Little New York

Newark has long lived in the shadow of its big brother a dozen miles away, and the comparison is part of what handicaps Newark's revival. Were Newark in the middle of South Dakota, it would be seen as the regional commercial and cultural center it is. This building, for instance, would grace any small city.

If you look closely at the street level of this building, you might think you were in Manhattan.

Well, a nicer, more polite, cleaner Manhattan than the genuine article, at least.

Spring, at Last!

Today was finally a full-fledged spring day here in Resurgence City, and my flowering bulbs have made a good start on their annual resurgence. Here is a wide view of most of the daffodils and hyacinths in my front yard.

Here's a closer view of the right side of the yard from a different angle.

Here is a view of the crocuses in my backyard at their height that I showed in an earlier stage several days ago.

And here is one little cluster of purple crocuses about 14 feet from the larger group.

The tulips at the front of the yard are not yet in bloom.
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I could never afford in Manhattan the kind of space for flowers and veggies that I have in Newark. In fact, I couldn't afford it in the suburbs that start seven blocks from my house!

Wires everywhere

Among the things that a smaller city has that cause visual clutter are telephone poles and aerial wires. (In Manhattan, such wires are below ground.) Here is a picture of the other house with turrets that I saw in North Newark last week. The wire clutter is one reason I initially chose to show the other house like it down the block. But it occurred to me on looking again that there is a certain dynamic tension to the network of wires spreading out from a focus near the house, so I present that picture after all.

When I initially resized this foto, the lines of the wires broke up. So I tried a different type of resizing option in my graphics program, "Smart Size", which gave much better results. This might be a fix for at least some of my problems with moiré effects.
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The webmaster of the Newarkology website answered a question I posed here some days ago, namely, who was Irvine Turner, for whom the Boulevard is named? Irvine Turner was apparently the first black councilmember in Newark, who was elected in 1954 and died sometime in the 1970s. Good to know.

Fast progress on my block

The two houses going up three lots from mine, which on the 16th had bare plywood walls, now have siding and roofing. As you can see from this picture, some areas remain without siding, which leads me to believe they may be where brick will go. I should know in a few more days.

What had looked to be windowless inner walls between the two buildings now are perforated with windows.

However, the outer walls, in which you would think windows would be more important, have none. Will windows be cut thru the siding already placed? Again, I should know within a few days.
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The wall at the back of this picture is a retaining wall. The houses on my side of the street are cut into a slope, and the lots behind, which front on Sanford Avenue, are level from the Sanford elevation back to the property line, where there is a sudden, sharp drop to the level of our yards. So retaining walls hold back the soil of the higher lots. I suppose the builders could have left a steep, uniform slope, but that's not what they did in those days. (My house was built in 1930.)
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Your monitor may play odd games with the fine, repetitive parallel lines in these pictures. Does anyone know a fix for this? If so, please let me know, at ResurgenceCity@aol.com.

Enduring error

There is a statue of Columbus in Washington Park near the Broad Street edge. On the base, on the inner edge parallel to Broad Street, is this inscription, which immortalizes in bronze three typographical errors. Do you see them?

In an odd way, these typos are a tribute to the thoro assimilation of Newark's Italian immigrants, because no one on the committee that oversaw the creation of this monument knew Italian well enuf to catch these obvious errors.
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OK. Did you see them? "Giuseppe" is misspelled in three places, at the top as "Guisippe" Verdi, at the lower left as "Guiseppe" Ciochetti, and on the lower right as "Guiseppe" Verdi. Hm. Why couldn't those letters, U and I in inverse order, have fallen off if any were to? It is never too late to fix some mistakes. This is one. Well, three, actually.
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(P.S. In reviewing this entry months later, on September 24, 2006, I chanced to see, bizarrely, a typographical error of my own, "could't" for "couldN't". Inasmuch as I said "It is never too late to fix some mistakes", I fixed it.)

