Bethany Baptist of the New Alliance

This "Church Day" at Newark USA I show a view of a storefront church not far from me in Vailsburg, Bethany Baptist Church of the New Alliance (Eglise Baptiste Bethanie de la Nouvelle Alliance). I find no website for it, but do see a phone number on the sign on the building: "Rev. Edmond Etienne, Pastor 973-372-5046". Switchboard.com shows that to be a current phone number, for Rev. Etienne.

While looking for a website for this church, I found an interesting piece on the blog of the other, better-known Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, pix of which I have shown here on April 30th and December 31st, 2006. (Tho that is called a blog, it has had only one entry so far, from August. By contrast, this is the 674th entry in this blog. Oh my Lord! (Seems an apt exclamation for a Sunday.))

Many on-lookers in America, even some African Americans, knew too little about Liberia’s past to interpret [a] call for U.S. intervention. They were unaware that Liberia was co-founded by freed African slaves in America (now called Americo-Liberians) and the American Colonization Society (ACS), an elite group of whites, first conceived by a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey named Robert Finley. The ACS favored repatriating blacks to Africa as an alternative to their emancipation in America.

I knew that Liberia was founded by American freedmen, but did not know about the New Jersey connection. I checked "Robert Finley" in Wikipedia and, sure enuf, it says the same thing, save that he was co-founder of the society that created Liberia, along with a minister from Connecticut, Samuel John Mills, who was, on his own, instrumental in forming the American Bible Society.
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After discussing Liberia's troubled history, the blog writer, Dr. M. William Howard, Jr., pastor of Bethany Baptist, says:

The best way to guard against [Liberia's] being further subverted by these pressures is to rebuild a truly sovereign democracy in which all the people, regardless of ethnicity or religion, share in the nation’s prospects.

I left this comment:

Actually, the best way to secure the Liberty and Prosperity (New Jersey's state motto) of Liberians is not to secure its independence but, quite the contrary, to bring it into the Union as our 51st State. The fact that it would be our first black-majority state should reverberate with Bethany Baptist's congregation. As Dr. Howard points out, New Jersey played a key role in the creation of Liberia, so it is only fitting that New Jerseyans, perhaps from Bethany Baptist itself, lead the way to resumption of closer ties between the U.S. and Liberia, and a more intimate and mutually beneficial intensification of relations across the African diaspora. Wouldn't black Americans benefit from two more black Senators (than the one — out of 100 — they now have) and four more Representatives in Congress? "Sovereignty" need not mean "independence". New Jerseyans have a secure democracy and share the sovereignty, and might, of the United States. Liberia should have the same.

There is a significant presence of Liberian immigrants in this area. I showed pix July 30, 2006 of a gathering in Military Park of the Liberian Community Association of North Jersey, and mentioned that I took a business card to give my neighbor across the street. By way of update, I did give him the card, and he did contact the group.
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Another thing I found interesting on the website of the big Bethany Baptist Church is that the editor-in-chief of Essence magazine is a member of the congregation (so presumably lives in or near Newark).
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Gaetano found mention of another religious item of note in today's Star-Ledger, "Newark clergy preach the practice of unity". Black and Latino clergy met at the great big Metropolitan Baptist Church on Springfield Avenue (2 pix of which I showed here November 12, 2006) in a service called "We're Cut from the Same Cloth," to "seek to build bridges between the two groups". I hope it went well.
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I wanted to take pix inside MBC to complement the exterior views, and sent a letter, by postal mail, to request permission. No one so much as acknowledged receipt. How rude! and arguably un-Christian. I guess they have so many members they don't need any publicity, altho a member of the congregation at the time told me the preacher one Sunday said that he wished outsiders could see the joy of the faithful during services. I was willing to show that. Was the refusal to answer me a racial thing? Perhaps MBC needs to hold a meeting on building bridges between black and white Newarkers.
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Queen for Another Sunday. For the second week in a row, Newark's Queen Latifah was on Sunday morning TV, this time on the season premier of the A&E interview and performance series Private Sessions. If you missed it, there are 3 brief video excerpts on AETV.com, in one of which she mentions being from NJ. A video similar, if not identical, to one of those clips also appears at the Spike video website, tho it was choppy (some kind of server problem) when I went to it. The entire one-hour interview will be rebroadcast at 4 o'clock in the morning of a third Sunday, on Cablevision channel 46 next week, October 7th. If you want to set your VCR or TiVo, remember that 4am Sunday morning is Saturday nite as most of us see things, so don't wait until Sunday itself to do the programming.
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It occurred to me only today that I didn't mention another famous Newarker's very prominent television appearance at the beginning of this month. The Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association was hosted by Jerry Lewis, who was born Joseph (or Jerome, there seems some uncertainty) Levitch in Newark in 1926. "Jerry" is a common nickname for "Jerome", not "Joseph", but many sources show "Joseph" as his original first name. Odd, huh?
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Wikipedia shows two flags in the summary box on the right of Jerry Lewis's entry, those of the U.S. and, this one, the flag of NJ.

Wikipedia says that Jerry Lewis not only hosts the MDA Telethon but also helped form that organization. I don't watch begathons, be they called "telethons", "pledge drives", or anything else. But Jerry managed to raise over $63.7 million for MDA, up 4.5% over the prior year. Good for him.
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Interestingly, Jerry Lewis has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies and one for TV. He also has a plaque on the New Jersey Walk of Fame (last foto at my blog entry of May 3rd).
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The Wikipedia article on Jerry Lewis might also usefully have included the flag of Essex County, but did not. You may have seen it flying outside the Old Essex County Courthouse but not been close enuf to read the lettering.

Newark may not have a flag of its own, since I didn't find one on the Flags of the World website, but I did find one there for Tom Cruise's high school stomping grounds, little Glen Ridge. Isn't that odd?
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I chanced to see as well in the L's in Wikipedia's list of performers honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, that Queen Latifah also has a star, perhaps not far from Jerry Lewis's movie star. I don't know the geography, but the building numbers aren't far apart (his: 6821 Hollwyood Blvd; hers: 6915). The Wikipedia list shows Latifah out of alpha order, however, between Sherry Lansing and Walter [Woody Woodpecker] Lantz. In checking to see who Sherry Lansing is, I find that her Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this past March's Academy Awards was presented by Tom Cruise. He is described by Wikipedia as "her longtime friend and business partner".
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Not everything comes back to New Jersey, but you might be surprised how much does. Well, at least in my little world.

Not So

I have been criticized by some readers for showing only the good about Newark. Tho it is true that I show much more that is good, and normal, about Newark than about the bad, and abnormal, it is certainly not true that I have avoided unpleasant topics. I specifically admitted to a murder on my block, with foto of the floodlited crime investigation scene; a triple murder 1,000 feet away, for which an arrest was made within about two weeks; the Ivy Hill shootings, five times (August 7th, August 14th and August 23rd; in passing on August 27th and September 5th); and even the theft of my patio table. That hardly paints me as a Pollyanna misrepresenting Newark as problem-free, now does it?
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This blog does not purport to be a portrayal of life for everyone in Newark, only my life in Newark, and the life most people can expect to enjoy in Newark. You see, crime is abnormal in most of Newark, most of the time. I lived for 35 years in Manhattan. I saw and experienced a lot more crime in Manhattan than in Newark. That is part of my perspective. Another part is understanding that there are people who live miserable lives because of circumstances around them; there are people who live miserable lives because of things within them; and there are people who live miserable lives because the outer world and inner world co-conspire to make them miserable. "You can take the boy out of The Bronx/Newark/Harlem or Rumson/Beverly Hills/You-Name-It, but you can't take The Bronx/Newark/Harlem or Rumson/Beverly Hills/You-Name-It out of the boy." So, part of us is shaped by where we grew up.
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Still, there are people who can make the richest life into their own personal hell. Look at the fallen celebrities, with all their money and fame and power over their lives. Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are constantly in trouble with the law. Robert Downey, Jr. nearly ruined his life and lost his career due to years of drug abuse that produced bizarre behavior, such as breaking into a stranger's house to go to sleep. Don't forget Len Bias, a black kid who got his big break, being signed with the Boston Celtics, but who used part of his signing bonus to buy cocaine — that killed him. And of course there is the lovely Michael Vick, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy an estate where he could hold dog-fiting contests and brutally kill dogs that performed badly.
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Newark is not uniformly poor, and the poor, in Newark and elsewhere, do not necessarily live horrible lives and descend into crime and drug addiction. Such things are abnormal, and should never be exaggerated. Most Newarkers go about their lives concerned more about traffic, taxes, making ends meet, deciding where and when to take their vacation, and all the ordinaries of life anywhere. Self-respecting people who find themselves in a bad situation look for ways to get out of difficulties, not get themselves into more difficulty. And that is as true here as anywhere.
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My biggest problem today is deciding whether to water newly planted rose of sharon saplings tonite, in the middle of the nite, or wait till tomorrow. After that, I have housekeeping, reorganizing my papers, and other personal matters to tend to. Crime enters my mind only tangentially, as for instance whether some miscreant driving down my block while I am watering plants at nite will cause me problems. After all, the one murder on this block was of someone brought in by car to this quiet street, forced out of the car where no one would see, and shot in the back of the head. But I know that it is extremely unlikely, as a practical matter, that anyone will bother me if I water my plants at 3am. Were it not for constant suggestions from media that crime is everywhere around us — which is one reason I rarely watch the local news out of Crime City (New York) — such thoughts would scarcely enter the back of my mind, given my own actual experiences in my own neighborhood.
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Regular readers of this blog/viewers of the fotos may not have realized that I have a lot of nitetime views, which is my way of subliminally telling people that much of Newark is safe to be in after dark. Bear in mind that an older white man who cannot run due to knee surgeries took those nite views and lived to show them.
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Today I offer yet another nitetime foto, of an SUV I saw in the Bergen Street Pathmark parking lot. I was struck by the elaborate decorations, and personalized license plate. Not just the back but both sides of that vehicle had religious slogans or imperatives imprinted. I wasn't up to trying to steady the camera for all three sides but contented myself with this one view.

