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This place was trully a Jersey city Gem, very Ornate and I remember the lighting was allways on the Dim side, food was excellent and definatley a Treat back in the Day.

I remember most dishes would be served in a small covered platter....Ah nice fund memories...

CK

Anyone remember the Canton Tea Garden? Good food, and entering the restaurant was like stepping back in time. I loved riding in the elevator up to the dining room, and so did my daughter. I've never been anywhere else like it. At least four generations of my family enjoyed the Canton. It's so sad that it is gone.

The Yum Yum truck. The yum yum truck was parked on Palisade Ave. in Washington Park (we always called it North St. Park). It was actually about 30' over the Union City border. It was an old walk in van, like a bread delivery truck and painted yellow. It never moved, I don't think it ran at all. It actually had electric service wired from the pole so it couldn't move even if it wanted to. They sold hot dogs and yum yum ices (Italian ice). They must have had some unusual agreement with the county ($$$$) because it was parked on county property. The Yum Yum Truck was a permanent fixture in that same spot from the 50's through the late 90's.

+1 on Tippy's in the heights.

Charcoal cooking at it's finest!

Anybody remember the Hill Top restaurant? I was very young when my folks used to take me there. Don't even know where it was located, but I do remember the name and the inside of the place. Always dimly lit. One of the first places I remember with a big screen projection TV. I remember the food being tasty, but then again, I was probably 6 years old, so I didn't really know what good food was, or how many other places had big TV's. Just a place I remember and I always liked going there.

Not to bring down the momentum of the thread, but my dad asked me to get him a Rand's banana milkshake on his death bed. No lie. That's how good they were. This was 12 or 13 years ago.

Unfortunately they were either closed that day for some random reason, or maybe they had just recently shut down the shop permanantly (I don't know when they closed for good). There were still signs up and everything, but the shop was closed and it was the middle of the day. Dad never got his shake. I was devastated that I couldn't bring him something he wanted so badly.

Anyway, it's not meant as a sympathy thing or a melancholy thing, or anything like that. It's just as meant as evidence that they were indeed an awesome ice cream shop, and people really, really enjoyed their product.

Anyway, now somebody cheer me up. Gimme a blast from the past that I haven't thought about in 30 years or so.

Please?

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Your right about Texas wieners...

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Stars was an okay bar with fantastic food. I miss places like that. Bonner's D & J was another great place next to the Philippine Bread House on Newark Avenue.

Not a restaurant, but RANDS Ice Cream was the best ice cream in the tristate area.

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Star's was a bar on the western end of Newark Ave. just west of Tonnelle. They were known for their hot dogs. They had a very long bar. I think the sign with the hot dog is still on the building. The Texas weiner place on Central was across from the police station and I think was just named Texas Weiners.

I know this is a little off topic, but does anyone remember a dive bar down by PREP called Sarges? It was the first bar I was ever in. The PREP guys we hung out with used to go there , but I don't remember where it was. it would be interesting if it's a new trendy place in Paulus Hook.

Hmmm... was it Stars, or Starrs? Something like that? I'm not sure if we're talking about the same place.

I'm loving this thread! Haven't thought about many of these places in a long time!

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Hey Red

I attest to it as well, noone ever got proffed at Paradise east, staff was allways friendly..what a place...

Funny how some of the usualls won't hone in on this topic since most are transplants from the Midwest and god knows where else......

You really have to be from JC to appreciate this topic.

Hey do you remember the Texas weiner place on Central ave ???

CK

Ho... Lee... COW!

Paradise East. The mention of the name alone gives me a hangover headache. If you were tall enough to see over that little half door the receptionist stood behind (about 3 and a half feet tall), you were officially "legal" in their eyes. We were in there all the time. The "Volcano" was my drink of choice. Made my throw-up a lovely shade of red.

Wow. What a place. And it's funny. It was a restaurant, sure, but it wasn't famous for it's food at all!

Being some of us are of similar age and referring to similar time frames, we all must have crossed paths there, at least once. I used to hang out in Country Village in the dead end all the time, practically next door to PE. I'm the red headed kid who was usually throwing up in the bushes outside.

Yeah, I enjoyed PE.

Maybe a little too much.


Before Vinnies it was called The Golden Pizza. Vinnies has been there over 20 years now, believe it or not.

Oh My! That?s right. Paradise East! Roachy, but umbrella drinks were fun! What about Foxes?? Wasn?t that downtown?

Listened to some to the Tube Tapes last night?Oh Man! That?s freaking hysterical! And, I can?t, for the life of me, remember what pizza parlor was on Westside/Danforth before Vinnys???

