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No, I have no association with them except a frequent sometimes too frequent patron. They aren't the best at everything, but this thread is only about burgers in downtown JC.

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maybe so. but the screen name references elliott smith, so i'll give them a pass.

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Apparently the White Star Bar serves SPAM as well.

Personally I think its hands down the White Star. Real burgers not prepressed cheap meat. The word is they even get there meat from Moloney's Meat Market... a real JC butcher. The fries are yummy, toppings even go into gourmet and good prices. Go on Wednesday and the even have them on the $5 food night menu (smaller version of course). I've converted many people into fans. Oh, and the rest of the menu is really tasty too!

WHITE MANA! If you like grease, and onions.

If not, Arthur's in Hoboken does make a damn fine burger. Beats the hell out of their mediocre steaks.

Park Tavern is a great bar (cheap Guiness on tap) and the burgers are fine, but they can be very slow with food orders.

My favorite would have to be White Mana (AKA Original Mana) on 1/9 Truck Route and Manhattan Ave. It's essentially the birthplace of American fast food. It's the original burger stand from the 1939 World's Fair, and has been in JC since the 40s. The is not the place to go if you're looking for a fancy half-pounder. It's more like the best White Castle burger the world has ever known. 3 cheese burgers, fries and a soda used to be $5, but I think it's up to $5.50. Open 24 hours, but the location is sketchy and draws a sometimes wild crowd late on weekends.

There's another one called White Manna (note the double-N) in Hackensack which some say is better, but I've never visited. It was once a chain of about a half-dozen restaurants, but JC has the original.

Good Burgers at the Park Tavern on West Side Ave. Just off Communipauw. I have not been there in awhile, but they were always freshly made and tasty. Arthur's in Hoboken has good burgers also.

OK, So Citysearch.com has a list of Best Burger Joints in NYC.

How about Burger Joints in Jersey City??

Any suggestions?

I heard Brownstone serves good ones, but never tried.

Tips on Down Town area will be nice, but Heighs, JSQ all welcome!

I think 'Beach at end of street' is my favorite! Nix's check cashing is right behind...


Gina

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Oh my! That is a good one! Did he reply?

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I bet if we get a good young mayor of our own (Fulop!) we'd move foward!

Just sayin...

Gina

Has anyone tried to send a 'message in a bottle' it may be better recieved.The difference between the first year of the Healy adm.and the first 60 days of the booker term in newark could not be more dramatic.While booker punches his fist in the air and yell's "let's get moving"jersey city has just become a punch line to various naked mayor jokes.

A follow up story from the NYT shows where the antiterrorism funds went: Indiana

U.S. Terror Targets: Petting Zoo and Flea Market?
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, July 11 ? It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald?s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified ?Beach at End of a Street.?

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child?s play: all these ?unusual or out-of-place? sites ?whose criticality is not readily apparent? are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.

?We don?t find it embarrassing,? said the department?s deputy press secretary, Jarrod Agen. ?The list is a valuable tool.?

But the audit says that lower-level department officials agreed that some older information in the inventory ?was of low quality and that they had little faith in it.?

?The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data,? the report says.

In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including ?Nix?s Check Cashing,? ?Mall at Sears,? ?Ice Cream Parlor,? ?Tackle Shop,? ?Donut Shop,? ?Anti-Cruelty Society? and ?Bean Fest.?

I like:

1> The people
2> The bars and restaurants*
3> The fact that most of my friends are within walking distance as are all the bars we go to
4> That we can take a very long walk along the water with the beautiful view - ours is better than theirs! nah nah
5> That we can walk to LSP
6> My back porch/yard - the insanity in the asylum
7> PATH runs 24hours - even if we do detour though Hoboken (my friend had to leave early on Friday night because her car was parked at Montclair - they don't have train service on the weekends)
8> Pecoraro's & 2nd St Bakery
9> The nice people that say hello and are friendly in my building
10> My neighbors kids that watch my cats while we're away
11> JClist and all the great people I met through here
12> The arts
13> Walking distance from a mall & Target
14> Non-NYC rents
15> The local characters and flavor

Did I miss anything?


*Way too many to name!

In no particular order and please pardon the spelling?