Sincerely religious people have made a big difference in Newark. They spearheaded the creation of the shopping center in which I saw that vehicle. And it's not just Christians. I was stopped at a red lite at West Kinney Street and MLK Boulevard one nite a couple of weeks ago, when a man in a kaftan strolled across the intersection from north to south. I happen to know that there is a mosque on that block, and was pleased to see him. There are some kinds of people you might watch carefully if they pass near your car as you are stopped at a lite. But a man in a kaftan walking toward a mosque? I don't think so.
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Two last things. It has recently been suggested, in an Internet story Gaetano found, that the Ivy Hill shootings were hate crimes against students at least one of whom was (thought) gay. I never saw that in any of the coverage of the incident. Nor, however, have I seen an express linking of the Ivy Hill shootings (of three current and one prospective Delaware State University students) with a recent shooting by a student from East Orange of two Delaware State students in Dover, Delaware. (One of the victims was sent to a hospital in Newark, Delaware, oddly enuf.) News reports mentioned that conflicts between students from Newark (NJ) and Washington, DC may have been involved in that incident. I find it odd that there should be so much violence involving Delaware State University and Newark, New Jersey in recent months. The only sexual reference I see in reports of the Ivy Hill shooting is a suggestion that two of the victims may have been sexually assaulted before the murders.
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An online opinion piece by a young man who calls himself "The Newark Voice", points out that some of the crime reported in Newark has its origins outside the city. And of course, the prime suspect in the Ivy Hill shootings resided outside Newark and came from very far outside Newark: Peru.
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The other thing I wanted to mention, in connection with the suggestion that the Ivy Hill shootings may have been, at least in part, anti-gay, is that in searching the Internet to make sure that the church shown in a foto here September 17th was Grace Church, I found an express mention (in Google's second listing) that that church is gay-friendly. Its own website says, on its welcome page, "Its members are young and old, married and single, gay and straight."
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That makes at least two major Downtown churches that welcome gay people, the other also being Episcopalian, the seat of that denomination's Newark diocese, Trinity & St. Philip's Cathedral. In addition, my friend Joe says that a church near him in Belleville, Christ Church, has actually shown the rainbow flag. It is also Episcopalian, and explicitly mentions gay outreach on a page of its website. These and other gay-friendly Episcopal churches in the vicinity are shown on the website of an Episcopal group on Mulberry Street, "The Oasis: LGBTi Ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark".
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There is, however, as of now very little in the way of openly gay or gay-friendly businesses in Newark, and there is for gay men pretty much nothing to do at nite in Newark. Then, again, social opportunities for gay men in New York have shrunk drastically in the past 30 years, to perhaps 1/5 of what they once were, as people buy the lie that we don't have to be by ourselves, ever, but should be happy to be surrounded by people unlike ourselves, always. Being tolerated in their world is better than living full lives in our own. No, it really is not.
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As Newark becomes more sophisticated and diverse, as new people move in, there must develop places where each subgroup can be by itself now and then. We have always had that in this country, Chinatowns and Little Bombays, black neighborhoods and white, places where Portuguese or Spanish can be seen on signs and heard on the streets. But in recent decades the pernicious notion has arisen that wanting to enjoy your own group, culture, or subculture is evil and must be renounced. We are all to be the same, to the fullest extent possible, and all difference is to be downplayed and denied. The heck with that. Pardon my French.

Possum on My Porch

I have mentioned that there is at least a pair of raccoons on my block that has visited my house on various nites. They come out of a storm drain on the other side of the street from my house, about 100 feet down to the right. Raccoons are big, strong animals but they generally don't bother cats, so I don't care if they're near, tho I have had to chase them out of the house a couple of times, and out of the trunk of my car, where one of them started to rip open a big bag of dry cat food when I took other groceries into the house. They're cute, but not with dogs. Any dog that encounters them and attacks is likely to be severely injured or killed, but most dogs around here are on leash. Little, however, did I expect to see an opossum on my outside steps, because they are not big and not tuf. When possums are young, even adult cats could kill them, and playing dead is not likely to save them.
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Yet, when I went out to get the mail Thursday evening, what should I see but a great big possum perhaps a foot long (not including tail), with its distinctive triangular face, unkempt straight, lite-brown hair, and skinny tail. It scurried down and under the steps when it saw me, but not fast enough to evade a cat or dog. I saw that the bowls where I put dry food and water for the neighborhood outdoor cats were both empty, so filled them, thinking that maybe this is the critter that has ripped open a loaf of bread and package of egg noodles I left on my back vestibule, so it might like dry cat food, and could in any case probably use a drink, since we haven't had rain in days. I refilled the dry-food bowl, then took in the little water bowl to refill it too. Sure enuf, when I returned to the porch, s/he had come up near the dry food again. On seeing me again, however, it went down and under the steps again.
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I hoped that if I left for awhile, it would come back. I wanted to get a picture. But my camera was on the third floor. OK, by the time I can get up two flites and back down, the possum might have returned to (involuntarily) have its picture taken. No such luck.
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I don't know if the only reason I got to see this wild critter is that my porch lite burned out a couple of days ago and I have not replaced it, or that it only recently moved into the neighborhood (and a porch lite wouldn't dissuade it from raiding a cat-food bowl). I'll keep my camera close at hand for a few days, and turn it on, set to flash, when I step onto the porch at nite, in case I can catch the cute little thing visiting again.
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Vailsburg is one of those (semi-)suburbs that wildlife is returning to. Some parts of NJ have deer(s) and bears. (I don't like irregular plurals. If the singular is bear and deer, the plural should be bears and deers.) Newark has, at the least, raccoons and, it now appears, possums too. Bunnies don't stand much chance of growing to adulthood to reproduce here. There are too many feral cats and raccoons to make a meal of them.
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Today's foto is of one of the raccoons ransacking grocery bags in my kitchen 3 years ago as my cat Mirabella looks on. I have since had new windows with built-in screens installed, and these indoor visits have stopped.

Golden City

As I was walking around the Federal Courthouse area last nite and approached the Arena worksite, I spotted this restaurant in front and lited Prudential Center with Rock of Gibraltar logo beyond. It said something to me, especially in that I had, only minutes before, seen the golden dome of City Hall lited up in the nite.

Speaking of gold, Gaetano sent me links to two items about a Newark-area swimmer who shared a gold medal in the 4x100m Freestyle Relay in the 2007 World Aquatics Championships. Tho born in the Bronx, Cullen Jones grew up in Irvington and attended St. Benedict's Prep in Newark. As a child, he almost drowned at Dorney Park, so made special exertions to learn to swim at the JFK Pool and Recreation Center in Central Newark. Now he is promoting a national program called Begin to Swim, directed to minority kids.

A study conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control, using statistics from 1999-2002, showed that black children between the ages of 10 and 19 are almost three times more likely to drown than white children, and Jones, the first African-American swimmer to hold a world record, said he wants "to close this gap." [By teaching black kids to swim, not by drowning white kids.]

When I was a child in Palisades Park, my parents taught me to swim at Lake Hopatcong. We then moved to Leonardo (Middletown Township), a few blocks from Sandy Hook Bay; then for one year to a rental house in Little Silver that had a big swimming pool, then to a house in River Plaza (another area of Middletown) alongside a lake. So I swam a lot in my youth. A lot of inner-city kids get no such exposure, and do not master even the most rudimentary techniques for surviving in the water. Jones is doing something about that.
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There's a short video online about his efforts at the Star-Ledger's space on NJ.com.

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Golden location, but for how long? To the right of the Chinese restaurant you can see demolition of whatever had been alongside it. Is Golden City next? Or will it be spared?

