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Re: Nicole's on Jersey & Columbus Avenue
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I know there's a nice row of Caribbean and soul food restaurants a couple of blocks south of the Martin Luther King light rail stop. I got lunch from one last summer, while registering my daughter for the after care program, but I don't remember it that well.
Anyhow, are there any people here familiar with the restaurants south of the MLK light rail stop? If so, what did you think about them? Which ones (if any) would you try if you were on a quickie intra-JC day trip?
Posted on: 2008/6/21 14:57
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Re: Nicole's on Jersey & Columbus Avenue
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Quote:
a) Could you list some good Nicole's alternatives? b) Have you been to Calle Luna, on Varick south of Columbus? To me, it seems as if that's a good place, but it sounds as if you're probably a better, tougher critic than I am.
Posted on: 2008/6/21 2:21
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Re: Sprinkler Req'd by JC for Brownstone Renovation
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On the one hand, that's a lot of money, and I'm sorry for the original poster and hope things work out. On the other hand, I sure wish someone had installed sprinklers in the apartment of the poor 90-year-old woman who burned to death at Second and Marin last month.
Posted on: 2008/6/20 15:22
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Re: How to see a doctor today?
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I went to Dr. Mirza (the walk in clinic on Jersey Avenue, a block south of Columbus) about 10 days ago, when the office was busy. The waiting room is shabby, but the office manager knows what she's doing, and the exam room area seemed clean. Mirza is board certified in internal medicine. It was pretty obvious what I had (kidney infection), but Mirza seemed to know what he was doing when he examined me, and I think he'd at least be fine for the little illnesses that healthy people get. I've also been to the DOCS clinic in Manhattan. The good thing about the DOCS system is that it's integrated with Beth Israel Medical Center, and it's pretty easy for DOCS to send you over to get all kinds of medical tests. The bad thing about DOCS is that, because of the way various laws and insurance rules work, all of the medical practices and testing operations are separate companies with separate billing arms, and one little visit for, say, mild pneumonia could end getting you tangled in all sorts of billing red tape, even if you have a good health plan that pays all of the bills.
Posted on: 2008/6/16 16:38
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Re: Jersey City and Hiroshima (after the atomic bomb)
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Because Jersey City was hit by two devastating economic attacks. From about the 1850s to the 1950s, Jersey City was an industrial powerhouse, and it also was the meat locker for New York. (Stockyards filled a lot of the land along the Hudson River. Then, from the 1940s to the 1970s, because of high labor costs and other costs here, lower costs in other places, and decreased reliance on railroads and and ferries to move freight, a huge percentage of Jersey City's industrial businesses disappeared or moved elsewhere. Second, it turned out that the wonderful industries that used to be here polluted the land with toxic metals. In many cases, the vacant lots you see are vacant because figuring out to contain, eliminate or pretend you've gotten rid of the toxic waste on the lots is very difficult. The irony is that, in 1996, when I got here, the fact the old-time factories had poisoned the ground and made it too dangerous for people in made it a safe haven for all kinds of wild plants, rabbits, birds, etc. We had what amounted to a "toxic prairie on the Hudson."
Posted on: 2008/6/6 16:21
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Re: Primary elections in Hudson County today - Tuesday, June 03
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That's hilarious. This means that, in my district, 14, there might actually be more Greens and Libertarians than there are Republicans.
Posted on: 2008/6/4 21:04
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Re: Stop Signs on Erie Street - Steven FUlop
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Yes, and I got all of the questions right. But I have no depth perception and wouldn't dare to try to drive a car here.
Posted on: 2008/6/2 18:27
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Re: Head of Jersey City police internal affairs found dead in apparent suicide
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It would be interesting to see if there's an especially high rate of suicide among Hudson County officials who "know too much." Maybe there are folks out there who are good at assisting these people with suicide.
Posted on: 2008/5/31 2:08
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Re: New York Times: Gentrification in Portland
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If good electric cars come to auto showrooms, maybe the edge suburbs will do fine. If not, in the medium term, I think suburban McMansions might be to the punk kids of the 2010s and 2020s what burned out brick rowhouses were to the punk kids of the 1980s and 1990s. In the long run, I think the solution is to figure out a way to encourage employers to minimize employees' average commutes. Right now, employers have no incentive whatsoever to hire an employee who lives near the office rather than an employee lives far away. If, say, employers had to pay a tax equal to a percentage of each employee's monthly gasoline bill, then maybe employers would be willing to use some kind Craigslist system to trade long-commute employees for short-commute employees. In some cases, maybe employers could shorten a lot of commutes by building operations centers in the suburbs. Another strategy would be to make sure that all edge suburbs have a little shopping area with a supermarket, a drug store and some kind of general store (e.g., a Target, or a Kmart), to minimize the number of long trips residents have to make just to buy a few groceries. they trade
Posted on: 2008/5/29 15:51
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Re: Where are all the BJ shopping carts coming from?
