Heating Asphalt, Faking Bricks

What would Downtown Jersey City be without its quaint touches and in fact, if you can fake quaint, you may be able to fake sincerity. Turns out our cobble stone cross ways are not actually cobblestone left over from a Jersey City hey day. Unlike our faux 19th century clocks, our faux 19th century brick cobblestones actually work.

They aren’t really cobblestones at all, it’s decorative asphalt made by Pavement Impressions. Mike from the company told me how they do it. Using a Pavement Heater SR-60, they heat up the asphalt until it is malleable.

A template of brick formations is placed over the warm tar. Another machine is used to flatten the template against the asphalt to form the brick impressions. A sheet of reddish thermoplastic is then placed over the template, more heating is involved until the substance melts, covering the brick shapes, turning them into, faux brick cobblestones. They look pretty good. It’s a pretty clever trick and you know something, it makes the street safer. Traffic can be pretty bad downtown, but not like Manhattan and jay walking seems encouraged. Jay walking I define as crossing where there’s a light—crossing in between, not at the green. You see the signs of international stick figures of people walking, crossing. Drivers can see the red bricks and perhaps they slow down. Can’t drive as fast over cobble stones as you can flat tar. Alright, asphalt is not tar but I think of them as synonyms.

There’s a big pile of bricks just down the street. I guess fake is cheaper than real when it comes to bricks. Mike said it was the third crossway his company has done for Jersey City. The others were done by another company using a slightly different process. Fake brick cobblestones that look and function like the real thing. Admit it you never knew this either.