Seeing Double

I had to go Downtown this evening to mail the application for the rebate of the Home Depot delivery fee for my washing machine, because I missed the Vailsburg post office's closing time and this was the last day I could mail the rebate form and still qualify for the $55 back. I said to the woman at the counter that this needed to be postmarked today (my working motto is "Never do today what you can put off to tomorrow") and she said the meter strip would be fresh out of the machine (with the right date). When she looked down at the recipient's address, she remarked, "Oh, I've done a couple of these today already." That's good to know. It suggests at once that the Newark Home Depot is doing good business (and paying lots of sales tax into the City's treasury) and that Newarkers are savvy enuf to send for the rebates they're entitled to.
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I disapprove of mail-in rebates, and regard them as a basically unethical practice adopted by merchandisers who know that some people will forget, or lose the necessary forms or receipts, or otherwise not apply for the rebates they are entitled to. But mail-in rebates are a fact of present merchandising life, so until government says rebates must be redeemable in-store or, in the case of Internet purchases, online during the same transaction as they apply to, we will all have to dance to the merchandisers' tune.
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After I got the rebate form into the mail, I walked around that area, where I hadn't spent much time before, to see not just what the Arena looks like now but also scout out the handsome Federal Courthouse and its monumental sculpture. The Courthouse comes across as a modernized reflection of the Post Office building across the street, with similar roof peaks at various points around the building. Outside the main entrance is a huge stone head of Themis, in Greek mythology a Titan who functioned as the Greek goddess of justice. The head (with neck), which was made by artist Diana K. Moore in at least two segments joined by mortar, is 11 feet tall and probably 7 or so feet wide.
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There are a couple of curious features to the statue. First, it is androgynous, with very short hair. And second, unlike the Roman goddess of justice, Justitia, who is typically shown blindfolded and holding a balancing scale, this Titanic woman is shown without the scales of balance but wearing a blindfold that is so thin that the outlines of her open eyes are clearly visible. A curious thing to put outside a courthouse, it suggests that tho justice is supposed to be blind, maybe it isn't. It is a wonderful work. Go see it.
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I was irritated to see that this building, dedicated in 1992, is named for Martin Luther King, Jr. Why? Isn't it enuf that we renamed High Street, a major historic roadway, MLK Boulevard? What is MLK's connection with Newark? A plaque says that King's 'last visit to Newark was only ten days before his death', but the mere fact that he might have visited on isolated occasions is utterly insufficient reason to name an enormous Federal courthouse for him. By contrast, one of the most distinguished members of the United States Supreme Court in its entire history, William J. Brennan, was born and raised in Newark. A Google search reveals no William J. Brennan Courthouse, anywhere. Why wasn't ours named for him? If it was only because he was still living at the time, we should just have left it unnamed, as simply the Federal Courthouse at Newark, and added his name upon his demise.
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The Wikipedia article on Brennan contains this pithy quotation from a dissent he wrote: "I cannot accept the notion that lawyers are one of the punishments a person receives merely for being accused of a crime."
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Ah, well, what's done is done, and often cannot be undone — tho I don't see why our courthouse in Brennan's city of birth cannot be renamed. After all the Brendan Byrne Arena was renamed the Continental Airlines Arena after 15 years, in a crass act of dishonoring a public servant for corporate gold. The Federal Courthouse has borne the MLK name for 15 years. Maybe it's time for a change. One or the other: a boulevard or a courthouse, but not both.
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In any case, before we name anything else for someone from outside Newark, we should make absolutely certain there is no worthy Newarker who deserves such an honor.
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Speaking of gold, the regilded and floodlit dome of City Hall is visible from the vicinity I was walking thru, and looks wonderful. Unfortunately, police are very wary of permitting fotografs of public buildings nowadays, and I was in no mood to risk being hassled (or worse) for taking pix of the Courthouse, Post Office, City Hall, and/or Police Headquarters at nite. Some other time. Perhaps I can get permission from the General Services Administration or other authorities to set up a tripod, day and nite, to show this area in all its glory. If so, you'll see the fotos here.
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For today's picture, I show the two lited occurrences of "Prudential" visible from that area, one on the Arena, one on the company's world headquarters. One might call them "The Pru Two" except there is a third Pru in Newark, Prudential Hall in NJPAC. That name isn't lited up at nite, however.

This is as clear a rendering as I could manage of the lettering on the Arena and Prudential HQ in the same view, because of differences in briteness levels.
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By the way, the Brendan Byrne Arena opened with six sold-out shows by Bruce Springsteen on October 30, 1981. Almost exactly 26 years later, maybe Bon Jovi and the five different opening acts they have booked, really can sell out the Prudential Center for 10 shows.
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(This is an entry for Wednesday uploaded Thursday due to time and energy constraints.)

We Are the Champions, My Friends

The Newark Bears minor-league baseball team won their second Atlantic League championship tonite, in Newark. (They also won in 2002.) NJ.com buried the story toward the bottom of its homepage. I had to do an electronic search for "bears" to find it. Let's hope the story gets more play in the minds of Newarkers and outsiders.

As I modestly told Gaetano yesterday,

It's all me. Before I attended a game, they lost a lot. Now they win a lot. They'll probably win the whole thing now. It's all me. Yeah, that's the ticket. [Think Jon Lovitz's Pathological Liar bit on SNL.]

But seriously, folks ... Star-Ledger sports columnist Steve Politi wondered aloud, last Sunday, if Newark is a good place for sports, saying that despite a very strong season, the Bears were drawing only about a third of the stadium's capacity. I sent him my take.

Your commentary on the poor attendance at Newark Bears games refuses to recognize that the people of North Jersey are spoiled by their proximity to MAJOR LEAGUE sports teams called "New York" this and that, even if they actually play in New Jersey. Tho I have lived in Newark for over 7 years, I attended my first Bears game, with friends, only this year, the home opener on May 9th, and put up 31 fotos, with commentary, of our nite out, on my fotoblog.
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Most people think of sports in terms of win/lose in major leagues. What they DON'T understand, because it has never been EXPLAINED to them by MEDIA, is that there is a lot more to attending a Bears game than baseball. A nite at Riverfront Stadium is a nite of wholesome, family-friendly entertainment, with other things happening than baseball (see my blog entry above if you don't understand that assertion). Minor league managements understand that they can't compete for fans with major-league teams on baseball alone. They thus have to offer other diversions. And they DO.
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I have been to Yankee Stadium three times. It offered fans only baseball. I have been to Bears Stadium once. It offered much MORE than baseball. And CHEAP. So which would I prefer to go to? Because of the MAJOR LEAGUE thing, it really is hard to say. I had a good time in both Yankee Stadium and Riverfront Stadium because I was with family or a friend in the Bronx and friends in Newark. And that is much more important than the score (altho I have no idea who won when I was at Yankee Stadium, I know for sure that the Bears won May 9th; for one thing, it was a 14-0 blowout!).

I had, before my first Yankee Stadium game, thought MLB boring, because I had seen it only on TV. Various observers have suggested that watching baseball on TV is comparable to watching grass grow. Seeing it in the stadium is an entirely different experience, and not just as to what's going on in the stands. You see guys trying to steal bases, for one thing. Yes, I know that TV tries to capture that, but it doesn't give viewers even nearly the excitement of what a damned NUISANCE it is to a pitcher to have to keep a corner of his eye on base-stealers. Sports writers don't convey that. And there is always something in the stands, close to the viewer, that is about as interesting as what is going on, on the field.
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As far as the general public knows, watching a baseball game on TV is pretty much the same as being there, and thus being there is BORRR-ing. Not by a long shot. So there is, to begin with, in any in-stadium experience, a whole lot more to see than you realize from home. In a major-league ballpark, baseball is ALL you see. Not in a minor-league ballpark, if my ONE Bears game permits me to generalize. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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We had a very good time (despite the subnormally cold weather; where is this "global warming" we all hear about?), but parking was BAD. As I mention in that blog entry, it took me 21 minutes to get to Broad and Bridge Streets from my home in Vailsburg, western Newark, but 25 minutes to find a place to park. Yes, Newark has copious public transportation, but most people prefer the private automobile, especially if they are traveling in family or other groupings (since group travel on public transportation generally involves no discounts for 2d, 3d and other members of a group traveling together). (By the way, do you know if there are any plans to induct Bon Jovi into the New Jersey Walk of Fame during their Prudential Center opening stint late next month? There certainly should be a plaque ready for them to pose by.)

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It's fine to have a stadium near major roadways, except that there is not even nearly enuf parking, especially free parking, for people of modest means. This is a problem for Newark's general economic health, not just for the viability of sports Downtown.

