Another Essex County Titanic Victim

In doing an image search in Ask.com on "newark nj" today, I came across a webpage about the Broad Street Station on a website called "Great Railroad Stations" which mentioned that the architect of the Montclair station did not live to see it completed because he died in the Titanic disaster. There's a very nice article about him on the website "Encyclopedia Titanica". He was only 25 years old, a second-class passenger headed home to Orange, NJ on the great ship after touring architectural sites in Europe and Turkey.
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I will investigate other fotos I found thru Ask.com Image search, over time, and mention here things I find particularly interesting or scenic.
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Today's fotos are of the Broad Street Station. First, a view of the Station on the right, the former Westinghouse meter factory on the left, and the Newark Light Rail station between. Mies van der Rohe's Colonnade Apartments appear in the distance.

And here's a view of the ticket windows inside, with the sun streaming in, one late afternoon.

Titanic, Shaq, Growth

No, Shaquille O'Neal isn't growing. Newark is growing. A New York Times article sent to me by a reader says that Newark's population is up 3.3% since the year 2000, and half a percent this past year alone. That is a higher rate of growth than any other major city in the Northeast. Gaetano sent me a slitely different story, also from the Times, with the same information, and told me that The Daily Newarker blog drew its readers' attention to that same story. Good. The more people know, the better.
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Newark's own Shaquille O'Neal has a new summer-season show on ABC television in which he is helping Florida kids lose weight and get fit. (Shaq now plays for the Miami Heat. He doesn't like cold weather. Did you know that Shaq has an MBA?) The woman who trained me in MS Word alerted me to the show because her brother, Tarik Tyler, a physical trainer, is part of it. Lisa used to live in Queens but moved to Bloomfield a couple of years ago. I hope to ease her into Newark over time.
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Another news item Gaetano found was the auction yesterday of mementoes connected with the Titanic disaster. A 9-page handwritten letter about the event by a 16-year-old survivor who lost her father to the sea sold for $16,800. The Newark native was traveling with her father. She got a place in a lifeboat. He did not. Very sad.
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Today's foto is of a grand funerary monument to one Elias L'Hommedieu, died 1858, in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in North Newark, that looks like a gigantic chess piece. I found no reference to that gentleman in a Google search, but an Ezra L'Hommedieu was a member of the Continental Congress from New York. A 1783 letter from him to the Governor of New York written from Princeton, where Congress was then meeting, says that New Jersey offered 30,000 pounds toward the purchase of lands at the Falls of Trenton on the Delaware River for new houses of Congress. (But Congress met in Trenton for only 14 months.) Perhaps Elias was a descendant of that distinguished personage, but I don't really know.

(In looking to Wikipedia to find when Princeton and Trenton served as capital of the U.S., I chanced to see that today's hilited article, about the New Jersey Devils, has them already based in Newark! By the way, Princeton was the seat of the Continental Congress, and thus capital of the United States, from June 30, 1783 to November 4, 1783, and Trenton was the Nation's capital from November 1, 1784 to December 24, 1784. News 12 New Jersey showed tourist sites in Trenton today and had glowing things to say about that troubled city. I wonder if they'll spend a day touring Newark this summer too.

South Orange Mini-Expedition

One of the best things about living in Newark is the wonderful little towns around us (all of which should be part of a Greater Newark, and thus become charming neighborhoods of a united city, as they are all part of an organically functioning metropole).
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This evening I joined a woman I used to work with, for coffee at the Starbucks in South Orange. My temp word-processing agency in New York had given me Starbucks gift cards for Christmas, and I offered to treat her on their dime. After half a year, we finally got together. She works in Gateway One but lives in Orange, so we met at the Starbucks adjoining the South Orange train station rather than the one in 744 Broad Street, Downtown (4 miles from me; the South Orange Starbucks is 2 miles from me, in that I am 7 blocks from the city line).

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South Orange Train Station.

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Neither of us had ever been to Starbucks before — she's a Dunkin' Donuts gal and I don't generally spend for coffee* unless I'm falling asleep on a road trip. So we had to look at the menu and ask questions. A "Frappuccino", it turns out, is always cold, a mix of this or that with a slurry of ice. I had not known that. The weather was hot, so I got a 'summer treat' raspberry frappuccino.
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Some of the ornate, special streetlites outside the station (which might be gas rather than electric; I'm not sure), have hanging baskets of flowers suspended from them. Is this what the hanging baskets planned for Downtown Newark (mentioned yesterday) will look like? In parts of Manhattan, some streetlite poles are surrounded by a single large basket in which flowers are planted. There are many ways to accomplish the same idea, so I will be intrigued to see which one(s) Newark adopts.

My friend told the blond youth who was to prepare her Latte that she didn't want any sugar in it, and an earlier inquiry about what was in another beverage led me to ask her if she has suffered late-onset diabetes since last I'd seen her. She had!
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Despite both her parents having had diabetes, she didn't think about it affecting herself because she had gone thru many, many, many decades (just a dig, in case she reads this) with no problem. But in January she started to drag. It got to the point where she just couldn't rouse herself to do much of anything. Lifting a fork to eat dinner was too much to contemplate. A diabetic friend tested her blood and found the measure worryingly but not alarmingly high. The next day, they tested again, and it was lower, but still way too high. The day after that, Superbowl Sunday, she felt so bad that her friend drove her to Saint Barnabas Hospital. Thanks to the Superbowl, she had the emergency room all to herself!, and got prompt treatment. It turns out her blood-sugar level was dangerously high, some 4 to 5 times as high as was safe.
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She had to stay in the hospital for three days before they could stabilize her. Even then she had to undergo many weeks of injected insulin before they could switch her to oral medication, and then they had to fiddle with different types of medication to find something her system could tolerate.
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I thought that frequent urination was an unmistakable warning sign she should have become alarmed at, so asked about that, but she said she had, shortly before all this developed, started to drink more water as part of a health regimen, so she was already going to the bathroom often. Then she lost weight suddenly. She dropped 20 pounds in short order, but chalked that up to the sense of fullness that her recent increased water intake gave her, as caused her to cut her food intake. Only when she found herself ground down by unexplainable exhaustion, did she begin to think she might need medical attention.
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If any of this sounds familiar, maybe you should investigate whether you have a blood-sugar problem, before somebody has to drive you to an emergency room.
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South Orange is a very nice little town. Actually, of course, it's not, in legal terms, a "town" at all. What it is, is bizarre, as this sign at the station shows.

Thunderstorms passed while we had coffee, today as yesterday. I heard what I thought was thunder but my galpal reminded me was actually trains passing overhead! But there was rain, part of a regionwide stormwatch, two days in a row. I don't think water conservation is a serious concern for this area right now.
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As for South Orange's weird legal name, there are other such names around here. The municipality where my friend lives is formally called the "City of Orange Township". Silly, no?
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All of the Oranges (Orange, East Orange, South Orange, and West Orange — no North Orange, for whatever reason) were once part of the City of Newark, and should be again. When driving, you can't always tell when you move from one of the Oranges to another, because the street signs don't change color but remain as black lettering on white background from Orange to Orange. Why not orange lettering on black background? Or black or other dark-colored lettering on an orange background? You've got a color in your name, folks. Use it on your street signs, for goodness sake!
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The first year after I moved here from Manhattan, two friends from London visited and found their way around while I was out at work. Maria really liked South Orange, and she and Jeremy told me about enjoying time in a Starbucks there. That was in about October 2000. I got to the same Starbucks a scant 6 1/2 years later.
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Speaking of late, as we parted a little before 8pm, and I headed to the Pathmark on Valley Street, which contains a branch of my bank, Bank of America (tho I didn't need it today), I saw these daffodils abloom outside the train station — at the end of June! My daffies come up in early April. What gives? I never heard of daffodils blooming in late June. Can the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse be far behind?

