BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer
MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Surfing and skating are on the rise in Monmouth County, and new businesses in Red Bank and Long Branch have recently opened to cater to practitioners of the sports.
Revolution Board Room at 21 Monmouth St. in Red Bank opened just a month ago, and co-owners Connor Green and A.J. Colantoni, both 25 years old, said business is booming.
“Business is very good,” Green said. “It’s what we expected.”
Green and Colantoni met in high school and attended the same college. After graduation from Fairfield University in Connecticut, the two went their separate ways without any plans to become business partners.
CHRIS KELLY staff Another surf/skate shop, Bare Wires Surf Skate, 22 Atlantic Ave., Long Branch, offers clothing and many surf and skate accessories such as the boards shown. It is located next to the new skate park. “I went to Wyoming for three years and snowboarded,” Green said. “My partner [Colantoni] traveled in Australia and surfed.”
When the duo returned home in the summer of 2003, Green to Middletown and Colantoni to Avon-by-the-Sea, they teamed up and started a business called the Shore Wake Board Academy.
“I saw the guy I bought my boat from in Point Pleasant one day, and he had a smaller-looking surfboard,” Green said. “I asked what it was, and he said it was a wakeboard. I picked it up and started using it.”
Shore Wake Board Academy provides personal training lessons in the Navesink River on wakeboarding, a sport that Green said is popular in Florida and has started to catch on locally.
Wakeboarding is a combination of water skiing and snowboarding. The wakeboard, which resembles a snow-board, is towed by a rope that is attached to a boat.
“The closest place to buy wakeboards was Point Pleasant,” Green said. “One of our students told us to open a store nearby [so equipment would be more accessible]. We’re knowledgeable enough, so we did some research.”
The store sells surf, skate, snowboarding and wakeboarding equipment and is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Revolution Board Room stocks surfboards that range from Walker and Aloha at $450 to Glenn A. Klugel (G.A.K.) boards at $995.
Skateboards range in price from $43 to $55 and include names such as Popwar, Flipdecks, Almost, Enjoi and Rafalibre.
Snowboards and wakeboards range from $325 up to $500 and include Option and Hyperlite brands.
The store also sells women’s and men’s clothing and footwear in brands such as Analog, O’Neill, Third Rail, Locomotion and Enjoi.
Red Bank was the obvious choice for the store’s location, according to Green, who said there is no better advertisement than word of mouth, and Red Bank is a foot-traffic shopping hub.
“People spend a day in the town and walk by and see that we’re open,” Green said.
Many of Revolution Board Room’s customers travel to Vermont to ski and anywhere from Sandy Hook to Allenhurst to surf and wakeboard, Green said.
He said there are no places to skate in Red Bank, so many customers travel to the newly opened skate park in Long Branch, which is located adjacent to another new surf and skate shop, Bare Wire Surf Skate Shop on Atlantic Avenue.
The new county-owned SkatePlex at Seven Presidents Park in Long Branch turned out to be a bonus for Michael Brown, who chose the oceanside location for his surf-and-skate shop because of the waves he saw on the beach.
When Brown signed the lease for 22 Atlantic Ave., where he planned to open Bare Wires Surf Skate, he found that the store would be located adjacent to a 4.5-acre property that would turn out to be the future location of a county-owned skate park.
“When I looked at the beach, I saw the waves breaking, and I wanted to get in at the ground floor,” Brown said.
“When I was looking at the building as a possible location, I didn’t know about the skate park.”
Brown, 31, of Manasquan, had been managing the Inlet Outlet surf shop in Manasquan, owned by Ken Klos, for eight years.
Klos, of Manasquan, and Brown decided to go into business together and open a spin-off of the surf-and-skate shop in Long Branch.
The new store opened just months before the $1.5 million skate park opened Sept. 1. The new Skateplex is located on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Ocean Boulevard and includes a skate park with ramps and a skating rink.
Adam Holloway, manager of Bare Wires, said the lack of skate parks is a problem in every town.
“Now kids have a place to skate,” Holloway said. “It is one of the greatest, free-skating parks in New Jersey, and there aren’t just local people coming. It’s attracting many people from out of town.”
Holloway said that business has been good at the surf-and-skate shop, but it is too soon to tell what impact the skate park will have.
“We’ll see the real impact [of the skate park] in the fall,” he said.
“Not many surf shops are open year-round,” Brown noted. “Having skating apparel means you don’t need waves to do business.”
The store sells surfboards that range from $350 for a Challenger board to $935 for a classic Dewey Weber board. Skateboards range from $90 up to $160.
The store also specializes in women’s clothing, “hoodie” sweatshirts, hats, shoes, and skate and surf accessories by names such as Volcum, Hurley, Quicksilver and Ripcurl.
Brown said customers range in age from 8 to 40.
“The store was doing pretty well without the skate park,” he said. “We’ve seen a bump [in sales] since it opened.”
Brown, who has been surfing for 21 years, put aside any dream he had of one day running a surf shop and began working at an insurance company after he graduated from Villanova University with a degree in economics.
“I didn’t fit into the corporate world,” Brown said. That was when Brown decided to turn his passion into a career.
He went to the Manasquan surf shop he frequented as a kid, and the timing was perfect. Klos was ready to make some changes and offered Brown the opportunity to manage the store.
The business continued to be successful, and the duo decided to expand and opened On the Beach in Manasquan, which sold beach equipment.
“The store didn’t fare so well,” Brown said. “We went out of business. It’s a big risk. Now I’m focusing on something I’m good at.”
Connor Green and A.J. Colantoni from Revolution Board Room on Monmouth Street in Red Bank pose with surfboards displayed in their store.