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And there just is not enuf parking for Riverfront Stadium to reach even a substantial fraction of its capacity. Nor is there parking enuf for Downtown Newark generally, especially low-cost or FREE, which would turn this city around completely! I suspect some people in high positions here insist, in their hearts, that people SHOULD embrace moving about by public transportation, as leads them to REFUSE to adjust to the reality of the Automobile Age -- which has been with us for AT LEAST 65 YEARS -- instead to make Newark car-friendly.
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The Devils will be a somewhat better test of whether Newark is a big sports city, because the NHL, tho foreign (based in Canada (Montreal), with mostly foreign players, from Canada and Europe), is at least major-league. Do you think that if the New York Yankees wanted to leave Yankee Stadium for a new stadium in Newark, they would lose half their crowd?
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Now, I KNOW, and you MAY know, that the parts of Newark that sports fans or other tourists would go to, are SAFER than New York. I lived 35 years in Manhattan, and have lived in Newark 7 years. I was astonished when, in looking for information on the Internet about the area I was thinking of moving to from Manhattan, I found that 07106 had approximately the same crime rate as 10036, my old zip code. And yes, I have had one bad experience here, but I had lots of bad experiences in New York City, which is filled to the rafters with thieves, drug pushers, prostitutes, and worse. People look at crime statistics per 1,000 population, but if they were to look at crimes per square mile, the rates for NYC would unquestionably be appalling as contrasted with NJ in general and almost certainly as contrasted with Newark as well.
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I am starting to tire of the old stereotype of Newark. It bears little or no resemblance to the New Newark that I live in. Why can't "you people" in media get that thru people's heads? Cheers.

Reality and perception are at war in the public mind when it comes to Newark, and perception trumps reality every time. The fix is to change the perception by showing the reality more compellingly. Seeing is believing, so you have to bring people into Newark. And then the second most compelling evidence goes out from people who came to Newark and not only survived but had a great time: word of mouth, in this era bolstered by pix and videos. This is why the Arena, which Bon Jovi* opens exactly one month from today, can play a crucial role in bringing home to people that times have changed.
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Hundreds of thousands of people from outside Newark will come to see games and concerts in the Prudential Center. The Booker Administration and Arena management must do everything in their power to see that as close as possible to none of them go away with horror stories to confirm the old perceptions of Newark as a dangerous ruin.
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Within hours of the Arena's opening, written accounts, digital fotos, and videos of many concertgoers' nite in Newark will go flying across the Internet. This promises to change the way the world views Newark. And just as with NJPAC, we can expect the performing-arts portion, not just the sports portion, of the Prudential Center experience to play a major role in reshaping perceptions. This is a very exciting time to be in Newark.
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* The official Bon Jovi website now plays the song "Lost Highway" from their new album, and a recorded message from Jon about the five different opening acts for Bon Jovi's 10 Newark concerts: My Chemical Romance, Big & Rich, Gretchen Wilson, Chris Daughtry, and All-American Rejects.
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I haven't heard of any plans for a fireworks display October 25th, around the opening of the Arena. Can't IDT, which did such a terrific job with the fireworks outside Bears & Eagles Stadium this year, arrange a display by the Arena? Or if Prudential doesn't want to share the spotlite, surely it has money enuf to do a great display of its own, with speakers around the building for recorded musical accompaniment, as from Bon Jovi and all five of the other bands that will play in Newark during this concert series. That could be a freebee for us common folk who can't afford indoor concert tickets for the whole family, as to involve all Newarkers in the celebration.

Mushroom Shrub

While walking around in my neighborhood I spotted this unusually trimmed evergreen.

It reminds me of a green mushroom cloud, but more peaceful. Now that autumn has arrived and leaves start to fall, evergreens assume a more important role in our visual environment. I've got an enormous spruce (I think) in front of my house on one side of the stairs; a great big yew on the other; and a large boxwood (I think) at the corner of the driveway. I've also planted some azaleas and rhododendrons in the front and side yards; and an evergreen bamboo in the backyard. English ivy has climbed two trees I can see from the front of the house. So I always have greenery in view.
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I sometimes wonder if the first people who moved out of the tropics and saw trees dropping their leaves as the weather got cold thought the world was coming to an end.

Queen for a (Sun)day.*

Newark's own Queen Latifah was profiled today on the classy morning program CBS News Sunday Morning. I chanced to see it only because I couldn't sleep. I'm having a lot of trouble with my sleep cycle right now. My 'little' sister (she's only 61) foned today and when I mentioned my sleep-cycle problem, she said "You too?!" She thinks it may be an age thing. She is currently on the East Coast, tho she lives in Long Beach, California, so has jet lag to boot. But I have absolutely no sleep cycle nowadays. I sleep at different times on different days, and not nearly long enuf on most days. Then I'll make up some of the time by sleeping too long one day, which isn't good either. Because if I go to sleep at 9am and don't get up until 6pm, there's no way I'm going to be able to reset my personal sleep-cycle clock to 11am or earlier. Now that the days are getting shorter, I want to be up in daylite. But I am not presently getting to sleep until 10am! Add 8 hours to that, and you get 6pm. That is no time to be getting up.
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I don't want to take a pill, and alcohol energizes me as much as inclines me to sleep. 'Is a puzzlement.'
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In any case, had I known about this CBS profile of Newark's Queen Latifah earlier, I'd have alerted you, but I chanced across it only same-day, in looking for something to soothe me to sleep at 9am.
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The occasion for this television profile was the release this week of QL's new album, Trav’lin Light. (The?) Queen's segment didn't start until 10:00, however, and didn't cover much new ground (for me), except that Ms. Owens, whom her mother still calls "Dana", not "Queen", started using the name "Latifah" (which she pronounces with a broad-A in the first syllable, like the musical tone "la"), albeit without the "Queen", around age 8. She added the "Queen" around 17 when she released her first album. And 'Dana' said that the "Queen" name used to be coextensive with herself but has now grown into its own monumental thing, a corporation, as it were.
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Curious about her present religion, given that she freely mentions that "Latifah" is Arabic, I checked a couple of sources, Wikipedia and NNDB.com. Wikipedia says she was raised Baptist but, by early adulthood, "She was ... a member of the Nation of Gods and Earths, a Faradian Islamic sect." (That would be Black Muslims, Elijah Muhammad's and now Louis Farrakhan's group.) But NNDB shows her religion as Baptist. What up?
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The reporter mentioned that Queen Latifah spends time in her old stomping grounds "in New Jersey", and the video showed crossed street signs at a corner for Halsted Street and some other, in East Orange. (I know it's East Orange rather than Newark because the signs are white with black lettering. But, then, all the Oranges seem to have white signs with black lettering. Again I ask, "What up?"
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Halsted Street ends on the south at South Orange Avenue five blocks from me. "Newark" wasn't mentioned even once. OK, so Dana Owens/Queen Latifah was born in Newark but the family moved to East Orange after the divorce of her parents. A mention of both those localities would have been welcome on television's classiest morning news show. Worse, the print version of the report has two fotos, the caption for the first of which refers to the "New Jersey Performance Arts Center". Yup. CBS News actually said "Performance" rather than "Performing". Gives you lots of confidence about the info CBS News gives us about remote parts of the world, doesn't it, that it doesn't even get right the name of a great big building 12 miles from their broadcast center.
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At least Dana/Queen was heard to say she is more comfortable on the East Coast, where the pace is faster. But she's now an L.A./Hollywood kind of gal. Stay grounded, Ms. Latifah/Owens. Make Newark your home base. Maybe you should buy the Krueger-Scott Mansion and make it your personal, and Newark's, palace of hip style and glamor. Certainly all attempts to make that mansion into an African-American Cultural Center have failed miserably. Why not sell it to Queen Latifah so it might become a very-high-end private residence again?
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Today's Church. This being "Church Sunday" here at Newark USA, today's foto is of Iglesia Fuente de Vida on Lower Broadway in the North Ward. It would probably be categorized as a "storefront church", for not having stained-glass windows and the like. It has a website, in Spanish, at http://www.fdvida.com/Spanish/home.html. Its postal address, oddly, is in Union.

Pix Galore. I checked the directory on my computer where I store the fotos I have published in this blog, and find there are 1,597 fotos in it, all but perhaps a dozen being my own, the rest generously offered by Jeffrey Bennett and Eric Koppel (am I forgetting someone?) or created by screenprints. I've been busy.
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* That is a very dated reference to a TV show from the 1950s and 60s, Queen for a Day, which had the tagline, "Would you like to be queen for a day?!?" But I didn't say it. Charles Osgood on CBS News Sunday Morning said it. I just supplied the parentheses.

