One town’s junk is another town’s gold, it seems. Audrey Oldoerp of South Street looks at nearby burgs, with their annual townwide garages sales, and wonders, Hey, why not here, in Red Bank?
Townwide sales aren’t uncommon. Atlantic Highlands has one every May, an event it bills as the longest-running townwide garage sale in Monmouth County. Belmar also does one in May; this year’s event included a speedboat for sale. (No word on whether that baby found a new driveway to grow old in.) Metuchen, in Middlesex County, has townwide sales in both April and September; they must accumulate useless wedding presents at an accelerated pace up there in the Brainy Borough.
The idea is to get dozens or even hundreds of homeowners and tenants to set up tables on their lawns and driveways to lure visitors into town, get them to take away stuff we no longer want, and leave behind some cash in the process. Promotion could be centralized, with a master roster or map available to bargain hunters.
Oldoerp says that with its popular Antiques District, Red Bank seems a natural for this kind of thing. She thought she might get one going by talking to Red Bank officials, “but nobody in the administration was really interested in it,” she says.
So if we’re to have border-to-border bargaining over used goods, it looks like residents will have to make this happen.
Who’s up for this idea? Comments, please.