The drive-in was closed as far as I can remember?.I know that I definitely saw Star Wars in the Loews?But, speaking of theaters, anyone remember the Pix? I remember my older sister taking me there for a double-feature - some random scary 70's movie which escapes me right now...But, I remember the 2nd movie..It was "The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave" or something. First scene was of a naked woman being butchered to the tune of what I am now sure was typical 70s porn music.....My sister covered my eyes and ran us out of there.....I guess it's no wonder why the rest of the patrons were all men

Can't talk about rt. 44o restaurants without mentioning the Paradise East. Went there pretty frequently when I was 16. Of course the place is just a blur in my memory because I was always so drunk from drinking all those tropical drinks.

Cheap eats and all the fruity alcoholic beverages you could ask for ( without ID). It truly was a paradise for the underage crowd.

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Hell Yeah, saw "Star Wars" there as a little boy back in the 70's, nearby the 440 HUDSON Mall.

Do ya remember 3 Boys from Italy Pizza nxt to the Jsq plaza??? Awesome Pizza !

CK

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Your kinda behind the ball on this one.
Read the previous posts.


CK

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WOW - I was wondering happened to the Burritovilles Downtown! What a bummer -- but there is a ray of hope - the New York Times reports that they may reopen a few locations next week or so. I really love the place - I hope it stays around!

==============================

For City?s Burritovilles, Adi?s or Hasta la Vista?

New York TimesBy TINA KELLEY
Published: September 19, 2008

Burritoville, a restaurant chain beloved by hungry folks on a budget and disdained by people preferring more authentic Mexican food, seems to have gone the way of free-market capitalism, with all of its Manhattan restaurants suddenly closed.

It is a dark time indeed for some fans of Holy Mole Burritos and Bob Marley?s Last Burritos. Kenny Wharton, 36, who works in drafting, was walking by the shuttered Burritoville on Second Avenue and Ninth Street on Thursday. He used to eat there, and at another outlet on Third Avenue, when he lived in the East Village.

?Where am I going to get my lunch now?? Mr. Wharton said.

Eli Penchasov, 25, the owner of Exquisite Creation Diamond and Jewelry, next door to the Burritoville at 36 Water Street, was surprised that it had closed after renovations three weeks ago.

?No signs, no nothing,? he said. ?A couple of days ago the workers, the chefs and delivery boys showed up around 10 in the morning and were waiting on the stoop out front. Eventually they went home because no one showed up to open the store.?

Burritoville?s Web site has closed, its various phones are either constantly busy or unanswered, and the company president, Jeffrey Bernstein, could not be reached for comment. A woman who returned a message on the company?s behalf, identifying herself only as a member of Burritoville?s ?executive management,? said the chain would reopen several stores in the next two weeks.

Burritoville was founded in 1992 by David LaPointe and Steve Lynn, with the first store opening at 78th Street and First Avenue.

?People from New York said, ?What?s a burrito?? ? Mr. LaPointe recalled in a 1999 interview, ?but people who knew about fresh Mexican food from California simply said, ?Thank you for being here.? ?

In 2003, TruFoods Corp. bought a dozen of the New York stores, with plans to franchise the business. An executive for TruFoods, who declined to give his name because the company is no longer associated with Burritoville, said that Mr. Bernstein left in June and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But an online search of court records in New York did not turn up any filings under Mr. Bernstein?s name or that of Burritoville or Burritoville Services, an associated company.

(The executive management spokeswoman would not answer any questions about bankruptcy.)

Jennifer Parkhurst, 38, who sells books online, said on Thursday that she had no idea the Water Street location she frequented was closing.

?I was even thinking about going there tonight, because we?re having guests,? she said. ?The people were really nice. How sad. They were always good and had absolutely to-die-for soup.?

Online Zagat commenters hailed Burritoville?s ?fantastic late night food? and called it ?a perennial favorite for burritos and beer, before a night of video games on your best friend?s couch.? A citysearch.com reviewer wrote, ?Burritoville is not authentic Mexican food, but when you?re poor and too lazy to walk to the place ? who cares? The delivery is super fast and the food portions are big enough to stock up on for the next wave of the Depression!?

Other critics were not as kind. In a 1999 article about the ?burrito boom? in New York, The New York Times observed, ?The ingredients were fresh but had no soul.? A commenter on the Gothamist blog recently called the food a ?Moosewood hippie atrocity,? adding, ?It is to Mexican food what Velveeta and ketchup on Wonder Bread is to Italian.?

Without further insights from the company, it is hard to know what did the chain in.

Darren Tristano, executive vice president at Technomic Inc., a food research and consulting firm based in Chicago, said that only the fittest restaurants survived nowadays.