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* I prefer cola for my caffeine, or even caffeine tablets, and even with plain water. Pathmark sells a generic version ("Stay Awake"), each pill the equivalent of a cup of coffee (200mg of caffeine), just like the brand names. The first popular brand was NoDoz. Then Vivarin became the standard, available at the front of stores like Duane Reade, alongside the Tic Tacs, but I haven't seen either of them in a long time.

Downtown Street Improvements; NewGIN

Gaetano found clarification for me in today's Star-Ledger of exactly what is involved in the $17.5 million street improvements begun yesterday, Downtown, "to make the city more inviting to pedestrians":

The three-year project, which began yesterday, calls for benches, graffiti-proof trash cans, old-fashioned streetlamps, poles with hanging baskets and four different groups of trees to be planted on narrow side streets, and larger, wider varieties gracing boulevards like Broad Street. Every corner will have granite curb cuts, allowing for smooth access to crosswalks for all pedestrians. * * *

Signs will also be improved and color-coded with directional signs for motorists, signs marking street names, and pedestrian-oriented signs that will provide directions and distances to major destinations, retailers and historic landmarks.

Some prettification has already been done along McCarter Highway in the Gateway Center area, with brick walkways and lots of new trees. Parts of Market Street also have lots of trees already. Beaver Street has always been brick. But some of the narrower streets may specially benefit from the planned improvements. I'll take some "before" pix next time I'm down that way on a sunny day, to contrast with "after" pix in October, around the time the Arena opens.
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I show, below, an aerial view of the first-stage neighborhood from a city website by means of which everyone, but especially planners and potential investors, can get not just map info integrated with satellite images, but also tools by which to measure areas and distances, get address info, etc. Called "NEWGIN, the Newark Geographic Information Network", it seems pretty easy to use. The images appear in an area called "NewView".
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Here's a NewView overview of the area that visitors to the Arena from Newark Penn Station might see, if they were to walk down Alling Street to Edison Place and then west toward PruCtr.

Alling Street is presumably named for the David Alling chairmaking company, which was very big in the first half of the nineteenth century. The opening page of a 1987 article about it contains this interesting info about two paintings of his "manufactory":

In one version two men pause in front of Alling's warerooms, a woman and girl walk past his house, and a black worker emerges, possibly from behind the manufactory, with an empty wheelbarrow .... In the more interesting of these two paintings, Alling posed proudly in the half-open doorway of the manufactory where, since the early years of the [nineteenth] century, he had produced chairs and other seating furniture .... A more elegant chair is placed beside his front stairs, the black worker has traversed the sidewalk and loaded a bundle onto his wheelbarrow, and the two men have replaced the woman and girl in front of Alling's house.

I first heard of Alling chairs, which apparently are well regarded in the antiques trade, on an episode of Antiques Roadshow. I sure hope the Arena will someday host an "Antiques Roadshow — Newark". Maybe we'll even be one of those cities that have a "Part I", II, even III. I own very little that's old, and even less that's valuable, but I sure would like Newark to be seen on that hugely popular PBS show, and I'd love to go myself. I wonder if Vanderbeek has inquired into this.
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As for NewGIN, you can quickly move between places in various ways. I shifted westward four miles and found this view of my immediate neighborhood. Joe and Gaetano might recognize my car. Yup, you can see a car plainly in the images available from NewGIN. The system also allowed me to measure my block. I have long thought it had to be about 1,000 feet long. Now I know it is, round numbers, 1,030 feet long.

Just what I need, another website to lose myself in for hours, as tho I don't already spend much too much time online.

Newark Radio; 150 Buildings

Joe (from Belleville) sent me the URL of a list of radio stations in and around Newark. I knew of only one, WBGO-FM (88.3). When I went to its website today, I saw no live feed, as is usual, but a story that they are silent today as a protest:

In March 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) passed new rules which will significantly increase--in some cases by a factor of three--the royalty rates Web-based broadcasters, including WBGO, must pay for music played over Internet radio stations. Webcasters, and especially non-commercial webcasters like WBGO, have decried the rate changes saying the new rates will force the majority of online broadcasters to shut down their services. Streamers have been asking for a delay in the rate hike, but so far, the CRB has denied motions put forward by webcasters and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to re-open the hearings.& NPR, acting on behalf of its member stations, has filed a request for a stay on the new royalty rates with the Washington, D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

This is apparently part and parcel of a Bush Administration assault on public broadcasting, since there is no exemption for public broadcasters from these vastly higher fees. I don't know what justification is offered by the Bush Administration for this bizarre increase. There is a summary of the terms of the proposed legislative remedy that is backed by WBGO at http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/110_HR_2060.html.
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These are the other four stations licensed in Newark. WFME, 94.3 FM, is a Christian religious broadcaster. WHTZ, 100.3 FM, better known as "Z100", is a pop radio station whose website claims it as a New York station but whose city of license is Newark and whose studios are in Jersey City! Joe says he hasn't listened in a long time, but recalls having heard mention on-air that it is a "Newark and New York" station. I'll have to listen when next I'm in the car (the only time I listen to anything but news on radio). WCAA, 105.9 FM, is a Spanish-language station. And WNSW, 1430 AM, calls itself "Radio Portugal", and apparently broadcasts in Portuguese. I'll have to check that too.
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By the way, my brother Alan (a Ph.D.) recently informed the family that his book, The Psychology of Poker, is going to be translated into Portuguese by a Brazilian publisher. If Newark ever gets a bookstore, maybe both the English and Portuguese versions will be offered.
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150 Buildings. I got replies today from both the AIA-New Jersey and AIA-Newark & Suburban section to my inquiry yesterday about whether there is an AIA Guide to Newark. AIA-NJ said:

No. AIA-NJ is in the process of putting together a tour book of 150 important buildings/spaces. It should be out sometime next year.

That was clarified a bit by the response from AIA-N&S:

I appreciate your interest in the architecture of Newark. Unfortunately I am not aware of any AIA guide for Newark. However [it] being the AIA 150th anniversary this year we are looking to issue a 150 Best Buildings in NJ booklet sometime this year which would include some buildings in Newark.

I replied:

Thanks for the info. How will the general public know when this publication is issued? I will be interested to see how many of the 150 are in Newark. Permit me to take this opportunity to encourage the Newark & Suburban section to think more ambitiously and create an AIA Guide for Newark. I'll mention this upcoming publication in my fotoblog today and look forward to seeing it when it appears.

Today's foto is of the main portal to a building almost certain to be included in the 150, 744 Broad Street, the National Newark [and, formerly, "& Essex Banking Co."] Building.

Tourist Guide for Newark?

Many years ago I found the American Institute of Architects' Guide to New York, which was updated in the year 2000. It has squibs about a host of buildings and (at least the old one) suggested routes for self-guided walking tours. When I visited Paris, I found an excellent tourguide available at a newsstand. I sent, today, the following email to the AIA-New Jersey and its local section, AIA-Newark & Suburban:

Is there anything like the AIA Guide to New York City, for Newark, with building data, suggested self-guided walking tours, etc.? I love the AIA Guide to New York, but I now live in Newark, and when I walk around I have no information about what I'm seeing.
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Has anyone in your group, or the group itself, created such a guide, in print or online (which would be cheaper and more easily updated)? I'd like to tell the readers of my fotoblog, as below, about resources for finding information of interest about the buildings in Newark, a hugely underappreciated city. Please advise.

Several days ago I also sent email to an architectural librarian at NJIT to ask a similar question (and implicitly suggest that NJIT might want to create such a work). The person I sent to replied that he is no longer involved in that area but forwarded my inquiry to the person who is now in charge. I haven't heard further.

