It would be nice if there could be some way to assure that when this animal gets out of jail that there could be some way to foce him to live the rest of his days in the closest possible proximity to the judge and members of the jury who did not put him away for life. If those people ( who were the only ones the rest of us could rely on to take care of this matter) knew he would be spending the rest of his life in their face maybe they would have given his sentence more consideration. As it is he will get out and be in our collective faces, a reminder of a botched legal process the judge and jury were able to just walk away from.

Sammy the T thanks for your reply. I know I come off sounding like I have a chip on my shoulder and I can tell you why: its because I have a chip on my shoulder. The amount of money the failure of the old Museum took out of the cultural community of this city was tragic, maybe criminal. When I see someone representing the Museum today dismissing peoples bitter recollections about the Museums history as "rumor mongering" by "Pseudointelectualls" I get the strong feeling those working at the Museum today have misunderstood something important about the way the old Museum failed its community. The Museum has a lot to atone for and offhand dismissals of legitimate criticism is not going to make me optimistic about the future of the Museum.

So where will we be able to view a complete list of the Museums artifacts and artwork? Also what about the question of former Museum staffers at work today in the Museum? Also it would be great to hear the Museums plans for the auditorium its keeping shuttered and weather or not there are any plans for its use......I wonder if anyone could just cut and paste the Museum's Mission Statement here, I would love to see what they stated goals of the Museum are and how it defines its roll in the community.

I have to say, as a Pseudo Intellectual I found Roderick's stream of recent posts short on Intilectualness. Also what about the concerns noted about lack of information on the Museum website, why was that issue not addressed? What of the suggestion to open the magnificent auditorium to public use? Its a cultural asset that belongs to the community and it is sitting unused. Why? Mostly I would just like to be assured that no personality that was associated with the failed -possibly corrupt- museum of the past will have anything to do with this museum ( OUR Museum) in the present or future. Intellectuals like me, and the other kinds of intellectuals too, want to know if there will be a catalogue of the artwork and artifacts the Museum owns or had owned. If there was not one in the past (an abomination if there was not), surely there would have to be one made now. And if one is not in the works I would like to know why not. Surely records of some sort were kept by the old museum? Even if the old staff was made up entirely of pseudo intellectuals, they must have had records of SOMETHING.

Only young children and people over 75 should ever ride on the sidewalk. Also I would trade any number of miles of bike lane for the pedestrian bridge to Liberty State Park to be rebuilt. Rebuilding that bridge would probably be of more actual benefit to Jersey City cyclists than painting lines on pavement.

Personally, if I was going to read a news item about my City Council representative Nidia Lopez and Jersey City taxi drivers, I would have preferred it would have been more along the lines of Lopez reminding the ?professional drivers? of the traffic laws we have in our fair city, of the sanctity of human life on foot at every intersection and how it must be respected and preserved, the need to come to a complete stop at all stop signs, to use the turn signal every time the ?professional drivers? intend to make a turn, to drive within the speed limit, indeed, to simply drive within the painted lanes, to respect those of us on bikes with whom they SHARE the road. Stuff like that.

What's that sound? Its the sound of forlorn infrastructure crumbling at Journal Square for another year.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the JC List webmaster. For lots of reasons but mainly for even HAVING this website which allows us all to keep our finger on the pulse of Jersey City but also for apparently being FAIR about how things work here. Think about how easy it would have been for our webmaster NOT to disclose the multiple accounts of this guy outed below. I used to read HOBOKEN 411 until it turned into a soap box for that webmasters political agenda. And even if I had agreed with that particular take on Hoboken politics I still would have lost faith in being able to get close to the truth there, since I could see the bias. So thanks Webmaster!

Plans for the future of this area are of little concern to people like me that have to look at the shockingly deteriorated PATH plaza area every day. Shame on every elected official that has any decision making authority for this part of town. Presumably taxes are paid here, so where is the revenue going? Certainly it isn't going into any sort of maintenance here. How is it possible the city could ignore this place for as long as they have? Couldn't they just spend a little money on trash removal? Couldn't a bit of attention be spared for the appearance of what is here right now, and not spending all their time imagining how it COULD look ten years from now? I understand there WERE plans for construction to have taken place and this construction was placed on hold. But YEARS have past since then and NOTHING has happened in this area this whole time. where is the plan for what is here RIGHT NOW?

