There’s a thin strip of land in the Jersey City Heights wedged between the street and the edge of the baseball field near the reservoir. A few times a year, a carnival, of sorts, will encamp in that one-block-long urban landscape, transforming the area into the saddest little carnival in the world — filled with emptiness and longing and no joy to be had anywhere for any ticket price. Even the Fire Ball circle roller coaster has no flame.
Mike Rice is the head coach — and Head Bully — of the Rutgers University basketball team. By the time you read this, Rice may be long gone, but his bloody head will not be the only one rolling down College Avenue. Athletic Director Tim Pernetti most certainly should lose his head as well — as should Pernetti’s school bosses, like the President Robert Barchi, who, it appears, refused, along with Pernetti, to fire Mike Rice in November 2012 even after watching video evidence of the coach physically and verbally abusing his undergraduate basketball team during practice. The Rutgers Board of Trustees must act now and clean the Rutgers house and fire Mike Rice, Tim Pernetti and President Robert Barchi — because they were all in collusion to not protect the welfare of the student athletes entrusted to their care.
Today, as I casually pondered what I would do with my day off, I had a jolting moment that I’m sure many people in the tri-state area have experienced. I thought to myself that maybe I would head over to my beach, particularly its recreation areas– and then was struck with the memory that I couldn’t.
I spent some time in New York City this weekend, and at some point between pushing past slow tourists and instinctively dodging comedy show promoters, I couldn’t help thinking about the oddness of city life and the East coast in general. Having grown up in New Jersey and spending plenty of time in New York, I usually follow the unspoken rule of, well, not speaking.
Monday night, at 11:00 pm sharp in Jersey City, New Jersey, the lights went out and stayed off until last night at 7:43pm. That’s three days without power or heat. Hurricane Sandy was a massively nasty beast, and we’re just now starting the recovery process. We are hungry and scavenging for food. Supermarkets are closed. Few places have power.
Sometimes you read things you cannot comprehend were actually given life in the giggling light of day. A recent example of this non-awesomeness happened last month in Trenton, New Jersey when it was decided by the Educational Forces of Evil to no longer force third-graders to reveal a secret and explain why it was important to keep that secret a secret.
I read something interesting online a while ago, but I can’t remember the source material. The gist of the story was that the pre-recorded automated announcements you hear in train stations – and other public transit hubs and modes — are purposefully driven by subconscious sexual stereotypes. The female voices you hear provide “information” about the current stop and next stop, while the pre-recorded male voices give you warnings and orders like, “Get out of the way!”
Jersey City, New Jersey was founded in 1630. It’s an old and ancient East Coast metropolis. Jersey City is also, because of its geological terrain, a city that teeters in the past with no clear way into a stabilized future. Allow me to explain. Unlike most modern cities that bury their power lines and cable television lines and other communication cables, Jersey City still hangs all their municipal cabling from telephone poles hoisted along the streets.
The reason for this is simple: Jersey City is built on bedrock. In order to put the cables in the ground, you’d have to dig up massive boulders. You don’t dig precise trenches in Jersey City. You excavate pits. That Jersey City bedrock is both good and bad. It’s good because Jersey City is the definition of “rock solid” — the city core is incredibly sturdy — and it’s bad because your city looks like it’s stuck in the 1950′s with all sorts of wires and cables angling above your head every day. Another problem with telephone poles in your city is that they are made out of wood and they warp while in use and they need to be replaced. You can’t “bury it, and forget it” like you can with cables.
I’ve lived in Jersey City for over a decade and the first thing that struck me about the city all those years ago was the plethora of what I call — “Janky Poles” — telephone poles that look like they’re about to tip over and break from overuse. A few days ago, I took a half-hour walk on the streets of Jersey City to memorialize some of the sillier Janky Poles in my neighborhood and here are the best-of-the-worst for your perusal.
The first Janky Pole is the second pole in the distance. Every time I happen upon that particular Janky Pole, I always cross the street because I fear if someone sneezes too close to that chunk of wood, the whole thing will come toppling down.
How did Chris Christie get elected governor of New Jersey? Why would the people elect a bully in a suit who secretly caters to big business while publicly cutting the lifelines of the working class and the less fortunate?
The weekend snowstorm that tackled us into Monday opened 23 inches of Whoopass here in Jersey City, and many pockets of humanity in and around the Tri-State area are still trying to dig out of the drifts. We lost power several times Sunday and Monday and lots of neighborhood trees were tipped into felling by the heavy, wet, snow. Streets are still unplowed. Sidewalks are still impassable. It’s a winter whiteout of neighborhood morality and city leadership.
The recent, leaping, suicide death of 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi from the edge of the George Washington Bridge reads like “Lori Drew: Part II” in so many sad ways. Two Rutgers students are charged with “invasion of privacy” because they secretly streamed live internet video of Tyler making out with a guy in his dorm room.
After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration shamefully lost $400 million in Federal education funds for the State because of an error in their application, the school system in the Garden State was looking woefully undervalued and critically underfunded. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, pledged $100 million of his own money to specifically help the blighted Newark, New Jersey school system.
I live and love The Blues from the great State of New Jersey, and I confess that in the past, I have not been so kind to DR Strings — made right here in the Garden State in Emerson! I previously recanted my sad ways, and today, I am delighted to tell you I have finally found The Perfect Blues Guitar string for my ’57 Les Paul: The “Pure Nickle, Round Wound, DR Pure Blues 11-50.” I like these strings so much that I plan to use them on all my guitars.
Sometimes a gift is best left unopened. I was watching the first quarter of the NY Giants and Carolina Panthers football game today, when the telecast cut away to a live shot of the “Teardrop Memorial” — a 100-foot tall gift from Russia to the citizens of Bayonne, New Jersey — intended to memorialize the dead in the World Trade Center disaster. The teardrop alone is 40 feet long! However, to even an untrained eye, the monument looks more like a vagina dripping sperm, than a tear falling between torn twin towers.
