Red Rock Tap + Grill will be permitted to enclose some of its rooftop seasonally and make other site changes. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Rock Tap + Grill can convert some of its rooftop space to year-round dining under a decision by Red Bank’s planning board Monday night.
Also, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash can keep its splashy, ordinance-breaking window treatment, the board ruled.
Jamian’s Food and Drink on Monmouth Street in Red Bank will host a season-six premiere party Saturday for “Comic Book Men,” the AMC cable show set in film director Kevin Smith‘s Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, on Broad Street.
The free-admission party begins at 8:30 p.m. and, weather permitting, will include a screenings of classic episodes on the back patio. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Harley Quinn Smith, Johnny Depp and Lily-Rose Depp co-star in “Yoga Hosers,” the new feature film by Kevin Smith. Below, the cake that Cake Boss Buddy Valastro made for Smith’s birthday appearance at the the Count Basie Theatre in 2010.
The last time filmmaker/ actor/ Smodcaster/ writer/ King of Most Media Kevin Smith commandeered the Count Basie Theatre for a public birthday celebration, it was with an August 2010 Q&A session that saw his milestone 40th and magnificent head immortalized in buttercream by a fellow Jersey celeb soon to establish Red Bank cred: “Cake Boss” Buddy Valastro.
The multi-platform cult figure (and self-described “fat guy who got thrown off the plane”) may have left Leonardo for Los Angeles years ago — but as he approaches his 46th birthday, he returns to the borough of his birth; the town he gae its big-screen close-up in features like “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma;” a burb that sits at the nexus of the comix multiverse courtesy of the Smith-owned Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash and the AMC TV series Comic Book Men.
A mural on Monmouth Street near Maple Avenue touts the five-day Indie Street Film Festival, which flickers to life Wednesday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
For the first time since 2007, Red Bank will swarm with screening maniacs this week as independent films, filmmakers and cinephiles invade the downtown — and one or two nearby outposts.
Encompassing nearly 100 feature-length and short films, four screening venues and a handful of bars and restaurants, the five-day Indie Street Film Festival kicks off Wednesday, promising to liven up a post-Independence Day interval when the borough traditionally slips into an early doldrums.
Spoiler alert for fans of the cable show ‘Comic Book Men,’ shot in and around Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash on Broad Street in Red Bank: a future episode will feature a race between the Batmobile and the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, shot Thursday afternoon on Bridge Avenue in Gotham Red Bank.
And who was riding shotgun for a faux Batman? None other than onetime Batman portrayer Adam West himself, now 85 years old. Andres Verde of Red Bank, above, got a selfie with West, following one take of the low-speed race. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
COMIC BOOK MEN’s Ming Chen and fellow marathon runner Nicole Corre kick off their charity run of the San Francisco Marathon with an event at Jamian’s Food and Drink on Thursday, June 26.
Longtime habitues of Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash know Ming Chen as “weekend man” at Kevin Smith’s Lourdes-like grotto of pop pilgrimage — and the burgeoning fanbase of the Smith-produced AMC series know Ming as one of the Comic Book Men who’ve helped put Red Bank on the map of the multiverse for comix culture. But if you haven’t known Chen as a Marathon Man, then an upcoming event on Thursday, June 26 is designed to make the public aware that, when it comes to philanthropy, Chen is in it for the duration.
Hosted at Jamian’s Food and Drink on Monmouth Street, the “Not So Ordinary Fundraiser” party serves as the official kick-off to Ming and Nicole Run San Francisco, an endeavor in which Chen and fellow endurance runner Nicole Corre will take part in the upcoming San Francisco Marathon, scheduled for July 27.
Robert Bruce at a Glen Goldbaum fashion event in Red Bank in 2011. A regular on “Comic Book Men,” set at the Broad Street store below, he’s about to get his own show on AMC. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank comic book juggernaut Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash continues to add to its amazing superpowers.
“Comic Book Men,” an unscripted TV show about buying and selling comic books that’s based in the Broad Street store, has been picked up for a fourth season by the AMC network, according an entertainment industry report.
