Skip to content

A town square for an unsquare town

redbankgreen

Standing for the vitality of Red Bank, its community, and the fun we have together.

BRUCE & PATTI: MEDIA SIEGE BEGINS

You’ve got to feel for the folks at the Antique Center of Red Bank.

Antiquescenter_1

Up until now, the story that Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa were as lovey-dovey as they’ve ever been when they shopped and gave an impromptu concert Friday afternoon has been a redbankgreen exclusive. (See the two items immediately below this one, please.)

Frankly, we’d love for it to stay that way for two reasons. One is to assure a lot of hits to our infant site. The other is to spare store employees from pestering about two of their favorite customers.

But now, the national media appears about to descend, either in person or by telephone, on the West Front Street establishment. We hear that one publication is at the center at this very moment. And it seems logical to assume that others will follow.

Reporters will be looking both for dirt on the Scialfa-Springsteen relationship and confirmation of what dealers and customers saw when the couple went shopping there Friday, even as the rumor of a breakup was flying around the globe.

The people who work at the center are torn. On the one hand, they want this story, which originated with an unsourced item in the New York Post, to go away, fast, so they don’t have to talk about two customers they consider friends. The couple obviously treasure the cozy, barnlike atmosphere of the place in part because it is a refuge from the spotlight. And the employees there do all they can to foster that atmosphere, just as any number of restaurateurs and other merchants hereabouts do.

On the other hand, those same dealers—and, presumably, customers who haven’t yet been heard from—are in the best position to dispel, or at least throw some serious water on, the splitsville story.

We were just over at the center, and the sense of ambivalence is palpable. Some of the dealers have been selling antiques to Bruce and/or Patti for the better part of two decades. And nobody but nobody bothers the rock stars when they come through. Guy Johnson, who owns the center, has a strict policy prohibiting his employees from taking pictures of Bruce, Patti and any other celebrity who visits. They want them to feel at home, and to come back.

Bill Wigginton, a dealer, pointed to a used boxed-set of live Springsteen recordings lying on a table. “I would never ask Bruce to autograph that or anything else,” he says. “If I asked, I’m sure he would. But I wouldn’t ask.”

Wigginton_1

And just talking about the couple’s visit on Friday has the people we spoke to worried about violating their privacy. They’re that protective over there.

By the way, Wigginton and other say they have no insights into the state of the Springsteen-Scialfa marriage beyond what they see with their own eyes, which they trust more than they do Page Six.

Neither does redbankgreen have any inside dirt. We have no idea if their marriage is on the rocks, or if they’ve been to the precipice and back, or find themselves somewhere in between, as most married people sometimes do.

All we know is that Bruce and Patti are members of our community with kids. This kind of story deserves better treatment than it got from the Post and its unnamed sources.

Well, you might ask, what about redbankgreen‘s role in this sordid mess?

We want to be as transparent about this as possible.

We didn’t report the rumor when it broke. To us, it was pure, unsourced gossip.

But when we learned that local businesspeople had eyewitness information that seemed to challenge the veracity of the rumor, which had appeared all over creation, our judgment told us that that was news. We stand by our decision to find out what we could and to write it up.

We also sent word about our scoop to every media outlet we could think of. Why? Because we thought the world should know that maybe it been sold a bill of goods by the Post, and if we didn’t put the word out, the chances of the story getting picked up in a timely manner were slim. Believe us, we are not yet even a tiny blip on on the Google News radar screen. (Type our name into a Google News search, and you’ll get the message, ‘Did you mean redblackgreen?) [Update: as of Aug. 28, we’ve broken through.]

And yes, we wanted credit. This is a three-month-old, shoestring operation, and we owe it to our business and our advertisers to try to leverage any scoop into clicks.

Given the supportive commentary we’ve seen on Springsteen forums in the United States and Europe, and from the e-mails we’ve got from readers from San Diego to Wales, we believe we did the right thing. Even the folks at the Antique Center have been nice to us.

Still, we owe them a beer or two over at Brothers’ Pizza.

E-mail this story

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
redbankgreen Classics
Partyline
JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION
Performers at Red Bank’s Juneteenth community celebration Sunday at Johnny Jazz Park. (photo by Brian Donohue)      
BUTTERFLIES LOVE THE WEED
Save the monarch, plant butterfly weed. (photo and text by Partyline contributor Roseann DalPra)  
LANTERNFLY PARTY
An invasive ailanthus tree sprouting in front of the US Post Office on Broad Street is covered with invasive spotted lantern fly nymphs Wedn ...
STREETCORNER SERENADE
An Irish doodle named Cheddar listens to native New Jerseyan, singer/songwriter and former Houston resident Tom Foti, (identified in the hea ...
Red Bank 5K Fun!!!
Red Bank Classic – June 14th, 2025 (photo by Partyline contributor Adam Kaplan)  
RAINBOW OVER RED BANK
Saturday, before and after the storm that rolled through town. (photo by Partyline contributor Thomas Doremus)    
Mini Ballers Bring the Heat at Fusion Basketball School
As the temperatures heat up, so does the competition in the mini baller clinic at Fusion School of Basketball. These little tykes are intens ...
DOZENS OF PLEIN AIR ARTISTS “PAINT RED BANK”
Plein air artists take over town for first ever "Paint Red Bank" event. (click to read)
RED BANK: SIGN ON ICONIC DANNY’S STEAK HOUSE COMES DOWN
The sign hanging from the shuttered Danny's Steak House comes down ten months after a manager reported Danny's Steakhouse would be back "bet ...
FOR YANKEES FANS, GOOD TRASH PICKIN’
A collection of framed photographs of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and other New York Yankees greats was placed curbside along with a ...
RED BANK: NEW HANDICAPPED PARKING, WEST SIDE MEETING PLANNED
New handicapped parking sign West Side advocate had pressed for is installed, with meeting planned to discuss other concerns. (click to read ...
SUNSET AT SUMMER’S START
Crazy sunset clouds shot from Monmouth Boat Club on the Friday evening at the start of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer. ...
SIDEWALK GOES FROM WORST TO FIRST
P (photo by Brian Donohue) What had been, in our estimation – and apparently in the eyes of the several people who have emailed and te ...
RED BANK: PEERING FROM ON HIGH, ACROSS THE DECADES
Roofers on the Azalea Red Bank top off the project in the shadow of a sculpture depicting another generation of construction workers who toi ...
BRICK FACELIFT CONTINUES ON MONMOUTH STREET
A million-dollar brick sidwalk makeover of Monmouth Street in Red Bank continues.
JAY AND SILENT EAGLE
A very loud blue jay squawks at an indiferent bald eagle in a treetop alongside the Swimming River in Red Bank this week. (Partyline photo b ...
PIZZA LOVING SQUIRREL SPOTTED IN RED BANK
Pizza squirrel spotted in Red Bank. (click to read)
GET YOUR MA SOMETHIN’ NICE AT THE RED BANK FARMERS MARKET
It’s a beautiful and sunny Mother’s Day for the first instance of the farmer’s market, held every Sunday, beginning in May ...
SIGN? WHAT SIGN?
Folks in Red Bank Wednesday exercising their riparian rights to access tidal waters first encoded into Roman law in 500 AD and later adopted ...
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
Partyline contributor captures photo of backyard fox.