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there are a ton of people who have been very active at the shelter recently, and i've oriented a couple of new volunteers over the last couple of weeks who were interested in walking/training dogs. the shelter is more active volunteerwise than i've seen it in the two years i've been volunteering there.

check out the facebook page. it's a veritable hive of activity.

there are a lot of people who are right in step with your line of thinking, fauxboken. perhaps this thread should be euthanized, but, all the events of the last month considered, lhs is alive and well.

i know this thread has been here for a long time, but i was never ready to join until now. but i have finally surrendered.

my name is karl and i hate comcast.

our internet has been cutting out like every ten minutes for the last week. okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. but it has seriously been cutting out every twenty minutes.

maybe it's been like this for a while. i JUST joined facebook and the whole liberty humane thing went down and we're using facebook to keep connected so it's only the last week that i've really spent any time on the computer. so maybe comcast has been bad for a while and i'm only figuring it out now.

we're by lincoln park. i'm gonna see what else is available.

xerxes brings up a couple of fantastic points, and highlights another area in which the shelter needs help.

i train and walk the dogs there. that's what i do. i'm a piano teacher, so i (hopefully) use my brain a lot during the day. when i go to the shelter, i'm up for helping physically, but i don't have the skills or energy to look at balance sheets, etc.

liberty needs people who can answer all of the questions that xerxes raised. in the past, perhaps those people were the board members. right now, there are a few people serving as an interim board so the shelter can legally keep its doors open, but they all expressed to me that they did not want to serve on the board forever.

i will try to find out who to contact about how you can take a look at liberty's finances. when i have an answer, i'll post it here.

hi. i volunteer at lhs all the time. we can discuss the politics of this thing or the realities of animal shelter operation all we want here. but what lhs needs now is help. you don't have to help. you don't have to think this is worth doing. you can call me a doodiehead. that's fine.

the primary need at this point is to find homes (preferably permanent homes but foster homes is better than nothing) for the animals at lhs so that the issue of overcrowding is moot.

the people who were at the board meeting until the end of the board meeting are doing this with the correct motivation- a desire to help the animals of hudson county.

if you want to help, we've decided that facebook will be our central meeting area for now so that we all are on the same page.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/LibertyHumaneSociety?ref=ts

thanks.

jewett between west side and jfk (so you'd walk from the path down jfk) is cool. that's a nice block, actually. walking down bergen from the path after sunset could be iffy and i'd have to agree that block (between bergen and monticello) would be potentially problematic late at night.

a contractor friend of ours in california loved this setup (it's called solar in a box):

http://videos.sorensonmedia.com/f51b7 ... bc-4703-9cad-088bd66e3885

anyway, N2JCH, definitely keep us posted. we hope to be following in your footsteps.

i saw a couple of good referrals for avolar, but the website isn't working. not a good sign. have they moved to another site, or does anyone have any other electrician recommendations? we need someone who is licensed, insured, certified and retrofitted, because we have a TON of stuff to do (starting with upgrading our service). thanks!

i think chunky pam's is the best.

the wawa/7-11 and eagles/giants fan demarcations are great measuring sticks, and coincide very closely. i'm gonna say that there is about a fifteen-mile DMZ that extends from lambertville to rumson on the northern edge and bordentown to belmar on the southern edge.

when i saw this thread i was hoping it was an old thread that someone had just commented on. what a bummer.

we own a pit. why? because when we went to liberty about 80% of the dogs there were pits. why? because lots of kind-hearted animal lovers have a predisposed opinion about pits (and this included me before we adopted one) and don?t want to adopt them, and because a lot of the people who come in looking exclusively for pits can be shady characters.

yesterday i was volunteering at liberty and a guy wanted to know about one of the pits in there. i had a bad vibe about him and told him that pits required experienced handlers and that we would approve him to adopt a pit after he attended four of our training sessions with one of us. then he took off. am i right about my bad vibe? i don?t know, but better safe than sorry.

the two descriptions of the breed that i agree with are that they are strong and they are persistent. therefore, owning a pit means that basic precautions that should be taken with all dogs are things that must be done with pits.

my dog is great. i know a lot of pits that are great. but I also know that i won?t make anyone an automatic pit lover based on a post on a message board. there was an interesting article a few years ago in the new yorker, i believe, which featured stats about pit bull attacks, and the upshot was that the people who own pits that have attacked people are almost always individuals with checkered pasts who should not be allowed to own an animal, or a gun, or even a moving vehicle.

