Joan Thompson and Kent Kneisel weren’t really planning a big remodeling project at the year-old Bethany Beach location for their boutique Anything Goes, but one motorist this week didn’t leave them any choice.
Coastal Point • Susan Lyons
A motorist plowed through the front door of Anything Goes on Tuesday evening, taking out part of the wall near the door. The incident was reportedly caused by a flip-flop stuck on the accelerator.
The couple’s store, in the Connor Mall next to that family’s package store, had closed Tuesday evening, Sept. 2, about 6 p.m., just before a customer at the shopping center had a flip-flop-related accident.
Instead of hitting the brake as he drove through the parking lot, the man hit the accelerator, catching his flip-flop on the pedal and thus creating a larger front entrance than Thompson and Kneisel really ever wanted — a drive-through entrance, in fact, and not in a good way.
The driver took out the section of wall between the display window and the front door to the boutique, as well as the door itself. He also side-swiped a parked car in the process, according to Cathy Phillips, who works at Connor’s Package Store and arrived on the scene shortly after the accident.
Thompson, who has operated her original Anything Goes in Rehoboth Beach for 19 years and only expanded to the Bethany location last summer, said Wednesday from the storage area of her boarded-up storefront that she had already found a silver lining to this particular dark cloud.
“A retailer’s nightmare is a customer’s dream,” she said of plans already laid to hold a sale to celebrate the business’ unexpected grand reopening in the near future.
Husband Kent Kneisel found another up side.
Coastal Point • Susan Lyons
A motorist plowed through the front door of Anything Goes on Tuesday evening, taking out part of the wall near the door. The incident was reportedly caused by a flip-flop stuck on the accelerator.
“At least nobody got hurt,” he said, expressing hopes that, once insurance adjusters and structural engineers have cleared the way for repair of the damage from Tuesday’s accident, Anything Goes might be open for fall shopping in just a week, or perhaps two.
Customers can check on the business’ reopening by calling Anything Goes in Bethany at (302) 537-1137 or the Rehoboth location, in the Village by the Sea, at (302) 227-2960.
On a side note, like most states, Delaware permits barefoot driving — an option this particular driver might want to consider in lieu of flip-flopping behind the wheel.