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This is the kind of thing I'm interested in, a series of buildings that are plainly old but not plainly historically significant. Do they have interesting histories? Famous architects? I don't know.

Jeffrey Bennett's Newarkology website offers virtual walking tours of some parts of the city, but this part of Broad Street is not covered by the tours posted to date. Jeff at least has the right idea. Now if he could show a locator map with the tours outlined, we'd have a good starting point for our own physical walks about town. However, it's very hard to carry a computer to read along the way (especially in brite sunlite, even with a portable device), so a hardcopy version of a walking-tour guide is very much needed, especially in the tall-and-skinny format of the AIA Guides.
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A coop of Newark historians, architects and architecture students, businesses, and the city could produce a quality guide you could carry with you. Is there a market for it? Newark is not yet a must-see in the minds of most tourists, even those who venture as close as Manhattan. But how likely is it to become one if there are no guidebooks?
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The State of New Jersey offers some free brochures about attractions statewide, which do include some things in Newark. But they do not have the kinds of detailed information I, or your typical Southern, Midwestern, Canadian, European, or Japanese tourist would be interested in.
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The Newark city website has a Visitors area, but the offerings are not as detailed as I'd like. Some of the detail I'm interested in is offered about 45 places, but they are not shown on a locator map, nor are self-guided walking tour routes indicated. It's a good start but needs a lot of work, and a lot more places.
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The Emporis.com website has a good overview of Newark and a lot of information on buildings, but again, they are not arranged on a map as would enable people to create their own walking tour. Ah well. I should check whether newsstands Downtown have any tourist info. We don't have a Convention & Visitors Bureau kiosk at Newark Airport, the Four Corners, or Newark Penn Station — because we don't have a Convention & Visitors Bureau! We should.
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P.S. In searching — unsuccessfully — for Newark tourist guides, I chanced to find that Newark has a highly regarded provisioner for the food industry called D'Artagnan, at 280 Wilson Avenue, near Route 1-9. It was founded by Ariane Daguin, dauter of one of France's best-known chefs, André Daguin, and has an Internet ordering site. Golly.

First Presbyterian's Great Big Neighbor

For this "Church Day" at the Newark USA fotoblog I show a picture of the oldest church (but not necessarily the oldest church building) in Newark, the First Presbyterian Church, and the Newark Arena/Prudential Center nearing completion behind it.

I don't see a website for the church (congregation) itself, but Old Newark has a page with additional fotos, inside and out. I have yet to get inside most of the churches I show due to my schedule (when I work, I work evenings, so am not generally up until early afternoon). Most churches around here seem to be closed during most times on weekdays and after services on Sunday. In ye olden days (when I was young), churches generally stayed open at least all day and often well into the nite. Some never closed.
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By the way, some word-oriented people might like this bit of information from the Random House Unabridged Electronic Dictionary:

The word YE, as in Ye Olde Booke Shoppe, is simply an archaic spelling of the definite article the. The use of the letter Y was a printer's adaptation of the thorn, þ, the character in the Old English alphabet representing the th- sounds ... in Modern English; Y was the closest symbol in the Roman alphabet. Originally, the form would have been rendered as [little-e over y] or y^e. The pronunciation (yē) today is a spelling pronunciation.

How nice.

Antigay Vandalism — by the Superintendent of Schools!

My friend Gaetano sent me links to two blog mentions of a Star-Ledger story yesterday about Marion Bolden ordering the defacing of a yearbook to black out with marker what she termed an "illicit" foto of two boys kissing. The foto itself appears in the Star-Ledger, along with this information:

While the students waited, staff members in another room blacked out the 4½-by-5-inch picture from approximately 230 books [which cost $85 each; that's vandalization of $19,550 of private property by a public official; a felony?].

"I don't understand," said [Andre] Jackson, 18 [one of the two students shown kissing, who paid $150 for that page in the yearbook]. "There is no rule about no gay pictures, no guys kissing. Guys and girls kissing made it in."

East Side's is like most high school yearbooks. About 80 pages in the roughly 100-page tome is dedicated to class photos, formal shots of seniors, candids and spreads dedicated to a variety of sports teams and academic clubs.

The back of the book is a collection of tributes where students designed pages filled with pictures depicting them with their families, girlfriends and boyfriends, and friends.

Rules for publication of the pages prohibited shots of gang signs, rude gestures and graphic photos, said Benilde Barroqueiro, an East Side senior graduating with Jackson.

"You know, it couldn't be too provocative. No making out, no tongue," she said.

Students were surprised when they opened their books and found Jackson's picture had been covered with marker, Barroqueiro said.

"He purchased the page and fell under the rules," she said. "If they want to kiss, that's their page. If you don't like it, don't look at it."

It seems a teenage girl has more sense than a middle-aged woman.

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For today's foto, I would ideally like to show a picture of East Side High, whose yearbook was vandalized. But I don't have any. That's the other side of town from me. But I will get there sooner or later. For today, I present a picture of the former New Jersey Historical Society headquartes on Broadway in the North Ward, which is now a Student Center in which, I understand, computers for student use are available. Now I must wonder what kind of filters are in place on those computers. Are nonpornographic gay sites and information about homosexuality and lesbianism blocked? Does anybody know? What about libraries? Can kids who think they might be gay, read about sexual orientation in their school library? You have to wonder.

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Note that this offense occurred during the runup to the 38th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, to be marked tomorrow, less than ten miles from East Side High, by the annual Gay Pride March in Manhattan that attracts hundreds of thousands of marchers and spectators. I was on the committee that organized the first such march, in 1970, and the term "Gay Pride" rather than the original "Christopher Street Liberation Day" attaches to that march because I offered that term in committee. Most of us on the first committee were scarcely more than kids, tho some were in their thirties. I was 25. Some of the stalwarts of The Movement have since died of the diseases of old age, never having lived a day without the discrimination we worked to end. Every now and then we think we've made progress — and then something like this happens.
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"Benilde" is a name I was not familiar with, so I researched it on the Internet:

Origin: Derived from the German and composed from berno- "bear," and hildjo, "battle, war," and means "who fights for the good."

Very appropriate.
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The first blog mention of this outrage I checked, carried a comment by someone who pointed out that the time to challenge a foto was before the money was accepted and the book printed, not after. That commentator also observed that some New Jersey employers are resisting the State's requirement that the partners in "civil unions" be granted the same rights as married people, which I had heard on TV last week. Such resistance must be crushed. It does, however, argue for converting the feeble "civil union" law into simple "marriage". That way, the simple box "Married" could be checked on forms of all kinds, and qualification for spousal benefits would be automatic. What do people who are 'civilly unioned' check? Hm. (By the way, I have seen both the awkward phrase "civilly unioned" and the more standard-English phrase "civilly united". I suspect those who use "civilly unioned" are making commentary on the awkward unnaturalness of that legal state. "Married" is so much more graceful, isn't it?)
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Alas, New York State may beat NJ to the punch in legalizing simple gay "marriage", which would reduce the advantage in attracting prosperous gay couples to New Jersey, people who would contribute to the community but make minimal demands upon government services, such as schools.
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I remarked to Gaetano:

DISGRACEFUL. If the objection was to the pose (with one guy behind the other, but fully clothed), the people in charge of the yearbook should have asked for a picture of the two face to face. If they didn't want to accept any foto, they should have said so before the guy paid for it, so he could either accept that and withhold his money — or sue the bastards, because antihomosexual discrimination is ILLEGAL in NJ. Marion Bolden should be ashamed of herself — and removed from office for violating the NJ Law Against Discrimination (LAD). There is no place in the Newark public schools for antihomosexual discrimination.

