State of the (Jersey) City (speech)

“Jersey City is a leader in the State of New Jersey on nearly every front, whether it be in public safety, economic development, sustainability, the arts, or entertainment.”

Mayor Jerramiah Healy

State of the City speech … a good speaker, the Mayor, who highlighted many accomplishments including an impressive amount of green initiatives. He seems justified in taking credit for J.C. not laying off any police officers or creating several youth (or as his J.C. accent tended to say, “youft” as in Paftmark) programs or filling in 92 pot holes. The council room was filled to standing room only capacity. Many in attendance were city employees, such as the woman near me, who told me she worked there, meaning city hall. She loudly applauded at the conclusion of the speech then declared “now I can go home.”

The speech is worth reading not for its rhetorical flourishes (which were mainly absent) but how it highlights lots of local stuff you probably don’t know about. I know I didn’t. If this link doesn’t work just google.

Politics… America… this year there’s the presidential election, next year Healy is going to run for reelection and his main opponent is Councilman Steve Fullop. Everybody expects a mud fight and judging by the nasty comments about the Mayor Fullop supporters are prone to making and the fact that Healy is a seasoned, experienced politician well adept at battle in muck and mire, expectations will be filled well passed flowing. Forget about the brim; we’ll be knee deep before we know it. This speech is one of the last hurdle-free victory laps our oft beleaguered Mayor can take.

What role will our city politics play in affecting the national and state situations? I guess by definition, a State of the City speech must be myopic, so as a means to gauge larger implications it is quite inadequate.

Low voter turn out, in large part due to a sting operation on bribe taking politicians, resulted in the election of that disgrace in Trenton, Republican superstar, Christie. Obama’s second term is not assured, progressives feel short changed on change and the Republicans are in a frenzy with a panel of scary crazy candidates the likes of which I have never seen (Gingrich, really?).

We live in polarized times. I believe in America, I believe in Justice, Godfather. I believe that the Democratic Party is our only political hope and the reliable stalwarts of the New Deal dream were, for better or worse, city political machines, unions and voter turn out. The 99 percent of yester year made FDR’s policy and the hope they embodied a reality, imperfect at best and in the scheme of history, sadly short lived.

 In New Jersey, the Dems are in disarray after the debacle that was Corzine. What Democrat will run against Christie – who is now a celebrity, you can’t deny he has attained that status even if you like me find it offensive; proudly overweight, arrogant, and anti-intellectual, it’s as if the inner, aging frat boy of the Republican party has come to life – or for that matter, what N.J. DEM replace Lautenberg, who is a great Senator but is now about 120 years old. I wasn’t looking for hope at the State of the City, and I didn’t find it. I felt better about thinking locally but was disappointed when I thought globally.

The most enthusiastic applause came for the paving of Christopher Columbus, which is sadly telling about our true residential priorities. Development and construction defines any aspirational hope in the local economy so all sorts of new projects, mainly residential, were cited. Goya Beans was a standout – best damned can of beans at C-Town! – They’re moving their plant here and promise 500 permanent jobs. There’s talk of a re-industrialization of America, and maybe a new cannery in our fair city can be taken as an early harbinger of such a dream becoming true.

Mayor Healy spoke of Jersey City becoming a World Class city. World Class is such a way overused phrase that one must wonder what does it really mean. I’m not exactly sure how a city which is world class should be defined but I suspect a World Class city is not one with only one museum and that museum is closed down, ownership of its collection in doubt and has been sold; or a city whose one live entertainment facility, a beautiful but only partially restored former movie palace, is closed every summer, holds one, maybe two events a month the rest of the year and is still waiting for seats in the balcony. Well, he did talk about the live music ordinance (New Orleans – J.C. has a fee structure for licensing in place – watch out!).  Maybe I love Jersey City because it can never be World Class; but our leaders think it can be, in spite of themselves, their priorities and the facts of circumstance. Hope springs eternal, or least the espousing of such hope with such sound good phrases as World Class. Who would truely want to be World Class anyway, have you seen the world lately?

The Mayor, who seems like a good guy, is focused on keeping his position. Unlike Schundler, he seems uninterested in taking his act on the road to the hinterlands to fulfill grander ambitions. Healy doesn’t seem to have an appeal beyond Hudson County; he is too much of here.