It’s also spawned a new show starring borough resident Robert Bruce, a regular on “Comic Book Men.” And it looks like progenitor-of-all-things-Stashian Kevin Smith will get one, too.
Backward Glances’ owner cited rising rents and diminishing cool as factors in her decision to leave Red Bank. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
After 28 years in Red Bank, vintage clothing and accessories boutique Backward Glances has departed for Asbury Park.
Also in this edition of redbankgreen Retail Churn: an Asian restaurant hopes to open in English Plaza, just a few doors away from a new hair salon that’s readying for its debut.
Kimberlee Thornton, self-styled “production mom” for the reality show “Comic Book Men,” rocks a superhero cape on Broad Street in Red Bank Monday to mark the start of taping for the show’s third season. “Comic Book Men,” set in film director Kevin Smith‘s Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, will again run on the AMC cable channel in the fall, having moved last season from Sunday nights to Thursdays. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Ming Chen, right, talking smod with Michael Zapcic at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash last month. (Photos by Dan Natale. Click to enlarge)
By DAN NATALE
Throughout their playful, occasionally ball-busting discussions conducted online on ‘smodcasts‘ that anchor the show, store employee Ming Chen tends to be the brunt of the jokes due to his laid-back, friendly and unassuming disposition.
Chen, 38, started on his path to comic book heaven in 1996, while attending the University of Michigan. There, he studied everything from economics to organic chemistry, until he found himself skipping class to follow his true passion: web design. Chen says he fell backwards into his life as a professional nerd after he created a fan website for Kevin Smiths movie ‘Clerks,’ which prompted Smith to offer him an internship. Since then, Chen has formed lifelong friendships with Smith and the cast, which includes Bryan Johnson, Michael Zapcic, Walt Flanagan, and Steve-Dave.” This chemistry, Chen says, is what creates the show’s natural feel.
redbankgreen sat down with Chen, who also hosts the show Puck Nuts and is often featured on the podcast Tell em Steve-Dave,” for an installment of our infrequent Human Bites feature, which focuses on people and their passions.
Tour guide Bill Normyle tells a group about the Dublin House’s infamous Mrs. Patterson, a ghost known for locking doors to make her presence known. (Photo by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge.)
By STACIE FANELLI
Red Bank sees businesses change hands often. Ghosts don’t like change.
At least that’s what Jersey Shore Ghost Tours guide Bill Normyle says when his group stops in front of the vacant storefront on Monmouth Street most recently home to Stokaboka.
It’s also a former borough hall, and Normyle suggests it is filled with the spirits of “a lot of disgruntled people who felt they had a lot of unfinished business politicians and taxpayers alike.”
Cliff Galbraith with his two recent comic books, above, and talking with fan John Hanley on Broad Street, below. (Click to enlarge)
This Saturday, a pair of Red Bank comic book aficionados dealer and Comic Book Men star Robert Bruce, and author/illustrator Cliff Galbraith are putting on Asbury Park Comic Con 2, reprising an event they debuted in May. redbankgreen spoke with Galbraith recently about his own relationship with the printed form of his work.
By JOHN T. WARD
It took a kind of SMACK! to the head, but Red Bank’s Cliff Galbraith learned his lesson:
When it comes to comic books, the web isn’t nirvana.
Fans waited in line as long as 10 hours with Kevin Smith books, films and artwork to be signed by their hero. Below, actor Jason Mewes, trailed by a video crew. (Photos by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge.)
By STACIE FANELLI
North on Broad Street, around the bend at Mechanic, sharp right into an alley, past the “end of line” sign and back around again. That’s the route hundreds of fans took Sunday, inches at a time, as they waited in line to meet director Kevin Smith.
Some came from down the block, others from up to five hours away all to spend maybe 60 seconds with the Highlands native and owner of Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash in downtown Red Bank. The store is such a haven for comic book fans that it is the focal point of AMC’s reality show “Comic Book Men,” for which Smith’s appearance was a part.
The reality show about comic book aficionados is being taped once again at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash as well as at 28 Broad Street, above. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Production of the second, full season of Comic Book Men got underway Monday, giving a prominent vacancy in downtown Red Bank something to do for the next 10 weeks while its owners continue trying to attract a more permanent tenant.