President of Ecuador Here Sunday

I had the Spanish news on TV while doing other things, and heard that the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, will be at the gymnasium of Essex County College tomorrow from 3:00 to 7:00pm to reconnect with the expat community. A Jersey Journal article in Spanish (I didn't even know that that Jersey City paper published in Spanish) says that the event is intended to be as much fiesta as political appearance. (I initially wrote "party", but that has political meanings; so "fiesta" is a better choice, even in English. And yes, "fiesta" has been in the English language for over 160 years.)
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Asked if President Correa was trying to drum up votes for his candidates in upcoming legislative elections, the Consul General, Jessica Escala, denied any such (crass) motive. No, he just wants to show the 700,000 Ecuadorians (!) in New Jersey (which makes Ecuador's Newark consulate second in importance in the U.S. only to New York) that he hasn't forgotten them. (Did you even know that there were foreign consulates in Newark? and Ecuador's is not the only one.) The Ecuadorian consul in Newark said:

"Todos vienen cuando son candidatos, y cuando son presidentes sólo acuden a Manhattan a las grandes reuniones económicas, financieras y de otro tipo." [They all come when they are candidates, and when they are presidents they only go to Manhattan, for the great economic, financial, and other types of meetings [such as the UN General Assembly, now underway].]

Further discounting that President Correa will be here to stump for his candidates, Ms. Escala said that of the 700,000 Ecuadorians in New Jersey, only 6,527 voted in the last Ecuadorian election (by absentee ballot), in large part because many are not still registered. Correa wants to urge all to keep their passports and other documents current, and register to vote. He also encourages Ecuadorians who need assistance from U.S. officials to ask for help without fearing deportation, presumably by keeping their papers in good order.
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In any case, it's not every day that the President of any country visits Newark. I hope he will be made to feel welcome.
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New York's Cooper Union will host the far more controversial, leftist President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, the following day. Maybe the next time Morales is in the region, as for the next UN General Assembly, he'll stop by Newark too. Indeed, somebody should invite the hugely controversial President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to speak in Newark. He might like that, figuring that a city with a large population that has been roughed up by the American economic system might be a congenial audience for his economic and political theories about what the United States should — and should not — be doing in the world. But in any case, we will have one President of a South American country in town tomorrow.
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"PL/SQL developers converge on .... Newark!" Gaetano found a blog entry by that name today. I have no idea what a PL/SQL developer is, other than that it has to do with some computer technical field. What interested Gaetano and me is that a group of about 200 computer professionals came to town, albeit to an airport hotel, and had no problems, which they will doubtless tell others when they return home. I left the following comment:

Did any of the participants get to see anything of Newark but the hotel? Newarkers are always glad when out-of-towners come to visit, and have nothing negative to say when they leave, but there is much more to see of Newark than conference rooms. Had they managed to get to NJPAC, the Newark Museum, or one of the great Iberian restaurants in the Ironbound, conference participants might have been very favorably impressed, and passed along that info to their colleagues, not just what they learned in training sessions.

It's good that Newark is a place for business. It would be better if it were understood to be a place for leisure too.
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Today's foto is of an addition to our culture that Hispanics have made in recent years, and lets us say goodbye to summer. Autumn starts Sunday at 5:51am.

I hadn't realized that "Delicioso Coco Helado", on the side of this cart, is the name of a company based in the South Bronx. (The vendor is seated in the shade; you can see his left leg, tho.) An interesting article about the company, which was started by a Honduran immigrant, appears on the website of the New York Press.

Behind a counter, Sofia Pastora, Alfredo's daughter, and Jerry Thiebaud, his son, dispense provisions to pushcart operators. This involves selling three-gallon-jug containers of sherbet, which cost $16.75 or $20.50, depending on the flavor. * * *

The vending carts, says Alfredo [Thiebaud], a hardy 65-year-old with tanned skin, a broad, fleshy nose and thick eyebrows, are built from scratch here in this building [in the South Bronx]. He rents them out for $1 a day. "There are about three or four different companies imitating me," says Alfredo, through a heavy accent. "But they have no license. I have everything by the book."

Alfredo sells about 10,000 gallons of sherbet a week, which is made on premises almost every day in the summer. * * *

Today, prices can range anywhere from 50 cents to $1.50 for a cup. When Alfredo started his business in the late 60s, the same product was going for 5 cents and 7 cents. * * *

This year [article appears to be undated], Delicioso Coco Helado has introduced a new product, the first to be sold in supermarkets—also Alfredo's first attempt to pick up slack in the winter when there is zero income: All-natural frozen fruit bars in passion fruit, piña colada, coconut and mango flavors are being sold $1 apiece, or $2.99 for a four-pack at such markets as C Town, Associated and Pioneer.

There's a C-Town near me that was beautifully renovated a year or so ago. Maybe I'll check this out, to see if these bars are still available. I was puzzled as to why our local store did not appear in the website's store list. Then I realized I was looking in Newark, but that side of South Orange Avenue is in East Orange. Oddly, it's still not listed. So I just sent the webmaster an inquiry. Maybe it's an oversite. And no, I do not apologize for that pun. I have no shame.

College Town Shuttle, and All That Jazz

As I was coming out of the Bergen Street Pathmark this evening around 9pm, a van pulled up and stopped right in my path, to let someone out. I looked at the lettering and logos for several Newark institutions of higher education on the side of the van, and noted the words "College Town Shuttle", operating on the "C.H.E.N. Route". I made mental note to find out what that is, then loaded my groceries into the car and headed home.
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On the way, I turned on the radio, which I don't always do. In part, I wanted to see if WQXR could be heard in that vicinity. QXR, the classical-music station of The New York Times, is clear in most parts of Newark, but somewhere in the middle of the city runs into interference from (an)other station(s). Nothing comes in clearly in the conflict zone. QXR is clear to the east and west of the blackout area, but something knocks it out mid-city. I don't know what, nor how large the area is.
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Instead of music, talk came on. As I listened to determine which of my pushbutton stations I was on, I heard WGBO asking for money: "Listen, folks. We need $400 in the next four minutes to make goal." Apparently BGO was running a begathon, that annoying thing ("pledge drive") that public broadcasters do several times a year to raise money, by offering memberships and thank-you gifts. In case you're not familiar with WBGO, it is based in Downtown Newark and modestly calls itself "The World's Premier Jazz Radio Station". Its website, which has streaming audio, appends to that self-description, "NYC and NJ". "NYC" first. Then the state, NJ. Not "Newark", which would go better with NYC, the "C" standing, after all, for a city, not a state. Logically, "NYC" should be paired with "Newark", another city, not the state of NJ.
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It's not that BGO is ashamed of Newark. No. You can hear them refer to Newark often. It's just that it serves the whole metropolitan area, and appeals to the whole region for support. As thru begathons, tho this is the first one I have been annoyed by.
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OK, I was hooked, for four minutes at least. I'm in no position to be sending off "$50, $100, $125 — or $1,000" as the male announcer urged of listeners, but I have mentioned here that Newarkers inclined to support public broadcasting should give to NJN or BGO rather than to WNET. The hosts implored, "Two minutes left to make goal." Then, "One minute. Come on folks, all we need now is $350 to make goal. We hate to miss goal, as I'm sure you hate to miss your goals." Then, music. They didn't make their goal for the hour 8-9pm Friday nite. One must learn to live with disappointments. Onward and upward!
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I was annoyed earlier today when CNN Headline News spent (wasted) something like 3 minutes on the Monterey (California) Jazz Festival. So it's the oldest continuous jazz festival in the world, so what? I'm in New Jersey. If I wanted to go to a jazz festival, I'm sure there's one closer. The Newport Jazz Festival moved many years ago from Rhode Island to New York City, and now the JVC Jazz Festivals organization, which took over, runs programs in both NYC and Newport. At worst, then, to see a major jazz festival I would need to travel 20 miles from home, not 2,600. I thought maybe Newark might have its own jazz fest, so searched for "newark jazz festival" online and found one — in Newark-on-Trent, England! I also found that there was a jazz festival ("second annual") in our Newark in November 1992, with Tony Bennett and Nancy Wilson. I even found that "Craig, the Jazz Singer" would be appearing at this year's Nwk-o-T jazz festival (last May). Different Craig. No, I don't scat. In any sense, except maybe skedaddle.
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I find no current references to a jazz festival in Newark, presumably because most people around here have the same view of jazz as I have: nice enuf background music, as when driving in the car, but that's about it. I regard jazz as the classical music of the United States, and most Americans (including me, most of the time, except when driving) don't much care for classical music. But when driving, I don't want to be distracted by sounds from the radio, so the two radio stations I most listen to (if I listen to radio at all) are both, in my view, classical-music stations, QXR and BGO.
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In any case, how many of CNN Headline News's viewers care to see 3 and more minutes of coverage of any jazz festival out of 21 minutes for a summary of all the news of all the world? I often wonder about the news judgment of Headline News.
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When I got back to my computer, I looked up the "College Town Shuttle" and found this info at a UMDNJ website:

The Council for Higher Education in Newark (CHEN) has existed as an informal association for thirty years without formal/legal relationships. In the early 1970's, CHEN was formed to foster cooperation among the schools and to make Newark a significant American University Center. [That is, it works to promote the image of Newark as a "College Town", which, with some 48,000 students in higher education institutions within city limits, it surely is.] * * *

The CHEN College Town Shuttle, an inter-campus shuttle service serving the University Heights area in Newark, is a result of the longstanding‚ collaborative relationships between the CHEN institutions. The shuttle is available for use by faculty, staff and students from Essex County College, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rutgers University-Newark and UMDNJ. The CHEN Shuttle operates Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. In addition to transporting University-bound passengers at each institution, the Shuttle also allows individuals to board or exit the shuttle at the Broad Street Train Station (formerly called Lackawanna Station) and at the CHEN Building (corner of Warren and Lock Streets), which is in close proximity to International Center for Public Health.

