It's ridiculous alright, but not as bad as the plan to let ignorant morons procreate at will at a time when the population of the planet approaches 7 billion. And then to REWARD the jackasses with the tax structure because GOD said someting in a Bronze Age book is beyond the pale.

So yes Alec produced a silly idea but one that would improve the situation a lot. THe current siituation is abhorrent.

"Hey honey, there are no jobs, let's have 6 kids!"



On the matter of those who do not make $30,000, if they have two kids they will START to pay taxes even on salaries of $5,000 each because they will each lose $20,000 of their deduction giving them NO deductions (minus ten grand per kid per parent.)

For those who think the planet can support 20 or 30 billion people, go read your bible becasue its simpleminded enough for you to comprehend.

I guess that helps explain why there is no manufacturing in Jersey City.

The business of Jersey City is crooked politics.

If it comes up as "private number" it is probably a pro-pipeline organization counting votes in a way that suits their interests.

Did anyone ask "Who do you represent?" or "Who is paying for the survey?" An "I don't know, I only work here" should be highly suspect. It could be followed up by "Where is HERE?"


I have not received any such call.

To double check my feelings, to coincide with a trip to one of the Union Square theaters I did a stroll through TJ's on 14th...again
Price comparisons are hard because so much is store brand labelled, but TJ Albacore tuna at $1.99 when Shorprite was selling Chicken of the Sea for $.99, the smallest acorn squash I have ever seen like big lemons for $1.99 each. OY. Honeydews the size of grapefruit for $2.99 when the same week I got a succulent honeydew the size of a bowling ball on Central Aneue for a buck. Preposterous.

So the gentleperson talking about how cheap Trader Joe's prices were by giving his few silly examples was "prevaricating."

The entire vegetable section looked like Shop-Rite's garbage bin...I mean really, any Korean grocer would long ago have thrown the stuff away.

About three buck Chuck (the junk wine)...I fell for it for a trial of every varietal. It MAY have been good once upon a time but it is undrinkable rotgut today. I am a wine connoisseur but anyone who can get this crap down deserves a medal. Plain old cardboard Carlo Rossi Cabernet Sauvignon becomes Chateau Margaux-like compared to the slop sold as the cheapy at Trader Joe's...and it's even cheaper. I don't ask a lot of cheap wine, but I don't like the feeling that it is dissolving fillings out of my teeth.

I asked the clerk how long the checkout would be if I joined the Monday evening line. He said "It moves fast, no more than a half hour." Really, a half hour. He also said things are better on a Tuedsday or Wednesday morning. Could they be worse?

Earlier poster was correct, I have never been in any other Trader Joe's so maybe some are Nirvana, but the one at 14th and Third strikes me as a visit to Hell.

Sounds like other than Van Voorst Park there's nothing.

Newport has a couple nice playgrounds, Hamilton Park is nice but if you want something easily accessible, there's nothing on that southeast waterfront quadrant north of the canal.

The place was GORGEOUS and huge with a couple huge bars, carpeting, mirrors, chandeliers, the works, but it never caught on with patrons. The owner, a VERY beautiful woman was quite gracious on my one visit, we talked at length, but it felt spooky because of the combination of size and emptiness.
Also the location was beyond weird amidst deserted factories and trash filled streets under the "bridge."

They tried it as a couple other bar types, cannot quite remember but nothing got off the ground. THe whole enterprise was very short lived and like an earlier poster said, somebody lost a FORTUNE on it.

As I recall there was a big to-do about the "owner's" boyfriend being the REAL owner but under court order as part of some other plea bargain he was forbidden to own a bar and the DA claimed he was the actual ownner. The battle raged in the papers for months but I forgot all the names involved. I think they even tried it as a BYOB DANCE CLUB, but I don't think that convinced anyone.

It illustrated to me that old cliche about the importance of "Location, Location, Location." Anything except driving and parking in their fenced lot seemed a bit dangerous.

But on the other hand, perhpas it would have gotten going but for the legal hasssle...forgot the final outcome of that as well.

The place always had that certain undefinable quality of Tony Soprano about it...but I was sad when it failed because someone tried REALLY hard to make something exciting Downtown (or whatever one might call that warehouse area.) Had it been in Manhattan, you'd have had to be Paris Hilton to avoid waiting in a long line to get in.

(I wonder if I can peek into a wiindow and see what's left of it?)

I'm sure the name begins with VAN...like a Van Voorst?