unfortunately, if such people continue to have access to pits, this kind of thing will continue, and all of the goodwill that my dog creates when the kids at the bus stop we walk by pet him will be gone when some other moron-owned pit has another headline-inducing incident.

i was hesitant about adopting a pit. i talked to some owners, consulted message boards and read a couple of books, and made a decision that i'm really happy about today. i just wanted to post that i am a happy a pit owner, but i don't have any judgment towards people who have little direct experience with the breed for having certain opinions.

i just think this story is a bummer.

yikes. sorry mark.

dan rizzi- the last plumber you'll ever need. he rocks. he was the second plumber we met after moving here and he's done big stuff and small stuff for us and i would not hesitate to recommend him for any plumbing job to anyone. his cell is 845-492-1201. tell him karl mueller sent you.

i searched and there is a thread on jclist where the gutter cleaning question has been asked, but it has been merged with a thread that is titled "gutters need REPLACING." Since i don't need my gutters replaced, just cleaned, i am hoping to start a new thread and attract folks with gutter cleaning, not replacing, knowledge.

according to the other thread, Garden State Gutter Cleaning is not so hot.

any suggestions? thanks.

we're on fairmount between west side and jfk. we really dig it. we have a driveway, but i know if you don't street parking can be a bit of a hassle at night.

our schedules are such that we're generally out between 7am and 11pm, and the neighborhood is fine then. i walk the dog down west side to lincoln park all the time and have done so without incident so far (and so has my wife). as far as what goes on at 3am, i really don't have any experience. so far (we've been here for ten months) we have not had any problems at all with our selves, our cars or our property.

there's good pizza, good gyros and a good deli/smoothie place on west side within a couple of blocks of there.

welcome to the neighborhood!

yup. i think he did it on purpose, because he doesn't say it's the "munishipal" court.

jcbiscuit, if your friend remembers the words the person used to command the dog, it might help to figure out where the dog was trained. command words for this type of behavior are not common words and are often in other languages so that the dogs don't react when the word comes up in conversation.

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amen, sister.

i heard that about the bats too. there's an above-ground pool two houses over. they recently sold the place and the new people are fixing it up but don't live there. so when we reached critical mosquito mass, we did a little research and got these: http://www.eco-gardening.com/miscella ... osquito-donuts_690_62.php. now we just chuck one over the fence into the pool every couple of weeks and it's made a difference. and that burt's bees insect repellent works well for me, though it is quite oily. i'm a night time showerer anyway, so it's made no change in my lifestyle.

unfortunately i have a funeral to attend tomorrow, but i signed the petition. i hope lots of people make it out. it would be great if we can demonstrate we're not as apathetic as things like voter turnout seem to indicate.

see what we can accomplish when jersey city comes together? first a new page. tomorrow, a new, i don't know, i can't think of anything else new we need.

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yup.

this is helpful producewise. not perfect, but a good starting point. http://www.epicurious.com/articlesgui ... ble/seasonalingredientmap i cook a lot, and i do go to spiffy supermarkets for certain things, but for most stuff i think the pathmark is fine.

just picked my dog up from the jcah on west side. two people who he's stayed with before were out of town or had house guests. i was not too keen about boarding him, but we had no choice. he already knew a couple of the vets (dr. fede nee thornton is his usual vet) and some of the techs (this one tech named beth always comes out to see him if she knows she's not going to be his tech for our visit).

he is happy and healthy after staying with them for four days. i've never had any difficulty with the vets or the techs or the administrative staff.

i was there once when someone brought in a dog that had been hit and they really did drop everything else. joyofsound, i realize you don't know what the extenuating circumstances of that particular day were, and i don't want to belittle your experience. i think if you want to go looking for a new vet that is fine. just wanted to post and say that in my experience neglect or absentmindedness or whatever it was is not part of their usual operating procedure.

oh, and my secret to tooth brushing:

i started with a toothbrush full of cheez whiz and i let the dog lick it off. every couple of days i used a little less cheez whiz and a little more dog toothpaste and moved the toothbrush a little more. took about two weeks. now i brush his teeth a couple of times per week and he rolls on his back and opens up. i wouldn't say he enjoys it, but he knows that if he gives me 45 seconds he'll get a biscuit.