Our "Saviour"

I rarely get into North Newark, so that area is underrepresented in my fotos, as is the Ironbound. Alas, the weather was crappy again today, so I didn't head out to take pix anywhere. Yesterday, however, I did chance across a striking brick church opposite the turreted houses I showed here last nite, so, this being Sunday, "Church Day" here, I present two pix of that edifice, the Presbyterian Church of Our Saviour.

Monitors play nasty tricks on pix like this at reduced size, and moiré effects appear magically from patterns of fine parallel lines. Here's a closer view that should have minimal distortion.

I dislike British spellings, so would prefer "Savior" to "Saviour". But I don't know how old this church is, and some linguistically conservative people retained the OUR-ending far longer than others. Noah Webster offered -OR instead, early in the 19th Century, but it took a while for some people to catch up.

Turrets in North Newark

I happened to be in the area of 1st Avenue and 7th Street today when I saw some handsome old brick buildings — this is, after all, "Brick City" — with the kind of great architectural details that modernist architecture detests but people like. I could sure have used a wide-angle lens for this scene, but my camera could capture only one or the other of these buildings entire. Most of the second would be cut off. So I chose to show the corner building and an impressive conifer, with just a piece of the second turreted house down the block showing at the far left.

Alas, the weather was dismal, not just drearily gray but also cold, and my battery went out (I have two spares, but had run out of the house late to make an appointment, and left both spares at home), so I must leave to a nicer day trying to take a better picture of the scene.

Looking ahead to Branch Brook fest

It is finally beginning to look, tho not yet feel, like spring. So it's not too soon for out-of-towners — and especially all you former Newarkers scattered to the winds in a great Newark Diaspora — to make plans to head to Branch Brook Park for this year's Cherry Blossom Festival. The 30th annual event kicks off Sunday, April 9th, and runs thru Sunday the 23rd. April 9th is only 16 days from now!, so if you need to make airplane reservations, get on the phone or Internet and do it!
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I've asked my friend Joe from Belleville (where the most glorious displays appear) to let me know when the blooms approach their peak, and I'll let you know here a couple of days in advance.
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To remind you of how beautiful Branch Brook Park is, here's a view of a forward salient of the perforated concrete wall along the lake in the southern portion of the park.

This foto was taken after peak flowering, but you can see a couple of cherry trees in bloom nonetheless. It seems to me that the lake should have a lot more cherry blossoms than it has now, so we should start planting more trees now that Newark is coming out of its long sleep of shame, and finding its pride again.
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This would be a very good investment in bringing tourists to town, and especially bringing people in the Newark Diaspora back to their roots.
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If you have thought of seeing what's happened to the old neighborhood, or haven't visited your parents' or grandparents' graves in Newark cemeteries in a while, make this the year to come back for the cherry blossoms. And once you're here, take in a show at NJPAC, stop in at Aljira, visit the little critters in the Newark Museum's Mini-Zoo, see stars at the Planetarium, and have some great meals at Forno's, Iberia, or Spain, have ribs on Bloomfield Avenue, or enjoy a cup of coffee and Portuguese pastries in the Ironbound or a slice of pizza in Penn Station.
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If you haven't been back in years, you have a wonderful surprise waiting. Bring your camera. You are going to want to show your friends in distant places that they are completely mistaken about Newark.

Crumbling elegance

The foto below shows a grand old streetlite on one of the overpasses within Branch Brook Park. Note that there are chunks missing from the stonework on the lower right, probably as a result of decades of freezing and thawing of rainwater. Even stone needs repair from time to time, and Newark's long years of fiscal distress may have shunted funds that should have gone to such repairs to more urgent matters. Now that things are looking up, perhaps we will tend to our patrimony.

Different perspective

Here's a different view of Downtown from most I have shown here, north-south instead of east-west. This foto shows the view from McCarter Highway in late afternoon going south. The FBI Building is the tallest structure, on the left; One Newark Center (Seton Hall Law School) is the building on the right; and One Gateway Center is the building with the microwave antennas on top.

