Evaporate store exterior
Asbury Park has recently seen some brighter days. The community is slowly revitalizing near the boardwalk area with fashionable independent businesses sprouting all over the Cookman/Bangs Avenue area. Young people are beginning to move into the area thanks to its low cost near the ocean. While I could write a thousand blog posts on just how nicely this community is beginning to turn itself around, I’ll stay focused to what I know. Now, I’ve covered Asbury Park-based places like Asbury Lanes and businesses like Shear Revival, but this time I’m covering a different business in a different industry.
Evaporate is an electronic cigarette retailer on Bangs Avenue. E-cigarettes, or vapes if you’d prefer, are a new trend we’ve seen rising lately. They provide one of the more viable ways to help many quit smoking, and many flavors also just taste great. I’ve seen people vape nicotine-free e-juice before without ever having touched a cigarette in their lives. Vaping can be anything from purely a quit-smoking aid to a social hobby. Many people are into customizing the e-cigarettes they use, and oftentimes people collect different mods to tinker with in their spare time.
Now, I don’t ever want to be too personal on this blog, but I was once a two pack-per-day smoker. From around 19 years to 21 years old, I would smoke at least one full pack each day. Cigarettes consumed my wallet, my health, and just generally made me a more unappealing individual in many ways. I tried quitting cold turkey, but it didn’t work for me. I tried replacing smoking with things like drinking coffee, but I couldn’t sleep because the ten cups of coffee I would drink in a day would keep me up all night. I needed a viable option to stop smoking.
I eventually started vaping, after trying out an e-cigarette that my friend had. After that, the rest was history. I found the one thing that helped me stop smoking. I quickly began collecting and trying various flavors of e-juice and fell in love with many good ones. Most of these good flavors I’ve tried have come from purchasing them at Evaporate.
Many e-cigarette retailers have their own house-made e-juices. While some may be good, most are rather poor quality and will go brown within a couple of days. Evaporate doesn’t do that. They don’t bother wasting their time on house-made juices since the e-juice market is now a craft market all its own. Rather than carry any house-juices, they have dedicated their business to providing supreme quality e-juices from notable companies around the globe. Their menu of different flavors also changes constantly, which makes each visit to their location an opportunity to try an interesting new flavor.
I should also mention that the store’s interior has some serious design points to it too. Walking in, you’ll find a lounge area with leather seating to your left right up against their big front windows. To the right, you’ll find an L-shaped counter with higher, bar-style chairs around it and samples of the various e-juice flavors they are carrying at that point in time. The coolest part? Well, that would have to be the counter itself. They have mini glass display cases embedded in the counter top. It’s seriously cool way to show off featured e-juice flavors they are selling.
Store interior from right before the shop’s grand opening. The coolest part is how the store makes use of natural light in the front, and then uses warmer lighting in the back. It sets a great atmosphere with their dark walls and floors.
Evaporate also hosts various events at their location. I’ve seen many posts about them hosting live music at their shop before, which adds a unique angle to their business that no other e-cigarette retailer does. Not only are they an e-cigarette shop, but their location can also double as a venue, which is great considering the large amount of artistic talent spread out amongst the members of the revitalized Asbury Park community.
Finally, I can’t mention this place without mentioning how friendly their staff is. Every time I’ve gone in there, every staff member that has been working has always been friendly, talkative, and helpful. They are people that love their job and love helping people quit smoking and enjoy vaping. Their products range from beginner starter kits to elitist mods, and they know the ins and outs of every product they carry, which is reassuring to customers. As long as Evaporate has a staff like this, they’ll be a business that’s in good shape for a very long time.
Evaporate is located at 611 Bangs Avenue, Asbury Park, NJ. To find out what products they are featuring or currently carrying, visit their Facebook page.
(All images taken from Evaporate Facebook page.)
Native Tourist 