Customers waited out the outage by candlelight at the Broadway Diner. (Click to enlarge)
Donna Natale of Sea Bright was in the Shrewsbury Car Wash when the power went out ever so briefly early Tuesday night.
It came right back on, but then went out again as Natale and her sparkling vehicle emerged into a world missing a large share of its usual blast of candlepower.
So she decided to head to downtown Red Bank to experience what she could of what turned out to be the Most-of-Monmouth-County-Blackout of 2008.
There, she found herself among the sidewalk passersby being entertained by Frank Bressi, on guitar, and Matt Keppler, on upright bass, who also came into town, thinking it a fine occasion to pitch their original tunes on Broad Street.
“This is like the Titanic,” laughed Natale. “They just keep playing.”
All over town, at Red, at the Dublin House, at the Broadway Diner, people went about their business, only now with a narrower focus: the power outage, what had caused it and, most importantly, how long it might last.
The answer, depending on location, was roughly 90 minutes. Here are some views of what went on in the interim.
Frank Bressi of Bradley Beach and Matt Keppler of Little Silver laid down some tunes outside Funk and Standard.
With traffic signals out, vehicles crawled along Front Street, as seen from the top deck of the Globe Court parking garage.
Drinks by candlelight at Red
A Porsche got squished between two pickup trucks, one of the parked, on Broad Street, briefly trapping the driver inside.