Everybody takes it (wrongly I believe) for granted JC/NJ will vote blue come November, so why talk more broadly about Democratic ideals? This speech was not the place for that. Healy cited environmental issues, anti crime initiatives and public/private partnerships that have spurred economic development that are essentially progressive solutions to specific issues, which can be take as separate components of our needed paradigm shift even though they fall short of being the shift. Still…

Most people prefer to complain than act. J.C. artists here are justified in claiming that City Hall is not as artist friendly as it should be, and yet the representatives of those constituencies  were nowhere to be seen at City Hall to hear the state-of-the-city speech. Other one-issue constituencies, like anti-crime activists, school officials, fire fighters were in abundance. I’m an observer, not an activist. Just saying, it’s easy to whine, to bitch and moan or make clever sarcastic remarks about the way things are politically. Political change and involvement in quality of life issues, especially on the managerial level of a city, is not just about rhetoric (although that is important), it is about enduring tedium and assessing details then making decisions so change and the infrastructure necessary to support that change can occur. If the artists want more city hall support, might want to consider making yourselves better integrated into the structure of government beyond the random council meeting when your issue is being debated.  

Dismiss all politicians as corrupt, but if you want change and don’t become involved, than how much intellectual integrity is contained in your dismissal.  I do not like his Jersey Shore decision, but it is not an impeachable offense, and those opposing the spin off filming did not feel the need to make their presence known at this space at this time, the first public appearance by his honor since he did what Hoboken would not.

Healy comes across as smart, competent and someone who genuinely cares about our city and its people. I have no reason to believe that impression is false. Is that enough to vote for him next year, well you can decide that for yourself in the voting booth and your decision will likely be based on everything that happens from now until then. I’m not a prognosticator, my sole prediction (and recommendation) is that the sky will remain above the ground.

The 2013 Mayoral election occurs six months after what (right now) I hope is the re-election of President Obama. The segment of the population that will (most likely) determine the winner in the national election is the same constituency that will be just as decisive in our local race, the Gen Yers, aka, millennials (I abhor that term). In J.C., the hundreds (maybe thousands) of new residents mainly fall into that bracket – folks well under 40, the majority of whom live in Downtown, Fullop’s ward.

They may not be enough to make any candidate a sure thing by themselves, but they will be the group most likely to mean the difference. The closer those vote tallies are, the bigger difference they will make. If other candidates run, which the official media prognosticators predict will occur, votes will be siphoned off, and the chasam between Fullop and Healy becomes exceedingly narrow. Those young (mostly white)  people in Downtown – the very voting block who were barely represented in the audience at the State of the City speech – will be the makers of the next king of our would be world class fiefdom. In 2008, this population has been credited for getting the first African American in the white house and compared to Gen X or Baby Boomers: they have a much higher voter turn out percentagewise. Yet, in 2009, many of these young jerysities (including Hudson County) and Obama supporters, stayed home on Election Day. Their unwillingness to make an effort and vote Corzine gave us Christie. In 2010, nationwide, they also stayed home and we got a tea party congress. So following this admittedly weak analysis, whether they vote or not vote, Gen Y determines our political future, nationally and locally.

As with other complex issues, this too was not addressed in the State of the City speech

Snow Peas

Drivers passing the time at local a Chinese take out restaurant removing tips and stems from snow peas. They’re waiting for take out orders that they’ll take to residents. The more orders for pick up, the more snow peas that will be ready for stir fry or steaming.

Familiar Face, Fenced In

 He’s a familiar face you see around town. One of our local street artists uses this floating visage, discombobulated eyes, nose and lips, as a tag to several buildings and unusual exteriors but this is probably the most unusual, not to mention, inspired and clever. Not only does the visage float here, which is on Newark Avenue west of Monmouth, a 3-D effect is simulated: the eyes and brow are on the tarp and the nostrils and lips on the tar sidewalk. This visage doesn’t just float, it seems to undulate.

Whatever was here was torn down months ago and the lot is now a construction site. The Rent-A-Fence fences went up, equipment has been parked behind the fences and workers are here during the week days.

