RED BANK: POLICE TO GET BODY CAMERAS

Borough police will get 20 body cameras under a grant. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank police will soon begin wearing body cameras on the streets, under a grant announced Monday by Acting New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman.

Aimed at increasing transparency in policing, the program will provide 176 towns statewide with $2.5 million to buy 5,000 cameras and ancillary equipment, Hoffman.

Red Bank is slated to get almost $9,000 under the program, enough to buy 20 cameras, according to a list published by nj.com. Read More »

December 22, 2015 - 6:32 am | Comments ()

FAIR HAVEN: OLD BUILDINGS TO BE JOINED

Architect Matt Cronin’s design would link the two River Road buildings shown below with a new glass-filled central section. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

A plan to connect a pair of 150-year-old structures in Fair Haven with a window-filled central addition elicited unanimous praise from the planning board Wednesday night.

ForeFront Incorporated, a web tech firm headquartered in a stately Victorian two doors away, intends to use the conjoined buildings as expansion office space, company principal Michel Berger told the board.

With a patio, yoga space and “mom’s room,” it’s designed to attract millenial coders and developers to his company, where the average employee is 24 years old, Berger said.

December 10, 2015 - 10:00 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: INTRO TO CODING FOR TWEENS

Web developer Kenny Katzgrau says even fourth-graders can begin to code after a bit of instruction. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

The idea of computer code may be daunting to many adults. But kids are quick to pick up on the logic underlying the dominant technologies of our time, says Red Bank resident and web developer Kenny Katzgrau, who will lead an Intro to Coding class for kids aged 10 to 14 years old at the borough Public Library this Thursday afternoon.

The primary goal of the 90-minute session, says Katzgrau, is to spark interest in what can be a hobby or the basis of a lucrative career.

December 7, 2015 - 11:07 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: YOUR 15 MINUTES HAVE ARRIVED

One of the new 15-minute meters on Broad Street, near White Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

LicPlate1 Street meters, off-street meters, permits, kiosks, an app: now, add one more element to the Red Bank parking mix.

The borough recently installed nine white meters on downtown streets to enable shoppers to park for just 15 minutes, at 25 cents a pop.

November 25, 2015 - 10:13 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: ZIPPRICH ZAPPED ON ‘PLAGIARISM’

Councilman and Democratic party chair Ed Zipprich, right, with Democratic council candidate Michael Ballard at the borough Halloween parade last month. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

[SEE UPDATE BELOW ]

An eleventh-hour election email purportedly sent by Red Bank Democratic Party chairman and Councilman Ed Zipprich has drawn fire from Republicans both for its content, which they allege was “word-for-word” plagiarized, and for the method by which it was distributed.

Republican chairman Sean DiSomma and Councilwoman Linda Schwabenbauer both said Zipprich took an email that Schwabenbauer sent out Monday afternoon in support of the two Republican council candidates and tweaked it into an endorsement of the two Democratic candidates.

Then Zipprich sent his version out to recipients whose addresses he improperly obtained from the borough parks and recreation department, said Di Somma, who called for an investigation by state election authorities.

November 3, 2015 - 7:35 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: TECHIN’ IT TO THE STREETS

File this under “who knew?” Since February, visitors to Red Bank’s business district have been able to use an app to pay for parking from their vehicles via cellphones or tablets, thus avoiding the payment kiosks, which are no fun in bad weather.

But the only public notice of this service that redbankgreen could find was a notice taped to a parking kiosk at the White Street lot.

October 23, 2015 - 8:30 am | Comments ()

ON THE GREEN: HOW WE LOOK FROM ABOVE

A new interactive map developed by NJ.com, the website of the Star-Ledger, enables users to zoom down to nearly the street level to show where every one of New Jersey’s more than 8.9 million residents lives, as well as the race and ethnicity of each, according to the 2010 Census.