1. Torrico?s Coconut Pineapple Ice Cream ? SMOKES the Haagen Dazs version

2. Owning a car, but having an insurance DISCOUNT because we don?t use it to drive to work.

3. ?Creative?, neighborhood gardening ? from windowboxes on brownstones to patches of corn.

4. The brasciole and gravy at 2nd Street Bakery

5. ?Possum-hunting? with the dogs during the last walk of the night at the embankment

6. Jersey City Pesto ? made fresh with basil from our garden (chromium be damned!).

7. Ethnic takeout and neighborhoods ? from a 15 minute walk from the intersection of Jersey & Newark the options include Vietnamese, Polish, Italian, Cuban, Pakistani, Syrian (Ibby?s), Chinese, Mexican. And then when you add the other JC areas? I always think of the Joe Strummer song ?Bhindi Bhagee? as the unofficial theme: ?Welcome stranger, to the humble neighborhood??

8. Moule Frite in mustard-wine sauce and crepes with nutella @ Madame Claudes.

9. Pizza @ La Rustique and the unscripted ?Honeymooners? routines from Charlie and Phil.

10. My dark, ?old-school?, 40-year-resident, Russian neighbors who scared the hell out of us at first with their tales of how bad everything is - but couldn?t be better people.

Things I can't believe no one has mentioned yet:

* The Embankment and the Resevoir
* Brunswick Window Gallery
* Balance Hair
* La Conguita
* Subias
* the cheesy multi-holiday decorations at City Hall
* and that Pimp guy

A Terrorist Attack on the City,
85 Years Before Sept. 11

By Glenn C. Altschuler - New York Obsever

The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice, by Chad Millman. Little, Brown, 330 pages, $24.99.

It can happen here. And according to Chad Millman’s The Detonators, it did—85 years before 9/11. After war broke out in Europe in 1914, the German government sought to prevent the United States, a neutral country, from delivering ammunition to the Allies. On Jan. 26, 1915, the Foreign Office sent a cable to German attach?s in North America authorizing acts of terrorism: “In United States sabotage can reach to all kinds of factories for war deliveries. Under no circumstances compromise Embassy.”

Within months, Franz von Papen, a military attach?, and Heinrich Albert, a commercial attach?, supplied fake passports, housing and money to a network of spies and terrorists, many of them American citizens. The Germans set up a bomb factory on the Frederick the Great, a battleship interned in New York Harbor. They set fires on merchant ships and in chemical and weapons factories across the country. A few miles from the White House, Anton Dilger, a former medical student, stockpiled a bacterium that causes anthrax. And on July 30, 1916, Michael Kristoff, Kurt Jahnke and Lothar Witzke bribed security guards to look the other way and blew up a munitions depot on Black Tom Island, a tiny spit of land in the New York Harbor. The explosion, which shook the ground in Maryland, decimated 13 warehouses on Black Tom, devastated Jersey City and destroyed property in Manhattan. Five people—plus vagrants sleeping on barges in the harbor—perished. Damage estimates approached $20 million (about $350 million in today’s money).

The saboteurs pulled off their dastardly deed with ease and initially escaped detection. Although the U.S. government had tapped the phones of German diplomats and recovered incriminating material from Heinrich Albert’s briefcase, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Military Intelligence Division and the Secret Service were, Mr. Millman writes, “no more sophisticated than a small town sheriff’s office.” Investigators speculated that the Black Tom explosion had been caused by a fire, set to drive away mosquitoes, that had blazed out of control.

The story of the Black Tom conspiracy is little known, fascinating and timely. A former Sports Illustrated reporter and currently senior editor of ESPN the Magazine, Chad Millman tells it reasonably well. He’s less successful in reaching beyond the narrative to provide the historical context and explain Black Tom’s significance. Mr. Millman sheds little light on the recruitment of the saboteurs. How did von Papen, Albert and Paul Hilken (their Baltimore-based paymaster) identify the Black Tom detonators? Who approached whom? Did these men derive their view of the origins of World War I from the journalists on the payroll of Johann von Bernstorff, Germany’s ambassador to the United States? Were they paid for their work? Why were they willing to commit treason against the United States?