You have to REGISTER, then you have to VOTE! Its really the only thing you can do to try to turn things around. Its exhausting trying to decide which person is the lesser of the two evils sometimes, its difficult to read past the campaign hype when your trying to make an informed choice. But REMEMBER stories like this one next time you pull a lever.

I was really hoping to learn that "empty sky" had been toppled and would be too expensive to repair.

This could be a good opportunity to brush up on your Morris Canal lore. You may not realize it but that old footbridge of ours was over the Eastern terminus of the Morris Canal, a vast historically significant waterway. Here is the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Canal

and another: http://www.morriscanal.org/kids.htm

I'm shocked, SHOCKED to learn that people drive cars like idiots near Newark !

Lets face it the old bridge WAS the sort of thing that could have been thrown up overnight and I hope some agency will take the trouble to throw up a new one soon. I would be content with a Burma Bridge. Or one of those cable car affairs with a chair in a mesh box hanging from a steel cable with some rope and pulleys with which you pull yourself across. Not having access to the park from that location is going to be an enduring hardship. In another thread last summer someone proposed a bridge at the East end of the Morris Canal, one high enough to allow the water traffic to pass under. Rational minds know this would be too expensive but I propose a tunnel. Very expensive no doubt but I feel its an idea that WILL eventually be implemented in the far off future. Unless jetpack technology comes in first.

I'm sad about that bridge, I have a lot of fond memories of it. Riding my bike over to Liberty Landing and Liberty State Park has always been a nice escape for me at the end of the day. Riding all the way around to get there on surface streets is going to suck. I hope they repair or rebuild the bridge soon but the practical side of me thinks its going to be low down on peoples lists of priorities. It was never the best bridge in the world- I remember riding across it when it was submerged at high tide!

Isn?t a municipality announcing its going to begin repaving streets a little bit like a restaurant announcing its going to serve food, or if a hospital announces its going to start treating patients? I guess the REAL story would be why they ever stopped in the first place.

I?m fully aware that when you read through my posts I must come off sounding like a boring complainer. But on the other hand, this is the internet and where else am I going to climb onto a soap box? Anyway, on to the complaining: How is it even possible that fires can occur in the PATH? Someone wrote in earlier pointing out how well paid the PATH employees are, isn?t ONE of them a Safety Officer of some sort? Wouldn?t it be this person?s full time job to make sure that there were no flammable things in the system? And if there were some flammable things that were necessary, wouldn?t that thing be under high levels of scrutiny?
I have not heard the findings about this incident but I will take a wild guess that it was trash on the tracks ignited by sparks from the train. If that?s the case I would wonder why trash is allowed to accumulate on the tracks in the first place, given the live sparks visible to even the most casual observer cascading down onto the track bed any time a train moves past.

This is going throw my Purity of Essence all out of whack.

I have the chlorine too. I told myself: they must be adding it to the water to kill harmful pathogens they must have discovered in the water. I kind of got philosophical then. Also now I'm really glad I made that split pea soup LAST week.

I just rode up the hill from Grove Street along Newark and they are FINALY at work scraping off the old road surface. This is NOT the pipeline work that has been moving down the hill along the cemetery, this is a comprehensive resurfacing. I'm so pleased this is finally happening! At last I will be able to ride my bike down the hill and not have my fillings shaken loose hitting the continuous surface of pot holes- I wish I had known on Friday that ride down the hill would be the LAST TIME I had to deal with that awful road surface, I would have savored it.

I think Dan and everyone who voted for him during the city council elections had low expectations of his winning despite his strengths. But we voted for him anyway since we believed it was worth trying to get him in. Now here is an unexpected avenue for Dan to get into city politics, which is where he would be able to do some good for us. If this is a way for him to connect the dots and get into City Hall than I say its better this way than no way at all. I believe that Dan is the right sort of person for this time in this city and I will be glad to know hes at work in City Hall regardless of how he gets there.

Clearly in my neighborhood there is a VAST CONSPIRACY. Teams of watchers trade position continuously whenever I glance out from under my tinfoil hat I see them pretending to be walking past.

Your projecting a lot onto the other person who put up the Craigs List ad. All you really know is that they have not responded. There is no way for you to know that the email went to their junk mail folder. My advice is that you put an ad of your own on the same Craig's List forum stating what you have stated here.

