I woke up exhausted this morning. Maybe it was the cumulative effect of yesterday’s 10-mile JC Bike Tour (or the 100 bike miles over the course of the previous week) piled on top of Fridays’ Machete y Ron performance and Saturday’s Everything JC festival in the Heights, but I’m not complaining. It’s a happy exhaustion.
The move up the hill has been good to me. In the last month-and-a-half, I’ve been gardening, biking, giving all my money to plumbers and carpenters, and generally rediscovering this part of town. Rather than a feeling of disconnect, which many of my friends predicted, I think I’m getting a much better dose of real Jersey City, away from the waterfront condos and watered-down $10 drinks and ubiquitous hipsters.
I still take the ride Downtown almost every day, and enjoy the challenge of riding up Dickinson Hill coming back. My neighborhood is quiet and diverse, I mean really diverse, with all kinda people living up on top of each other. That’s in contrast to Downtown, where diversity has become harder to find.
The other side of Downtown’s otherwise well-organized activist center is its lack of diversity (cultural, economic, educational). Even the awesome Bike Tour, despite a rainbow of riders, was almost entirely run by white people. In and of itself, that’s not wrong – We shouldn’t expect a bike tour to be an instrument of social change, necessarily - but it highlights what I’ve feared about what’s changing around my city. Read More…
The last time I saw Charlie Markey was (randomly enough) at the C-Town on Jersey Avenue. I had my ear buds in and was unaware that he had been following me around the supermarket for a good five minutes while I considered the difference between the Gala and the Red Delicious. I was startled to find the slightly disheveled Charlie with that cherubic (OK, mocking) grin on his face. Read More…
For the half of a half a dozen of you who may have been wondering where I’ve been, a lot has been changing around the good offices of BCB. Mainly, they’ve moved. Uptown (as we used to call anything at the apex of Dickinson Hill) to the Heights. It’s been a great move – I’ve always dug the Heights and I have a backyard now – but I never expected to be thrown for such an emotional loop just by moving my living space. Read More…
Spectra blue shirts engage in some information overload
The blue shirts scattered like cockroaches in the kitchen when I aimed my point and shoot camera in their direction. “Nobody wants to see my ugly mug,” says one of the Spectra Energy reps at yesterday’s Open House in the gym at PS #9 on Mercer Street.
Texas-based Spectra, which wants to build a natural gas pipeline extension through some area neighborhoods, is holding several Open House events to get property owner feedback. Fortunately for Spectra, their reps far out-numbered property owners yesterday, and what some of us thought would be a public discussion (on the insane notion of building a gas pipeline extension through my backyard!), turned out to be a public relations bum rush. Read More…
An appeals court is weighing arguments from a group of Tea Party activists in New Jersey who want to recall Sen. Bob Menendez. The groups were in court this week, asking an appeals panel to let them continue to collect names on a recall petition while the court determines if they can even recall Menendez. Read More…
Now that’s how you do a snowstorm. 48 hours of steady falling snow can do wonders for a city. Before it turns to hard gray slush, the blanket of white and the hush it brings can fool you into thinking that this little town is something close to heaven. Granted, you gotta be a little starry-eyed, (or cross-eyed) to see it, but Jersey City in the middle of a major snow event, is hard to beat. Read More…
The public hearing on the municipal budget began around 7 p.m., with the first of what would be 30-some-odd speakers. Slightly after 7 p.m. I was on my way out the door. I know this rankles a few of you. How can he report on a meeting he didn’t even stay to watch. I could write “so-and-so said blah blah blah, and the people said “Yeah!” or “Recall!” or “Steven!” (and I literally wouldn’t be too far off) but I’ll leave that to the kids at JCI, HR and the JJ, who get paid to do that sort of thing. Read More…
Ever since the days when former Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague threw his wild, whiskey-fueled, Roman-themed parties at the old Casino, Asbury Park has always been the shore destination for Jersey City folks. Actually, I made the part about Frank Hague up. (But it could be true.) The more likely reason for Asbury’s popularity among JC peeps was its relative close proximity in those pre-Parkway days and the easy train commute.
I love it down there and was actually part of a team that helped relaunch the old Stone Pony a decade ago. (That’s another story for another day.) Asbury’s grittier than the rest of the Jersey shore and, since the 1980’s was always one of the most-neglected of our shore towns. The city has boomed and busted and boomed and busted since then, but it has remained popular, especially with gay people and those specifically not looking for a Jersey Shore experience.
I was down last week to do a radio piece on the Silverball Museum, a pinballer’s heaven, which just moved to the spiffed-up Boardwalk. The owner, Rob Ilvento, is part of the Ilvento’s of Jersey City, who ran the West Side Avenue eatery of the same name for decades. You can listen that story here.
Thursday’s indictment of former Newark Deputy Mayor Ron Salahudddin may yet prove to be a blow (or not) to the Cory Booker reelection campaign, but the mayor’s response to the announcement is something Booker’s buddy, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, might’ve been wise to study. If only the U.S. Attorney’s office had announced the Sullahadin indictment earlier, Healy could’ve studied the tape. (But you can’t control the timing of a corruption investigation, can you?) Read More…
We asked last week if Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy felt that he should apologize to JC residents for the actions of close friend and former Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini and other Healy Team members during the spring of 2009. Here’s the mayor’s response: Read More…
Loading ...