Nor does The Detonators address questions that Mr. Millman should have asked about the motives of the German government. Why risk bringing the United States into the conflict, especially if German diplomats were convinced, as Mr. Millman is, that President Woodrow Wilson clung “desperately” to his policy of neutrality until the Zimmermann note—a proposal by Germany of an alliance with Mexico—so inflamed public opinion in 1917 that he “had no choice” but to ask Congress for a declaration of war? Did the Germans believe in 1915 that American arms shipments might tip the balance in favor of the Allies? Or that America would enter the war eventually, no matter what the German government said or did? If so, why not try to vanquish England and France before the Yanks were ready to go over there? Or did the Foreign Office give the green light to sabotage because officials were confident that they could hide their involvement? Which they did—for quite a while.

The second half of The Detonators reveals how the Black Tom conspiracy was eventually exposed. A legal thriller, spanning two decades and three continents, the tale has more twists and turns than a colonoscopy. It began in 1922, when the United States and Germany established a Mixed Claims Commission to settle suits for damages arising out of the war. Two years later, after locating documents misfiled by the U.S. Bureau of Investigation (precursor to the F.B.I.) implicating Germany in sabotage, lawyers for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which owned the buildings on Black Tom, filed a claim for $20 million.

The Germans stalled, stonewalled and lied. The cable sent in January 1915, they explained, was neither an order nor a command, but simply an observation that sabotage could occur. German officials swore that they had authorized no illegal activity. Without a “smoking gun” linking the German government directly to Black Tom, the Mixed Claims Commission ruled against the Lehigh Valley in 1930.

But then, in a stroke of serendipity—one of many in The Detonators—a message sent from Mexico City by one of the conspirators in 1917 surfaced. Written in a magazine in lemon juice so that it would disappear when dry, the message became readable again only after the heat of an iron was applied to the page. A handwriting expert verified that Fred Herrmann, an American citizen turned German spy, was the author. The Americans asked to reopen the case, only to have an even more eminent authority assert that the message had been written long after 1917. Owen Roberts, a justice on the United States Supreme Court and the umpire for the Mixed Claims Commission, denied the petition. But he left the door open for one more appeal.

In 1934, Dame Fortune smiled on America again. John J. McCloy, a lawyer for the Lehigh Valley and the hero of The Detonators, persuaded the Irish labor leader James Larkin to prepare an affidavit about German initiatives to disrupt the flow of supplies from the United States to the Allies, including the Black Tom plot. With Larkin ready to name names, the Nazis agreed to settle. They later reneged, but in 1939, Roberts found for the plaintiffs: $21 million in damages and $29 million in interest.

Better late than never, justice had been meted out—but the biggest beneficiary, Mr. Millman suggests, was John McCloy: The young lawyer for whom Black Tom had once been a black hole went on to become an Assistant Secretary of War, president of the World Bank and U.S. High Commissioner to Germany; in the latter stages of his career, he was widely known as “Head of the Establishment” in the United States.

A coda: During World War II, American policy makers drew the wrong lesson from Black Tom. Asked to assess threats to national security, advisors to President Roosevelt, including McCloy, recommended internment for Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. As he issued the order, F.D.R. turned to McCloy and said, “We don’t want another Black Tom.” History has a way of repeating itself—sometimes, as The Detonators demonstrates, in acts of sabotage from within, and sometimes in an overreaction to threats real and imagined.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Not having to own a car has to be tops on my list.

A house and garden a 7 minute train ride to work is wonderful.

I love the Grace VV Church booksale

I could not disagree more as far as Flood Watch not being a ripoff. We had them do work in our condo building and their prices were quite high.

I also called them in to take a look at a leaking faucet in my bathroom sink. He took a crescent wrench, tightened the lead to the valve and told me, "that will be $150.00". Idon't know about you, but I classify that as a ripoff.

I had a company called Recommended Plumbing replace a thermocouple on my hot water heater for $120.00 and he came less than an hour. I don't have their number, but I think the guy that came was Eddie.

We actually used Kook & Son today to replace a faucet in our tub. Extremely professional: http://www.kookandson.com/. They said they'd come between 8 and noon this morning. Showed up at 9 and left by 11:45. Other people have used them for more complex jobs in the building and had good and professional results too.

What I love about J.C.? Positive threads like this.

Seriously, everyone's named everything I've loved about this place since moving here in '98. There is just no other place like J.C.!!!