The second blogger, from Newark, rightly compared the discrimination in this incident to racial discrimination.

It's been noted that the bias seen today against homosexuals has parallels to discriminatory policies of the past. Consider if the administrators had blacked out a photo of an interracial kiss, and read the comments again. It's the same attitudes, by the same sorts of people, just in a new era. We've made a lot of progress on the civil rights and tolerance frontier (this couple is probably not in danger of being lynched) but to continue making progress it's necessary to be aware of and condemn behavior like this.

I left the following comment at that blog:

The superintendent's behavior was not just rude. It was also ILLEGAL. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) bars discrimination on the basis of "affectional or sexual orientation". See this official webpage of the State of New Jersey: http://www.state.nj.us/lps/dcr/law.html#LAD. Superintendent Bolden said she did not review the entire yearbook. But she had a legal obligation to do so, in order to determine whether what she proposed to do was discriminatory. She could easily have ordered that every kiss in the yearbook be flagged so she could review all such pictures. She did not do that but chose to jump to suppress an image of two boys kissing. She violated the law and vandalized thousands of dollars worth of books. It's time for her to go. Everyone offended by this should write to Governor Corzine to demand her ouster: http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail.html.

I'll write to the Governor myself when I have time. I should also see if Mayor Booker has email. Bolden is a State appointee; Newark does not have control of its schools yet. But Booker can put pressure on the State to oust her — as might, incidentally, empower him to put someone of his own choosing into that key spot!
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Gay men have lifted marginal neighborhoods all over this country, and Newark could surely benefit from an influx of gay people. Shows of antigay bigotry by someone high in local government hurt the future of Newark, more than just the feelings of the students offended. At least the kids had the good sense to be offended. Do Newarkers generally?
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(This is an entry for Saturday uploaded Sunday due to time constraints.)

Neither Boom nor Bust

An article in Money Magazine last April, still online, says that real estate prices in Newark grew by 71% in the past five years but are expected to decline by 2.4% in the coming year. That's in line with a nationwide downturn, and less severe a drop, by far, than many other markets. So this is a good time to buy into Newark, tho not quite as good a time to sell.
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Today I present a couple of pix of townhouse-style buildings on lower Broad Street near Lincoln Park. That is an up-and-coming neighborhood, but there are probably still lots of bargains to be had. Here, an ivy-clad building is broken starkly apart from its neighbor by some ill-considered siding. The ivy joins the buildings' dignified and compatible facades, but the owner of the building on the left apparently either wanted to distinguish his building from the other or couldn't afford to repair crumbling stonework the right way.

And here, an unpretentious building with decorative brickwork and a bowed façade that forms bay windows from three separate windows on the middle two floors is marred by pieces of wood around the doorway that apparently held a sign or some other kind of structure that has since been taken down.

Maintaining and renovating older buildings can entail some expense, but there are right ways and wrong ways to do these things. I hope that somebody, or some company, that can put buildings like this into the kind of shape they should be in will come forward and do that. There are multitudinous fine old buildings all around Newark that could benefit from careful conservators, and repairs done right are usually far less expensive than tearing down old structures with character and building new structures without.

'Newark' Express No More; Residency Requirement?

I mentioned here May 16th that the Newark Express basketball team was charging $150 to kids who want to try out for the team, and urged people to boycott that ABA team. Well, Gaetano sent me the URL of a news report that the team has moved to Morris County and changed its name to the "Jersey Express". Yes, that's right: "Jersey", not even "New Jersey". These people can't do anything right. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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I guess they didn't get an invite from Jeff Vanderbeek of the Devils organization to play in the Newark Arena/PruCtr. Maybe they are too amateurish to play in the big leagues. Vanderbeek was happy to invite the Seton Hall college basketball team, tho. And now he has brought in an expansion team of the Major Indoor Soccer League, the "New Jersey Ironmen". Yes, NEW Jersey. Gaetano alerted me to a short June 19th news report, and another reader sent me a longer story from yesterday's Star-Ledger.

Asked what kind of teams and what kind of sports he may bring in, Vanderbeek said, "We're talking to a bunch of teams in a bunch of leagues. I would just say, all the usual suspects, going into next year."

Asked if those "suspects" would include arena football and professional indoor lacrosse, he said yes, and added that the WNBA could be a possibility. However, the latter would seem the least likely since the Prudential Center will not house an NBA team.

A publicist with the Devils organization told me many months ago that the MISL will be moving its headquarters into office space at the Newark Arena once construction is complete. I sent email to the MISL today to find out if that is still the plan and will let you know what I hear.
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As for the 'Jersey' Express, it may be that Vanderbeek withheld an invitation from an ABA team in order to avoid a problem with the NBA if he wanted to bring in a Women's-NBA team. But I don't know that to be the case.

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Today's foto is the reverse angle of the second foto in the New York Times article I mentioned yesterday. That foto showed the view out from this tower, which one might think was thru glass. This foto shows that the glass might actually not yet have been put in. Well, it wasn't in as of June 9th, when I took this picture.

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No Residency Requirement? I was under the impression that Newark city employees have to live in this city, and I have seen mention of people being struck from the eligibility list for police and fire department positions because they were not Newark residents. But an item in today's Star-Ledger about people trying to organize a recall of Mayor Booker says:

In addition to the tax increase, residents questioned the influx of new employees who are not Newark residents and who are getting paid higher salaries while city hall employees are bracing themselves for layoffs.

So what's the story? Is city employment restricted to residents, as it should be, or not? Are there waivers for 'key employees'? There shouldn't be. If the city hires somebody from outside, that person should be required to move into the city within a very short time, at most one month. They can take an apartment on a temporary basis while househunting — hey! they can ask me for a real-estate referral (ResurgenceCity@aol.com) and I'll hook them up! Hey also to Gaetano: I actually found an article of interest on my own!

Another Leno Crack

NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno attacked Newark again today. The setup was a Continental Airlines flite in which some idiot (or malicious saboteur) flushed a latex glove down an airplane toilet as caused it to overflow so badly that excrement-soiled water was rolling up and down the aisles, producing a nauseating stench throughout a 7-hour flite from Amsterdam to Newark. You might guess what was coming:

When they got off in Newark, it smelled even worse! [Imitating a passenger's reaction:] "Get back on the plane!"

Not funny, [epithet (supply your own)].
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I don't know what Leno's problem is, but, as my late mother might say, "he needs a good, swift kick in the pants". A reader here suggested after the last Leno crack I mentioned that Newarkers might join in a class-action defamation lawsuit against Leno. I told him I don't think that's a good idea. There is too much frivolous litigation in this country as it is. But it is tempting.
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I turned to Letterman to wait for the Top 10 List, and during a break saw my first commercial for the Bon Jovi concerts at the Arena!
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And last nite, during a film in the PBS documentary series P.O.V., I was pleased to see mention that the plane carrying Bantu refugees from the chaos in Somalia to a new life in the United States landed at Newark. No toilet-overflow problems on that flite. But did they mention that? No-O-O-o!
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New topic: I called the NJPAC box office this afternoon to see if there were any tickets left for the (free) showing of the documentary I mentioned yesterday, but was told there were none. Hm. The tickets were offered for only three days, starting on Monday, and were gone by Wednesday afternoon. If they ran out of tickets for the Victoria Theater, shouldn't they have moved the event to the much larger Prudential Hall? There was nothing scheduled for that room, but they preferred to hold the event in a smaller hall and exclude people!
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In any case, I missed out. I had intended to go a bit early and fotograf the rest of the plaques on the New Jersey Walk of Fame between the time I got my ticket and the time the film began, but that will have to wait till some other time.
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Today's foto is a view of, left to right, Gateway Four, One Newark Center, and the Prudential garage, as seen from Edison Place east of Mulberry Street (and, thus, east of the main entrance to the Arena/PruCtr). The chain-link fence topped by barbed wire encloses a parking lot right now, but that entire area will probably look drastically different in a few years. Gaetano told me of a New York Times article yesterday about the probable explosion in development in that area once the Arena opens. The article, even online, includes two fotos. The first is great, taken from the sales office for corporate luxury boxes in the Arena, which is located high up in the National Newark Building.