?Restaurant chains are suffering from what?s going on in the economy, with the stock market, the real estate market and increased competition, especially in the Mexican sector,? he said. ?Firms like Chipotle are succeeding.? He recalled that New York Burrito Gourmet Wraps in the city folded two years ago.

But Robert Angelone, chairman and chief economist at the Epicurus Group, consultants based in Wall Township, N.J., said a credit shortage was causing many restaurant closings.

?Usually small businesses, and medium-size businesses as well, have to borrow to get through the tough times,? he said. ?If there?s no liquidity in the market, banks don?t have the cash to lend.?

Karen Zraick and Rebecca White contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 24, 2008
An article in some editions on Saturday about the sudden and mysterious shuttering of all Manhattan branches of Burritoville, a Mexican fast-food restaurant, misstated the given name of the company?s president. He is Jeffrey Bernstein, not Jonathan. And a reporting credit with the article misstated the surname of a contributor. She is Karen Zraick, not Drake.

Hey, so this is a *little* off-topic for the thread, but i found out today that Burritoville has gone out of biz! I used to love that place and had eaten there as recently as a few weeks ago. Crazy. I guess it just goes to show you it's hard to compete with a place as good & as well run as Chipotle. Still though, I will miss Burritoville!

Thanks again!

OK, so it would have been right near the drive in movies, then! I wonder how many people remember that JC had a drive-in?

So - was that the same building that went on to become Trader Horn all those years? I forgot about that place till you mentioned the electronics store!

And it's nice how we ate food on top of chromium contaminated land, eh? Meh - who knew the barrels would leak, right? (sarcasm) It's OK. I grew up playing ball on Metro Field before that was remediated, too. I think I glow now. During the day time. (not sarcasm)

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As I recall, it was within the Two Guys/Valley Fair/ Great Eastern parking lot up front at the roadside. The building went through several incarnations. Most recently an appliance/electronics store then a discount furniture/bedding store. It is now a toxic waste cleanup site.

JerseyGirl - The Rodeo! There's a short discussion about it on page 4 of this thread.

Justin - those tapes are a true piece of "JC Americana." If that term makes any sense... As you stated, they've definitely influenced the Simpsons, plus Howard Stern got a lot of mileage out of them years ago, too. They obviously went on to influence the Jerky Boys, too. Erm... their earlier tapes are funny, but they sort of slide downhill after that, culminating with awful movies. Anyway, yeah, they're sort of a piece of JC history.

Sorry for completely derailing the thread.

Here's a weak attempt to get it back on track:

JC trivia question:

What was the name of the pizza parlor on Danforth and West Side before it became Vinnie's?

Does anyone remember the "steakhouse" in Hudson Mall in 440?

Wow. This is really cool. I had no idea that these tapes were so famous...And, according to this article, the Journal Square Pub was the former Tube Bar so either way, my chair may, in fact, be Red's. The things you learn on JCList Thanks for the info!

________________________
Joke on 'Simpsons' started in JC

Famed crank calls originated in Tube Bar


Ricardo Kaulessar
Reporter staff writer 10/08/2005


There's a running gag on "The Simpsons" in which young Bart crank calls the local tavern and asks its bartender, Moe, "Is Oliver there? Oliver Clothesoff?" or some other punny name, causing Moe to ask out loud for the patron and embarrass himself. ("Al Coholic" is another popular one.)

Sounds like pure TV writing genius, but it was actually borne out of real life.

In the mid 1970s, two Jersey City guys, Jim Davidson and John Elmo, had the idea to crank call various bars and restaurants and annoy the people who work there. They particularly liked hearing the gruff voice of Red Deutsch, the owner of the Tube Bar in Journal Square.

Little did they know that tapes they made of their calls would become legend and would be sold on the internet for decades.

Tapes on sale

Advertisement


The tapes, known variously as the "Tube Bar Tapes" or the "Red Deutsch Tapes," capture for eternity Deutsch's raspy voice asking for "Sal Lami".

Deutsch would gullibly shout the name out in the bar, only to get harassed by some drunken patron or no response. But Red (who died in 1983) was only a victim until he caught on and started hurling profanities back at his tormentors.

Copies of the tapes circulated to major league ball clubs in the 1980s. Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons," wound up with a copy and introduced a larger audience to the crank calls on his animated series in the 1990s.

That's weird

The Jersey City Reporter tried tracking down the two men responsible for the infamous tapes, but was not successful. In fact, even Mark Moran, one of the co-editors of the New Jersey-based magazine Weird NJ acknowledged that they can be difficult to find.

