I'm on second street--about a five minute walk to Grove. I work at 61st and broadway, so I do this commute every day. And it's the easiest commute I've had of the handful of places I've worked in the city over the past 10+ years. My commute, including the walk to/from stations, is reliably 35-40 minutes. 30 minutes if all trains align, 40 if there are small delays.

Fastest way is A from WTC to Columbus Circle--saves a couple of minutes. But with the construction and jammed stairwells at WTC, I've been going through 33rd to avoid the craziness. I love that when going home, I can jump on the B/D to 33rd, the A/C to WTC, or even the 1 to Christopher. So if there are any 'issues' with MTA or the PATH, I have options.

If you are downtown, I think PATH to subway is the fastest. I can't imagine taking a bus, but it might make sense from certain parts of JC.

I looked into this a few years ago and recall coming across something that specified the distance that the fire had to be away from any structures (which seemed to limit this option for many outdoor spaces in downtown JC as there's often someone's house quite near). Can't recall where I found that info though. I suspect the rules are fairly strict given the close proximity of houses.

This tool provides interesting insight into Jersey City crime since 1985:

Uniform Crime Reporting Database

My husband and I got a box at PostNet just to get packages delivered, and it's been absolutely wonderful. The minimal expense has been worth it. We have saved so much time (not having to go to post office for USPS packages, not having to call/track UPS and FedEX packages), eliminated hassle and stress, and don't have to arrange our schedules to be home for packages. Love it!

We too had experienced UPS and FedEx pretending to deliver packages. One bonus about PostNet is that these guys have to swing by there to pick packages up! So, they have to go in to PostNet, and packages always get delivered when they are supposed to. We no longer have to deal with the awful downtown post office (which frequently couldn't find the packages for which they left notices).

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Only 18 hours? They must be improving. ;) I went in to JCMC for an emergency and ended up there for 9 days. I had a different diagnosis nearly every day, a different surgery proposed nearly every day, and in the end was treated with IV antibiotics for a few days, followed by antibiotic pills. Since this experience, I will only go to NYC hospitals.

A friend of mine delivered up at Meadowlands, and it seems like a very nice place for delivering a baby. It's so slow though, I can't help but wonder how they are in dealing with serious emergencies. But, if you needed something simple like stitches it seems like it would be a good place to go.

I've been a Sprint customer for 10 years and got the Evo in early June. I've never had a dropped call nor lack of service with Sprint (except for in half of my parents house in rural Oregon). My friends with AT&T on the other hand, do not get service in my building (two blocks from Grove St PATH). THey literally have to go outside to make a call. Love the Evo. The Sprint plan is $79.99/month with unlimited everything (don't be misled by the $69.99 ads...there's a $10 'surcharge' for certain phones). Still better than many other plans.

to clarify, the boiler was part of step 3. They covered all the labor (four additional guys on a separate day) and the interest, and I think it was at a reduced cost.

We did it last fall/winter, and it is/was AWESOME. There were many people working on our building for several days. Our bills have gone way down. We had a weird period of adjusting to how quiet and still the air became in our apartment. Helped us realize how drafty it had been! Suddenly our heat worked a LOT better. We ended up getting a new boiler for the building because our rating came back as a really inefficient. No interest payments spread over a couple years, and it was still cheaper than actually getting our boiler exhaust vent system up to code. We would love to take advantage of the next step which would be getting new windows, but it's beyond our budget right now. HOpefully the program will still be around when we have the money for it.

I thought about that, except that I don't think the people coming in for this reason are in the mood to buy anything.

I think it was just bad timing with the pouring rain, followed by a hot, sunny day.

I found a Jemma Loan brochure stuck on my windshield yesterday and noticed that MANY others on my block had trouble getting the brochures off. When I say stuck, I don't mean 'placed under my wiper,' I mean 'when I tried to peel it off, it came on in small strips and left most of it behind.'