I originally took this to show the construction then underway, but since I haven't taken an updated view since construction began, I did not process this in my graffics program to bring out the foreground. I'll do a before/after comparison someday. But not today. Stay tuned!

Room to grow

On the far side of the building pictured yesterday is Jones Street, a renamed continuation of a major north-south thorofare that farther north is called Norfolk Street and farther south is called Irvine Turner Boulevard. It used to mark the western boundary of a large swath of the Central Ward occupied by high-rise public housing developments that became a cancerous blight of crime and the culture of poverty. All of them were destroyed, mostly by explosive demolition. (I have a little video of the last such demolition on my Resurgence City website. The link here goes to an introductory page; a link to the actual video appears toward the bottom of that page.)
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Now parts of the leveled "brownfield" are being built on, but parts remain for developers. Here's one view of an empty area, showing how close it is — half a mile — to Downtown's office towers.

By the way, does anyone know who Irvine Turner was? I find nothing in a cursory search of the Internet. We really need a book about the origins of Newark street names. If you know of such a compendium, or even just who Irvine Turner was, let me know, at ResurgenceCity@aol.com.

NCC senior housing

Today I focus on an apartment building that I believe is for senior citizens, built by the New Community Corporation on South Orange Avenue at Jones Street. This is the view from SOA past NCC's private "Seven Generations Park".

Trinity cathedral

This Sunday, let me show a closeup view of the Episcopal cathedral of Newark, Trinity & St. Philip's, at the northern edge of Military Park in Downtown Newark.

This looks like an ordinary church and not the grand structure most people might expect of a cathedral, but the Episcopal Church is not a big deal around here. I think Catholics, Baptists, and Congregationalists predominate in Newark.

Looks, but Does Not Feel, a Lot Like Spring

I was in my backyard yesterday and saw the first crocuses of the spring. Here's one group poking up thru the oak leaves and between rocks. It's too soon to remove the leaf cover. I'll rake in a few weeks, which should provide some protection for tender shoots and allow time for more nutrients to return to the underlying soil. It is to have yards (front, back, both sides) for flowers and veggies that I bought a freestanding house in Newark to begin with. I couldn't afford either the purchase prices or the much-higher property taxes in the suburbs, and wanted a place with urban amenities and frequent public transit. My section of Newark, leafy Vailsburg, filled that bill perfectly.

The buds in this picture are not quite open, but a single flower about 12 feet away is partly open. My yard has lots of crocuses that the former owners must have planted. They hadn't been fertilized in years, it would seem, and some didn't get a lot of lite, but I get some flowers every year. I'm hoping for more now that I have had a tree service thin the trees to let thru more lite. I've also moved some crocuses and provided some fertilizer.
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A lot of daffodils and a few hyacinths on my little front yard are about to pop too.
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With brite, sunny days, it's beginning to look like spring, tho most trees are bare. I have some evergreens, so my yard is never completely gray. I always have some cheery greenery out one window or another. We're not getting as much rain as I'd like, so I may actually have to turn on my hose to water key plants just starting to produce spring flowers.
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The weather has been chilly, and is expected to remain 7-10 degrees colder than normal for the next week, despite the arrival of spring on Monday. Ever notice that when we have three days of balmy weather, the "Global Warming" crowd seizes upon it as proof that we're going to fry unless we do something about "greenhouse gases", but when we have three weeks of subnormal temps, nobody leaps to say we're headed into a new Ice Age?

Military Park detail

Here's a picture that focuses on the wrought iron railings and cannon toward the southern end of Military Park looking toward Gutzon Borglum's biggest statue in bronze, "Wars of America", in beautiful Downtown Newark.