The reality show, which had a limited run earlier this year on AMC, is set in Jay and Silent Bobs Secret Stash, owned by filmmaker Kevin Smith, and follows the jostlings of the shop’s employees and customers.
Additional footage, featuring Smith and an Algonquin Rectangular Table of comic book aficionads shooting the breeze, is to be recorded on a sound stage built across the street from the store, at 28 Broad.
That’s the former home of Prima’s Home Café, a furnishings store that vacated back in January, when the building changed hands for $1.175 million, according to property records.
Crowds would pack West Front Street opposite Riverside Gardens Park every July 3 for a view of the annual pyrotechnics display. (Click to enlarge)
By CONNOR SOLTAS
Tonight would have been the night.
The annual Red Bank fireworks show, a half-century-old tradition branded as Kaboom for most of the past decade, would have been lofted into the sky above the Navesink River tonight, as always on July 3.
But the event was canceled in February amid fundraising difficulties and security concerns.
redbankgreen took to the streets in recent days to see how locals feel about the change. A sampling of opinion is below.
What do you think about the fizzling of Kaboom? Let us know in a comment.
The disputed gas pressure regulators are beneath steel covers like this one outside 12 Broad Street. The utility contends they should be above ground for safety, like the one outside Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, below. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
New Jersey Natural Gas, locked in a lawsuit with Red Bank over unsightly gas valves, plans to replace 88 such devices in their existing sidewalk pits downtown beginning Monday, the company announced Friday afternoon.
Citing the “potential threat of harm” posed by corroded and leaking gas pressure regulators, the company said it would take unilateral action to temporarily replace the equipment in a way that does not require borough permits the sticking point in the pending litigation.
Mayor Pasquale Menna called the action a publicity stunt.
State Senator Jennifer Beck with the offending gas pressure valve on Broad Street Wednesday. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
[SEE UPDATE TO THIS STORY AT THE BOTTOM]Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna and 11th-District state Senator Jennifer Beck teed up New Jersey Natural Gas Wednesday for a plan to install emergency venting devices in front of downtown storefronts.
Labeling them “Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals,” the historically inclined mayor blasted unnamed NJNG officials for a “tyrannical decision to put in these horse hitches,” he said at a midday press conference outside Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash on Broad Street, where one of the offending valves was installed a year ago.
Michael Zapcic with Thomas Mumme, left, during Thursday’s live ‘SModcast’ at Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. Below: Kevin Smith on the center monitor during a taping earlier this week in Red Bank. (Photo below courtesy of Robert Bruce. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Michael Zapcic had the “really surreal” experience earlier this week of walking past Madison Square Garden, glancing up at the massive Jumbotron and seeing a commercial for ‘Comic Book Men,’ a new cable show in which he appears as himself: a self-described comic book geek.
“I’m like holy crap! It’s them! It’s us!” he recalled Thursday, in the tone of an average, fedora-wearing citizen spotting a caped man flying overhead.
Life in the mini-Gotham that is Red Bank may never be the same.
Only, yeah, it will be exactly the same, because ‘Comic Book Men’ is a reality show, one focused on the daily interplay of three employees of “possibly the world’s most famous comic book store” Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash on Broad Street, where the show is set.
Over six episodes, four opinionated, superabsorbent sponges of superheroism Zapcic, Ming Chen and Walt Flanagan, plus original store manager Bryan Johnson spend a lot of time “just arguing about stupid movie plot points, which happens every day without cameras anyway,” says Chen.
Crew members from the reality TV pilot being produced at Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash prepare a replica Batmobile for filming on Mechanic Street in Red Bank Friday morning. The vehicle was expected to be downtown for a few hours. (Click to enlarge)
Filmmaker Kevin Smith‘s 40th-birthday Q&A show at the Count Basie Theatre Monday night drew a scale-model lookalike. One covered in icing.
A few hours before the show, the auteur of such films as ‘Clerks‘ and ‘Chasing Amy‘ (and owner of the Red Bank comics/toy store Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash) got a delivery of a cake in his own likeness from fellow Jersey native Buddy Valastro, aka the Cake Boss.