I don't know if you have the same reaction to my foto, above, as I do, but I was inclined to avoid looking directly at the blazing sun as reflected in the dark glass of Gateway Four. In reality, the glare can be only as brite as your monitor, but I reacted to it as tho I risked blindness from the actual sun if I looked directly at that spot.

Free Film on Riots, Wednesday

A documentary film, Revolution '67, will be shown in NJPAC's Victoria Theater tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6:30pm. Tix are free, available at the NJPAC box office from 12 noon to 6pm, a max of 4 tix per person. I hope to go with Joe (from Belleville), but have yet to hear back. Gaetano drew my attention to The Daily Newarker's item on it yesterday, but cannot himself attend. He says he'll buy the DVD (if they offer one). Maybe they'll even have DVD's on sale tomorrow. If so, I'll call to ask if he wants me to pick one up for him.
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I didn't live in Newark in 1967. I had moved directly from Middletown, in Monmouth County, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in June 1965. There had been riots in Harlem in '64, but they didn't affect the area I moved to, nor the area I later went to college in. City College is indeed in Harlem, but not the area where rioting had occurred.
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Today's foto is of a new house going up in my neighborhood on what had been a wide driveway for a large family that owned several vehicles. They sold a couple of years ago, and the new owners apparently felt they didn't need all that space.

It seems they went from an overly wide driveway to none at all. Curious. I need my driveway, and made sure that the house I bought had one, even tho when I bought it, I didn't have a car. I do now.

Arena Shows, Webcam

NJ rock band Bon Jovi is confident it can fill the Newark Arena/Prudential Center ten times over, according to an article on today's Home News Tribune website that Gaetano found:

Bon Jovi ... has just announced ... five more shows... at the new Prudential Center in Newark.

The new dates are Nov. 3, 4, 7, 9 and 10, which are added to the original venue-opening Oct. 25, 26, 28, 30 and Nov. 1 dates.

Tickets for the new shows range from $71.49 to $154.49 and may be obtained first through "Lost Highway'' ticket packages, which include[ ] a digital download of Bon Jovi's new album and a concert ticket. The packages will be available exclusively to American Express cardholders from 10 a.m. Tuesday through 10 p.m. Friday at www.ticketmaster.com/bonjovi. * * *

Non-packaged tickets for all 10 shows go on sale 10 a.m. Saturday through Ticketmaster. Prices range from $61.50 to $337.74 for the first five shows.

Ticketmaster charge-by-phone numbers are (201) 507-8900, (212) 307-7171 and (609) 520-8383.

That's a lot more money than I care to spend on a concert, so I may pass, even tho I'd love to attend the very first event in the Arena. I guess I'll wait to see if Gaetano and/or Joe is going.

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This is the Mulberry Street façade of the Arena as it appeared June 9th.

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The Arena webcam on the City's website is working again. I find that the blogging program had corrupted my text for the URL on an earlier post (which produced a completely blank page), which I have corrected. But even aside from that, I had reached the right page but gotten an error message that my software license needed to be renewed, which could not have been my error. But in any case, the webcam is working properly again.

Humanity Baptist; Mention in Israel

It's"Church Day" again at Newark USA. I thus present, below, two pix of a modern church building on Bergen Street in the Central Ward.
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I had tried to find a rim for a spare tire for my 1992 Geo Storm at South Orange Tire (on South Orange Avenue, in Newark, not in S.O.). I had found a tire some days before, at Colón Tire, but they didn't have the right rim. South Orange Tire didn't have it either. It's hard to find. I asked if they knew of another place I might look, and they referred me to Romero Tire, on Bergen. They didn't have it either. So I gave up for the time being and headed for the Bergen Street Pathmark, but had to stop at a traffic lite and there, to my left, was this handsome modern church. So I quickly snapped this shot.

Then I noticed something unclear atop the roof, so pushed the zoom to the limit and captured this picture. I had no time to take a clearer shot. The lite turned green.

The little oddity turned out to be a songbird of some kind, apparently huddling on a chimney for warmth on a cold late-April day. I had assumed it was a sparrow or something common like that. But the picture shows it to be yellow and have a longish tail. Maybe it is a sparrow that simply looked different in that lite. My late mother would know, but I know almost nothing about birds.
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I do know that there seems to have been a growth in the number of songbirds in my area, Vailsburg. I saw a bluejay yesterday, and heard an unusual call today — which, again, I'd have needed my mother or another "birder" to identify.
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For some reason, the birds around here start chirping about an hour before dawn! Why would that be?
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I found no website for this church, only address and fone info: Humanity Baptist Church, 235 Bergen Street, Newark, NJ 07103-2640; Phone: (973) 596-0168. If they have a website and happen to see this entry, they can tell me the URL, via email to ResurgenceCity@aol.com, and I'll place it here in lieu of this paragraph.
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Israeli Mention. A few days ago I got an email from an Israeli who collects images of the Star of David, and wanted permission to use some of my pix of the former B'nai Jeshurun/present Hopewell Baptist Church on MLK Boulevard. Naturally, I was happy to consent. Those now pix appear on his blog at http://star-of-david.blogspot.com/search?q=Schoonmaker+.
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It couldn't hurt to get some attention for Newark from Israel and the Jewish community that reads that blog.

Gallery Aferro Opening, New Media Room

I did make it to the quiet opening of the show "Someday This Will All Be (something else)".

The first display inside the gallery is an arrangement of bits of actual sod representing the disordered yard of the childhood home of Evonne Davis, one of the Gallery's principals. This is one of the occasions I mentioned yesterday in which I couldn't quite get the entire work in frame and could not back up any further, so had to tilt the camera to get everything in.

Here is a more conventional view, but some things are blocked by the table and chair.

The largest two-dimensional works in the show are architectural pieces by Conor McGrady, an artist originally from Northern Ireland who now lives in the United States. Gallery Aferro likes to balance local artists with international artists. I'm partial to architecture, and liked his things.

Since last I was there, the Gallery has added a New Media Room on the second floor behind a heavy black curtain to block lite.

The particular film then showing (by Italian artist Gianluca Bianchino) was too fast-moving for my camera to freeze in that liting, but comprised extended footage, when I was watching, of great flocks of birds moving in shifting patterns. Alongside, or sometimes below, appear what looked to me like oscillographs of soundwaves.

I saw Matt Gosser, a major young Newark artist, said hello, and asked him about his next show. He said the next show will be unlike the things I have seen before, which revolve around items crafted from found objects, and fotos of vanishing old buildings, but later he will have something like that. I observed that he seems to like ruins. He corrected me: he is obsessed with ruins!
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I also chatted with Emma Wilcox and Evonne Davis, principals of the Gallery. Emma pointed out one of the features she especially likes about their current space, a metal ceiling.

When I observed to Evonne that they have a lot of space on the second floor not used in the current show, she said they hope to develop ties with up-and-coming Newark artists, and even partner with Newark schools to develop talent who will eventually fill that exhibition space with quality works. She added that there are also six working studios (not display spaces) on the third floor and one in the basement in which various artists create.
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So Gallery Aferro is not only growing a little, disjointed lawn but also an arts program for Newark. I don't know how long anyone will be able to speak for more than a couple of seconds with the artists in future shows. As the art scene grows, the time an artist can devote to any individual opening attendee is bound to shrink. Newark art aficionados should take advantage of the relaxed relationships of today's arts community. If you have questions, ask now, because the artists may not have time to answer in a very few years.