dan levin and his ticket's at larges. third one i'm still undecided. i'm in ward b and i'm voting for doug salters. i've done some homework and spoken with him and he's getting my vote.

san francisco (where we moved from) picks up garbage at night also.

i wonder if it's a function of the particular crew working in a certain area. the garbage collectors here (near st. peter's) are amazingly quiet. i never ever hear them, even when i'm watching tv on the ground floor fifteen feet and one window pane away from the curb. maybe (like in most professions) there are some conscientious folks and some who are not so conscientious.

i like the night time collection, but it doesn't disturb me, so i don't have an insomniac's axe to grind with it. i do know that i have very little tolerance for things that stand between me and sleepyland.

wow. i only carry a $9,766 wad of cash around with me. after reading this story, however, i realize that might not be enough to stop a bullet. i'll have to hit the atm today.

the suicide squeeze left turn is not just a new jersey thing- they do it in san francisco as well. however, it certainly has been taken to the next level here.

i say we name the maneuver. "jersey left" isn't bad, though if we could come up with something slightly more provincial, that would be best. i've heard a bumper whack while parallel parking called a "hoboken kiss." i like that.

"jersey city left" is too long, and "jc left" lacks punch. perhaps "jersey left" will have to do. anyone with any thoughts?

i usually don't respond to the "the west side of jersey city is a skanky war zone where you will be attacked by roving gangs of pit bulls and gangsters the second you get out of your car" threads, because most of the time people who contribute to those threads already have their minds made up. but i'll put my two cents in on this one for newinnjjc.

we too are on fairmount between jfk and west side. we've only been here for about three months but we really dig it. we moved here from san francisco, so we are used to neighborhoods that look like downtown. my perspective is not that of an individual who just moved here from east Baghdad and thinks any day when a car bomb doesn't go off is a lovely day. we have a huge house and parking for two cars. we have a good sized yard. the neighbors on our block are amazing. most of them are homeowners who really care about the well-being of the neighborhood. a lot of them have been here for some time, so perhaps they have seen the neighborhood when it was not so nice and have a vested interest in keeping it nice (or getting it nice).

as others have stated, jersey city's crime problem is not confined to one area. all i can relate is my personal experience. neither my wife nor i have had any problems with our personal safety or our property. granted, our lifestyle is such that we are not out roaming around at 3am, so i cannot attest to the behavior of our neighbors at that late hour, but from 7am to 11pm we have not had any issues.

there are some culinary gems out this way. there is also a lot of not so wonderful food, but there are other threads where that issue is discussed in detail.

long term, sure, i'd love to see some of the liquor stores and 99 cent stores on west side turn into establishments we'd be more inclined to visit. we think there is a core of good people here and we believe that the area is on its way up.

OottaBahr- ah. i see. concise and thorough.

Yvonne- thanks. will do.

super_furry- thanks for the linkage. never saw the jersey city independent before.

i'll let you all know who to vote for asap.

Does anyone know of a good resource to get an idea of the current candidates for public office, possible/pending legislation, etc?

I am finally done(ish) working on our new home and I need a crash course in local politics after moving here from San Francisco.

Thanks.

Or don't. There is only a bit more than a week to go in this thing, and the gaps between 3 and 4 (Liberty) and 4 and 5 are widening by the day. Liberty just doesn't have as many people on board as some of the other shelters, and for a long time Liberty was carried by a few dedicated folks who have burned out.

The scoop is that Liberty will finish in the top 20 and be part of the "narrowing down to 10 by zootoo" phase. No one can do anything about this phase unless they work for zootoo.

But, if Liberty makes the cut and gets into the final 10, then we will need people bad. Bad bad bad. At that point, it will be a simple matter of logging in and clicking the "vote for Liberty" button up to 10 times per day. That part of the contest is a lot easier than logging on and posting pictures, reviewing the latest dog food, etc.

So, if you think this is a great thing for Liberty and/or Jersey City and you think that Liberty deserves a makeover but you don't have an hour each day to max out your point total at zootoo, just sign up for an account and wait for me or croft or John to post here and tell you to go vote like the dickens. I'd rather you sit on your hands now and vote like crazy later than get fried trying to save Liberty by yourself now and be halfhearted about the voting when that happens.

Of course, if you do happen to have a thousand pics of your Labradoodle wearing a Mets poncho and eating tapioca out of an old sneaker, bring 'em on.