The New Newark, High-Rise and Low

My friend Gaetano in the Ironbound sent me a link to a discussion thread with lots of great pictures of the New Newark, focused on high-rises Downtown. Page 2 of the discussion contains most of the pictures. One of the participants in that discussion, "Jersey Mentality", has this text at the end of his post:

Check out Jersey:
10th in population, 47th in size, 3rd in personal family income, 6th in Gross State Product per person and 8th in Gross State product, home to the best, and worst cities. Haddonfield and Camden, only a few miles apart. Three of 5 safest counties in the nation (Hunterdon, Bergen, and Passaic). More revolutionary war battles fought here then any other state by far (over 100 battles). Mostly all fighting in the M counties (Morris, Mercer, Monmouth, and Middlesex). Most interesting state in the nation.

Amen, brother! I can't verify the claims there, but they sound right to me.
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There is, at that site, an article from today's New York Times about a project that NJPAC is spearheading to build deluxe housing opposite the Center. The director of the Center is shown in front of a window of the Center that looks out over Downtown. I've seen that view, because one year the firm I then worked for had its "holiday" party there. Few people see that view, however, because it's available only from the rehearsal areas/special-event rooms above ground level. The director in fact spoke briefly and appreciatively to us, because our firm was a big supporter of the Center from the beginning.
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Today, my focus is on much more modest structures, the kinds of private houses popping up all over the city. I have shown earlier stages of the construction of these two houses three doors from me, but none from my backyard. Until now.
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From my yard, the new construction looks like this. I took these pix late in the day, so they're not as brite as I'd like. In a couple of weeks, the vines atop my neighbor's garage will be green and more visually appealing.

Here's an updated view from the vantage point of earlier pix.

As recently as nine days ago, there was only the start of one wooden wall above the foundation. Now, look.
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And here is a view from directly in front, showing the narrow space between the two houses and the windowless inner sides.

I don't think I'd like a whole wall of my house to be without windows, but I guess some people find it easier to lay out furniture, paintings, family fotos and the like if they don't have to adjust around windows.

Raymond-Commerce renovation up close

Here is a foto of the construction site for the renovation of Newark's second-tallest building, which was originally an office tower but is now being created into apartments.

The Raymond Boulevard side of the building shows a sign announcing the anticipated completion date, only part of which fits in a normal camera view. (I don't have one of those super-expensive digital cameras with wide-angle lens.)

I just went to the website noted on that sign, and it has a very jazzy, youth-oriented, slideshow intro that shows plainly the developer's intended target audience: a young, hip, affluent and multiracial audience eager to embrace all that life in a human-scale city has to offer. (They cleverly allow people who remember the site as www.1180rentals.com rather than "eleven80rentals" to get to the same site via redirect.)
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There will be a rental office on Commerce Street opposite 1180 in due course, but it's not yet open.

I hadn't realized that the apartments would be rentals. I assumed that, as in New York, they would be condos or coops. Rentals seem much wiser at this stage in the development of Downtown Newark as a residential center. Good thinking.

Battleship Iowa for Newark?

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has refused an offer by the Navy to station the battleship U.S.S. Iowa there, to serve as a tourist attraction. USA Today reports:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to spurn the ship. Supervisors who oppose the offer say they don't want a ship from a military in which openly gay men and women cannot serve. They also say they don't want it because they oppose the Iraq war, which city voters condemned in a 2004 ballot question.

"I don't think the climate has improved for tying a 10-story warship, or gun, to the waterfront," Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval says. * * *

The Iowa is among four "Iowa class" battleships, the biggest the Navy ever sailed. The others have found homes: the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor, the USS Wisconsin at Norfolk, Va., and the USS New Jersey at Camden, N.J. The Navy has said it will officially invite bids for a permanent dock and museum site for the Iowa this spring.

