Does anyone have the Hamilton Park pot dealer's phone number?

Quote:

Too bad we don't have a decent bookstore to host them.

Quote:

The security office of the Grove Street Station? Wut?

Too bad they couldn't ride the PATH over to do the reading.

'New Jersey Noir,' new anthology edited by Joyce Carol Oates, focuses on the dark side of the Garden State

Tuesday, November 08, 2011, 7:52 AM
By Adam Robb/For The Jersey Journal

"New Jersey Noir," released last week by Akashic Books, explores the dark side of Jersey City, Hoboken and other places in the Garden State through the words of more than a dozen celebrated authors. A reading will take place in Manhattan tonight.

An obsessive artist living on the industrial western edge of Hoboken, dangerously obsessed with a married woman who caught his eye on the PATH train.

An Indian pot dealer from Jersey City's Hamilton Park, the course of his life altered by a Port Authority cop.
These are two of the characters you'll find in "New Jersey Noir," a new pulp-fiction anthology of previously unpublished dime-store fiction focusing on the dark side of life in the Garden State.

The latest volume in a series of similar anthologies, "New Jersey Noir'' (Akashicbooks; $24.95 hardcover, $15.95 paperback) was edited by dark fiction author and Princeton professor/resident Joyce Carol Oates. It features 19 stories and poems from literary heavyweights including Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Pinksy and Oates herself.

Divided into four sections, the book focuses on the themes "Inner-City New Jersey" -- three stories and 40 pages devoted to Newark alone -- "Romance & Nostalgia," "Commerce & Retribution'' and the euphemistic "Garden State Underground."

The story of that lovesick Hoboken stalker, "Lola," is an unconventional romance. The inspiration for its protagonist can be traced to its author, the artist Jonathan Santlofer, who moved to a studio in the Mile Square City after receiving his MFA from Brooklyn's Pratt Institute.

While "Lola" begins on the Hoboken PATH, Hirsh Sawhney's story, "A Bag for Nicholas,'' reaches its climax in the security office of the Grove Street station.

Representing Jersey City, Sawhney -- who is currently residing in town while on a fellowship at Rutgers Newark -- contributed a multicultural adventure that features Newport and Hamilton Park, the 80 and 86 bus lines, and Dickinson High School as the main character is caught between a chance at redemption and a drug buy on Oakland Avenue.
Neither story, indeed none of the them in the anthology, has a happy ending, but not all PATH rides have to be so gloomy.

At 6 tonight, more than a dozen of the book's contributors, including Oates, Santlofer and Sawhney, will appear at the Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren St., Manhattan, a short walk from the World Trade Center station. Call (212) 587-1011 for information.

http://www.akashicbooks.com/newjerseynoir.htm