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Futile Button Mashing in New York

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I would dream of one day driving a car and being able to go wherever I wanted. I knew that it would be years before I would actually be able to steer and control an actual car but there was a way in which I could exert some kind of power over not just one car but many cars at once — the crosswalk button at most intersections.
Pressing that button gave me a dramatic injection of power and, as I have now learned, a dose of unwitting, medicinal, gullibility.

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Pimping Our Children

Are we pimping out our children’s education just to help line the pockets of big business?

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Dying to Die: Failing New Jersey Palliative Care

Dr. Michelle Reisner, medical director of the Palliative Care program at Jersey City Medical Center, isn’t out to kill you — but she does want to help you die with dignity and grace.

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Labelling Yourself with Shirts and Stickers

When I had a car that I drove regularly in New Jersey, I used to buy bumper stickers with the intention of putting them on. I never put them on, partially because of something my brother said about having your car stick out. What makes it all the more interesting is that I was ultimately glad that I did not put a sticker on the car because of an observation that I made while attending Phish shows from 1995-2000.

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Heroin Punks Getting Three Years a Bag

I was in a cab yesterday, and my driver pointed out a drug arrest happening across the street in the Jersey City Heights.  He was more interested in the bust than I was.  “There, see?” he asked.  “Three guys in handcuffs.  Seven cops and three unmarked cars pinning in the white car.  That was an undercover horse bust.  Big one.  You won’t see those guys on the street again.”

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Loving Electricity as Jersey City Melts

Jersey City is melting!

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McMenamins and The Kennedy School

Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.

When I was a kid and we took a long road trip from New Jersey to sunny Orlando, Florida for our first visit to Walt Disney World, one of my parents made an observation about strip malls.
No matter where we went, it seemed, the stores were pretty much the same. They were the same on the outside and the same on the inside. What a peculiar thing, I thought. At home we had such stores as The Princeton Record Exchange and dozens of other small stores – owned and operated by individuals or small groups of people, not large corporations.

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