I like the eye. This plastic tarp is on a fence-like temporary barrier which is behind another fence, so not only is the fence fenced in but the entire lot itself is enclosed by a fence. No entry point is visible where the tarp can be easily reached. The street artist had to climb the fence to work on his chosen canvas. Devotion to the street art cause! Sooner or later, construction will progress to the point where both fences are torn down and this face will be gone. We know this art is temporary we just don’t know how temporary so might want to take a look.

 

The Final Farewell of Star Video

 The last video store in downtown will soon be gone. It is on Newark Avenue Star Video

Star Video sign still says they rent DVD-VHS, I didn't ask if VHS rentals were still available I didn't even know the store was opened still, but they are, and just in time for a closing sale that is going on through March 5th amazing it lasted this long, been here for 20 years or so. Lee, the owner, told me he was the 5th owner, "always Vietnamese people." It's next door to a Vietnamese Bodega and across from Miss Saigon, a very good restaurant (I love their summer rolls!). But families are moving away, Lee says a bar will replace the business. "Going to be just like Hoboken."

That's a common concern, as the long hoped for Restaurant Row on Newark more fully takes shape, given a big boost by a bar whose selling point are 80s video games and a recently passed JC ordinance allowing live music in the hoped for bars, with an official licensing fees the bars, I mean, a-hem, cabarets, must pay (although no legislative definition of acceptable audible levels at outdoor concerts seems pending so concert interruptus will again plague summer entertainment). The next Hoboken... bemoaned by some, encouraged by others.
Change is inevitable and like I said, I thought video rental stores were already indeed a thing of the past, but this one hung on, the last one left in a neighborhood that once claimed half a dozen, at least that many in the 90s. Think about that for a moment: there were enough film enthusiasts and glad-to-rent customers to support that many shops all within a half-mile radius. I assume they are still watching movies, and there are (I think) at least a few thousands more residents in downtown than in the 90s. All that business isn't gone –  the stores are, the owners and their employees are gone, those video Clerk jobs and small business investment job opportunities are not coming back –  but people are still watching movies at home but now all the profits go to one monopoly.

I used to belong to two video stores during the height of my rental career, but I was mainly a loyal (never returned a movie late) customer of Video Rent All, a reminiscence of which can be found here.

I wasn't a Star Video customer, it is a little off the beaten path for my typical routine routes, plus it was one of those Video places that emphasized new releases. Most new releases I want to see I see on the big screen, and few are worth seeing twice. Not that I never rented new releases, I did all the time, but I tend to seek out off-beat films, foreign films, independent releases, low budget and obscure as well as classic movies (Video Rent-all had an entire shelf devoted to Humphrey Bogart).

I noticed last month new construction on this block. Development marches on and has now finally trampled our last video rental store.
Going inside was like being transported back in time. It was like a loyal recreation of an actual DVD rental store, except that it was still in business and had been for years, way after all the rest were long gone. I was filled with nostalgia for a way of life –  browsing film titles in a physical, actual space not the cyber efficiency by which we browse online inventories –  that is rarely possible under the New Order.

Racks and racks of DVDs, narrow cases the width of a hard cover Novella. Most of the films were within the last 15 years or so, the titles without any organizing principle, unintended juxtapositions. Did I see that one; if I did was it any good? A mini-eruption of pop culture stream of consciousness occurred; accompanied by random references slipping in and out of grasp at the edges of my memory. I used to love going to the video store to rent a movie... didn't you? remember... remember... stop at the video store, rent a movie, get some take out and a bottle of wine. There was something special about the limited choices of the video rental place. You had to decide if they had something right for that evening –  even it wasn't a date night of sorts, just some alone time –  what would fit in the mood.

Remember that decision making process? Sure, many times you knew exactly what you wanted, if it was a store you were loyal to, a quick call and they would reserve the copy. But other times, it was like what will work, what's best for your current state of mind or the evening that was planned and who was coming over to spend it with you.

VHS was never really a product made for sale, while DVDs can be bought for usually reasonable prices and there is Net Flix, which has every DVD ever made but the spontaneity of the visiting the store, realizing what your mood is and then finding something among the limited but creative choices that will fit the mood is completely lost.

The real rental experience was VHS. Every once in a while I'll be trying to find some obscure flick and do a search on Amazon and see that they still sell a VHS, used, because it has to yet to be revived on disk. Now when we want to find out about the video store experience, we watch Clerks, a document of a bygone era that was not long ago at all but is still gone.

Star Video reminded me of all those special video rental store moments: have you ever seen this? No subtitles tonight, please. Discovering some groovy film that you had no preconceptions of whatsoever. Or going on a film jag, watching a bunch of Woody Allen all weekend, trudging to the video store through the snow. That's all gone now, sure movie nights still happen –  video stores made the movie night at home a reality, before VHS you just had television and commercials to watch –  but you already know what you ordered from Net Flix and regardless of your mood, that's what you will watch on movie night. The film determines your mood instead of the other way around, something about that change makes me long for the past.

But, see, I thought that around the middle of the previous 00 decade –  seems so long ago now –  that video rental experience was already in the dustbin of pop culture history. Seeing the Star Video inventory and getting that blast from the past, was uplifting. The last hold out had still held out. The joyous fact that Star Video lasted this long entirely overwhelmed the anticipated sad reverie about things that I like that are no more.

Independent stores, like Video rental places once flourished in inner cities as well as strip malls. Sure, chains, like Block Busters or Hollywood Knights challenged these entrepreneurs, but the independents had a strong hold on this market. Movie companies catered to them, especially when it was VHS. How did the independents grow? By being knowledgeable about films and knowledgeable about their customers. That knowledge and skill set is no longer relevant in the New Order.

So, somehow progress is one company instead of thousands of business owners and semi-professional film buffs and another piece of spontaneity disappears from our lives. With that spontaneity hasn't another piece of our humanity also been erased?

Like his long gone colleagues, Lee rode out the transition from VHS to DVD, eventually replacing all the tapes with Disk. "We got rid of the VHS, invested in DVDs, then Net Flix killed everything."

He showed me his computer. "Still working, 20 years old, original computer for the store."

He said it still works. It was a pre-windows machine –  MS-DOS –  I could only marvel at this genuine artifact.

He is selling off the inventory –  $5 per disk, 3 for $10 –  through March 5th.

When was the last time you rented a movie?

"I still have customers, I'm still renting. I will rent movies until I close."

 

Pipe Organ Restoration Concert

Praise Him With Organ was the name of a mostly sacred and but still somewhat secular recital in recognition of the restoration of a rare pipe organ housed in St. Michael Church on 9th street. It was one of the most unique music experiences I’ve ever had and it’s not just because classical and choral music have never been on any playlist of mine.

The concert was held in a church, the audience sat in the wooden pews. The organ and the organist were in the balcony and in the back of the church, far above the pews. Unless you turned around and arched your head at a distinctly uncomfortable angle, the organist performed unseen. Even if were willing to risk a neck cramp, you still only caught a few glimpses of the organist’s back, maybe some elbow.

Part of the live music experience is watching a musician play; for musical theater or some other type of show, the orchestra is hidden. The point of those performances is not the music, it’s the show and the story it tells or extravaganza it presents, be it opera or musical comedy. Sometimes at large concerts, even sans show, the charisma of the celebrity on stage, the way he or she personifies the song, can overcome the actual musicality (or lack of it) of the performance.

Here, there was no distraction to the music, no visual point of focus to dilute the aural experience. Surrounded by colorful, stunning religious art – St. Michael is home to some of the best sacred art in the entire state of New Jersey – you merely sat and listened, your mind was what you heard because there was no stage to hold your attention, other than the intrinsic abstractions of your own consciousness.


The story behind this particular organ is fascinating. The church was founded in 1867, serving the then mainly Irish immigrant community. The St. Michael organ is a 1925 E.M Skinner Opus 542, which is similar to the one at St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC. Similar is the key word because the pipe organ uses pipes – St. Michael’s has 2,702 pipes – which are fluted with wooden resonators, much like a whistle – and the pipes are placed through out the church, literally embedded into the architecture. Because the instrument must be customized to the building, the organs can only be similar to each other, each one is unique. According to notes in the brochure given out at the event, in the 1920s, EM Skinner was a premier organ manufacturer, but the company went out of business during the 1930s and as musical tastes change, pipe organs fell out of fashion. While Skinner made 2,500 (St. Michael’s was # 542) only 190 are believed to still exist and only 20 are believed to be in their original condition, making the St. Michael instrument rare indeed, so rare in fact that the Joseph Bradley Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving Skinner organs, agreed to underwrite the bulk of the cost restoring the instrument – $400,000, a five-year project by Peragallo Pipe Organ Company of Paterson, whose founder of the company first installed the instrument. “We are continuing the history,” said John Peragallo III, the latest generation of a family renowned in the tight knit pipe organ community.

 As might be expected, Bach (Prelude in G Major BWV 568) opened the recital, which featured various works of organ specific composition. I particularly liked Carillon, which had a splendidly eerie feel – it’s hard to escape the Cabinet of Dr. Calgari/Phantom of the Opera connotations one has with the pipe organ's inherently spooky sound.

My favorite though was A Grand Instrumental Procession by George Frideric Handel – within a context of a march-type, steady rhythm this folk melody appeared, dancing around the other notes and it was echoed. You see the pipe organ has these things called stop, that create an accent to the sound so the it mimics say a French horn and here the melody would be repeated by a different instrumental mimic, it was almost a dissonance, this strange melody echo, separate but also contained by the main musical theme. Amazing this orchestral fullness was made by one instrument as well as the fact the musician the keyboard was not an octopus.



As the notes to the performance said, the pipe organ envelopes you. You become encompassed by the sound, enhanced by the fact that you are not seeing any performer. The sound was loud, but warm and while electronics are used in some of the keyboard wiring, the amplification is all acoustic, through the touring flutes that align the nave of the church. Hidden behind the organ of course are huge bellows that create the wind for the flutes.

This being an organ in a church, the  program's intermission – between the opening and closing musical performances – featured Bishop Thomas Donato, who blessed the organ and the fluteswith holy water form an aspergillum and incense from a censer. The bishop is a downtown Jersey City native, who graduated from the now closed St. Michael’s High School. At the reception after I saw him talking to another born and bred JCite about growing up on 7th near Division Street.

After the blessing was a hymn, which was sung with organ accompaniment, When in Our Music God is Glorified. The song had this striking couplet: “And did not Jesus Sing a Psalm that night/when utmost Evil strove against the light?”, referencing the Garden of Gethsemane the night before the crucifixion. Hey, the concert was in a church, blessing and prayers were part of the program. The finale was a truly grand performance of a Toccata in b minor. According to my dictionary, a Toccata is a composition for a keyboard instrument written in a free style that includes full chords and elaborate runs and is intended to show off the player's technique.

In addition to the reception, you were able to see the organ up-close and I got a chance to ask some questions of one of the Peragallos about the organ, it’s quite a contraption, as much a musical machine as a musical instrument. It has a real steam punk feel because the technology is old fashioned, real vintage yet the sound it makes fills an entire church.

What a unique musical experience. The sound wasn’t just magnificent, it was an aural embodiment of magnificence.

The Little Lebowski… Shop

 The dude abides… on Thompson Street in the village. The Big Lebowski is one of the greatest films ever made. If you don’t agree, you do not understand cinema. In fact, I don’t want to know you; go read another blog. The Little Lebowski is the film's disney store. A cardboard cutout of Jeff Bridges in in the icon icsweater standing there on the sidewalk, plain as day in the winter night.

According to the proprietor, whose name I didn’t get but let me take some pictures and who was a friendly Greenwich Village retailer, the hole in the wall shop started as a comic book store, and what looked like stencils of underground adult comic book adorned parts of the ceiling, a remnant of that incarnation. He said that he carried some Lebowksi items, but about two years ago it started to take off and the store became solely devoted the film.

All the items, which included a lot of t-shirts some of which are exclusive to the store, were quality stuff. The drinking game, the DVDs of course, weird stuff like Walter action figures!, cool stickers with lines from the film, and there were arty film tributes – a toilet with the famed rethort against the rug pissers – At Least I’m Housebroken! On an ctual toliet, 0r the landlord in the tights and leaves, as he was dressed for the recital or a blow up doll representing Marge Lebowski doing her art. An homage to the movie, a fan recreation – the store is a both a desintaiton and a specialty retailer. I don’t really buy this sort of memorbilia, but I am glad I can. Knowing this place exists… is well…. I forgot what I was saying.