Thanks, Australian, for asking a great question.

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::shrugs::


i havent been to iris yet, but then i havent been one to *buy* music as of late, relying more on live shows, radio and my friends to introduce me to new bands.

to most i would suppose the biggest impact WFMU makes on jc as a local force, would be their irregular yard sale. i would volunteer if it fit into my schedule.

another thing i love about jc--the siperstein's paint can!

There was a nice thread apparently lost on this subject near the inception of jclist-

1) Not only diversity, but the mishmash of multi-ethnic and gay families.
2) PATH access to NYC, Newark, JC was built on proximity to NY / transportation and still is.
3) Liberty State Park.
4) Coming into Jersey City on the Pulaski Skyway
5) NYC Skyline and the Hudson River
6) Loew?s Theater
7) Little India
8) Grace Van Vorst as a cultural center
9) That little car (Henry J?) on top of the used car lot on lower Communipaw
10) The sense of neighborhood, though you may need to set down roots to get it.
11) Some of our neighbors that care about the city and its future
12) The idea of the cultural anchor of PAD
13) JC is a do it yourself kind of place that has the bones to be a great city.

I do not get including WFMU, while I love the station, you barely know that they are here and seem to have nothing to do with JC; rather I would also include Iris Records on Brunswick.

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of course. but that goes without saying.

love that casual jersey pride!

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No disrespect to JC but part of its greatness is its proximity to other places, namely the greatest f'in city in the world, and that its in the greatest state in the country, NJ. What's not to love about that?

i think it's funny how many lists have mentioned either our proximity to OTHER places, or our methods of transportation used to GET to other places. humph.

my 2c, no particular order

* madame claude
* bryan benninghove @ the lampost every wednesday
* tanqueria
* the castle-like cluster of brownstones on the eastern side of jersey avenue at 8th street
* the low-ees, err, loews.
* boulevard drinks
* torico's ice cream
* the white mana
* random weirdness - i hope this town its unique f890ed-upness. so much secret history.
* 58 coles
* dayri
* wfmu!

i wish i could include the canton, melt, and uncle joe's. sigh. and i'm undoubtedly forgetting a lot.

1 NEW ( your living guide to jersey city )

2 LITM

3 GO gourmet organic

4 Beachwood caf?

5 Madame Claude cafe

6 Life clothing store

7 Cooke contemporary

8 The water front

In no particular order:

1 - My rent - a similar brownstone apartment near a park in NYC would cost me at least twice as much.

2 - That parking isn't so bad

3- Taqueria's pork tacos and flan and byob sangria

4- That Simple, Hamilton Park Ale House, White Star Bar, Isabella's and Basic are all within steps of my place.

5- Drinking is cheaper here than in NYC

6- That I can live without a car if I needed to

7- The PATH - I find it cleaner and faster and more reliable than when I had to use the subway daily

8- Dorrian's Pu Pu Platter and Red Ale

9- That I can be in nice suburban towns like Montclair in 15-20 minutes.

10- That JC is in New Jersey, which is on a state level much more progressive than NY State is on many levels.

11- The Waterfront and walkway

12- The Powerhouse - it's beautiful, while it lasts

13- Marco & Pepe's brunch

14- Having Newport Mall so close

15- The historical buildings

1. The Grove Street Crew that I hang with.
2. The MAJESTIK and the ridiculous alcohol consumption therein.
3. Chillin' on the stoop with the Fil-Mex guys.
4. My Dominican neighbors and their legendary BBQ skillz.
5. Rey Rey, the guy on my street who can fix any vehicle known to man.
6. Oscar at La Isla Nueva and his empanadas.
7. Van Vorst Park
8. No Car.
9. Hudson Camera
10. The Grove Street Pimp
11. Ibby's Falafel
12. My ridiculously hot wife who refuses to live in the suburbs.

Hmm.

No particular order:

35 minute commute door to door (though I admit I wish people on PATH had a better understanding of personal space)

My beautiful apartment kicks a$$ and I'd be in a much smaller, not as nice space in Hoboken or the city

My room-mate. OK, so she'll never see this but whatever.

Good takeout/delivery options

Proximity to LSP

Proximity to EWR

Waterfront

Random fireworks shows that set off every car alarm in PH.

$1.00/month parking