Specific pick-up/drop-off locations are designated at each institution ....

So why was a van in the Bergen Street Pathmark parking lot tonite? Shouldn't there be wider service, to the various dormitories now in service? Are there in fact more routes and stops now than indicated on the schedule webpage? If dorms are now being served, students there should bear in mind that UMDNJ is directly across the street from the Pathmark, in case they want to use the van to carry heavy grocery bags back to the dorm. Indeed, why not a shuttle stop at Pathmark? Kids have to eat.
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CHEN is supposed to have its own website, but there is a placeholder page there now saying it is "under maintenance". I think I visited months ago and it was "under maintenance" then too. How much maintenance does it need? And with all the technosavvy students at member institutions. shouldn't it be running like a top? Is Berkeley College a member now too?
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Today's foto is of the new parking structure at UMDNJ from the Pathmark Shopping Center (the latter of which also has offices of various NCC (New Community Corporation) programs in what used to be a Mailboxes, Etc. store).

I know that most readers won't find that foto particularly interesting, but parking for the multiple facilities at UMDNJ was hard to find four years ago, and UMDNJ then added three entire new buildings. People who used to have to wind their way up level after level of the one parking structure, and maybe head down again, before they could find parking, will be glad to know that such a large and well-lited additional structure, out of rain and snow, is now available. I used to have to go to UMDNJ every couple of months for followups to my knee surgeries, and I can tell you that we dreaded having to hunt for a parking space. This additional garage will make UMDNJ a more acceptable choice for people deciding where to have elective surgery done.

'Dog Whisperer' at NJPAC

Gaetano found mention that phenomenal dog trainer César Millán will be in Newark this Sunday. Millán's own website confirms that, and directs to the NJPAC website people interested in tickets. NJPAC advises:

[Please note that no live animals will appear as part of this event. In addition, no dogs are allowed in the theater for the performance.]

Seems odd, huh? I have seen Millán's program on the National Geographic Channel on isolated occasions, even tho I have cats, not dogs, and even tho I generally have the National Geographic Channel blocked because its programming is often astonishingly gruesome. Some nature programmers just love violent death on camera, and delite in showing rampaging elephants killing people, lions and other predators killing animals, etc. All parents of small children, and even teenagers, should block the National Geographic Channel unless they are right there, watching with the kids, and read the listings carefully in advance, lest the parents as well as children be traumatized by that station's appalling bloodthirstiness. You'd think that the National Geographic Channel would be wholesome education and family entertainment. You would be completely wrong.
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Putting aside for the moment the fact that wildlife documentaries are not really geography, the National Geographic Magazine and the cable channel bear almost no resemblance to each other. All filmic media, alas, have been taken over by sado-masochistic degenerates who love to show violent death. That's the way they get their jollies. I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer. I don't delite in the death of animals. So the National Geographic Channel is blocked on my cable boxes so I do not, by accident, see animals killed, ostensibly for our edification, when I am simply channel-surfing.
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In any case, tickets for the three-hour presentation in Prudential Hall at 2pm Sunday are on sale at NJPAC.org or by phone to (888) 466-5722. They range in price from $28 to $203! Jeez.

Today's picture is a nite view of a car passing the crosswalk to NJPAC at nite. My camera was on a tripod, set to Nite Scene, and the exposure was so long that a passing car is just a blur of taillites.

Brick Camouflage in the Brick City

In walking in my neighborhood, on Sanford Avenue in Vailsburg, I saw a faux-brick visual screen atop the Noll Apartments, presumably to conceal things like a water tower or mechanical equipment on the rooftop.

I suppose a blank 'brick' wall is better than a solid-color paint job.

Leno on NJ Again

Last nite, NBC's "nasty crack" (think plumber seen from behind), Jay Leno, again attacked New Jersey in his monolog. This time he mentioned a prison riot that was put down with tear gas and then said (approximate quote; I didn't write it down at the time):

What do you call tear gas in New Jersey? Air freshener.

My, but isn't that amusing. No, actually, it's not amusing at all. Leno needs new writers. Or a new personality. And character.
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Today, AOL hilited a story ("Priciest Zips in America", about high real estate prices being maintained in select zip codes despite a dropoff in sales. No. 1? Alpine, New Jersey 07620, where the median home price is $3,400,000 and the household income $128,287. Does Alpine need tear-gas air freshener?
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Alpine, on the Hudson River (tho Palisades Interstate Park may block views of the river and New York City beyond), is only fifth in per capita income in NJ, flanked above and below by Essex County towns Essex Fells (#4) and Millburn (#6). Essex County's well-to-do enjoy the benefits of being within commuting range of two great cities, New York and Newark. (What's the opposite of "double whammy"? Whatever it is, that's what people in Essex County get.) The top 3 are Mantoloking (Ocean County), Saddle River (Bergen), and Far Hills (Somerset). Overall, NJ is either the first or second wealthiest state by most rankings. Odd for a place that's supposed to stink, no?
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Newark Connection. Gaetano found an article that shows that the former Federal judge newly nominated to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, Michael Mukasey, worked in United Press International's Newark office before deciding to attend law school. That article appears via the Associated Press, the wire service that pretty much destroyed UPI, to the point where it was bought by the Unification Church, controlled by South Korea's Sun Myung Moon. Moon's church also owns the arch-conservative Washington Times.

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"This building brought to you by ..." One Gateway Center has a self-assertive new tenant, the law firm formerly known as Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, when it was in its old location, the Legal Center (One Riverfront Plaza). The firm considered moving out of Newark entirely when it became unhappy with its lease at the Legal Center, but found an agreeable fit at Gateway One. Part of the deal was that its new, one-word name be displayed atop the building, seen here in the foreground with the sign on the upper right, in this view from the south. A portion of the Legal Center appears behind Gateway One, on the right.

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CBS in Newark. Gaetano also found a historical note about Newark's role in broadcast history on the website of American Heritage magazine. (Oddly, altho the magazine is apparently still published, I see no subscription information at that website. I remember the magazine from years ago, which was in the form of large-page but thin, hard-cover books.)

[Headline:] Live From Newark, It’s the Columbia Broadcasting System

Eighty years ago today, on Sunday, September 18, 1927, at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the Columbia Broadcasting System, later known as CBS, made its first network radio broadcast ... [from] WOR, in Newark, New Jersey.

That story contains this astonishing, and refreshing, note:

the amount of advertising that could be put into a program was quite limited–two minutes per hour was a common figure--and the broadcast day could not be expanded at will, like a newspaper or magazine.

Instead, what has been expanded is the amount of time per hour given to advertising. Indeed, many cable broadcasters have given over 100% of several hours a day to advertising, the so-called "Paid Programming" that has ruined late-nite television. Even primetime TV has 19 minutes of commercials per hour, over 9 times the figure in 1927 and perhaps twice the figure in 1960. That's not even counting the intrusions upon programs made by broadcasters to promote their other shows, popups at the bottom of the screen that sometimes take over as much as a quarter of the viewing area or more, during the programming you're watching now! Even as late as 1977, according to one website, there was "less than 10 minutes of commercials per hour".
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Moreover, the cacophony of multiple conflicting advertisements has made things worse. It is a rare show today that has a single sponsor. You can expect to see 7 or more commercials and promos in a single break nowadays, which sometimes includes ads for more than one of competing brands (say, Toyota and Ford in the same break). By contrast, when I was young, in the olden days, there was the Texaco Star Theatre, Colgate Comedy Hour, Kraft Television Theater, U.S. Steel Hour, Armstrong Circle Theater, and other single-sponsor programs. Death Valley Days (which at one point had as host the later President, Ronald Reagan) was sponsored by the U.S. Borax Company, and the only ads that ran were for its products, 20 Mule Team Borax and Boraxo. Even before individual shows got single sponsors, some individual stations had corporate owners who went into broadcasting for its advertising potential.

Department stores often became broadcasters, hoping to promote their wares and capitalize on the goodwill that would go along with operating a popular station (WOR was run by Bamberger’s).