Better yet, anyone named Hendrik Hudson?

Someone named Munsee might REALLY win the game.

But since my family, i.e. ME, arrived in 1970, I doubt the Library archives will be of much help.

Cute idea though.

Gee, you'd think, though, that a city that was 350 years old would have learned a bit more about proper governance and competence...certainly learned that malfeasance in office should not be rewarded.

Several years ago we booked THE UKRAINIAN CLUB for several Bridge Club evenings. It was extremely cheap and they had several different sized rooms. For a kids party the adults could occasionally slip upstairs to the nice bar and have something more substantial than root beer.

The exact address escapes me but it was in the Southeastern quadrant of the Heights not much North of the "depressed highway."

They had a big parking lot too.

Try this:
Ukrainian Community Ctr (201) 656-7755
90 Fleet St
Jersey City, NJ 07306

(Things were already slow 10 years ago so I am not sure they survivied?)

I guess the "tiny" issue of poisonous drywall is important enought to catch the eye of the IRS.

They have made uncompensated remediation deductible as a disaster loss for replacement of the drywall and replacement of corroded appliances (acid gas.)

Of course you need to actually DO the expensive replacement before you can claim anything, so those least able to afford the damage will likely get nothing.

Quote:
...Herald Tribune

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that at least ONE major Jersey City high rise will need to replace ALL its drywall. Let's see if I'm right and watch for who smells hydrogen sulfide first.

Hey, an upside: maybe hydrogen sulfide gaas kills bedbugs?

An earlier poster mentioned some that had cinder block divisions between some of the townhomes.

I watched the earlier phases being built and saw NO masonry between any units, townhomes included, not to say that later additional townhomes don't have them.

But what I saw scared the bejesus out of me. A HUGE complex completely "stick built" Apartment connected to apartment in blocks of a dozen or so and adjacent to many many more. A windy fire would be DEVASTATING. I cannot imagine that these apartment can possibly conform to any sensible fire code.
Did they save a few pennies by using wooden 2 x 4's instead of the much safer steel studding.
I am AMAZED they haven't had a serious multi-unit fire yet.

A free standing house stick-built, okay, you try to be careful with fire (and avoid termites) but to build huge multifamily complex out of wood and drywall seems NUTS, any one of 3 dozen morons can accidentally or stupidly torch the place.
(And cute brick facing on some areas merely hides the wooden crap underneath...bible called it a "whitened sepulchre.")

I think anyone who watched the place being built would think thrice about living, much less buying there.

An apartment burned at Newport last week, but thanks to a concrete floor, concrete ceiling and steel studs behind the drywall, only one apartment was seriously damaged. THAT should be the standard for multifamily living in newer construction. After all, Newport is even older than Society Hill.

Why not order them from the posted site?

From what I could find it looks like a a sample 2 bedroom, 2 bath "garden home, i.e., not town house" goes for around $300K with maintenance and taxes of $800/mo. I presume you pay your own HVAC, hot water and electricity.

Rentals for these seem in the $1800-$2000 range.

Rough check so YMMV.

Water is a bitch the way it seeks the lowest point and just lays there.
I guess the laws of elementary hydraulics weren't repealed when people decided that roads, houses, and factories were far better suited to those useless old wetlands.

Anyone who thinks the West side of Jersey city was designed by morons need only look at the doofs who rebuilt New Orleans again...under water.

If the Westside of JC was massively flooded yesterday, this morning it must be open sea because I have RARELY seen it rain so hard as at 5 AM today.
I guess the East Side of town was better engineered because water seems to find it's way into New York Harbor more readily.

Just a hint for JC Civil Engineering staff (if indeed there is such a thing)...water runs DOWNHILL!.

I presume none of these tax rebates, if indeed they still exist, are applicable to anyone in an abated property because they do not pay "taxes" as defined by the state.

So if Christie got rid of the tax rebates early in his administration, thus the first thing he did was raise taxes. He didn't wait very long to become a hypocritical liar, did he?

GP,

I think it was the ELEVENTH floor.

So that's six people living in a one bedroom apartment with a diining area...smilingly called a "junior two." I suppose an infant can sleep in the dishwasher.

I guess only fires will expose illegally overcrowded apartments.

What are state/city regulations on housing occupancy limits, especially on housing using state and federal mortgages and local tax abatements?

Quote:

The SIZE item is that a bedroom must have 70 square feet for a person and 50 more for each additional.

