Shore Gamers opened recently at 15 Monmouth Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
In this end-of-2023 edition of Retail Churn: a man with a lifelong passion for tabletop games opens a “board game lounge” in downtown Red Bank.
Among his aims: to get teens and preteens off of zombifying computer screens and engage their minds, owner Gennaro Monaco told Churn this week.
Gennaro Monaco said his business was inspired by one in Brooklyn. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
The shop, called Shore Gamers, opened two weeks ago, taking over the storefront at 15 Monmouth Street vacated in early October by Feet First, a skateboard shop.
The 1,420-square-foot shop offers hundreds of board games for sale, as well as tables for walk-in play, club play, date nights and more.
It also includes a 400-square-foot reservable back room already has its first booking, a Pokemon-themed birthday party, Monaco said.
A “passion project,” the business came into being after Monaco, 45, lost his job as a computer systems engineer in a mass layoff at a Holmdel company in July. A devoted gamer with a collection of 250 board games, he’d grown up in Brooklyn, and before moving to Lincroft with his wife, Jessica, lived near a shop called the Brooklyn Strategist, on which Shore Gamers is modeled.
“They started at about this size, and wound up taking over the yoga studio next door to them,” Monaco said. “At about four o’clock in the afternoon, there’s like 50 12-to-15-year-old kids playing board games.”
In creating the business, Monaco and his wife, Jessica, wanted to create a learning environment their five-year-old daughter, Patty, and other youngsters, they said. Left to her own devices, Gennaro said, Patty gravitates to a “YoobTube” (her word) channel showing other kids playing games and with toys.
“It’s been proven many times with studies that childrens’ aptitude is not developing as well as it should being on screens all day long,” he said.
“They jump from thing to thing,” said Jessica, who works in IT at Princeton University. “They can’t focus.”
“Like adults on social media,” Gennaro added. “With this, you have to sit down, you have to strategize.”
“Just spending time together is what we enjoy about games,” said Jessica.
None of the video screens in the shop are for video games: they’re used for instruction, Gennaro said.
“Those two are learning to play a game they’ve never played before,” he said, gesturing to a pair of walk-in customers earlier this week.
The shop can accommodate 12 players in its front room and another 15 in back.
Shore Gamers charges $10 per player per day, which includes unlimited access to the shop’s library. Guests 12 years old and younger must be accompanied by a guardian, unless with an after school club. Check the website for hours and other information.
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