Mini-Vacation Over; Melrose Headcase; NJ Hall of Fame

I decided I needed a break, and was not going to try to put up an entry a day, late, to fill in every date, after all, but would just skip a few days, for the first time since I took this blog daily January 7th, 2006. I started a number of posts but ran out of steam before finalizing them. After all, this isn't my "job". Nobody pays me to do this and I don't get fired if I play hookey. So I took three days off (and was two days behind when I accepted that I did not want to bring the blog up-to-date by filling in missing days). I confess I felt guilty, but that is work ethic gone mad.

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I used the following foto of a Bon Jovi banner hanging from a fancy new streetlite outside the former Bamberger's building on Market Street, in the temporary placeholder I put here while I was working on the difficult entries about the arts weekend, and removed that placeholder when I got the actual entries done. But I didn't want future readers to lose the foto, so I'm putting it here, now. In the rest of this post, I am placing pix of and out from the Arena, which figures in other parts of this entry.

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Today I did a tally. In the 3 weeks and 3 days since October 14th, I have put here 180 fotos and 6 videos, with informative/descriptive text. That's an average of almost 8 fotos or videos a day, so I have more than met my pledge to try to put up a foto a day. In any case, I'm back.

Melrose Sh*face. (Remember, * takes the place of any number of characters.) The big controversy of the past couple of days was the ignorant and offensive remark by a CANADIAN hockey commentator on ESPN. (Why are so many foreigners given the best jobs in the United States? Send them all home.) As reported in a USA Today story Gaetano found:

In a video segment posted on ESPN.com last week, Melrose described the recently opened arena as a "beautiful new building" but added, "Don't go outside if you have a wallet or anything else, because the area around the arena is just horrible." ***

Melrose said he has driven through Newark before but has not been to the Prudential Center. He said he based his comments on footage aired by Canadian broadcaster TSN before the Devils' first game at the new arena last Saturday.

"I was trying to be funny and I'm sorry it didn't come through that way," he said by phone from St. Louis. "No excuse. When I talk I don't want to offend anybody. I love hockey and I want Newark to be a success. I certainly never wanted to hurt the feelings of the people of Newark or the people of New Jersey. There was no malice on my part."

The good news is that the offending video is apparently no longer available online, judging from a reaction Gaetano also found that placed a video viewer within that said the requested video is not available. Good. If Melrose had made an editorial comment in good faith, he should not have been censored. But he just mouthed off out of total ignorance. He hadn't been to the building. He hadn't been outside the building. He just joined in the chorus of kneejerk attacks on Newark, as tho it's a free shot for anybody to say anything about Newark without having to check the facts. Any slander will do. Well, no longer!

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The mascots for the Devils, Seton Hall men's basketball, and the soccer Ironmen were all supposed to be present on preview day, but I saw only the Seton Hall pirate, seen here with two fans.

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"DC" in NYC found a Star-Ledger article that contains this passage:

At the end of his comments about the Devils, Melrose said he understood Newark was using the arena to revitalize the downtown.

"I realize the rink is a huge step forward," Melrose said. "Get out there and support the Devils. Build the best restaurants and bars around the arena and make it the most beautiful site of any NHL city in the U.S. or Canada."

(By the way, in case you didn't know, the "nation" of the "National" Hockey League is Canada, not the United States.)
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Mayor Booker leaped to our defense and invited the ignorant b*d to come to Newark and tour the area for himself. We'll see if Melrose takes up the invite. (By the way, there is a Melrose Avenue in my part of town, Vailsburg. I don't know what or whom it is named for. But we don't need to change its name. We can just demand Barry Melrose change his name to something that is not represented by a street name in Newark — "Jerk", "Sh*d", or something.)

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Here is an old, sepia foto of a long-ago Newark soccer team, and its explanatory card on the wall outside one of the lounges in the Arena.

Gaetano also found an odd column by someone who calls himself "Scotty Hockey" that suggested that Melrose should have stood by his remarks, ignorant tho they might be.

Granted he never actually went to Newark before saying it, but if he opened his mouth he should stand by his comments and back them up with the astoundingly high crime statistics.

But he didn't, he rolled over and apologized. How great would it be if when he goes for that lunch for Booker he got mugged??!?!? Ha!

His commentary ticked me off, so I left a comment:

One ignoramus, Melrose, says one stupid thing; another ignoramus, "Scotty Hockey", compounds the stupidity with his own ignorant remarks. Appalling. Newark's crime rates are not "astoundingly high", and especially not in the area of the Arena. And the city is not "mainly African American" but only 54% black, as self-identified in the last census. Like other major American cities, Newark has bad neighborhoods with high crime rates but large areas with low crime rates. As for standing by ignorant comments, that makes as much sense as anything else the "Scotty Hockey" person said: that is, none. As for Melrose being mugged in the Arena area while joining Mayor Booker for lunch, that is about as likely as that "Scotty Hockey" will make sense someday.