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I didn't like Schundler as a statewide candidate, but he was actually a decent mayor. I understand that some people think he played games with the budget, but at least he could figure out how to play games with the budget, and he understood that the little things, like whether the trash gets picked up, really do matter.
Posted on: 2008/5/29 14:46
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Re: Jersey City Hospitals and how can they attract patients with private insurance
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Somehow I just noticed this post. Anyhow, suggestion about how to attract people with private insurance: Create an option that would permit a person with a billing question to pay $20 (through a 900 number?) and speak to an intelligent live person at a prescheduled time. My experience is that doctors and hospitals actually do a decent job at providing care. My insurers have mostly done a pretty good job of living up to the letter of their contracts. But the doctors' and hospitals' billing offices have been nightmares. The medical office business people who actually sit in the doctors' offices tend to be nice and bilingual but extremely ignorant. The people hidden in the offsite billing offices are a lot more intelligent, but they're almost impossible to reach. There have been times when I would have gladly paid $20 extra just to speak to a live human being and make sure that I don't owe anyone any money.
Posted on: 2008/5/28 20:09
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Re: Jersey City Hospitals and how can they attract patients with private insurance
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I've taken my child to the Jersey City Medical Center pediatric emergency room twice (once around 3 a.m. with a 105 degree fever, once on a Sunday evening with a smashed thumb) and it was great. The facility is new, clean and beautiful. A doctor saw us right away the first time and got right to the heart of the problem. The second time (after my insurance company's nurse line nurse told us to take our child to the emergency room), a triage nurse came out, glanced at my child's smashed thumb and told us that we could get by without medical attention. So, we got out without without even having to through the sign-in process. Note: we took my daughter before the residency programs changed. I don't know if the pediatric ER staffing was affected by all of that.
Posted on: 2008/5/28 18:23
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Re: Condo near P.O.?
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There are a ton of condos available in Paulus Hook. Example: on Craigslist.org, I see a 2 bedroom at Grand and Washington (a few blocks from the post office) available for about $399,000.
I see a 2 bedroom available at Fulton's Landing, which is a little farther away, available for $500,000, and another 2-bedroom unit, which I think is right by Fulton's Landing, available for $575,000.
Posted on: 2008/5/27 15:09
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Re: Maniac drivers who speed through crosswalks (and stop signs)
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First, I personally fall into the "timid pedestrian" category, not the "brazen jaywalker" category. Second, I think one problem with the pedestrians in Jersey City is that a lot of people have never driven a car, or at least have never taken a U.S. driver's ed class, so they really have no idea how a driver is thinking. Along the same lines, a lot of drivers here probably have never learned much about the local rules of the road and have no idea that pedestrians in crosswalks have right of way. Maybe one solution would be to post a lot more explanatory signs around town. Example: by a few busy corners with a lot of pedestrians, put up signs in English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic explaining that pedestrians in crosswalks have right of way. Similarly: take one of those LCD-side "rolling board" vans that goes around the city during political campaigns and have it run multilingual explanations of why jaywalking across a busy street in Jersey City is suicidal.
Posted on: 2008/5/23 17:42
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Re: Majestic II - What do You Want Sign?
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In a perfect world, they'd make that site the new home for Garden Preschool Cooperative. (It used to be across the street in the church that got sold for another development.)
But, actually, I wouldn't mind a rat-free Taco Bell, or a decent McDonald's. On the other hand, if some company is going to build Luxury Condo Building 9,437,663 downtown, I guess it might as well be a reasonably nice company like Exeter.
Posted on: 2008/5/23 17:22
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Re: Maniac drivers who speed through crosswalks (and stop signs)
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What annoys me the most is seeing officers speed through the crosswalk at First and Erie, right by the Jersey City Police Department headquarters, even on sunny weekend days when parents are trying to push babies across the street in strollers to get to the ice cream parlor. I can understand why, in the real world, pedestrians can't REALLY have the right of way whenever they feel like stepping into a crosswalk, but you'd think that a police department would at least symbolically enforce the crosswalk rules right in front of its headquarters, on sunny days when it's obvious that a lot of babies and small children will be in the crosswalk.
