials, the Skin & Bones Day Spa, also on Church Street, will hold a bone marrow donor drive in memory of the late Bob Brummer, an Oceanport business owner and Little Silver resident who died of Leukemia in May. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

The sale continues Friday and Saturday and includes all downtown businesses, even ones without brick-and-mortar spaces, Saybolt said.

“Anybody without a storefront is welcome to come and bring pamphlets or talk about their businesses,” she said. “That’s what we do in the business association, is we try to help each other out.”

On Saturday only, the borough will hold a townwide yard sale. Registration permits are $5 and can be obtained at borough hall.

The combined sales will be a gauge for future events in town, Saybolt said. Since the business association was started three years ago, it had held random sidewalk sales while residents put together their own rummage days throughout the year. This, she said, may be the first of many collaborative efforts to come.

“We’re hoping whatever it is, it will be successful and then it’ll grow from there,” Saybolt said.

Event: Multi-home yard sale, featuring goods from four or five houses

Location: John Street, Red Bank

Date: Saturday, June 11

Time: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

On the tables: “Big stuff, small stuff, kid’s stuff, wall stuff.  Stuff for your yard and your fireplace too.  Stuff for your bedroom and things to do.

Stop by and see what we got. Free lemonade.”

****

Is your block holding a yard sale? Send info to redbankgreen, and we’ll consider it for publication. No individual sales, please.

And keep in mind the Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, slated for Saturday, October 1.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

Lauren Shanks scanned jewelry arrayed on a display stand outside Shutters Cottage Home on River Road in Fair Haven Saturday afternoon hoping she’d spot a bargain — the second, perhaps, of the day for the Lincroft resident.

Just minutes earlier, she’d come across an unlikely steal: a birdcage.

“I’m finding a lot of good stuff,” Shanks said.

Down the street in a not-so-conspicuous location, on Lake Avenue, Mike Sena marveled at how well his items were moving as he offloaded a number of vintage rugs, handmade aprons, “tchotchke stuff” and, somewhat surprisingly, birdcages.

“She probably got it here,” Sena said of Shanks’s serendipitous purchase.

In essence, that’s what Fair Haven’s town-wide yard and sidewalk sale was there for: a far-reaching rialto, where residents could set out their extras and others could drop in, hand over cash and move on to the next find in a day-long exercise in small-town retailing.

When the borough introduced the event last year, the intent was to, in a small way, push back against eBay and keep local dollars within local borders. So far, it’s manifested that simple notion, with hundreds of households and dozens of businesses participating in the annual event.

Brian Fay, who lives on Hance Road and had a surplus of desks, chairs and assorted furniture, was stunned at the demand Saturday, as people started pulling up hours before the official start of the sale.

“I heard a bunch of noise at 7:30 in the morning and I was like, oh my God, they’re ready,” he said.

By early afternoon, he’d made $250 — from familiar faces.

“Most of the stuff my neighbors bought,” Fay said.

Even the erstwhile locals made an appearance for the sale.

James Weil, who grew up in Rumson and now lives in New York, sat outside River Road Books promoting his debut novel, Swiss Chocolate, a story that, while set in the Swiss Alps, has lots of ink about the Rumson-Fair Haven area.

“I’m a local,” he said. “I figured people might be interested to see what local people have done.”

Sales were not earth-shattering for Weil, but the exposure was a good start, he said.

And, as Sena pointed out, the first go-round at the yard sale doesn’t portend the next one.

“We did terrible last year. That’s basically because we had junk,” he said. “But this year we’ve got a lot of good stuff.”