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The sign atop One Gateway Center is lited at nite (this is a view from the east). To get the lettering clear, I had to use flash, which chopped the exposure so much that no detail of the building around it shows. Take my word for it: there's a building there, approximately centered in this foto.

This change tickles me, because the law firm that fired me, supposedly for things I wrote on the Internet, is also in that building, but their presence there is obliterated in public perception by the great big "Gibbons" sign on their building. Ha!

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Bamberger's is the store that once occupied the space Old Navy left (last month, I am informed by a reader). The building looks vacant, but Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster of the Newarkology website, says it is "a server nest", filled with computer servers for various organizations and telecommunications companies. It's a pity they didn't reserve the window areas for office space so the building doesn't look abandoned. Some lites at nite and houseplants in the windows would make a big difference in perceptions.
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Next time you get irritated with 4 solid minutes of commercials and promos, and surfing past channel after channel of infomercials, realize there is occasionally justice to the expression "good old days".

Old Navy Sinks

I was distressed to see, on my way home from the Newark Museum opening Saturday, that the big Old Navy store has closed. The space is empty and sign gone. When did that happen?
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When first it opened, I wondered how good a fit Old Navy is for Newark. The store also seemed much too big. But, I thought, Old Navy is part of The Gap, a very big company, which also operates Banana Republic, Gap stores, and Piperlime (a shoestore I never heard of until I checked the Internet to see what the other units of the company that owns Old Navy are). I checked the Store Locator feature at the Old Navy website, and, sure enuf, the Newark store is no longer shown, so they're not, say, reconfiguring and coming back.
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I had hoped a major corporation would have the patience to stay long-term. With the growth of residential student populations, the predominantly white customer base Old Navy appeals to is gradually growing. But American corporations are notoriously impatient. They need to show quick results to shareholders eager for the fastest possible return on their money. This is one reason Japanese corporations have devastated entire areas of the U.S. economy. Japanese investors will gladly sacrifice in the short term to win market share long-term. But American corporations are like the culture of poverty, and immature adults with poor impulse control: they can't delay gratification.

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Here we see the sustainable scale of retail business in much of Newark, in the mixed-use jumble of urban America. This block is just south of City Hall, on Broad Street. It is occupied by things like a Subway sandwich shop, delicatessens, a store that takes passport fotos, and other businesses to serve the available customer base in, for instance, the Federal Building that looms over it in this picture, and the parishioners of Grace Church, whose steeple rises between the commercial strip and Federal Building.

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So Old Navy is gone. Ah, well, even the New York Yankees in their very best season lost some games. We'll have to mark that down in the "Lose Some" column in a file "You Win Some, You Lose Some". White-oriented merchandisers may not succeed in Downtown Newark until there is much more free or very low-cost parking available. Why, after all, should I or anyone else who wants to carry packages home by car, go to Downtown Newark and look desperately for free parking, then end up paying for parking, if I can go to a suburban store of the same company and park for free?
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The Booker Administration took a booth at a convention in Las Vegas a few months ago to promote Newark to national retailers. But unless retailers can find store space near free parking, many such operators will do the calculus that they can't compete with suburban malls. The solution, plainly, is an urban mall, but that is a major undertaking.
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Some people prefer major undertakings to minor. For instance, I suggested here October 3, 2004 (when this blog was mainly text, no pix) that the Newark Museum could open satellite exhibition and sales spaces in vacant stores in Gateway Center and elsewhere to show more of their collection, rather than have to build a whole new building, at what I anticipated tho did not say in that piece, could be $100 million. Guess which they chose to do? For $110 million.
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By the way, if the Museum is going to construct a hugely expensive new building, why not site it in a new location, say, where the present big parking lot opposite the Arena now sits? The existing Museum building could then become a satellite display space, perhaps devoted to a particular subject, within the Newark Museum (think of how many individual museums the Smithsonian runs), or turned over to other organizations for other purposes. Heck, I'm a both/and kind of guy. The present site, with its historic Polhemus House and Ballantine House, could be turned into a joint Newark Museum/New Jersey Historical Society museum of Newark and New Jersey history, perhaps with all of the artworks by New Jersey artists that the two institutions now own or plan to acquire.
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Back to topic: Saturday nite I also saw something to mark in the "Win Some" column, however. Pedestrian islands for the middle of (over-)Broad Street are now being constructed near the Four Corners as part of the street improvements the Booker Administration has wisely undertaken to make Downtown more appealing and pedestrian-friendly. It's too bad Old Navy couldn't wait to see what impact those improvements have on foot traffic to local businesses. Navies and islands are a perfect match, but Old Navy preferred to sink rather than risk waiting to tie up at Newark's islands.

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The pedestrian islands are going into Broad Street in the vicinity shown below, tho the construction equipment in this picture, taken in June, is associated with the Arena project just south of there, not the street improvements (I think). The Four Corners lie between the two highrise buildings in the foreground, and I saw islands being laid out in Broad Street on both sides of Market. I assume there will be trees and other plantings appropriate for all seasons on these decorative islands. Some tall deciduous trees interspersed with spreading evergreens low, and flower beds, would be nice. I hope they dig up the street to get to soil, with paving (cobble) stones for foot passage between plantings, rather than put big concrete, aboveground planters to hold the plants. Such planters can be attractive, but they don't receive as much moisture from the rain as may be necessary to sustain various plants (whereas the ground contains groundwater) and they have a harsher look to the human eye than plants placed directly into the ground.

Iglesia Sembrador

This "Church Day" at Newark USA I offer a picture of a Spanish-language storefront church at 143 Broadway in the North Ward. It is the rightmost of three religious structures on the same block. The formal church structure on the left is the Clinton Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (discussed here February 11th). The rectangular building with the round window in Ahavas Sholem synagog (discussed here February 11th and May 22nd).

"Sembrador" means one who sows seeds (presumably Jesus, or, more immediately, the church itself). I find no website for Iglesia Sembrador, and the phone number I did find online (ending in -0403) is wrong. (I called.) I did find a description of its activities, including services on Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 1:30pm, with Sunday School at 11am.
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The wrought-iron gates are open to the wooden double doors in this foto, taken on a Sunday, last February 4th on the Newarkology walking tour of Lower Broadway, so perhaps this church is active, just not on the Internet.
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Missed a Tour. I heard about, only today, a bus tour of Forest Hill and other sites of Newark's old wealthy, living and dead, conducted by Newark Preservation today. I visited that website recently and did not notice any such tour, so was surprised (and irritated) when Gaetano sent me a link to a Star-Ledger article about it that ran only the same day. I just rechecked the Newark Preservation website and see that the 7th clickable item on the left did mention a tour. But the main discussion on that page related to the Newark Eagles commemorative events that I did discuss last Wednesday. That's what one calls "bad website design", where one event is lost due to excessive stress on another.
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The bus tour cost $35, so I probably wouldn't have gone anyway, but I would have liked to know about it. For one thing, I could have told you. And maybe I'd have decided to treat myself. An occasional extravagance won't kill me. Probably.

Museum Mobbed; P on Arena

The Newark Museum's opening of the exhibit "India: Public Places/Private Spaces" drew a very big crowd. I remarked to a (female) guard, "I have never seen so many people in this place." She seemed to agree. I added, "It's almost as bad as the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Sunday!" Here's the crowd in Engelhard Court. There were so many people that the customary tables and chairs were replaced by tiny tables at standing height. No chairs.

There were so many people in attendance that they spilled out onto the walkways above and around Engelhard Court.

There were so many people that some had to push aside specially placed drapes that blocked usually open archways to see the welcoming remarks.

There were so many people that in moving from the main-floor portion of the exhibit to the smaller continuation space on 3, the crowd filled the BIG elevator, something that I for one had never before seen.
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The third floor contained some of my favorites from the show, fotos of Indians in the United States in a series called "The Americans" (not "Indians in America"); comparisons of "Red Indian/Brown Indian" (American Indians, called by some in Britain, India's former overlord, "Red Indians", and India Indians, called in Monty Python's Flying Circus, if I remember correctly, "Ignoble Indians"); and something for me!: a fuzzed foto of two nude gay men embracing, by the gay Indian fotografer Sunil Gupta.
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Rarely do gay men get to see themselves in major, general-audience museums. The Newark Museum wins kudos for this from Mr. Gay Pride. (That would be me. As is mentioned in the profile to the right of this blog, I am the man who in 1970 first offered the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used, for events celebrating the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.) Curiously, that Indian gay man, whose parents moved his family from Delhi to Calgary, on his own then moved to New York, then London, which he says in the text of the exhibit he expects to be his "final resting place" — but, then, he adds "there's always Delhi". (Delhi is an old city, the metropolis of which "New Delhi", capital of India, is part. New Delhi is a planned city added onto Delhi to serve as capital of the British Raj. In the same way, Mussolini added a planned New Rome to the old, unplanned Eternal City.)
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It is odd for an Indian, much less a gay Indian, to prefer London to New York. Many Indians find London racist and New York freer. Most gay men also find London much less congenial. Gupta even shows a foto of a big sign on the Thames asking for information about the perpetrators of anti-gay violence, but chooses to live in an anti-gay and anti-Indian city. Some homos is just nuts. But I liked the fuzzy foto anyway. I generally don't show my own fuzzy fotos, because they're not deliberate, but perhaps he had a reason for his. To mute shame.
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MSSPrice said that some of the artists featured in the exhibition were present for the event. They were wearing purple ribbons, and she urged us to say hello. Prior to that explanation I had seen someone who might have been Mr. Gupta, wearing a purple ribbon, but didn't know for sure what it meant so didn't bother him. I later looked for that guy to ask if he was the gay fotografer, but didn't find him. They could have given these artists nametags, not just purple ribbons: "Hello, I'm Sunil Gupta." I'm not sure what I'd have said, other than that it was a pleasant surprise to see something gay at the Newark Museum (tho I don't approve of male nudity in mixed audiences).
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If I have a quarrel with the exhibit, it is that the captioning is inadequate, just bare bones. Then again, considering the opaque jargon that artists seem fond of (see below), maybe it's just as well that we are left to see whatever it is we see.
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This foto, taken toward the end of the evening, shows the wrapped standing-height mini-tables provided for the overflow crowd.

