BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer
After nearly 100 years on East Front Street, in Red Bank, Kislin’s Sporting Goods will close its doors sometime in the next few weeks, ending a chapter in the lives of its founding family, their customers and two longtime employees.
What are perennial sales associates Willie and Eddie Hebeler going to do now that Kislin’s is closing ahead of the redevelopment of its turn-of-the-century building?
“We’re going to retire,” said Willie Hebeler, who, like his brother Eddie, has worked at Kislin’s for 40 years.
“Eddie came first, then I followed,” said Willie Hebeler, adding, “People think we’re twins, but we’re not.”
The Red Bank brothers who have worked at Kislin’s since the late 1950s shared a few highlights recently while they busied themselves amid the dwindling stacks of deeply discounted merchandise.
Their favorite customer? “Katharine Hepburn,” Willie answered without hesitation. “She had everybody in the store waiting on her.” Busiest time? “Christmas and the sidewalk sales,” noted Eddie.
“Willie and Eddie have been there since I was a little girl,” said longtime customer Chris Murphy last week.
“Willie would always walk up to me and say, ‘Now, Chris, let me show you something in the spring line of shoes.’ It’s like watching the Turner Classic channel on TV. It’s going back and reaching for something you don’t see anywhere else.”
Murphy, of Rumson, came in during Kislin’s final weeks to take photographs of the downtown store that is inextricably tied to memories of her girlhood.
“It’s like losing Prown’s and Dorn’s,” she lamented. “It’s knowing the faces and the people who have been there forever. I’ve been going to Kislin’s since I was a kid.”
“We almost made it to 100,” said Doris Pinsley, whose father, Leon Kislin, founded Kislin’s Sporting Goods in 1908. “There isn’t anything like this store. I’m trying not to feel anything; I’m trying to stay numb. We’re getting close, very close.”
Pinsley and her daughter, Shawn Pinsley Illo, jointly preside over day-to-day operations and cater to the needs of third- and fourth-generation Kislin customers. Together, with other family members, the decision was made to redevelop Kislin’s three-story building at 8 W. Front St., necessitating the closing of the store – at least until the renovation is complete.
“We had to make a decision,” Pinsley said. “We figured who was going to take care of this place? I’m very pleased that we came to terms and realized what we should do. There’s a time to do things, and this is the time right now.”
“Doris and I are going to miss all of our customers. We’re hoping the store is going to be really beautiful and an asset to the town,” Illo said. “I hope everyone will really love our renovation.”
Plans approved by the Red Bank Planning Board in 2003 call for renovations to the exterior and interior of the 32,000-square-foot Italianate building that is located in the borough’s Historic District. Renovations will reconfigure the retail space on the first floor nto two spaces, and create 10 loft-style apartments on the second and third floors.
The question of whether Kislin’s will reopen in the new retail space has not been decided, Illo said.
“Doris and I have 10 months to a year to make a decision about that. We’ll see how the renovation goes and make a decision down the road,” she said.
Pinsley said she didn’t grow up around the business her father established close by the Navesink, pausing only on her way into town with girlfriends. But when her mother died and her father could no longer run the shop alone, she returned to the area with her husband to run Kislin’s.
“When I got back here, I just jumped in and learned about waders and fishing tackle,” recalled Pinsley, who had been living in Illinois. “I remember reading up on sleeping bags. You had to know all the different temperatures and sizes.”
Pinsley said she stayed true to Kislin’s basics, but added a more upscale line.
“I would say I added more expensive items. We began selling ski jackets for $700-800, and sweaters for $100. We went very upscale.”
Leon Kislin died in 1970 and eventually, Pinsley called on her daughter to join her in running the day-to-day operation of the store.
“She ran it on her own for a while and then I came and helped her,” Illo said. “I concentrated more on juniors and children’s clothing, bringing in some very upscale children’s brands.
“We kept what Kislin’s was, but kept pace with the times by bringing in junior clothing, and appealing to the family. Everyone could shop here and find something.”
“We shared the buying responsibilities and alternated being in the store. It turned out to be a good combination,” Illo said. “We both had our areas of expertise and combined, it worked out very well.”
In preparation for the renovation sale Illo climbed the stairs and discovered a trove of goods stored for decades on two upper floors. Clothing and other items dating to the 1940s and 1950s, even as far back as the 1920s, that had been stored away by her grandfather.
To clear the building out for the project, every item in Kislin’s regular inventory was put on sale, summer- to ski-wear, sporting equipment like kayaks, sleds, boogie boards, fishing gear, and athletic equipment like baseball bats and gloves.
Kislin’s built a loyal customer base that spanned generations, Illo reckoned, mainly because it never disappointed.
“People just knew we’re going to have whatever they’re going to need,” she said. “We carry everything, all the time.”
“We went ahead with what people wanted,” added Pinsley. “We were up with the times. We didn’t stay old-fashioned, but we didn’t get too trendy.
“We’ve been selling Uggs for as long as Uggs has been in business! Speedo, we had them for many years before they became the trend.
“And we always sold ice skates, backpacks and fishing tackle. And don’t forget we did a service to the communities around the area by selling licenses — fishing, hunting, bow and arrow, clamming and crabbing.
Kislins’ dedication was reciprocated.
“We have a lot of favorite people, a lot of people that we love, and I know they feel the same way about us,” reminisced Pinsley. “They’re just nice people, and you’re happy when they come in the door. We have lots of people we’re very fond of; that part is nostalgic.”
“How do I feel about Kislin’s closing? Terrible,” said Linda Kondrup Erickson, Navesink. “This is a landmark. I was raised in Rumson and I can remember taking the bus to Red Bank on Saturday afternoons.”
Erickson frequently shopped for sporting goods for the men in her family.
“I bought lots of my brother’s sporting goods, then my son’s, now my grandson’s,” she said.
“Going there in the fall was a big thing,” recalled Murphy. “You went there to get loafers, that’s the only place you went, and it was the only place that had brown and white saddle shoes with brown soles.”
Murphy’s uncle was stationed at Fort Hancock in the 1940s and continued to shop at Kislin’s even after he left the area, she said.
“Whenever he came back to visit us, he would go back to Kislin’s because it was the only place he could find those white bucks he loved. It was a vintage store before there was such a thing as a vintage store.”
Asked to conjure up her fondest memory, Pinsley took only a moment to reply: “We used to have Lionel trains in the window running on tracks at Christmastime. We put them in around Nov. 1 and we wouldn’t take them out until February. Parents would come from everywhere with their children. A lot of people around here remember it.”