The map doesn’t pinpoint the exact address of every resident: that would be creepy, wrote NJ.com reporter Stephen Stirling. Instead, developers at NJ Advance Media “created a dot for each person of each race within each Census block, and scattered them randomly throughout their representative geography,” he said. The result, said Stirling, “is the most detailed look at race in New Jersey possible with information available today.”

The effect is highly detailed image that shows while the state is the most diverse in the nation, the Greater Red Bank Green is a near monoculture of whites (represented by blue dots) outside Red Bank’s West Side, which is home to dense concentrations of Hispanic and African-American residents. And even those two groups are somewhat segregated, the data suggests. (Screen grab from NJ.com)

October 16, 2015 - 7:00 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: ARE WE THAT DRUNK?

The ranking methodology includes the number of bars per capita. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

Is Red Bank the fourth-drunkest town in New Jersey?

An infotainment website based in North Carolina claims it is.

September 30, 2015 - 9:31 am | Comments ()

STUDENT SUSPENDED FOR SCHILLING TWEETS

The profile photo of the Twitter user identified as “the Sports Guru,” who Curt Schilling said posted offensive comments about his daughter, is the same one used on Facebook by a Brookdale student named Adam Nagel. Both accounts have since been removed. (Click to enlarge)

[See update below regarding student’s affiliation with the radio station.]

By JOHN T. WARD

Brookdale Community College suspended a student Monday after retired baseball great Curt Schilling outed him as one of at least two Twitter posters who tweeted sexually offensive statements about Schilling’s daughter last week.

The student, who was not identified by the school, was among two or more Twitter users who suggested they would sexually assault Schilling’s daughter, Gabby, after her father announced that she would be attending college Salve Regina University in Rhode Island and pitch for the softball team.

March 2, 2015 - 11:12 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: MINUTES IN HISTORY

Workers from the digital archiving company DRS Group roll up old plats on the floor of the planning and zoning office in Red Bank Wednesday afternoon for transfer to a scanning facility in Springfield. At right, Ricardo Peetes rides down in the elevator at borough hall with a palette load of documents.

As part of a digitization project, the minutes of planning and zoning board applications dating back to 1929 – minus a decade’s worth from the 1950s that are believed to have been destroyed in a fire – are being scanned and transferred to both digital files and microfilm, says office director Donna Smith-Barr. Once that’s complete, the borough will apply to the state for permission to destroy the hundreds of site plans, architects’ renderings and other large pieces used as evidence in hearings, she said. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

February 11, 2015 - 3:00 pm | Comments ()

CHROMEBOOK TECH FOR RUMSON STUDENTS

Ms. Farrell’s fourth grade classroom at Forrestdale School in Rumson employs Google Chromebook laptop computers, as part of an ambitious new project in the borough’s schools.

Press release from Rumson School District

The Chromebook Project, an initiative of the Rumson Education Foundation (REF), has achieved remarkable success and progress since its inception as the largest, most ambitious project in the history of the Education Foundation and the Rumson School District.

The project will provide state-of-the-art Google technology to all students in grades K through 8 at Deane Porter and Forrestdale Schools. The stated goal of the project is to provide “1 to 1 Chromebook Technology” and “Place the Future in Our Children’s Hands”.

The first phase is already complete, with an ample supply of Chromebook laptops now available in all fourth and fifth grade classrooms, where all subjects are taught by homeroom teachers. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades — in which teachers dedicate themselves to specific subjects — carts containing Chromebooks are available for use by all students in Math and Social Studies classes.

November 19, 2014 - 6:00 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: LIBRARY HOSTS FUNDRAISER

Seven months after a mass resignation of board members in a budget dispute, the Red Bank Public Library hosted a wine-tasting fundraiser to signal it is back on track to eventual full restoration of hours of operation and services Tuesday night.