Something Else

Gallery Aferro has an event tomorrow evening, from 6-9pm, that I hope to (remember to) attend, the opening of a show called "Someday This Will All Be (something else)". The email announcement says:

"Cause when I look in his eyes/I can see it, paradise " The Jellybeans
"It ain't a mystery/Baby not to me." The Misfits

Gallery Aferro presents 5 artists working from within the landscape genre. "Someday This Will All Be (something else)" is about being a local, locally or otherwise, about what agenda nostalgia might serve, and about remembering the view. The ruin, the home town, the block, the unofficial monument and the front yard all get the benefit of the long view, the last look, or the look backwards.

Artists: Dylan Chatain, Evonne Davis, Tim Maul, Conor McGrady, Laurinda Stockwell

We are also proud to present film by Gianluca Bianchino and Jonathan Franco in our (brand new) New Media Room.

I'm afraid I find Gallery Aferro's descriptions of things cryptic and puzzling. There must be a clearer way of saying what this exhibition is all about. Announcements shouldn't be poetry, open to multiple interpretations, or opaque to people who aren't tuned in to the same wavelength as the artist. The text of the announcement might not be 'a mystery' to "The Misfits", but it is to me.
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Another mystery is why the fotos of the Newark Arts & Music Festival (at Halsey Village) shown in The Daily Newarker yesterday are severely tilted. On isolated occasions, if I can't get all of something wide or tall into the field of my camera, and can't back up, I might go diagonal, but one usually can move farther away to fit something in frame. I was pleased to see not only the pix on view in yesterday's Daily Newarker and at a foto gallery linked to from that day's post but also a mention of this blog at the end of yesterday's post. It's a good thing when Newark boosters draw to the attention of their various audiences, the work of other Newark boosters.
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Gallery Aferro hosted a one-evening event June 12th called "Queer Black Cinema". I was offended, so emailed this note:

I KNOW that some young people use the word "queer" as tho it's not offensive, but it is the exact equivalent of "nigger", so if Gallery Aferro would be wary of hosting an event called "Gay Nigger Cinema" it should be equally averse to hosting an event called "Queer Black Cinema". In 1970 I offered the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used, and "Queer" is offensive to a majority of gay men, who find its use, especially by outsiders, extremely objectionable. Lesbians were NEVER called "queer", and I find it odd that some lesbians, who already have an innocuous term for themselves, would want to call down opprobrium upon themselves by adopting a term of hatred. People who see themselves as "queer" accept the idea that homosexuality and lesbianism are bizarre and unnatural. They must reject all such suggestions.

At a time when blacks are debating the appropriateness of the N-word, we really should not be promoting the use of the Q-word.
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This past Monday, the Rainbow Flag of the gay-rights movement was raised at Newark City Hall for the first time ever, as Newark joined those many cities all around the world that acknowledge "Gay Pride" activities. Gaetano saw a Star-Ledger article with foto that says, in part:

The event was held to kick off the week-long celebration dubbed Newark Essex Pride 2007.

"Today is the day Newark says 'we are open for everyone,'" [Laquetta Nelson] said.

Nelson was among dozens of activists who joined Mayor Cory Booker at the ceremonial flag-raising, the beginning of a week of activities that includes film screenings, a jazz brunch and forums.

"I cannot as a mayor legislate love, but we as a community can generate it," Booker said.

There was some risk to Mayor Booker, whom former mayor Sharpe James reportedly called a "faggot white boy". This year we saw speculation that Oprah Winfrey's best friend, Gayle King, might marry Mayor Booker. So what's his story? Darned if I know. Maybe he's straight. Maybe he's gay. I have never heard him address the issue.
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Double-minorities (gay and black, lesbian and Hispanic) are notoriously confused and torn, and often have a lot harder time "coming out" than people who see themselves as part of the mainstream. If Booker is gay but in the closet from fear of ending his political career, he has lots of company. James McGreevey did us all a favor in coining the wonderful term "Gay American", but followed that up by setting us back decades in resigning as Governor! Those of us who sacrificed our own political ambitions decades ago, when no major political figure would dare to stand with us in advocating gay rights, are little comforted by the thought that some gay people are rising high now, when some of them are still hiding their homosexuality.
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Interestingly, a rainbow appeared in Newark the same day as the raising of the Rainbow Flag. Gaetano alerted me to the fact that Emma Wilcox of Gallery Aferro shows pix of it on The Daily Newarker today. I had seen a video view of it from Riverfront Stadium on News 12 (I think) that evening. Rainbows are rare around here, and it was fitting that one appeared during Newark's "pride" week. In olden days, that would be seen as an omen: "God is pleased."
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In any case, I hope to get to Gallery Aferro's event tomorrow nite. Gallery Aferro is located at 73 Market Street (between University Avenue and Washington Street between the former furniture stores Pitusa and Bushberg Brothers).
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Today's foto is of a bit of the landscaper's art on the northwest corner of Gateway Center, some roses outside the reflective black glass of Gateway Three, in which the U.S. Custom House is reflected. These flowers are of a type one associates with wild roses, the ones that grow from their own rootstock rather than the elaborate, big-blossom roses with weak roots that have to be grafted onto hardy, wild-rose rootstock. Wild roses have smaller flowers but require less care, so perhaps Gateway management saved themselves some watering and fertilizing by planting roses that can take care of themselves. Like Newarkers.

New Tournament for New Arena (and New Nickname)

Gaetano found a June 13th Associated Press report that there is to be a new college basketball tournament that will play its championship series in Newark this coming Thanksgiving weekend.

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I don't know why the Arena was sited to face tiny, narrow Edison Place.

The new Prudential Center arena will host the semifinals and final of a men's college basketball tournament in November featuring Texas and other top teams, officials said Tuesday.

The inaugural Legends Classic will wrap up at the arena on Nov. 23 and 24, the Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Opening-round games in the eight-team tournament are to be played at campus sites beginning Nov. 14. * * *

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You practically have to be at the Arena before you can see much of the building.

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The Classic will be the first major in-season men's tournament held in New Jersey since Seton Hall hosted the SHU/Meadowlands tournament in the mid-1990s. * * *

The Prudential Center, nicknamed "The Rock," is scheduled to open Sept. 25 with a concert by New Jersey rockers Bon Jovi. The Devils will open their first season in the new building in October.

That's terrific. A lot of college kids may from this tournament get a very different impression of Newark from the riot-torn city of their parents' memory.

I thought the Bon Jovi opening concert was to be in October, so just rechecked the Bon Jovi website and find that it is still showing October 25th, not September 25th.
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As for "The Rock", Prudential's own nickname, that would be a good image to attach to Newark more generally. "Brick City", "The Bricks", and now "The Rock". Better than "Beantown" (Boston), "Crabtown" (Annapolis), or "La-La Land" (one name for Los Angeles). Solid, man.


I am irritated to see that Ocala, Florida also dares to call itself "Brick City". The nerve.

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The Arena seems enormous in its setting.

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The fotos in this blog entry were taken June 9th.