Quote:

There is no other justification. Lefrak gets a big chunk of change from the licensees of the parking garages. (What, $180 a month now, $250 reserved?)

On the mattter of the city giving roads to private entities, it works the opposite. Lefrak built all the roads at Newport and tried to keep them private with parking allowed NOWHERE.
BUT it soon became apparent that it was going to cost PLENTY to clean and maintain these roads, sidewalks, etc. INCLUDING Washington Boulevard. SO the roads were ceded to the city who began to clean them regularly and the cityy set up the numbered resident parking and alternate side cleaning regs and weekend parking on Washington.

The only exception was that Lefrak KEPT North Boulevard, and of course, the ring roads in which they have set up tacky meters.

Yep,

If I could do it all over again, I would definitely be a banker or a Mafioso...or a Jersey City politician: the three best paying jobs, all of equal morality. The first two hold an edge because they can even tell PRESIDENTS what to do.

DRAG ME TO HELL was delightful with the old gypsy woman putting a curse on the annoying banker-chick.

JC man,

I assume you are talking mainly about lead-based paints used before 1978 and not the myriad of metallic components added for color in small amounts like titanium, zinc, chromium? etc.

For lead testing there are kits readily available, and I think remediation is usually a paint over. THe REAL difficulty comes if one is going to strip the stuff off, like in restoring the beauty of old woodwork, you don't want to breath in the dust.

It's a shame that a good product like lead paint, it lasted forever, had to be removed because some kids liked to eat paint chips. I imagine there are kids who will drink insecticide, eat matches, and sip anti-freeze but that shouldn't mean we should be forced to do without the products. Let Darwin do his work.

Downtown Regular,

My saying that everything is for sale in Jersey City in NO way intends to imply that everything is NOT for sale in New Jersey as well, nor for that matter in Federally run parks (just look at oil and gas.) The rape of public holdings extends far and wide, whether called "legal" or illegal, a semantic differentiation that can readily be bought and sold.

Curiously, If a group of people are machine gunned in Liberty Park, are the Jersey City cops alllowed to respond? If the old station catches fire, will JCFD respond. If one has a heart attack, does the STATE mount an emergency medical response and take you to a hospital in Trenton?

So maybe Liberty Park is not quite as independent of Jersey City as you say?

We will not get a bridge. We will not get a tunnel. We will not get longer stations (they billed for that 22years ago (1988) and extended nothing.)
We will not get more trains, but rather fewer trains as recent past history has shown. We willl not get clean station walls and ceilings.
Garbage will not be cleaned from the tracks.

What we WILL get is fare hikes, fare hikes, and more fare hikes....and the same 100 year old railroad system running through the same 100 year old tunnels with more and more people crammed in every year.

The best way to estimate future behavior is always to observe past behavior and the Port Authority has been very explicit about how it deals with the needs of its rail cutomers.

Anyone who expects anything more from PATH in the next 20 years than a finished station in the WTC just hasn't been paying attention.

I have been riding this train since 1972 and it was a better system back then. It has been a 38 year detererioration of service at every increasing prices (around 700%?)

I think I could have papered my bathroom with Sen Hai menus by now.

Proportion has nothing to do with it.
You either have defective drywall or you do not.

Just like roaches, chromium, bedbugs, leaking pipes or rotten landlords...you got 'em or you don't.

Bedbugs, drywall, Comcast and LEFRAK!

The first one is feared, the last two are VERY real! I might throw in the gas chamber atmosphere of PATH stations too.

And although I know and knew I am safe from Chinese Drywall, my posting was to give a heads up to those who have moved into new apartments built on the waterfront since 2001, like a jillion of them up and down the waterfront.

If a LOT of them are not made from outgassing drywall, I'll be massively surprised and that includes Shore North, Shore South, Aqua Blu, The Pier, Grove Pointe, half the Hoboken waterfront, and everything else Downtown constructed or reconstructed in the last decade.


So sniff your walls today. Jaded is correct, on a humid day LIKE TODAY you will smell rotten eggs (outgassing hydrogen sulfide, H2S, far more poisonous than carbon monoxide.) The cure is replacement of your drywall and/or joining one of the dozens of class action suits.

Blue nosed fools got some sort of grant from some moron to pay for a silly ad, or worse from a government agency.

PATH ran it because they are a dreadfully incompetent organization overpaying fools as managers.

