RED BANK: ICEBOAT WATCHERS FIND PARKING GRIDLOCK

Gridlock at the Marine Park parking lot. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)

By BRIAN DONOHUE

I mean, you could just about see the iceboats from there, right?

Here’s what we saw Sunday afternoon: westbound traffic on East Front Street stopped because of a line of cars waiting to turn right onto Wharf Avenue. Wharf Avenue, (pictured above) was at a standstill. 

In the Marine Park Lot, off Union Street, all the spaces were full, so cars that had gone searching for a spot were now looping back to the exit to get back onto Wharf.

And farther west on Wharf, cars in both directions were at a face-to-face standstill, with plenty of honking and shouting.

Little did any of these drivers seem to realize, just two blocks away, ample free parking was available (as is almost always the case) in the east-side lots flanking Wallace and Linden Streets.

To be certain, many drivers in the know (including this reporter) were parking there and then walking to the riverfront. The lots were more full than a typical February Sunday, but there was no shortage of open spaces. 

A photo taken minutes after the photos above shows ample free parking spaces in the Wallace Street lot. (Photo by Brian Donohue)

But the ones who were circling and screaming on Union Street – and, based social media posts we read later, giving up altogether and driving home – could have found a spot easily if they had done some pre-trip homework. 

That could have included watching the video Red Bank Rivercenter and Setaro House produced last year called “Where to Park in Red Bank.” 

If they had, though, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy another true locals-only pastime tradition this reporter has long bemusedly engaged in: easily finding a downtown parking space and then strolling past frustrated out-of-towners who can’t find a spot in the one lot they know about.

To be sure, there’s another wrinkle to this story.

Marine Park has about 20 fewer parking spots then it did the last time the river froze hard. 

Last year, as part of a remake of the park, the borough opened a new lot in the southwest corner of the park, where tennis courts had sat for years.

But the new lot has roughly 20 fewer spaces than the old 86-space lot, which is being converted into a great lawn as part of the park makeover.

Flushed with nostalgia after our Navesink skate, we went looking into the archives of the old Red Bank Register newspaper for articles about the glory days of Red Bank iceboating.

We found them, but we also learned this: the 2026 iceboat watchers’ parking struggles occurred almost precisely on the 100-year anniversary of the borough’s seminal parking kerfluffle. 

It was this week in 1926, that the borough first put time limits on downtown parking because employees of downtown business were hogging spaces and preventing customers from parking their Model T’s.

It really is a good old-fashioned Red Bank winter we’re having.