Real-Estate License

Altho I took all the needed steps to get a real-estate salesperson's license, I wasn't sure I had acted in time, because the wallet card I was supposed to get from the referral agency I registered with never arrived. I followed up several weeks later, and the agency had still not received it from the State. Then I got so involved with other things that I forgot about it, until I recently got a notice from the agency that it is time to renew my license! I phoned the real-estate commission to confirm and they told me that I do have a license after all. So I sent in the renewal notice and am now prepared to take more interest in learning the practical ins and outs of the business. Right now, all I can do is refer people to the broker in charge of my agency. When I know enuf to choose an agency in which I can take an active role in showing houses, I can move the license to my new employer.
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I wanted to go into real estate for two reasons. First, I really liked checking out houses and evaluating neighborhoods when I was looking for my own house, and found the whole home-buying process interesting. (By the way, one buys a "home" but sells a "house". That's a linguistic trick of the trade, to connect potential buyers to a new "home" and disconnect potential sellers from emotional attachments to an old "house".) Second, I want to do something, actively, to bring more good people, and especially gay men, into Newark to contribute to the city's resurgence.
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I would have been lost, in my own househunt, without my own buyer's agent, who was able to show me around and guide me thru the entire, complicated process of selecting a property; arranging a home inspection, insurance, financing, and other matters; and seeing things thru to completion. I want to do for others what Donna Gates and Weichert Realty did for me.
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So if any reader wants to relocate to Newark, or move up from renting in Newark to owning, I can hook you up (and even get a commission if you decide to buy thru my broker). All real estate brokers are required by state law to share information, so my broker can help you on almost any property, anywhere in the state. ("Exclusive right to sell" contracts keep a few properties to a single broker, but they are rare.)
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Today's first foto is of a sturdy and elegant brick house (in "Brick City"), on Sanford Avenue in my area, Vailsburg, a neighborhood of quiet streets and big trees.

I know my own area fairly well, of course, but not others. I'd like to establish a website for people who want to move into Newark, to give absolutely frank information on the various neighborhoods — both good things and bad — so people can evaluate different areas with their eyes open.
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When I was contemplating my own move from Manhattan, the Newark Public Library was very helpful. Someone sent me some background info on the city, including a transit map specific to Newark buses, trains, etc., that NJ Transit had published but discontinued. The Library still had some copies, and I found it enormously helpful in evaluating where to live, given that I was still working in Manhattan.
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The City of Newark needs to offer a Welcome Package of information to new and potential residents that would include such a transit map. If NJ Transit still does not publish, online or in hardcopy, the map they used to offer, Newark should urge them to do so again, even underwrite the cost of a new issue, or get permission from NJT to create our own, based on NJTransit materials used to create the first one, but updated.

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Here's a view of a neighborhood I can't afford, historic, upscale Forest Hill in the North Ward. Some parts of that area are convenient to the Newark City Subway, which goes right to Newark Penn Station, where commuters to Manhattan have a choice of NJ Transit trains to New York Penn, or PATH trains to either Downtown Manhattan or 33rd Street, Midtown.

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The City's Welcome Package online version should have links to 'report cards' on all the various schools, public and private, in the city, arranged by neighborhood. Things like info on what materials are recycled and how they should be bundled; what days garbage, recycling, and bulk items are collected, organized by neighborhood, should also be available, and a person should be able to customize the kinds of material s/he receives in hardcopy thru the mail, via a checklist of publications available. Childless people, straight and gay, might not much care about school quality. A customized Welcome Package could save printing and mailing costs that would otherwise be wasted on materials irrelevant to a given inquirer.
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I'd like to pick my readers' brains on these matters. For instance, what kinds of materials should be in a Welcome Package or website? If I wanted to post an online questionnaire people could fill out about their own neighborhood or even block, what should it ask? If you were looking for a house, what would you want to know about the neighborhood in which you found an appealing property?
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I'd also like to provide some guidance to people just beginning to think about buying a house, as regards things to keep in mind, incorporating a checklist of things they must have, would like to have, or can easily do without (e.g., porch, fireplace, finished basement, laundry room, driveway/garage, gas stove/electric, fence, pre-existing landscaping, trees/sun, awnings, new/old house, fixer-upper/perfect condition; whatever). I'd also like to offer some guidance as to things to watch out for that one might not at first think about. For instance, I love my house, and it has most of the "druthers" I looked for, but it was built long before we came to need so many electric devices, so doesn't have nearly enuf electric outlets, and some of those are only two-prong. Nor does it have enuf fone jacks. At least it has circuit-breakers rather than fuses. I'm sure a lot of first-time homebuyers haven't even thought about some of these things, but if they don't think of them before they settle on a property, they may become progressively more dissatisfied after they move in.

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Here's something to think about, low-maintenance front-yard landscaping. Some people love to putter around the yard. Others want no part of mowing a lawn, watering plants, raking leaves, or anything else to do with gardening.

Switching Gears. (1) Next Year's Street Fairs. Jeff Bennett was a tad dismayed at my commentary after his description of the Newark Arts & Music Festival in yesterday's post.

Ah, I didn't mean to imply that the NAMF was "dismal." There just weren't a whole lot of people there. Frances the Band was really good. I enjoyed the NAMF and I hope it happens again next year. This is just the start of a tradition. * * *

One reason I do not think that one should consider the NAMF a "dismal" failure is simply because the bands there were actually good. Although the crowd wasn't there Saturday night, qualitatively, there was some good music being performed. Also, some of the clubs around Halsey, like 27, were packed, which is something you don't always see.

Not every event that suffers a bad start goes on to succeed in later years. Some are aborted, not retried. Let's hope that the organizers of the NAMF won't give up but will persevere into future years. Eric K. says he has heard that next year there might not be a Portugal Day street fair for NAMF to compete with, but I have seen nothing about that. At the Vailsburg post office today I picked up a copy of a free publication, Local Talk ("New Jersey's Weekly Newspaper"), that has a major article (filled with typos; get a proofreader, people!) about the Portugal Day event, and it says nothing about that event ending.
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(2) Ask Mayor Booker. Gaetano directed me to The Daily Newarker blog today, which says that Mayor Booker will be live on radio station WBGO (88.3 FM) tomorrow nite, starting at 8pm. He'll be taking calls at 1-800-499-9246 and perhaps answering some emailed questions. If you'd like to ask him something, tune in, or write to newarktoday@wbgo.org).

Halsey Street Event

I mentioned Saturday that I missed the Halsey Street Arts & Music Festival ("at Halsey Village"). I hoped Eric Koppel, a fellow Newark enthusiast and fotografer who reminded me of that event and the Portugal Day event, had attended, so asked if he had fotos I could show here. Alas, he had passed by within a few blocks of the Halsey Street festival but didn't find it particularly intriguing so headed right for the Portugal Day fair. Fortunately, Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster of the Newarkology website, did attend, and offered this commentary and 3 fotos.

I was at the Newark Arts and Music Festival last Saturday night. I was there from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. It was good to know that there are people around Halsey Street who are proud of Newark and want the city to do well, but I have to admit, the NAMF was really quiet when I was there. There were almost as many policemen and staff people as there were music listeners. There were a few vendors selling beer and coco helado, but it wasn't a major art vendor fair.

While there weren't the art vendors you see at a suburban arts fair, there were artists. The loading dock area behind the Hahne's building was set up as an outdoor sculpture gallery. There was a "confession" booth where someone could come in, admit some sin, and then get a drawing of himself or herself committing that sin.

When I was there a group called "Frances" was playing. They were an original, artsy bunch. Instead of the usual guitar + drums lineup, they had violin and melodion players too. Overall, it was a kind of Death Cab for Cutie sound. Their lyrics were less than profound. One song went "all of the sky has turned blue, it's true. . . . all of the sky has turned blue, it's true."

I was really hoping the group would be from Newark. I would have bought a CD if they were. Alas, these bohemians were Brooklynites.