Posted on: 2008/5/23 14:32
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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WARNING: If you don't like long, wonky comments, you'll hate this comment. Please skip it and go find the thread about the naked lady in the window. Anyhow: I'm getting my McNair "economically disadvantaged" figure from the "detailed achievement test" demographic breakdown table that I linked to. The table shows, for example, how many of the 146 McNair students who took the 2006-2007 state achievement tests were male, how many were female, how many were black, how many were white, etc. One section is supposed to show how many McNair students are "economically disadvantaged," but that line is blank. I think that's because the state leaves out data when the numbers are so small that the data could be linked to individual students. On the other hand, the state didn't put the "privacy" asterisks there, and it could be that the state left out that data for some other reason, such as a programming error. Reason to think that the 2006-2007 number of economically disadvantaged kids might be less than 20: In the 2005-2006 demographic breakdown data, the state says 20 of the McNair students who took the state achievement tests that year were "economically disadvantaged." Another consideration: I read the No Child Left Behind definitions data, and it seems as if "economically disadvantaged" includes all kids getting free or reduced lunches. But it sounds as if the definition is really more complicated than that, because some schools count the kids getting free and subsidized lunches differently than other kids do. It's possible that McNair and Stuyvesant count economically disadvantaged kids differently from one another, and it's possible that New Jersey and Newsweek used different methods or different data sets to figure out how many kids at McNair are economically disadvantaged. Also: I think one thing that we don't get from the Newsweek rankings or the school report card rankings is an overall comparison of McNair and the Dickinson honors program. It would be great if the school district could prepare a mini report card just for the Dickinson honors program.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 18:38
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Re: Newsweek list of best public high schools in the country
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In case anyone wants to compare report card stats for McNair and Stuyvesant, here are some report card links:
McNair overview report card McNair achievement test demographic breakdown table Stuyvesant academic achievement report card Stuyvesant demographic report card Southern Manhattan school report card links New Jersey school report card home page Observations: - SATs at McNair are a lot lower. (Which might be bad from the perspective of someone who wants McNair to have great SAT scores but is great from the perspective of a parent hoping that one's child can go there someday. I'm a lot more confident that my daughter will score 600 on her verbal SATs someday than that she'll score 700.) - McNair seems to have a LOWER percentage of kids who are "economically disadvantaged" (get free or reduced price school lunches) than Stuyvesant does. (McNair: less than 14%; Stuyvesant: 29%.) - The quota system at McNair sounds sort of annoying, but only 5% of the 2005-2006 Stuyvesant students were black or Hispanic. To me, it seems that it's not great for the white and Asian kids, let alone the excluded black and Hispanic kids, to attend such a segregated school.
Posted on: 2008/5/22 4:03
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Re: 50 Columbus and Applied Rip Off Fees
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guest pass . . . Does that mean that you can pay $40 and bring as many as 4 guests to the pool whenever you feel like it, or does that mean that you get 4 guest passes, and you can only bring a guest to the pool 4 times during the year? If you can bring any 4 people you want to the pool as often as you want, then that seems pretty reasonable to me. If you can only bring guests 4 times a year, then that's a pain.
Posted on: 2008/5/20 19:09
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Re: Stop Signs on Erie Street - Steven FUlop
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One thought might be to put up more signs explaining in writing what people are supposed to be doing at various intersections. I think there's an assumption that people know, but, except for the fact that people know you get ticketed if you roll straight through a red light, it's not clear to me that people really know what the rules here. It doesn't look, for example, as if many drivers understand that pedestrians have right of way in a crosswalk.
Posted on: 2008/5/16 16:05
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Re: Nicoles on Jersey & Montgomery
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If you're in that area, another thing to do is to try crossing Columbus, walking one block west to Varick, then walking south on Varick to 356 Varick, to Calle Luna.
Calle Luna serves that I guess would count more as "Spanish food," rather than "West Indian food," but, whatever it is, it's also really good. I think anyone who would like Nicole's would probably like Calle Luna, too.
Posted on: 2008/5/16 16:02
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Re: John McCain at the Liberty Science Center
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I don't mind McCain. If he were a Democrat, and I knew he weren't going to bring the same people who've been wrecking the country for 8 years back to the White House, I'd probably like him fine. But Lieberman is pretty annoying.