Newark should bid for it. We need more tourist attractions, and Newark has lots of water. We are a seaport, on a river. The Passaic may not look like much, but it is deep, as an automobile tragedy demonstrated in October 2004, when three women drowned when their SUV ran off Raymond Boulevard and sank in 35 feet of water.
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The Navy will eventually come around as regards its antihomosexual policies. After all, blacks were discriminated against and segregated in the military until 1948, even tho the very first person killed by the British at the formation of this country was Crispus Attucks, a black man. We sometimes take a while to do the right thing, but we do eventually do it.
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After years of inactivity on riverfront redevelopment, work has apparently begun on some kind of project east of Penn Plaza. Here are some indicative fotos taken late in the day. This first view shows the boom placed alongside the frontage being redeveloped, to prevent anything that falls into the river from the worksite and might float away from contaminating the river downstream.

Here is a view from the Newark approach to the Jackson Street bridge. It shows the worksite at a very preliminary stage. I'm not sure what is to be built, but there are already an office trailer, a crane, and piles of heavy steel beams onsite. Note the steel retaining wall at the river's edge.

Here's a better view of the retaining wall, from ground level.

That wall wasn't there last year.
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Now, I don't know if the U.S.S. Iowa would fit comfortably with whatever is being built on the Passaic, and it might not fit thru the bridges that cross the Passaic between Downtown and Newark Bay. But it would certainly fit into Port Newark or alongside a dock we could easily build at Newark Bay.
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I haven't yet made my way to Newark Bay or Port Newark to see what kind of space is already available. I don't even know if there is public access to the Port or if extravagant worries about "security" bar casual visitors who are just out to see the facilities and the view in all directions. Should I get there, you'll see pictures here.
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In the meantime, if you think, as I do, that it would be great for Newark to have a battleship to help draw some of those millions of tourists that visit Manhattan out to our area, suggest that to Mayor James, County Executive DiVincenzo, Governor Corzine, New Jersey tourism, your councilmember, the Navy, and anyone else you think appropriate. Tell them you saw the idea here.
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Who knows? Maybe a lot of Iowans on vacation would actually venture into Newark to see a ship named for their state — and in so doing be startled by how crazy their preconceptions of Newark are.
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San Francisco is known as "The City by the Bay". Like San Francisco, Newark has a bay of the same name. I suspect the views across to Manhattan are spectacular. But somehow nothing has been done to build housing there. Maybe the U.S.S. Iowa could form the core of an entire new community of pleasure boating, housing, seafood restaurants, and shops. San Francisco has Fisherman's Wharf. Newark could have Iowa Wharf.

Seating Area

A few days ago I showed in this space a couple of pictures of the flowers that used to be changed regularly around the tree in the Gateway Center lobby between Gateway One and the Hilton Hotel. I recently revisited the area and took an updated foto, which shows the tables that have replaced the flowers so people can relax and have a cozy lunch under the skylite.

I don't see why there couldn't be both flowers and tables, and there are still some flowers or decorative plants in the planter. What is not self-evident, however, is that the tree is fake! The tree that used to be there was real, but this is a very good imitation. I'd prefer a real tree. I think the trees down the corridor to the Hilton are still real. But this one is such a good fake that I'm just not sure.

Inside the Basilica

This Sunday's church picture shows the organist practicing in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in the North Ward. I took it with my cameraphone, and the liting conditions inside the Cathedral are less than ideal for low-end fotografic equipment, so this picture may be of lesser quality than I'd like. But it does give a sense of the place.

It's too bad you can't hear the majestic tones of the pipe organ in that cavernous, magnificent space.

Artsy View

Something a little different today: an impressionistic view of the Jackson Street bridge at dusk seen thru the small-mesh chain-link fence at its Newark approach.

City Hall Draped

When I went to City Hall February 28th to get nominating petitions for Mayor, I was startled to find that scaffolding was rising on most of its facade. Yesterday when I went by to take pix of the scaffolding, I discovered that much of the scaffolding is now hidden behind some kind of windbreaking fabric.

