The upside, from the glass-is-half-full perspective, is that the new Red Bank Parks & Rec summer guide just now hitting mailboxes contains plenty of listings for events that haven’t happened yet.
We’re talking a full roster of concerts and movies in Riverside Gardens Park, a car show, StreetLife and theater performances.
Cynics, though, might immediately notice that the summer’s half over, and a number of the events listed in the guide are already history.
Among them: the KaBoom Fireworks of July 3, and an appearance at Songwriters in the Park by the artist featured on the program’s cover, Ari Heist. He played last Friday.
One of the listings is for an event on June 28.
Ronnie Gardstein of Spark Market Solutions, which produced the guide for Parks & Rec, declined to say why the mailer is just arriving now, except to say that bulk mail deliveries can be unpredictable.
But she does think it’s misleading to focus on the timing of the guide’s appearance in residential mailboxes.
For some time, the guide has been handed out on the street and to tourists who stop in at the Visitors’ Center, Gardstein says. Besides, she says, it’s just one part of a promotional blitz that includes ads in the Star-Ledger and other print publications; radio spots; and listings on various websites (including redbankgreen).
But even if it’s a day late, so to speak, don’t call it a dollar short. Gardstein says no borough funds were used to produce or mail the guide. Costs were covered by advertisers and sponsors, she says.
“I know we didn’t have anything in the budget for it,” says Mayor Pasquale Menna, who wrote a welcome letter to visitors for the guide.
Menna says the late arrival of the booklet is “not fatal. There’s still plenty of events left.”
Still, we asked him this afternoon, what does he think as a citizen about the timeliness of the guide?
“I haven’t seen it yet,” he said.
Tonight in Riverside Gardens Park: jazz by the Count Basie Cool School at 7:30p followed by the Cantaffappella Rock & Roll Chorus and an open-air screening of the PG-rated pirate flick “Hook.”