To me, the worst thing about McCain, really, is that he hangs out with Lieberman. I don't mind Lieberman's politics, so much, but the fact that he ran as a Democrat in the primary, then ran as an independent when he didn't like the primary vote, is really annoying.
Posted on: 2008/5/16 15:57
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Re: Hello Again Vintage Store @ JC Heights
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Could you tell us where is in relation to Pershing Field?
Thanks.
Posted on: 2008/5/14 16:48
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Re: Nicoles on Jersey & Montgomery
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I've eaten there. I'm not a foodie, but I've eaten there a few times per year for about 10 years. The food is a little greasy but good, the ginger beer is great, and I've never gotten sick from anything I've eaten there.
Posted on: 2008/5/12 4:51
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Re: Westchester Can Wait -- "Jersey City...It is like being on vacation every weekend.”
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First, to its credit, Hoboken does actually have some decent public housing and other types of subsidized housing. So, Hoboken is at least making an effort to help its cooks, secretaries and daycare workers stay in Hoboken. Second, in the real world, of course, as some neighborhoods gentrify, some low-income people will end up having to move, just as moderate-income people like me might end up having to move, and some high-income people might choose to move. That's life. But, third, there are great people at all income levels and in all demographic groups. When I go to my daughter's school and see the papers of the second graders in the English as a Second Language class on the hallway walls, and I see the projects of the pre-K children on the walls, they are incredibly beautiful. There are so many different types of parents in this city who have worked and scraped in their own ways to pour so much love and hope into their children that it's awe-inspiring. And I know that, even with this comment, I'm being unintentionally discriminatory and condescending. Class, race, etc. are such hot button topics here that simply trying to say anything more meaningful than "there's a naked lady in a window on Fourth Street" touches a third rail. But Jersey City really is the city of the Statue of Liberty, and I disagree with the idea that intentionally chasing low-income residents away would improve my life in any way whatsoever.
Posted on: 2008/5/8 0:56
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Re: Westchester Can Wait -- "Jersey City...It is like being on vacation every weekend.”
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I think one thing people are missing about Gull's Cove is that it's right by the light rail stop, the Sandbar, the marina, the Little Lady Ferry to Liberty State Park (and the Liberty Science Center), Two Aprons, Legal Grounds, the Grove Street bars and restaurants, and whatever businesses open up in Liberty Harbor North. The worst view a unit there could possibly have would be of a pretty attractive part of Jersey City. And, if you live in that building and pay a few thousand dollars a year to Offshore, you can take the ferry across to Liberty State Park and go sailing every weekend. So, for anyone who's idea of a good vacation is to sail in a little boat around the Statue of Liberty, then dock at a dive bar and listen to loud music, or to go on light rail adventures, Gull's Cove would be paradise.
Posted on: 2008/5/5 17:20
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Re: Greenville: Hail of bullets kills 1, wounds 2; may be gang-related
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Visit this Jersey City Gang Awareness site, and then call Ben Wilson, a JCPD detective who started the site. I saw Wilson give a really scary gang talk at my daughter's school a couple of weeks ago. He talked about topics such as gang graffiti, gang colors (e.g., the kids wearing Kansas City Royals fans are trying to show that they're members of the Bloods or other gangs that hate the Crips, not that they love George Brett) and "signs." I think, from listening to Wilson, that the police actually know a lot about what's going on with the local gangs. If you talk to Wilson, maybe he can explain what you're seeing and tell you if there's anything you can do.
Posted on: 2008/5/1 22:13
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Re: Morris Canal basin development?
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Is this the Hugo Neu building? If so: I guess the building is probably way too polluted to be re-used, but it's a little sad to think of it being torn down.
Posted on: 2008/4/29 18:36
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Re: Italian Village
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In all fairness, the thread "Downtown: Held in threats at playground," is about a guy who was threatening children in a park at Third and Merseles, across from P.S. 5, which is in the Italian Village. But my child has played on the playground there a few times a month, and we've never had any problems there.
Posted on: 2008/4/29 16:18
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Re: Historic Newark Avenue graveyard Decays
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Just to make it clear: this is the cemetery on Newark between P.S. 5/Madame Claude's and Journal Square.
Here's a good Web article about the cemetery. One interesting bit in the article is that the cemetery is in something called the Horseshoe District. Here's a description of the Horseshoe District: Quote:
Posted on: 2008/4/29 14:31
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