The event, hosted by the Foundation for the Red Bank Public Library, featured culinary offerings from a number of borough eateries and treateries, including Faustini Wines, the Melting Pot, Readie’s Café and Sugarush cupcakes. (Photos by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)

November 12, 2014 - 9:57 am | Comments ()

RED BANK GOES ORANGE AND BOOGIES, KINDLY

Who turned out for Red Bank’s contribution to a worldwide ‘Dance for Kindness,’ held on Broad Street Sunday? Among the several hundred orange-clad participants were Amanda Gorfain of Red Bank and her mother, Joanna Leddin of Fair Haven, who rehearsed with others for about three weeks. “It was something we could do together, and a no-brainer to support kindness,” said Gorfain. “Who doesn’t want to be part of a flash mob at the exact same moment that they are doing this all over the world?”

We’ve got tons of photos, plus a neat video, after the “read more.” (Photos by Susan Ericson and John T. Ward.)

November 10, 2014 - 9:03 am | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: LITERALLY!

Katie Corr, a hair stylist at Glen Goldbaum 72 in Red Bank, was “very young” when she started to do hair, but still loves it, she says – “especially when the clients leave the salon feeling much better then when they arrived.”

“It’s not just the hair,” she says. “Clients talk about their lives… sometimes I feel like a therapist.”

She’s seen here with client Lisette Lynch.

Video by Gerda Liebmann. Check out all the Clippings from the Green here.

October 27, 2014 - 11:00 am | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: THIS ONE BAKES THE CAKE

Gina Roselle-Broschart’s first love was gymnastics. Later, she studied nutrition at Rutgers, and then attended Culinary Institute of America to become a pastry chef. Today, Roselle-Broschart’s specialty is cake decorating. Here, and in the video below, she is at work at Antoinette Boulangerie in Red Bank, where she lives with her husband, backyard beef-smoker Scott Broschart.

“I found a connection between gymnastics and cake decorating,” says Roselle-Broschart. “They both require perfection and artistic liberty at the same time.” (Photo and video by Gerda Liebmann. Check out all the Clippings from the Green here.)

October 14, 2014 - 7:30 am | Comments ()

RED BANK: ZIPPRICH ARREST VIDEO POSTED

Councilman Ed Zipprich, left, at Democratic HQ on election night in 2007. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

A video showing Red Bank Councilman Ed Zipprich under arrest for driving while intoxicated in 2011 is “making its rounds among Monmouth County’s politically connected,” the Asbury Park Press reported Friday.

On its website, the newspaper includes a link to the video on YouTube, but YouTube shows the video as having been removed by the user, who is not identified.

October 10, 2014 - 5:48 pm | Comments ()

RED BANK TO ‘DANCE FOR KINDNESS’

Video from the Dance for Kindness global event in 2013. The next one, planned for November 9, will include downtown Red Bank, and anyone can participate.

A worldwide “kindness” phenomenon with digital roots in Red Bank is set to return next month.

The folks behind 2011’s pay-it-forward “Kindness Boomerang” video – which was shot downtown and has racked up 30 million YouTube views around the world – are organizing a “kindness freezmob/flashmob” dance in 30 countries on November 9, five days in advance of World Kindness Day. And Red Bank is among the 80 cities participating, say organizers.

October 8, 2014 - 11:27 am | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: POTTER AT WORK

“In this chaotic world, making pottery provides balance for me,” says Red Bank potter Lauren Bellero, featured in the video below. Bellero creates unique wheel-thrown and hand-built functional and decorative stoneware pottery, with a specialty in ‘pit firing.’

The 17th annual edition of Bellero’s ‘Mudslingers Art Show & Sale‘ is scheduled for November 9, from 1 to 6 p.m. at her home studio at 39 Leroy Place.

October 7, 2014 - 7:00 am | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: POSTER BOY FOR LUNCH BREAK

An online auction of images by rock photographer Mark Weiss of Rumson begins Wednesday to benefit Lunch Break, the Red Bank soup kitchen.

The auction, which includes images of Ted Nugent, Sammy Hagar, Ozzy Osborne and Paul Stanley, as well as 20 others, will be conducted on Charitybuzz through October 15.