“It was huge,” says Basie spokeswoman Diana St. John. “I mean, like, bigger than Kevin Smith’s actual head.”
Filmmaker and Red Bank toy retailer Kevin Smith was asked to get off a Southwest Airlines plane scheduled to fly from Oakland to Burbank, California Saturday because he was “too fat,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Mashable reports on Smith’s posts about the incident on his Twitter account, and the corresponding pledges by a Southwest Air rep to make the situation right on the airline’s Twitter feed.
From the Times:
“I’m way fat, but I’m not there just yet,” Smith wrote on his Twitter.com account after the incident, adding that he was able to lower both arm rests at his seat. “I broke no regulation.”
Southwest Airlines measures whether a customers too large to fly based on the passenger’s ability to lower both armrests while sitting on the plane. If the passenger cannot lower one or both armrests, the carrier typically requires the passenger to purchase an additional seat or make arrangements on other flights that may accommodate for extra space.
“Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky?” Smith inquired on his Twitter account. “Totally cool, but fair warning folks: If you look like me, you may be ejected from Southwest Air.”
Some merchants think too many downtown stores are closed at night. This photo was taken late Tuesday morning. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna has ramped up his campaign get downtown business owners to stay open later.
He says the effort did not begin with last week’s Broad Street debut of Urban Outfitters a clothing and housewares store that’s open from 11a to 9p Monday through Saturday and 11a to 8p on Sundays. But Urban is doing business the right way, Menna says, and he’d like to see more merchants follow suit.
“Retailing has changed, our society has changed and Red Bank is changing,” he said.
Given Red Bank’s amenities, with its bevy of late-night hot spots like bars and entertainment venues, it has always made more sense that many businesses, especially retailers, keep the lights on and the doors open after dark and on Sundays, Menna says.
But examples of missed opportunities to hook visitors are plentiful, he says citing two from last summer, when the Red Bank Jazz & Blues Festival, and later the Taste of Red Bank, drew thousands of visitors who found limited shopping options because stores weren’t open later or on Sunday.
“The businesses that succeed are the ones who are available when people are on the street,” Menna said. “We don’t have the luxury of shoppers out at nine in the morning. It’s a change in our society and sometimes we have to change our business model to keep our competitive edge.”
Fans gather at the Stash for a 2006 appearance by Kevin Smith.
Filmmaker Kevin Smith is closing the Los Angeles version of the Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash store, according to reports.
As reported on News Askew, the official organ of Smith's film / comic book / toy marketing empire, the shop is falling victim to the "tough economy." [Update: The item, which was available on the News Askew site early Tuesday morning, appears to have been subsequently removed.]
There's no word at this hour on the outlook for the Red Bank original at 35 Broad Street. Blogger Peter Sciretta, who first reported the closing of the LA store on /film, says the Red Bank store is "still going strong" after a decade of operation.
They just keep coming and coming, an endless line of stoop-shouldered pilgrims in undersized t-shirts.
We’re talking about fans of fillmmaker Kevin Smith, who stream into his Red Bank comic-books-and-tchotchkes emporium, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, looking for detailed directions to the Middletown convenience store that he made famous and that, in turn, launched him into the Hollywood firmament.
Well, the The Return of the Smith is upon us, as Himself makes his annual Q&A appearance at the Count Basie Theatre Friday night another sold-out affair and then hunkers down with a pocketful of Sharpies for one of his autographing marathons at the Stash on Saturday. (The photo above was taken during his August, 2006 appearance at the store; that one lasted into the pre-dawn hours.)
Today, Red Bank oRBit apprises this phenomenon from the eyes of the guys who run the store.
Never too soon to start oRBiting…
Something curious followed the publication of last week’s ‘Where.’
All the readers who got the location wrong thought they’d seen our Superman image downtown on Broad Street.
A Time to Kiln, Ricky’s Candy, Cones & Chaos, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash and Backward Glances were all named.
Is it something in the water? Evidence of a diabolical plot, perhaps? A reason to shriek, “Superman! Help us!”?