It looks almost like a Christo project, doesn't it? (Click here to see seven of my fotos of Christo's "Gates" in Central Park.)
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I think cleaning the facade is part of the renovation now being undertaken, and look forward to seeing a briter City Hall when the scaffolding comes down. I'll keep you posted.

Downtown at Dusk

I had to go Downtown yesterday to my branch of the Bank of America (Fleet Bank when I opened the account) and to PSE&G. After I finished that business, I walked around Military Park taking pictures, then drove past City Hall, then parked by the Jackson Street bridge to take sunset pix of an area I have shot at dawn, then to the area of the Bridge Street bridge, then to the Clay Street bridge. Oddly, there was no red sky at sunset. (This morning we had rain. Maybe that was indicated by the old saying, "Red at nite, sailor's delite. Red in the morning, sailor take warning." Or not.)
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None of my Clay Street pix turned out. They were all fuzzy, probably due to vibrations caused by traffic across that swing bridge. But I got a whole bunch of good pictures elsewhere that, interspersed with fotos from other parts of the city, will keep this foto-a-day blog going for quite some time.
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While there, I chanced across Rosemary L., a woman who feeds the cats and birds in the area of the Jackson Street bridge. She was carrying four shopping bags, and we chatted amiably because she wondered what I was doing. When I showed her, in the monitor of my digital camera, one of the pictures I was taking, she exclaimed, "So beautiful." Then, waving toward the view of the Downtown skyline, she repeated that it's all so beautiful. We both wish more people could see how beautiful it is. So here's an indicative picture.

As I walked back to my car, Rosemary was finishing up pouring out canned cat food, and I asked how far she had to walk. When it seemed a long way, I offered her a lift, and she took me up on that. It turns out she was going to walk from the Newark side of the Jackson Street bridge all the way to Hamilton Street east of Frank E. Rodgers Boulevard, a distance of at least a mile — carrying four shopping bags. What a woman!
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We chatted while I drove her to her corner. She's a garrulous retired woman who used to be in show business. She said she might be out feeding the seagulls and ducks Friday around 12:30. Maybe I'll see her tomorrow and take pix of the seagulls flying up to catch food mid-air. If I make it out then, you'll see a picture here.

Weequahic Lake in Winter

A lake occupies about a fourth of the area of Weequahic Park in the South Ward, west of the Airport. (See this blog's entry of March 1st for pix of the northern portion of the lake.)
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Here is a view past winter-bare trees looking toward the southern portion of the lake. I hope to take comparable views of the fotos made in the winter once the summer rolls around and the trees are filled with leaves. Stay tuned.

Smith Street update

On January 25th I showed some pictures of new housing construction on my block. Here's an update.
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The lot two from mine is a building site for two houses, not one as I originally thought.

It's going up with a largely Salvadoran crew, judging from "El Salvador" banners and flags hanging in two vehicles parked by the worksite. Judging from his first name as displayed on a sign nailed to a tree at the site, the salesman is probably Portuguese (or Brazilian). The Spanish would be "Joaquin", with an N.

Down at the corner, on 18th Avenue, the two houses that in late January were nowhere near completion are now fully clad in brickfront and clapboard siding. The one on the left is apparently very far along, in that an "OPEN HOUSE" sign points to it.

The salesman on those properties is also Portuguese (I know that not only from the name but also from a conversation with the owner last January). The sign indicates a two-family house, but I thought the owner intended to sell each house as a one-family. Perhaps each can be treated as two-family, tho a buyer might prefer to occupy the whole house and not rent out any part of it. Note the stained-glass panels in the door behind the sign in the foto below. Nice touch.

Both salesmen are affiliated with Exit Realty, a company established by a Canadian that is now widely established in various parts of the United States. I might myself want to affiliate with Exit, once I pass my state real-estate salesperson's exam. But I have to find my real-estate school completion certificate before I can even take that exam. It's around here somewhere. Lately, I keep losing things. It's as tho somebody is wandering around my house hiding things I need — my checks, my newer camera (which would have made sharper pictures than appear above), my business-card case. If I catch that bastard, I'm going to wring his neck!