Lunch Break’s fifth annual gala, by the way, is October 20 at the Navesink Country Club in Middletown. For more information about the gala or the auctin, contact Petra Vanderven at pvanderven@lunchbreak.org or 732-747-8577, extension 3106. (Video by Gerda Liebmann. Click to pause. And check out all the Clippings from the Green here.)

September 23, 2014 - 2:24 pm | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: GETTING SOME AIR ON THE BAY

Clippings took in some kitesurfing activity on the bay side of Sandy Hook recently. Intrigued by non-motorized watersports? The New Jersey Windsurfing and Watersports Association will host its annual fun fest opposite parking lot C at Sandy Hook from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Sunday, offering introductions to windsurfing and stand-up paddleboarding for $25, pizza included. For more info, call Tom at 862-268-3033. (Video by Gerda Liebmann. Click to pause.)

Check out all the Clippings from the Green here.

September 9, 2014 - 7:10 am | Comments ()

redbankgreen SPORTS PAGE POWERS UP

redbankgreen is pleased to introduce a new page. Headed “redbankgreen Sports powered by Shore Sports Zone,” it’s where you’ll find local sports news, much of it in the form of highly polished video reporting by Rich Chrampanis, founder of the independent website Shore Sports Zone, which is also debuting this week.

Chrampanis, who grew up in Middletown and graduated from Christian Brothers Academy (’88), is a veteran at this. After graudating from St. Bonaventure, he spent two decades in television sports coverage as an on-air reporter, anchor and producer. After 14 years at piloting the sports desk at WPDE-TV in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Chrampanis moved his family to Little Silver earlier this year to create Shore Sports Zone. With detailed school pages and timely video coverage, Chrampanis hopes to make the site the top resource for fans of high school sports in Monmouth and Ocean Counties.

We at redbankgreen hope to help him put it across the goal line while offering our readers something we haven’t had in the eight years this site has been around. So tune in here for hyperlocal sports coverage, and get the bigger picture at Shore Sports Zone.

We hope you find both our sports page and Shore Sports Zone informative and entertaining. Let us know what you think.

September 5, 2014 - 4:00 pm | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: FAIRLY DELIGHTFUL

It’s not just about the food, of course – though you should check out PieHole’s story on THAT, too. For kids, and kids at heart, the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair offers some kinetic delights in the form of good old carnival rides.

The fair continues through Saturday night. (Video by Gerda Liebmann. Click to pause. And check out all the Clippings from the Green here.

August 28, 2014 - 4:00 pm | Comments ()

LOCUST: CLIPPINGS GOES CRABBING

Four boys from Parisppany crabbing on Claypit Creek at Hartshorne Woods in Middletown on August 16, 2014.

Check out all the Clippings from the Green here. (Video by Gerda Liebmann. Click to pause.)
Read More »

August 18, 2014 - 12:22 pm | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: MOVIE IN THE ROUND

Liz Stahl, Mary Ellen Dowd, Chris Lombino and Tom Smith – friends who met in a theater group – were all set for the July 8, 2014 movie screening in Red Bank’s Riverside Gardens Park. But the event was rained out. They’ll get another chance with the Tuesday night screening of ‘Jaws,’ and a favorable weather forecast. (Video by Gerda Liebmann. Click to pause.)

Check out all the Clippings from the Green here.

August 5, 2014 - 9:06 am | Comments ()

CLIPPINGS: LENSMAN BETWEEN THE LINES

Red Bank photographer Danny Sanchez on the newly rebuilt grade railroad crossing at Monmouth Street just outside his Bridge Avenue studio on July 19, 2014.

“This is a very interesting spot to take pictures,” he tells Cliipings, noting “all the lines and patterns, wires and buildings.” Check out all the Clippings from the Green here. (Video by Gerda Liebmann. Click to pause.)

July 29, 2014 - 11:55 am | Comments ()