If you also experienced this, know that the owners will remove the brochures for you if you stop by their business. They said I was the fifth person to come in yesterday. I'm pretty sure that they've learned a lesson about putting these on cars.

New Jersey does charge fees for car registration. And it is more than $30. Do you mean that Jersey city should charge additional fees?

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Is it even legal for a NYC yellow cab to pick up a fare in JC?

As I'm sure you can see from other posts, when going the reverse direction, it's pretty much a negotiation and depends on your willingness/ability to haggle (possibly with multiple cabbies).

I think the previous poster has a point. In Jersey, it's 11 pm and in NY it's 9 pm (with different regional restrictions).

To the original poster: it's somewhat worrisome that the 21+ year old licensed driver that was in the car with you (as required by law) was not able to explain what you had done incorrectly. You also have to know whether the state you are driving in will let you drive with an out-of-state learner's permit. Between your knowledge of driving laws, the nature of the ticket, and a dose of common sense, you should be able to figure out what you did wrong. If you describe the scenario a little more, I'm certain that you'll get a lot of feedback from jclisters (for better or worse). It's probably not going to look good if you go into court and still have no idea what you did or what the driving laws are.

I am posting to caution jclisters against using the services of Sal Grasso in Hoboken. We have encountered a stunning level of incompetence in his office and are paying dearly for it. We are 21 months (!!!!!!) into resolving a situation with our 2006 federal and state returns. The response from his office has been less than satisfactory. It also took me less than two seconds to see that they'd screwed up our 2007 return by treating our non-taxable scholarships as taxable income (for a net difference of over $3,000 between what we supposedly owed and were actually due in refunds).

The frustrating thing is that my husband and I make every effort to support local businesses rather than chains. But it's TurboTax or HR Block from here on out!

Pine nuts. WAY cheaper per pound than anywhere else around. Throw them in the freezer so they don't go rancid.

I don't know.....a single toilet? Two months?

I agree with a previous poster--have them come check the meter. Something's not right.

Or you have a really bad leak, and I feel like if you aren't seeing water, then it's not going anywhere good. We became disconnected from the city sewer line a few years back and it took 5 months to figure it out. By that time, we had an 8 foot hole under the sidewalk/street gutter.

I hope it's the meter.

Can you provide more details about this leak? It must have been a whopper to have resulted in such a large bill. How did it go unnoticed if it was so much water?

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And yet, in many states (for example...oh I don't know...say, New Jersey and New York), pregnancy is defined as a disability and covered under disability laws!

http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/tdi/ ... r/state/sp_pregnancy.html



I find the idea of choice and disability very intriguing. A drunk driver chooses to get behind the wheel and then loses the ability to walk from the ensuing car accident. By the above logic, you are telling me that the drunk driver, who can no longer walk, is not disabled because it involved his/her choice to get behind the wheel? Interesting. I'm not saying that said driver deserves sympathy, but I am saying that s/he is disabled.

I agree that the testing requirements of NCLB are problematic.

I also agree that mean scores in smaller schools will fluctuate more than in larger schools.

But how many Jersey City schools are "small"?



What is the best way to measure the quality and subsequent growth or decline in quality of our schools? People are quick to dismiss standardized testing, but realistically, what is the alternative? Not trying to defend standardized testing here....I am really interested in understanding the alternatives.

I'm pretty sure that it has to be your primary residence, in which case you don't qualify. I don't know the specifics of when it had to be your primary residence.

Plus, there are income guidelines. You have to have spent about 1/3 of your monthly income on the mortgage during a certain time frame.

I think it also only applies if you have an adjustable rate mortgage.

It's called the 'Housing and Economic Recovery Act.'

Having a tracking number means jack sh*t in Jersey City. In April and May, I had three separate packages that never arrived. One had a tracking number and we could see that it had made it to the downtown JC post office....in fact it had arrived about 3 weeks before. I called...I went down in person....no package. I finally gave up, and the company I ordered from refunded my money. So, of course, about 4 weeks later, the package mysteriously shows up. It sat somewhere in the post office for 7 weeks!!! Ridiculous.