Grim Project

I couldn't help notice the difference between the Seth Boyden Apartments in the Weequahic section of Newark, where I saw the new voting machine last week, and another public housing development, Munn Avenue Homes in the Vailsburg section. The Seth Boyden project (named for the Newark industrialist who invented patent leather) is grim.

The Munn Avenue project is leafy and pleasant.

I don't think the difference is merely that the pictures at Seth Boyden were taken in winter and those at Munn during the summer. There's no grass at all at Seth Boyden, not dry winter grass, just no grass at all. Why the discrepancy? All Newarkers should live in more pleasant surroundings than Seth Boyden Apartments.

Nominating Petition Online Now

I have now put my nominating petition for Mayor of Newark online, along with a statement of the kinds of things I'd like to do should I be honored with the office of Mayor. The petition appears in two locations (in case there's a problem with one): http://www.resurgencecity.org/Petition.pdf and http://members.aol.com/ResurgenceCity/Petition.pdf. The introductory statement of principles (a preliminary platform) appears at http://www.resurgencecity.org/Mayorrun.html and http://members.aol.com/ResurgenceCity/Mayorrun.html.
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Petitions must be printed (make sure the "No Scaling" option is set) and mailed to me at the address given in the platform piece in time to arrive no later than March 15th, so I can get them to the City Clerk on March 16th, 11 days from now! This is the computer age. We should be able to get things done quickly now.
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OK, let's get back to the pictures. This being Sunday, let me offer a foto of the Eglise du Nazareen du Bon Berger, a Haitian church on South Orange Avenue at Oakland Street in my neighborhood, Vailsburg.

Changing Scene

When I worked in Gateway Center, I periodically took pictures of the changing flowers around the tree in the middle of the lobby outside Gateway One. Here are two. The first shows some white flower (chrysanthemums?).

This second shows orange kalanchoes. I don't care for white flowers unless they contrast with something substantial beyond.

Much better.

Playground

Most outsiders thinking of Newark playgrounds might envision a bare patch of concrete with perhaps some rusty jungle jim and swings with one side hanging. Here is a view of a more typical playground in a townhouse complex in the Central Ward.

IDT in England

My friend and colleague Jeremy, who lives in London, is spending some time in a place called Lancing, 10 miles west of Brighton and a 75-minute train ride from London on the English Channel. A plaque there says "This Community is recorded in the DOMESDAY BOOK [issued in the year] 1086". Domesday is often pronounced"doomsday". (A search at the Domesday Book website does not show "Lancing" as one of the communities named, so it might have been entered differently. I also searched under "Sompting", which is, no joke, the name of a community nearby! That doesn't show either. But I'll take the plaque's word for it. We know England has been continuously occupied for a very long time.)
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In any case, Jeremy recently advised me:

You'll be interested to hear that my telco/ISP (in Lancing) is now Newark's very own IDT Corporation (www.idt.net; 520 Broad Street). *** IDT's using the brand name Toucan here.

Well, golll-eee!
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Here are two pictures of IDT's headquarters building here in Newark, which also houses its subsidiary, Net2Phone. First, here's the view past the trees of Washington Park, from the area of the Newark Museum.

This second is of the IDT Building past the J. Massey Rhind statue of Washington at the southeast corner of Washington Park.

And here is a picture of Lancing, England.

If that picture, taken this year, doesn't look British enuf (tho, note the cars running on the left side of the road), how about this second view of the same area (from the 1960s)?

In looking thru the Lancing Postcards website for an appropriate foto, I found this notation:

[I]n 1845 a famous horse was reared in this area. Although the real colour and name of the horse are uncertain this animal became immortalized in a story book by Anna Sewell called “Black Beauty”.

Jee. Jeremy didn't mention that. The people who put together the Lancing Postcards website are really proud of their town. Newark could use more of that kind of pride.