A weekend trip by train to Red Bank, NJ

This past weekend, Paola and I decided to take a little day trip by train. We were looking for somewhere new, accessible by train, and with a coffee shop, some nature, and a few places to window shop.

In the end, we went to Red Bank, NJ for the day, leaving from Penn Station on New Jersey Transit’s North Jersey Coast Line, which has roughly hourly service on weekends. Given that the weather was supposed to hit 80 in the city, I was expecting a heavy beach crowd, but this wasn’t the case, the train wasn’t particularly crowded.

We started off our day with an iced coffee and a pork roll sandwich at Johnny’s Pork Roll and Coffee, which caught my eye because I knew pork roll was a Jersey staple. It’s a bit like spam or bacon, and the owner is a evangelist for this cured meat and a great guy to talk to. The sandwiches were so good, we ordered a second.

We then took a visit to Camera Culture to check out the collection of vintage film cameras. The owner was nice and they had a good selection, they even had a “Mick-a-matic,” a simple camera that Stephen Shore used to take many of his photos back in the 1970s (photo in gallery below).

We then checked out a massive antique market, went for a churro donut at Once Bitten Donuts, and went record and book shopping at Jack’s Music Shoppe before taking some time by the water in Riverside Gardens Park. Red Bank also happens to be the hometown of director Kevin Smith, who happens to have a mini museum and gift shop in town, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. If you’re a fan of Clerks, Dogma, Mall Rats, it’s worth a visit.

To close out the trip, we stopped for an elote (street corn) and some Mexican groceries near the train station. There are maybe a half-dozen Mexican food and grocery spots within a few blocks of the station.

Below I’ve included some photos I took in town, playing around with my Ricoh GR IIIx. I wasn’t really planning to write a travelogue, more just to share some photos today, so they aren’t particularly topical, though I think they capture the indie Jersey Shore-adjacent vibe of the town well.