These tables (decorated "Courtesy of Sejewet") did not afford us much room for our little plastic plates of the wonderful Indian food provided by the Mehtani Restaurant Group. I don't eat much at a time nowadays. Otherwise I would have stuffed myself like a little pig, the food was SO GOOD, tho some dishes were a tad spicy for my taste. Remember that Christopher Columbus went in search of "the Indies" for spices. In the present age, we find that odd. But before the age of refrigeration, spices were enormously important not merely in imparting extra flavor to bland meat dishes but also in disguising putrefaction. Much of India to this day does not have refrigeration, and much Indian food remains very spicy. Mexico also has a scarcity of refrigeration. Aaaah-ah.
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Altho the food was free, the Museum charged for booze, which I'd never seen before. That offended me, so I didn't have anything to drink, even the free bottled water. I don't approve of bottled water. Taps are for water. And bottled water is environmentally unfriendly, as to the costs of bottling, transportation, and disposal.
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This is a wider view of the standing-height tables toward the end of the affair, showing one in the context of the Roman arches that surround Engelhard Court. (Some of these fotos show people blurred due to motion, not fuzzy from bad focus.)

There was one drummer, dressed in what appeared to my untutored eye to be Rajasthani costume, tho it might actually have been from any part of India. What do I know? I meant to get a picture of him, but when first I arrived I was hesitant to take pix. Then I saw other people snapping away, while I was occupied eating. (Did I say the food was wonderful?) By the time I headed out from where I was standing, near the stage, to take a picture of the crowd around the stage, the drummer had stopped playing in order that the remarks from the stage might be heard without interference. +
The welcoming remarks were supposed to start at 6:30, so I rushed to get there and arrived around 6:23. The remarks did not in fact start until 7:12. Harrumph!
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One of the speakers, head of a foundation that was key to the exhibit's appearing, looked out over the staidly dressed audience and remarked that the invitation had specified "Festive Attire", but not-very-festive seemed to be the best that most of us could manage. Before I left the house, I rued not having a Hawaiian shirt, and ended up wearing a purple shirt, off-white khakis, and some metal jewelry.* That's as festive as I get. (Late this evening I told one of my sisters in Long Beach, California that I had wished I had a Hawaiian shirt, and she said that maybe she'll get me one for my birthday or Christmas (which are five days apart). If she does, the next time the Museum says "Festive Attire", I'll have something appropriate to wear!)
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The Museum's Director (Directress? Directrix?) Mary Sue Sweeney Price asked all the artists from the exhibit who were present (courtesy of Continental Airlines, which now flies to India direct from Newark) to join her on stage. Here's a pitcher.

I don't know where Ms. Price went, but I don't see her in that foto. I saw at various points in the evening another blond woman, tho in a lite pantsuit (MSSP — hm; looks like short for "Mississippi", doesn't it? — wore gray), who seemed to work there, but tho I think I've seen her before, I have no idea who she is.
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This exhibition is of fotos and videos only. The exhibit states that India has a long history of fotografy, the first foto studio being established in 1849 and first movie studio dating back to 1912. Wikipedia says that non-studio movies were made in India even earlier.
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Near the main entrance to the Englehard Court is a group of 9 self-portraits, in different costumes, by a female fotografer, Pushpamala N. This is as clear a picture as I could get with a hand-held camera in interior lite.

Regular readers of this fotoblog will know of my distaste for the opaque, pretentious language that afflicts all too much of the art world. Let me quote the caption to the right of this group:

These works combine the conventions of classic Bollywood portraiture and types with allusions to characterizations of the nine rasas — essential human emotions found in traditional Sanskrit literature and drama. The artist's masquerade reflects an attempt (or perhaps the impossibility of attempting) to construct an individual female identity from fragmented cultural ideals.

[The fotografer herself says:] The Navarasa Suite is a set of self-portraits ... based on the nine moods of Sanskrit poetics.

Nowhere are we told what those nine moods are supposed to be, nor which foto relates to which mood. You are just supposed to know. Most Americans can't name all Seven Dwarfs. How many Indians can name all Nine Moods of Sanskrit Poetics? I'm an American and can't name a single one. The Newark Museum is an American institution, but doesn't see the slitest need to tell its audience what any of those Sanskrit moods might be, much less list them all and either indicate which foto represents which mood or even urge us to guess (and provide the answers elsewhere).
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Tho it may not be plain from this foto of the group of nine, the bottom center picture of this group was used on the cover of the invitation to the opening.

The back of the invitation provides credits and additional information which, rather than type, I will simply show, and hope you are able to read.

Toward the end of the evening, a two-man crew from TV Asia (whatever and wherever that might be) interviewed two of the women who had been on the dais earlier. I'm afraid I do not know who they are. The (much) shorter woman is blocked by the interviewer in this picture. Couldn't be helped, because since I did not have my tripod with me, I needed to rest my camera on a table to get this foto, and there was no table that permitted all four people involved in the interview to be included. I don't know how well the audio portion of the interview will have turned out, because the group was near a speaker blaring Indian music.
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The largest single artwork in the entire show is this 3-panel video display, Lacuna in Testimony, by Navjot Altaf.

The exhibition is large, interesting, and well-staged. I did only a cursory runthru today. I may go back. If you didn't make this festive opening, you might nonetheless want to see the show.

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As for the heading "P on Arena", that's just my way of getting you to read to the end. On Wednesday I showed that on the Edison Place side of the Newark Arena, the P in "Prudential Center" was not lited. Now it is, along with, to its left, Prudential's Rock of Gibraltar logo,

derived from Laurel Hill in the Meadowlands. I'm no longer embarrassed.
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* I wore one of the four copper bracelets made by hand by a New Jersey craftsman (or was it Pennsylvania?) that I bought at the flea market outside the Collingwood Auction in Monmouth County; a silver chain for the neck, ID-style bracelet, and three rings I bought at the silver cart outside the Newark Penn Station McDonald's (wonderful place; I hope it's still there); and a darker, serpentine neck chain I bought from "Steve Leather" in Ty's, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. That practically exhausts my jewelry collection. I can't find my favorite silver ring from the Newark Penn Station cart. My cats knocked over the little bowl I had all that silver in, and since rings roll, the cats must have loved playing with it until it rolled under a chair or something they couldn't get to and I can't see under. I will find it someday. I hope.
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I went to Collingwood a few times when I went down to Monmouth County to spell my sister, who was taking care of my terminally ill father. Now and again, but not nearly often enuf I accept in retrospect, I would take over for a weekend, or one day of a weekend that I could spare from my 'busy schedule' in Manhattan, and take my father to his favorite places, the Collingwood or Englishtown auction. (Who here remembers the Englishtown Raceway ads on radio? "Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!") I think the Englishtown flea market might actually have been near the raceway, but would not swear to it. In any case, I was rolling my father in his wheelchair thru the Collingwood flea-market area when I stumbled across a table full of wonderful hand-crafted copper bracelets for men. The guy who crafted them took me to one side and asked about my father, who had a plastic tube up his nose for feeding that was always left in place. When I told him he had (terminal) cancer, he let on that his own father had a similar situation at one time. In any case, I recommend that if ever you have to take care of someone who is terminally ill, go someplace s/he and you will both really enjoy, and if you can buy something you really like while there, terrific. You will have something by which to remember a good time with that person in his or her last weeks. Whenever I see my copper bracelets or beautiful, sweet cookiejar bear (bought at Collingwood on a different occasion), I remember my father, with pleasure rather than pain. Mostly.

A thing of cutie is a joy forever.