Robinson Hernandez cuts a customer’s hair at Red Bank House of Fades earlier this week. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Some updates from the continual swirl of comings and goings among Red Bank businesses that we like to call Retail Churn:
After months of dormancy, the conversion of the storefront at 8 Monmouth Street was completed this week. Or half-completed, that is.
With its opening on Monday, barbershop Red Bank House of Fades took over roughly half the space that for more than 50 years was home to Red Bank News and last occupied by Exotic Birds of Red Bank.
Greene Street Consignment plans to open its eighth store at 40 Broad Street in Red Bank, former home of Funk and Standard, by mid-September. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
When officials from Greene Street Consignment, a high-end used-clothing shop with seven stores in the greater Philadelphia area, paid her a visit about a month ago, Red Bank RiverCenter executive director Nancy Adams’ immediate reaction, she later said, was, “We’ve gotta get you here. We need retail.”
And with some fast action, Adams helped do just that, in the process heading off what might have been a prolonged and gaping vacancy in the heart of a downtown still struggling to recover.
Bars and restaurants are doing their job keeping doors open late, some say, but more merchants must stay open to attract more visitors. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
As Red Bank continues to claw its way out of an economic hole it hasn’t seen since the we-don’t-like-to-talk-about-it Dead Bank days, Mayor Pasquale Menna tends to periodically jab downtown’s retailers with a reminder that it’s going to take work to bring Red Bank back as a top destination in the region and beyond.
Lately, though, he’s taken a firmer approach.
At a council meeting last month, when two requests for car shows on Broad Street appeared on the agenda, he paused from the typical rubber-stamping of such requests.
“This is a chance to tickle, pinch, smack our retailers to stay open on Sunday,” Menna said, and then pointed to Red Bank RiverCenter Executive Director Nancy Adams, who was seated in the audience. “Get the word out. Tell them to stay open on Sunday. I might start smacking instead of pinching.”
It was another lash at a limp horse he’s been flogging since before Red Bank’s business dipped with the national economy. For years, Menna has been urging merchants to move away from the nine-to-five mindset and keep the lights on after dark and on Sunday, when too many stores, he says, are closed.
Is it just us, or are more young people shopping in downtown Red Bank than in recent years? Below, Leanne Navarette of Backward Glances. (Click to enlarge)
By MOLLY MULSHINE
Autumn Byrd, 14, may not have a driver’s license, but the Colts Neck resident still finds a way to shop, eat and hang out in Red Bank whenever she can.
“My daughter is always like, ‘Let’s go to Red Bank, let’s go to Urban Outfitters, let’s go to Funk & Standard,'” Autumn’s dad, Avery Byrd, said as he paid for a purchase at Backward Glances recently.
Autumn eschews the mall in favor of Red Bank because of the town’s artsy feel, she said. “A lot of the styles I’m into, I can find here,” she said. “And I feel safe in this town.”
If any trend is apparent in downtown Red Bank this summer, it’s the return of teens and young adults, lured to modest-priced clothing stores and eateries, including relative newcomers Urban Outfitters, women’s clothing boutique Dor L’Dor and Mexi-Cali chow purveyor Surf Taco, as well as staples like Funk and Standard.
Merchants see the influx of teens as a rebuke to the idea that the town is becoming too upmarket and squeezing out younger shoppers and others with moderate incomes.
The trailer for ‘Forks Over Knives,’ which will get two screenings in Red Bank Thursday night.
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
While Adam Sobel waits to learn if he’ll be permitted to operate his four-wheeled business in Red Bank on a regular basis, he’ll have his Cinammon Snail mobile food truck downtown for at least a couple of hours Thursday night for a down-to-earth dinner and a movie.
Along with vegan-friendly comrades Patti Siciliano of Funk & Standard, Gail Doherty and Tiffany Betts of Good Karma Café and others, Sobel is taking part in an evening focused on the health benefits of eating the un-American way: organically.
The night revolves around the indie documentary Forks Over Knives, which features T. Colin Campbell, a nutrition researcher at Cornell University who believes degenerative diseases can be prevented, and in some cases reversed, by adopting a “whole foods, plant-based diet.”
Or, as Siciliano, a converted vegan who recently opened an organic juice bar in her Broad Street business, says, “just don’t eat garbage.”
Red Bank’s popular farmers market makes its traditional Mother’s Day debut Sunday. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
It’s time to polish momma’s apple, locavores.
Red Bank’s ever-popular, always-growing open-air emporium, the Red Bank Farmers’ Market, returns to the blacktop of The Galleria on Mother’s Day for its 12th season of dishing out homegrown fruits, vegetables and miscellaneous wares.
Patti Siciliano just hours before opening the latest addition to Funk and Standard, Yummy Yummy Good Stuff juice bar. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Patti Siciliano started Red Bank’s Funk and Standard with a clear goal in mind. A lover of food, she always had a dream to branch out beyond clothes and accessories, the main draw at her Broad Street store.
But it wasn’t until now, while wading through a challenging economic wave, that she decided to work toward it.
Today Siciliano unveils Yummy Yummy Good Stuff, a hyperhealthy addition to her downtown shop.
“It’s always been a part of the original plan. That’s why challenges, I find, are gifts. They drive us forward and make us better,” Siciliano said. “In tough times you just say, alright, let’s do it.”
Yummy Yummy or Yum, as Siciliano calls it, in hopes that it’ll catch on is like a mini nutritional center amid Funk and Standard’s assortment of clothes, tchotchkes and gifts. The bar will offer a line of fresh juices and smoothies, soups, desserts from Keyport-based bakery Papa Ganache, vegan pastries from Zaitooni’s Deli and a selection of Adam Sobel’s popular Cinnamon Snail mobile vegan eatery.
The ‘lollipop’ clock outside Ballew Jewelers has been a Broad Street fixture since 1902, when the store was known as Reussille Jewelers. (Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Ballew Jewelers, a Red Bank staple since 1886, when it began as Reussille Jewelers, is pulling out of town, leaving a gaping hole, both symbolic and tangible, in a downtown struggling to tread water in a difficult economy.
News of the closing hit some of the nearby merchants like a sucker punch.
“It’s horrible. Horrible,” said Zebu Forno owner Andrew Gennusa. “For a business that’s more than a hundred years old to close here, it’s like a death.”
Robinson Hernandez cuts a customer’s hair at Red Bank House of Fades earlier this week. (Click to enlarge)
Some updates from the continual swirl of comings and goings among Red Bank businesses that we like to call Retail Churn:
