Dilapidated Sign

Have you ever seen a store front sign so dilapidated. What can you say about a neighborhood when a goodwill drop off dumpster is the only positive? Welcome to the darkness on the edge of Downtown. We didn’t see this building in the condo brochure, but there it is... or is that there it was? It used to be a deli, it used to be a car wash, it used to be a discount store. I think I knew somebody who worked there. I’ve walked by there for years, I can’t remember when it was opened last. I remember it being closed before 9-11 (that date is a useful marker to delineate a when). There’s a whole patch of abandoned buildings over there by Grand Street, west of the Pathmark. Debris is scattered about, don’t go there at night, broken windows, real estate broker signs. Someday I guess, development money will find this nook in our neighborhood for the cycle of demolition and rebirth. Seems kind of weird though, that there are empty, abandoned buildings in a neighborhood less than a quarter of a mile away from those bucking-the-recession trend condominium developments. Profitable buildings are being re-purposed for condos because developers can make a bigger profit. Why leave these spaces fallow? Why not first try to make some profit from these buildings? Well, I don’t run the world and life is too short to make sense of Jersey City logic. I like old buildings. This once warehouse type district, industrial park neighborhood—basically this whole part of the town was much like this. Before it closed, it was a discount store. This building looks older than 50 years and I doubt it was a store when the Colgate Factory was making soap. The dilapidated sign is a remnant of just one past—one more than ten years ago—the building itself is a remnant of another dream long ago lost and forgotten. The past before that past, way before our past.