But the best part was when I called the post office to find out if they have a room there for mail that they are not delivering..if there was a place I could come search, etc. I got lectured about using tracking number and how that would solve everything (HA HA HA HA HA!). He couldn't explain why my package with a tracking number couldn't be found. He went on to tell me over and over how in the history of the JC post office, they have NEVER LOST A PACKAGE. I fell over laughing. It was the funniest thing ever.

On several occasions, they've given me other people's packages or not had the package that I got a slip for and given me a different package (and then mysteriously find them when I call back to say that the package I received wasn't the one I was expecting). I explained this to the man on the phone. He didn't respond well when I explained that yes, technically if you give a package to a person...even the wrong one....it's been delivered.

I was hospitalized for 8 days in the late spring and am now wading through over $60,000 in bills. And, of course, I am a full -time student supporting my also-a-full-time-student husband on a meager stipend. Ha ha ha ha. Ain't life grand?!

So, is there anyone out there with any experience dealing with Jersey City Medical Center bills? Especially looking for any referrals for decent people to contact in their billing department.

I'm actually at the point that I'm afraid to accept my student loan for the coming year because I don't want them to hold that against me as an asset. I'm particularly annoyed that they kept me there several extra days simply because they don't do the procedure that they thought I needed (but didn't) on the weekends. Plus, though I was at an in-network facility (and I made my student insurance status/litmited income known to every single person there...repeatedly), every single doctor that they assigned to me was out-of-network! Lovely!

Any insight is greatly appreciated!

Teddy is my longtime PATH nemesis. I can't remember when it started but long ago I had to jump the turnstile because he somehow managed to turn it an extra turn and use my last ride. I felt a little strange asking him for money, decided to jump the turnstile (as I didn't have any money on me), and ended up injuring myself. Oh, Teddy, we'll meet again.

As far as puking on the train goes, my friends have always joked that it's a right of passage. One friend tried to go between cars to spare everyone but discovered too late that she was in the end car--and the door doesn't open (a good thing, I think we can all agree). What a mess. Someone was nice enough to give me a teeny, tiny potato chip bag to throw up in once. Never could eat sour cream and cheddar chips again. But I was incredibly grateful!

But my favorite PATH experience....the day I bought my wedding dress. I was heading home around midnight, lost in my own thoughts. I was leaning against the door, a woman was standing in the space to the right of the door, and close to her, a girl was hanging onto the pole for dear life on her way home from celebrating her 21st birthday. Her friends were kind enough to warn everyone that she was about to "blow chunks." In order to give the woman to my right some space, I moved a big step to my left. As I swing my head left, I notice that the guy in the space to the left of the door has his pants unzipped and has his not-so-private parts in his hands. I was completely flabbergasted and didn't know what to do, where to go. For some reason, the words "PUT THAT THING AWAY" come flying out of me. Now, everyone's looking at me because I'm the crazy lady yelling on the PATH train. I somehow decided that I didn't want to be on the train with this guy but that it wasn't fair that I'd have to wait at Christopher 1/2 hour for the next train, so I start screaming at him that he'd better get off (ha!) the train at Christopher St. He motions to me to "keep it down" like this will just stay between us. At Christopher, I am still screaming at him, and (admittedly, in retrospect) no one on the car still has any idea what is going on. I couldn't figure out why no one was helping me! So, finally, I scream out, "Does anyone want the guy who was jerking off to stay on the train?" A packed train collectively gasped and screamed "NO!" The guy literally tipped his hat to me as if to say "well done, you win" and stepped off the train. The drunk girl was so distracted that she made it all the home.....to Hoboken....without puking.

Does anyone know what the occupancies are for the new buildings going up by Grove St? Are they planning to run more trains at rush hour to accommodate the added commuters?