"Seems like these mysterious men have slipped once more into anonymity," Moran wrote in a recent e-mail. "Best of luck tracking them down and please let us know if you find them!"

Weird NJ was the only publication that conducted an interview with Davidson and Elmo - back in the late 1990s.

At the time the pair called themselves the Bum Bar Bastards. They had kept their identity a secret for many years but decided to come out in the open.

In the interview, Davidson described how the calls first started in the early 1970s and were taped on reel-to-reel.

When asked why he and Elmo did it, he replied, "Boredom. Because we could. There was no malice intended. We were just having fun."

Davidson said the tapes of the calls to the Tube Bar began in 1975 and ended a year later. He recalled how he and Elmo would pass by the bar as children and as adults and see commuters go in and out of the bar, with many being thrown out.

"One day we were just making random crank calls when I thought to call the Tube Bar. When Red answered the phone, I just started laughing and hung up."

Davidson added, "I told John, 'Hey, you gotta hear this guy's voice.' We called back and made most of those calls in one day. The ones like 'Sal Lami, Cole Cutz,' I couldn't believe he just kept calling out the names!"

Segments of the tapes, which can be downloaded from the aptly named "Bum Bar Bastards" website (www.bumbarbastards.com), have Red eventually threatening to "cut their stomachs out" or inflict some other type of physical harm.

Davidson said in the interview that the last tape was made in 1978, and he kept it to himself.

The Tube Bar



Now it's a Mexican restaurant, but the Tube Bar was once a commuter pub located in the concourse or alleyway next to what is now the Journal Square PATH Station.

Opened in 1933 by former vegetable stand owner Red Deutsch, it was a place that would stand three to four men deep with 20-cent beer and no stools. The bar was named for the subway tunnels running across the Hudson, known as "tubes."

The bar eventually was sold by Red in 1980, and he moved to Florida, where he passed away three years later. The new owners kept the bar in the same location until moving the liquor license across Kennedy Boulevard to what is currently known as the Journal Square Pub.

Old-timers remember the bar for other unique details and for its unique owner.

John Gillen, a Jersey City Police officer, worked at the bar in the mid-1970s after he returned from service in Vietnam.

"When you entered through the doors, there was sawdust on the floor and three chairs at the front of the bar that Red insisted had to be filled before he would allow anyone to sit anywhere else," said Gillen. "And only thing they had to eat was saltine crackers, hot peppers, and pickles. Eating those would make you thirsty."

Gillen also recalled Red had several rules they everyone had to comply with.

"If you weren't drinking, you weren't staying," he said. "Red had such traffic in that place he had to tell people to move it along. And if you were drinking beer, he would put you in the back room."

He also did not allow women in his bar even after laws were changed in the 1970s to admit females into bars in Jersey City. And he scolded his bartenders if they even served a woman.

However, Gillen did say that Red was a nicer man that he is given credit for.

"He would give to any cause no matter what it was," said Gillen. "And he would cash checks for anybody."

Well known



Gillen's friend, Mike Nolan, currently a bartender at the Astor Bar and Grill on Montgomery Street but once a Tube Bar customer, knew about the tapes.

Nolan said, "They would hand them out at old Sully's Tavern on Hopkins and Summit [avenues] and they would play the tapes."

Gillen recalled some of the calls made to the bar.

"They would call and someone in the bar would yell out here, 'I am," said Gillen. "They would get him every time."

Nolan said that he does not believe that the two men who came forward are the ones who made the tape. He coyly suggested that he knew who really made the tapes, but would not name names. Gillen agreed.

Nolan said, "What happened at the Tube Bar stays in the Tube Bar."

Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com

Check under "Tube Bar," but if that does not work, try searching for "Bum Bar B@$t@rd$." Don't use the "at" signs or dollar signs, though.

Edit - that's NOT intended to be a link. Don't know why it came out that way.

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well. I think I bought it for like 25 or 30 bucks, so I doubt the owners would part wiht it if that were the case...I-tunes? I had no idea they were that widespread. Will def. look into it...

If it turns out you've got the actual chair Red used to sit in, you've got yourself one heck of a collectors item there, and you should try to preserve it, or something.

As long as you're not offended by absolutely horrendous language and very crude humor, those tapes / CD are a MUST hear.

I do believe they're available on iTunes now.

Really? Must be the Journal Square Pub then. I'll have to ask my husband if he remembers which..This thread has quickly turned into a fun trip down memory lane....Very cool.

Yeah. It wa a scary place allright...And, I was pretty little...I was never inside - just passing by. And, some people think Journal Square is scary now...Should have seen it in the 70s, right....Actually, I never heard the tapes....I'm gonna have to find then on-line one day....