The stores claims it’s the first shop for achievers, and proud we are of all of them. The Village, it was always sort of touristy and is still bohemian and it is satisfying to see how well Lebowsky appreciation fits into the timeless funkiness, in the parlance of our times, that will always be Thompson Street, just south of Washington Square Par. The block has yet to be completely assimilated into the NYU Campus. One thing the Cohen Brothers film does is celebrate, through comedy and cinema, the suvival of 60s counter culutre ethos (at least it's an ethos) into the 90s; the Little Lebowski Shop is located in the heart of where people first coalesced around the ideas contained in the ideals to which the Dude dedicates his life. 

The Village is the rug that ties the whole room or history together. 

 In this age of wonders, you can even buy the merchandise on line too. Website: www.littlelebowskishop.com

V. Fiore’s Deli

This building has been fallow for years. It was an upscale pizza joint, Lombardi’s or something, I can’t remember exactly. Not bad but nothing special. Construction resumed a few weeks ago, progress has been made, big letters on the roof Studio 17, another hair salon. I wish it well. It’s on a peninsula type street, Monmouth, Newark, First. As part of the construction they removed the yellow exterior revealing the colors of the Italian flag, red, white and green, thus revealing the gone but not forgotten original establishment, Fiore’s Deli.

I caught the tail end of their multi-decade reign when I first came to town in the early 90s. I guess now only the bakery on Newark is the last vestige of Italian Village, as old time locals like to call the western side of Downtown near the Heights borderlands. It was only open for lunch; not on Sundays. It was legendary for the quality of its food, simply one of the great Italian delis ever, with the salami, pepperoni, capicolla, and provolone hanging down like delectable stalactites. Fresh fish fillet sandwiches every Friday (or was that only during Lent).

For a few years, during the height of my freelancing period where I was working mainly out of the apartment, I went their weekly. It was around the time the Internet first dawned in a serious way. I had written an articles, actually wrote a coupla three like that, which include a history and glossary of terms like browser and newsgroup. Believe or not, people expected big things back then from the Information Super Highway. Anyway I gave one of the guys (for some reason, only guys worked there) to give to his son who was studying computers. It was still family owned, and there was a location in Hoboken. They were very Italian, gesticulated when they talked but sincerely warm and welcoming and going there was a always fun and enjoyable.

And the food was simply awesome. They had these rolls, man oh man, Italian Break perfection, and fresh mozzarella as creamy as fresh churned butter. The taste buds of my memory can recall the smoked turkey with fresh mozzarella and sun direct tomatoes, drippy with olive oil. The epitome of the ideal lunch.

The born and bred Jersey City folks, talk to them about Fiore’s, they can get weepy.

Seeing the old exterior, chipped, in pieces, back for a while during this rehabilitation phase was a nice reminder and obviously a brief one. Memories I hadn’t thought about for years came flooding back. There are plenty of places in town where you can get a decent sandwich; there are no places where you can get a great sandwich. There is no place like Fiore’s here or in Hoboken and even in New York, nothing like the quality. The family was still running the place when I ate there, had an interest. Seeing the old exterior exposed again, after more than a decade was a unique experience in and of itself, sort of like Charlton Heston seeing the Statue of Liberty head on the beach at the end of Planet of the Apes.

Even then, then being when I first discovered Fiore’s, it had a faux old fashion look, a little corny, almost like somebody’s fantasy of what an Italian Deli should look , but inside was it was genuine. I don’t know what generation of Fiore’s gave up the ghost, why they never expended, extended their hours. The foodie culture, like the Internet, was growing and back then it was so obvious and Fiore’s seemed like such a natural fit, but it was not to be. In fact, I remember the selections getting narrower, one of the guys died. You know you’re in trouble when the beverage refrigerator hasn’t been restocked. But it was part of the city, well since 1912 according to the sign on the wall.

Nothing lasts… if only chipped paint could talk… pretty awesome this echo from the past. I wonder what happened to those guys, that fresh mozzarella, the sundried tomatoes all drippy with olive oil….