He replied. You can check his text if you like. I won't repeat it here, except for the part quoted in this, my further reply:

National crime rates are meaningless, for averaging in rural areas of Iowa and Montana, as well as Fifth Avenue, with the South Bronx and other bad areas. Before I moved from West 46th Street in Manhattan to Vailsburg, in Newark, I did online research that showed that the crime rate in the two areas was practically identical. But I had a lot more trouble with crime in Midtown West (e.g., prostitutes carrying on in cars at 3pm as schools let out) than in Newark. We don't even have window gates in Vailsburg, but no building on West 46th Street would dare go without bars on the windows.
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As for "hav[ing] something riding on saying how wonderful [Newark] is", you have it backwards. I wasn't born in Newark and thus don't feel forced to defend it. I moved here because it's wonderful. If it weren't, I could live many other places. But I bought a house here (cheap!) and set down roots alongside my 70-foot oak trees because Newark has a future of great promise, not just a past (aside from an unfortunate 35-year stretch) of distinction.
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To date, Bon Jovi and the Devils (I'll get to a game sometime, which will be my first hockey game ever, maybe Devils vs. Rangers -- hey, let's meet in the Prudential Center and I'll bet you a quarter (25 cents, that is, about what a hockey game means to me) that the Devils win) have drawn something like 150,000 people to the new Arena, and there hasn't been a single serious incident reported. Not one.
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People who don't know Newark should check out my fotoblog. A picture is worth 1,000 words, and I've put up over 1,700 pictures there), http://newarkusa.blogspot.com/.
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I am not a pompous ass, but am astoundingly modest considering how brilliant I am.
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When you make your first trip to the Prudential Center, I trust you will give your first-hand impressions honestly and admit that the New Newark looks damned good.

I probably won't trouble to check back at that site to see if "Scotty Hockey" has anything further to say to or about me.

Hall of Fame. In channel-surfing tonite, I chanced across a public-access program, We've Got Issues, that was discussing a New Jersey Hall of Fame that was apparently approved by the State Government in September 2005. The first inductees, 15 in number, have been chosen, and include Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Buzz Aldrin, Yogi Berra, Toni Morrison, Frank Sinatra, and, of all people, Meryl Streep! (That would be Cruella Deville — born in Summit and raised in Bernardsville. I did not know that.) Future "classes" of inductees are expected to run 7 to 9 individuals. The standard for inclusion seems to be some significant tie to New Jersey, even if they were not born here. Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein, for instance, were born in Ohio and Germany, respectively.
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The Hall has a website but not yet a physical locus. I sent the following message to them about that.

I chanced, tonite, to hear much of the discussion about the Hall of Fame on We've Got Issues. Steven Edwards said that the Hall has not yet settled on a physical location, but mentioned some of the criteria to be used in settling upon a site, prime among them accessibility. Permit me to suggest that there are only two places that make any sense at all, Newark and Trenton. Trenton is only minimally accessible, because despite its geographically central position, it is not readily accessible to the bulk of New Jersey's population, which is to be found in the northern part of the state. Newark, by contrast, is at the center of an unrivaled nexus of transportation, by road, rail, air, and sea, as makes it an obvious choice not just for New Jerseyans headed for Newark but also for people from all over the world who pass thru Newark on their way to or from New York.
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Affordability was another criterion mentioned, and Newark is very affordable for an urban setting. Yes, you might find a cheaper site in a suburb or non-prime area of Atlantic City. But almost no suburban location would be readily accessible to significant numbers of potential visitors by public transportation; and, altho, Atlantic City might be a good place for a satellite location to 'tease' visitors into looking for the main institution, Atlantic City is isolated from interstate traffic, and most people who visit A.C. are interested only in gambling.
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Mr. Edwards also said that ideally there should be other attractions nearby, to create a cultural synergy with the Hall of Fame. Newark has the New Jersey Historical Society, clearly an ideal match; NJPAC; the Newark Museum; a number of art galleries, private and public (e.g., private, the Rupert Ravens Contemporary gallery; public, the Dana Library galleries); and now the enormous sports and concert venue, Prudential Center.
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Surely there cannot be any better place for the New Jersey Hall of Fame than Downtown Newark.
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As for a specific location, how about the former Central Graphic Arts Building, two blocks from Newark Penn Station? The building is huge, unoccupied (I think), and a two-minute walk from either Newark Penn Station or the Prudential Center; it is across from Gateway Center, and on McCarter Highway. If that is too big, you could start with vacant space in one of the Gateway Center buildings (perhaps where the City Without Walls gallery used to be, if that space is still vacant) or on the ground floor of the old Hahne Department Store building or adjoining Griffith Building, both of which are supposed to be under reconstruction. Specific siting is something you can scout out. But what should not even be in doubt is that the New Jersey Hall of Fame belongs in only one place: the greatest, most historic, and most cultured city of New Jersey, Newark.