I just got a crazy idea that just might work! The city could submit a request for proposals for a barge man. Anyone could apply, all they need is a raft made out of four 55 gallon drums and some decking materials from Home Depot. Then you need a large stick to pole across with. Whoever wins the proposal has to build the landing on each side of the Moris canal and be insured but they can charge whatever the market will bear to provide the service. If it doesn't work the city is out no money, and there is no damage to any infrastructure.

I don't like the idea of kids micturating anywhere in public either. But lets look at an imaginary parallel universe version of Jersey City, one that is EXACTLY like the one we live in EXCEPT there are public restrooms in the parks. Close your eyes and picture what the inside of this restroom is going to look like and smell like. See? If I had a kid I would still think better of him or her taking a wizz on a tree rather than have them traumatized and mentally scarred by visiting this imaginary public restroom.

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index ... ty_and_hudson_county.html


The saga of the Stuyvesant sculpture is one of my favorite potential scandals so I always take note when it pops up in the news again. Like all the reporting I have seen on the issue, this Jersey Journal article appears to be pulling some punches. But this latest one hints at the real issues in the final third and it makes me wish they had dug deeper. My take on the story has always been like this but with gaps in my understanding: Hudson County Community College had a new plaza planed for the area in front of their culinary arts building and decided they needed a nice monument to be a centerpiece. At some point they decided the best solution would be to pull strings and get the city to allow them to move the existing Stuyvesant sculpture from its home to the new plaza. To prevent criticism they promised to fund a new monument to take the place of the old one, this one dedicated to martin Luther King. And somehow the city allowed them to remove the monument from its longtime home but it never materialized at the new location and has been in limbo for a couple of year now. No Martin Luther King monument ever materialized and now we learn from this news item it was deemed too expensive. Some of the gaps in my understanding are: If they had the funding to make a Martin Luther King monument why didn?t they just buy a new monument for their plaza instead of looting the Stuyvesant one? What city agency would allow this blatant misuse of the cities cultural resources? Aren?t those agencies in place to PREVENT this sort of thing from happening? And then what went wrong with the scheme? We now know it was thwarted but there is no explanation of how the College changed its mind and abandoned the Stuyvesant sculpture to limbo in a warehouse. Who do we have to thank for putting the brakes on this project? THATS the real story.
So that?s how I saw this unfolding and it takes us to where we are now, with the city trying to put the monument back to where it was and trying to raise a considerable sum to do so, but with the Board of Ed and Hudson Community College refusing to kick in. As I said, my grasp of the situation is a bit vague but shouldn?t the college pay the entire bill since they set the ball in motion and caused this to happen? If I?m not being fair or I am missing important facts I would LOVE to have someone in the know set me straight.
I take the Jersey Journal to task for not delving into the real issues in this story, what they present in the article is a bit of a whitewash in my opinion.

I wonder what other projects were on the short list to get the funding? If the city has 3.9 million dollars sitting around why didn't they repaint the lines on all the roads, they are all worn to invisibility.

I posted above about the smell following the rainstorm. After I posted at 9:30 the smell came through in waves for the rest of the night and this morning I was awoken by the smell at 6:00 A.M. This is unacceptable. I can't say where it is coming from- others pinpoint the recycling company- I can say that I never smelled it before and that the smell was so strong I felt my health was being compromised. I live across from a middle school and all those kids are going to be breathing it too and this is not acceptable. I called the Department of Environmental Protection number 1-877-927-6339 to report the smell. The guy I spoke with said the nobody else had called about the smell. If YOU smell the chemical I urge you to call the number and report it to the D.E.P. and get the ball rolling as I doubt they will put much weight behind my one phone call. If they get dozens of calls maybe something will get done about it.

Another very strong waft of that smell tonight over by Journal Square. I'm writing this Tuesday the 29th at 9:30. A rain storm just passed through and right behind it is that very strong chemical smell. I sure hope our elected representatives are taking note and will soon take steps to address the situation. This chemical smell is a new thing for this area. I have caught a wiff of it a few times in the last week but have never smelled it before and DO NOT wish to continue smelling it. Its very unpleasant.

I, for one, am glad that finally someone has found the courage to step forward and say what we have all been thinking but were too timid to utter aloud!