WHERE HAVE I SEEN THIS?
One of our readers guessed that last week’s photo was taken in Hazlet.
Um, Hazlet? Isn’t that up there near, you know, Wasilla?
THROWING MUD ON MONMOUTH
The one-named artisan Tito brings his fourth-generation skills to Red Bank and Long Branch this weekend. (Click to enlarge)
In from Spain this weekend is a potter best known simply as Tito, who’s making a return engagement at a Red Bank store that features his earthenware.
Juan Pablo ‘Tito’ Martinez is a third-generation maker of bowls, pitchers and more from the Andalucia region of Spain who won his country’s National Artisan Award in 2008 for keeping alive skills that date back to the Renaissance.
He’ll be at Carter & Cavero, a business specializing in olive oils and vinegars, churning out vases and bowls while fielding questions from anyone interested in his craft.
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‘O’HERN AVENUE’ COMING TO WEST SIDE
The late Daniel J. O’Hern in 2006.
Red Bank’s governing body is expected to vote Monday night on a proposal to add the late Daniel J. O’Hern‘s name to signs marking the street of his upbringing: Locust Avenue.
O’Hern, a former borough mayor and state Supreme Court associate justice, died April 1 at the age of 78.
Mayor Pasquale Menna says town leaders have been searching for an appropriate way to honor O’Hern, and the most obvious was to go to his roots. O’Hern was born on Locust Avenue and spent his formative years there.
He also, Menna says, first won elective office largely on the strength of his neighborhood ties.
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WEST SIDE CLEANUP, TOYS FOR SEAN & MORE
An effort to spruce up the streets of Red Bank’s West Side in April 2008, above, will be reprised this Saturday.
A West Side cleanup effort, a toy drive for a boy at the center of an international custody battle, and several education-related fundraising efforts mark this edition of Done Good.
The cleanup, scheduled for Saturday, June 20, starting at 8a., is the second annual edition of the effort, dubbed “Operation Inasmuch.”
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FORMER RED BANK MAYOR AND SUPREME COURT JUSTICE DANIEL O’HERN DIES AT 78
Daniel J. O’Hern
By JOHN T. WARD
Daniel J. O’Hern, a son of Red Bank who was its mayor through a period of social unrest and later served almost two decades on the New Jersey Supreme Court, died Wednesday night at his home in Little Silver.
The Star-Ledger reports that he died of metastatic brain melanoma.
“Dan O’Hern was the quintessential gentleman who represented Red Bank so well in so many aspects,” said Mayor Pasquale Menna, who said he was inspired by O’Hern’s example to pursue public service.
Noting the racial strife of the late 1960s, when O’Hern was a borough councilman and, starting in 1969, as mayor, Menna said O’Hern “led the borough at an exceedingly difficult time, when there was great social friction.”
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and many towns and cities braced for the kind of violence that had erupted in Newark and elsewhere, O’Hern marched down Shrewsbury Avenue with local ministers and citizens in a peaceful memorial, Menna said.
Through sit-ins and noisy council meetings, “it was always a mark of his sensitivity that he was able to keep the tensions so that they did not rise to a level of civil strife,” Menna said.
TO DIAMOND MAN, BROAD ST. STILL SHINES
Displaced from his longtime storefront, Alan Fisher plans to take over the space now occupied by Papyrus in the red brick structure visible over his left shoulder.
Alan Fisher got his walking papers in late January.
After 25 years operating A.H. Fisher Diamonds at 10 Broad Street, Fisher was notified with just five days remaining on his lease that it wouldn’t be renewed.
Turns out his landlord, Keith Alliotts of Broad Street Realty Associates, has a client on the line who not only wants the storefront at 2 Broad, at the corner of Broad and West Front streets, but the entire 10,000-square-foot structure that stretches several addresses south on Broad.
Alliotts’ client is widely rumored to be Urban Outfitters, though neither the clothing retailer nor Alliotts responded to redbankgreen messages seeking comment.
Fisher says he knows nothing more than the rest of us about who the tenant will be. But the fact that his landlord told him the mystery tenant wants not just 2 and 8 Broad, but Fisher’s space and the private breezeway it abuts will only heighten interest in the prospective deal.
But that’s a story for another day. Today, our topic is Fisher’s decision, in spite of all the mutterings about Red Bank’s purported slide back to the days of ‘Dead Bank,’ to stick with Broad Street.
“I grew up here in town, so yes, this is a vote of confidence in Red Bank,” says Fisher, who in high school and college had a job that required him to wind the clock atop the former borough hall and police station at 51 Monmouth Street.
RED BANK: WORKING UP A SWEAT
Chuck Lambert’s day job is not exactly the kind of gritty, back-breaking slog typically associated with the blues: he’s a membership services associate at Red Bank’s Community YMCA. That’s right, he’s the guy who’ll give you the orientation tour, set you up with access to the Cybex machines or heated indoor pool, and do it all with purring, irresistible charm.
But Lambert has also had glimpses of the seamier side of what the world can show you, he says, and hes not just talking about the men’s locker room at peak occupancy. For starters, some of the musicians Lambert has played with have been run over by the music biz, or drugs, or just plain bad luck, without having any sort of safety net for themselves or their families. Music — the blues in particular — has its pitfalls, he says over tonic water at the Downtown Café. Next thing you know, theyre having a benefit concert for you.