Thanks for the info and pix, Jeff.
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The apparent dismal failure of this event can be attributed to its unfortunate timing opposite the Portugal Day street fair in the Ironbound, which attracted hordes of participants, including me. The two events were too far apart for people casually to move back and forth between them. That would be especially true of families with children. The nearest points were over half a mile apart, and the farthest points, well over a mile apart.
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I don't know how it happened that the sponsors of the Halsey Street event decided to schedule their street fair the same weekend as one of Newark's biggest outdoor events, if not the very biggest.
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Plainly, there needs to be more coordination and consultation among groups, a central scheduling calendar online that everyone could consult before finalizing plans, with contact info by means of which groups that appeal to similar audiences and are initially inclined to hold an event on the same day might consult with each other about moving one or the other event, or doing joint promotion. For outdoor events, there would also need to be rain-date conflict-checking.
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GoNewark.com does have an events calendar, but I am very unhappy with it. It includes in the regular day's listings museum shows that last for months, which is visual clutter to people concerned about that specific day's events. Yes, longer-term events should be shown, but AFTER one-day events on the same webpage.
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New Jersey Tourism also has an events calendar. I checked it for last Saturday, June 9th, and found only ONE event in Newark, a beadmaking workshop, but not the Portugal Day festival nor the NAMF. The GoNewark calendar for the same day, as displayed today, after the date at issue, likewise showed neither event. Did it show both events before the 9th? I don't know.
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A Google search for "newark new jersey events calendar" found some wildly inappropriate pages, one of which claimed to be an events calendar for Newark, New Jersey on a site called hellonewark.com, but which included events not just in Long Island but also in Houston, Texas! Likewise, I found a Craig's List (different Craig) calendar of events in North Jersey, that is badly organized and often does not show a searchable town. It also did not include either Portugal Day or NAMF for June 9th, but did include a lot of ads for non-events.
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NJ411.com has an Events section, but includes a lot of things outside NJ, and its June 9th listing did not include either Portugal Day or NAMF either!
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The Newark Arts Council maintains an events calendar, which at first appeared not to show either Portugal Day or NAMF. One might understand a Portuguese street fair not being included in an Arts Council's calendar, even tho there were musical performances. But a Newark ARTS & Music Festival not being included? Well, I was looking at the list of categories on the left, and clicked on "Fairs & Festivals" but didn't find either. I did not at first look at what seemed a display ad on the right, but which turned out to be an article all about the NAMF! Why, however, was that event not also shown in the "Fairs & Festivals" category? I still didn't see the Portugal Day street fair mentioned.
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Newark's jazz radio station WBGO has an events calendar that also does not show either street festival on the 9th, even tho there was music at both.
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Our equivalent of a Chamber of Commerce, the Newark Regional Business Partnership, also has an events calendar, and its website allows you to check off an event that interests you and receive an emailed reminder! But it too did not show either the Portugal Day or NAMF events!
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Someone has got to establish an online Newark Global Scheduling Calendar (by any name) to which people looking to avoid conflicts and produce synergies can look, in a stripped-down overview format (day/date, begin-end times, name of event, type of event), with links to more detailed information, including email and/or telephone and snailmail contact info. One- or two-day events should be shown first; longer-term, after. GoNewark.com, the City of Newark (which should create a Convention & Visitors Bureau; it's startling, I know, but we don't have one!), the Newark Arts Council, NJPAC, WBGO, and even New Jersey Tourism should put their heads together to establish not just a global scheduling calendar but also a global Newark events calendar that all their websites could point to, if not in lieu of their own separate events calendar, then as a supplement to each individual calendar, as a "More Newark Events (not specific to our focus)" option at the bottom of their own calendar.
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In a city this size, all the groups and activist individuals working to make life better and bring in new residents, investments, and tourists should be working together much more closely than they are. A conflict as devastating as that suffered by the Newark Arts & Music Festival should never again occur.

Mountain Water for Newark Beer

Gaetano sent me the link to a commentary about the move of Rolling Rock from a Latrobe, Pennsylvania brewery to the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Newark. That blog raised questions about the safety of Newark drinking water, so I sent the following comment:

Newark's water supply comes from reservoirs in pristine mountain-forest areas of the northwestern portion of the state, not from the Lower Passaic. To protect the watershed of the Pequannock River, a tributary of the Ramapo River, which in turn is a tributary of the Upper Passaic (see map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Passaicwatershedmap.png), the City of Newark farsightedly bought large tracts of land a century ago to head off development in the watershed, which remains pristine forest to this day in the most densely populated state in the Nation thanks to the foresight of Newark's city fathers. Some water is also brought in from inland portions of the Raritan River in west-central New Jersey. The Lower Passaic is still somewhat polluted, tho much improved in recent decades. But Lower Passaic water does not enter the system for Newark drinking water, so no one need be concerned about polluted water being used in the brewing of Rolling Rock, Budweiser, or anything else from the Newark Anheuser-Busch bottling plant. The water in Rolling Rock may not come from a Pennsylvania mountain spring, but it does come from untouched forests in the mountains of New Jersey.

My reply did not immediately appear at the original commentary, so others may not see it. Or a moderator might have to review it before it is posted and it will appear later. But you see it now.
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Today's foto shows some Newark water in the pool and waterfall in the plaza outside the PSE&G Building, Downtown.

I found some better angles from which to show that pool and waterfall (the closest thing I have seen to a public fountain in Newark), but the pix I took from those angles are dim because they were taken late on a cloudy day. I have to get back to that plaza on a brilliant day, preferably with fluffy clouds to show in the background of this pool and its setting.

Squat Church

It's "Church Day" again here at the Newark USA fotoblog. As I was leaving the Portugal Day street fair in dwindling daylite yesterday, I took for today a picture of the squat, unsteepled church at the three-way intersection of Ferry Street, Edison Place, and McWhorter Street.

I also took a picture of the two historical plaques on the front of the building. The top plaque reads:

THE SECOND REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH
BUILT 1848
HAS BEEN PLACED ON THE
NATIONAL REGISTER
OF HISTORIC PLACES
BY THE UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

The second plaque recites some of the history of the building and incorporates a foto that shows that there used to be a steeple!, so the church wasn't always so squat and odd-looking. Curiously, the recitation of the building's history does not say when, why, or how the church lost its steeple. The plaque reads, line-for-line:

The Second Reformed Dutch Church

This building served many people as a
source of spiritual strength. The
church was constructed in 1848.
Designed by architect, William H.
Kirk, it was initially named the Second
Reformed Dutch Church. The German
immigrants of the Ironbound area
were the first residents to benefit from
the services held here. Later, as the
Italian population grew, the church
was purchased by the Newark Catholic
Archdiocese and renamed Our Lady of
Mount Carmel Church. The church
was closed in 1972 and remained va-
cant until August 1978 when the Iron-
bound Educational and Cultural
Center secured a rental with an option
to buy the church and former rectory
buildings. The IECC temporarily mov-
ed [sic] into the main level of the church. On
February 10, 1981 the IECC purchased
the church and the rectory which had
been listed in the National Register of
Historic Places in 1979. Later in 1984
the church and rectory buildings were
catalogued as an [sic] Historical site by the
State of New Jersey.

The architect's name is, appropriately, Scots English for "church". I won't quibble with the lack of commas in a couple of places they might better be, but I will certainly complain when people set errors in bronze, such as hyphening the one-syllable word "moved" or using the preposterous affectation "an Historical". (If you don't say "an history", don't say "an historical". It's that simple.) And why a capital-H for "Historical" but not a capital-S for "site"?

I'm puzzled by the windows, or lack thereof. I wasn't looking carefully when I took the picture, but in working with the wider foto today I noted that it appears that the windows have been blocked. Or is that some kind of optical illusion in which we are actually seeing thru glass into a dark interior? If the windows have in fact been blocked, that seems a clear violation of the landmark laws. I'm pretty sure that owners of landmarked buildings have to keep the original exterior appearance, and I can't imagine this church had its windows blocked when it was in use for services.