Since DRINKING is not illegal, blue noses will try to confuse the isssue with silliness like POISONING and UNDER-AGE DRINKING. This will sound like common sense to the IQ deficient riding on the trains.


Driving kills more than drinking: so STOP DRIVING. (Look for something like this NEXT week.)

Something SANE would never appear like: "WAR kills more young people than anything else, so let's skip the next one"...NEVER HAPPEN!

When you read, DISCRIMINATE, otherwise reading is not worth doing.

But then without those who do not know sense from nonsense, how else could we have religion?

The park is used for private uses often. All one needs do is grease the right palms and the cops look the other way.

A lawsuit 2 years later might have an effect to say, "naughty naughty."

Remember, this is Jersey City and like Casablanca everything is for sale. How else could there be a private marina in a state park?

How did Healy do on his first American Idol tryout?

I've been hearing more and more about the "Chinese drywall" issue of late. Seems a lot of it was put into homes and apartments because the local production was outstripped by demand (or more likely, it was CHEAPER ) when the housing frenzy was inflating starting in 2001.

Seems there is a high sulfur content that outgasses hydrogen sulfide among other noxious products and it is making people sick. Lawsuits are flying, and people are walking away from homes. Remediation numbers like $100,000 per home fly around.

Does anyone have any personal experience with this stuff?

(I assume I'm safe because my drywall dates to 1986.)

I wouldn't consider it. It has all the disadvantages of the suburbs while having all the disadvantages of urban living.

It misses the advantages of both like good schools (suburbs) and urban living style (city.)

It's as isolated as you can get now that Port Liberte is within reach of the Light Rail.

The townhomes are nice though (apartments are cheesy and noisy) and if you are a homebody who doesn't need the tedium of getting in and out of Manhattan for everything, AND you get a good price, then maybe.
It's easy to buy your food at a nice Pathmark almost on-site.

But generally speaking, Downtown is probably your wiser choice.


(What are the Society Hill, Droyer's Point townhomes going for these days?)

Don't be so obvious a twat, skepticalhook.

When was the last time you sent a loan application to Barney Frank or Chris Dodd. If a single democratic representative and a single senator can force banks to make loans with a Republican Administration, why then can they not do it NOW...answer, becasue your position is stupidly laughable.
Did you see a single word about this economic mess that blamed Republicans or Democrats in any of my posts.

Too bad posts like yours can't be shown in crayon to illustrate the second grade mentality of someone who has only a single channel on his TV...FOX NEWS!

But since you stupidly choose to play politics,

Can you recall who was the Treasury Secretery and his president when the bailout was proposed to congress; and can you recall the amount that was proposed to be used? Hint, the name rhymed with MAUL-SOME. The request was for an unlimited amount but "CERTAINLY" no more than $75 billion...remember, or did they skip that on Hannity?

The financial system was completely destroyed by 2008...and each and every law and regulation that engineered it and drove it off the rails was signed by George Walker Bush with Richard Cheney holding the crayon so he'd stay within the lines.
PS. Check the composition of the Senate between 2000 and 2008...Chris Dodd held no imperial power.


Bassface,
Yes it is SO heartening to know that banks will have weak regulations applied against them...and in 2019 to boot.
Just like the Big Pharma wrote the joke called Medicare D into law, Big Oil writes drilling regulations, Big Gas gets to route the pipelines, and the big banks engineered the bailout, so these same banks get to write their own regualtions.
So although the Tea Baggers are nothing more than the KKK who left their sheets at home, their ppoint is well taken that the country is indeed shot.

Newport/Avalon Cove/ Crystal Point/Harborside are all spotless and litter free.

So the conclusion to be drawn is an area will be filthy and littler-strewn if homeowners and landlords don't care to keep it clean; but it can be clean and neat if they do care.

Jersey City, for all it's newly found pomposity still has its share of slumlords who care only about one thing...rent.

As far as banks paying back the taxpayer money. It ignores the mountain of toxic mortgages that were "bought" by the government at face value.
This largesse to Wall Street and the banking system made the TARP money look like cabfare. Officials, those few who understand an iota of economics, prefer not to dwell on this fact.

If we revalued this toxic debt to actuual value, the number would be BLINDINGLY high.

So, no, the banks that should have failed and the insurance companies that should have failed, and the mortgage companies that should have failed were bailed out for many many TRILLIONS and that debt to the American people will NEVER be repaid.

And as for inflicting pain, anyone who is jobless today can thank Wall Street's greed and fraud.