From left: John Jackson, Jacqueline Sturdivant, Michael Ballard, Tim Hogan, Linda Hill, Erin Fleming and Sean Murphy. (Photo by Red Bank Together. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Three incumbent council Democrats have teamed up with the president of Riverview Medical Center in a bid to form Red Bank’s new government this summer.
The seven-member “Red Bank Together” slate is the second hoping to capture six council seats and the mayor’s chair in the May 9 special election.
Scenes from the 2011 fireworks show, when police presence was ramped up following widespread brawling and drunkeness in 2010. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s largest public event, the annual KaBoom Fireworks show, is off for 2012 and facing steep barriers to a return, organizers said Wednesday morning.
The nonprofit show’s executive committee, after several months of mulling, concluded about a week ago that the costs and challenges of staging the event, which draws an estimated 100,000 visitors to the borough each July 3, could not be met this year, chairman Tim Hogan told redbankgreen.
“It was a victim of its own success,” Hogan said, with increasingly bigger crowds drawn to what was billed as the fourth-largest Independence Day fireworks celebration in America in terms of the number and size of shells lofted into the sky above the Navesink River.
“It was a big event,” he said. “It was a challenge to control the crowd and make sure we were providing security to the folks who came.”
A promotional video for the KaBOOM fireworks show. Below, Tim Hogan, new chairman of KaBoom’s executive committee. (Click to enlarge photo)
Coming off two years of financial challenges and crowd-control issues, the 2011 edition of the giant annual fireworks extravaganza known as KaBoomFest will feature a renewed focus on family entertainment and security, organizers say.
While some aspects of the event, including whether to repeat last year’s expansion from one to three days, remain undecided, KaBoom is on track to raise more money from corporate sponsors this year and is paying more attention to the importance of security, said Tim Hogan, president of Riverview Medical Center and chairman of KaBoom’s executive committee.
“We want to make sure that it’s safe and want to make sure that it’s family-friendly,” Hogan said.
The annual KaBoom! fundraiser culminated in a fireworks preview outside the Monmouth Boat Club in 2008. This year’s edition will be at Hovnanian HQ.
Whether you love it or leave town for the day because of it the annual KaBoom Fireworks on the Navesink event is one of “the fabulous events that make Red Bank and the Navesink River community the special place that it is,” says KaBoom! Committee chairman Tim Hogan.
As an attraction that draws some 150,000 gawkers and revelers to multiple sites along the riverfront, the July 3 sky-splash is surely the single biggest happening of the borough’s calendar year one in which all of the more than $200,000 needed to produce KaBoomFest comes from private donations.
While the KaMittee’s underwriting vehicles have ranged from big-league corporate sponsorships to the less sophisticated (but no less effective) “Kick In for KaBoom Bucket,” it’s the annual springtime cocktail party that has traditionally fired the first signal flare in the Countdown to KaBoomsday and on the evening of Thursday, April 28, the fuse will be lit for an intensive interlude of pyrotechnics, preparations, promotion, and the soliciting of those crucial private donations.
Hollywood’s Siobhan Fallon Hogan, TV’s Real Housewife Caroline Manzo and Broadway’s Michael Mulheren appear at local fundraisers in the coming days.
There’s a gala for the neediest of our neighbors that’s studded with familiar faces from movie screens and Broadway stages. A sneak-preview of a film from a major studio, raising funds for the arts right in our backyard. There’s even a benefit dog walk, graced by a reality TV star who’d be able to tell us a thing or three about catfights.
You don’t need to boast of any showbiz connections to have Done Good for your community sometimes all you need to do is come on out, take in some lovely early-autumn weather or enjoy some of the best of local cuisine. Cheer on a committed competitor from the crowd, or pound some pavement for a charitable cause. Donate a used book, buy a used book or bring back those library books, no questions asked.
In this edition of Done Good, redbankgreen pulls together more than a dozen ways that you can be part of something big in the days and nights to come. It’s an opportunity that begins this weekend and continues on through the first half of October with benefits that will be felt locally (class trips, school sports, food banks, animal rescues, holiday traditions, clean streets) as well as globally (clean oceans).
The Done Good rundown continues, right around the corner.
From left: John Jackson, Jacqueline Sturdivant, Michael Ballard, Tim Hogan, Linda Hill, Erin Fleming and Sean Murphy. (Photo by Red Bank Together. Click to enlarge.)
Three incumbent council Democrats have teamed up with the president of Riverview Medical Center in a bid to form Red Bank’s new government this summer.
