The Tris McCall Report
January 2, 2004
If the IRS can offer online tax returns, I can figure out how to automate our annual Critics Poll. After a two-day struggle with HTML (lay off, I'm learning as I go), we're all set. Coding in an honor system would be an altogether more difficult task. I know it's an old Hudson County tradition, but please refrain from stuffing the ballot box!
December 30, 2003
As a notorious teetotaler, I don't usually go into bars in the middle of the day. Actually, I try not to go into bars at all, but since much of the indie rock subculture revolves around them, they're pretty much unavoidable. Uncle Joe's opens for business at three o' clock in the afternoon. The clientele does not seem to be the same class of hipster that you get after a Pilot To Gunner show on a late Saturday night. Neighborhood types are here, people who might be working on the construction projects along the waterfront, a few guys who appear to have been drinking since ten in the morning. Yesterday. I am eyed suspiciously. I don't know what Uncle Joe's was like before it became the trendiest spot on the Gold Coast. If a bunch of former regulars feel that kids in black clothing have come in and taken over their drinking spot, I can't begrudge them their discomfort and veiled hostility.
I am looking for Shaun from the Ankles, the booking agent at the club. He's not here yet, I'm informed by the bartender. Oh, well, I'm just going to have to wait, and act as inconspicuously as I can. I'm here on business, see, indie rock business. Andy Gesner is reprising his year-opening discussion and information-sharing panels at Maxwell's: the first will take place this Friday before the Val/Hero Pattern/P-Zoo show, the second on the sixteenth before my own. I am again the moderator for this event. It seems I didn't piss off enough people last year with my blunt questions. Better yet, I've convinced Andy to make the last panel a Jersey rock summit meeting, featuring a voice or two from the major scenes around the state. Since he's been living in Jersey City for a few years, booking its only rock club, and working at the Ground, Shaun seems like an obvious choice for the panel.
I've also got to sort out my own winter 2004. Jersey City loyalist Stephen Mejias of Bridges & Tunnels has asked me to be part of a show at Uncle Joe's that he's putting together for the Donewaiting website. Sounds great, but I'm worried that it'll conflict with the NOMOmania! performance that Melody Lanes has been planning. Moreover, I've been trying to help land a night for Marc Maurizi's return to full-group rock. Uncle Joe's would be the best choice, but I'm also very interested in doing something at the Waterbug Hotel. I'd better log some quality time with my calendar.
Here comes Shaun to sort everything out. He doesn't know me very well, but I flatter myself to think that he finds me sympathetic, albeit in a flustered, mad-professor sort of way. He is very obviously a mensch, and since indie rockers don't usually appear on discussion panels, I want to frame this so he doesn't think I'm completely insane. Luckily for me, he's interested; moreover, he's quick to get out the book and hash out dates with me. Shaun pitches a few bills he's put together, discusses a pick-up jazz night he's been hosting on Sundays, and generally evinces understated enthusiasm for winter '04. I have to concur: the upcoming Uncle Joe's lineup rocks. Post-pavement indie groups, weird touring acts, avant-garde experimentalists, deafening rockers, wordsmiths, characters all; the wide menagerie of the isolated, mutated, powerful, and strange that is North Jersey pop music.
Out of the bar and onto First Street: unseasonably warm and breezy, the weather and me both. I'm supposed to meet Hilary at the Balance Salon (18 Erie Street) for haircuts. I've decided to put my money where my mouth is and, all in the name of local commerce, violate one of my most sacred principles -- I vowed years ago to never again get my hair styled in New Jersey. Snobbish, sure, but a lousy haircut can ruin a couple of months. I am vain as hell and must always look smashing. Out on Grove Street, on cue, a large, crosseyed and fortyish Arab decides to make obscene comments in my direction. "Do you like a big dick?", he asks me, as polite and open-faced friendly as everybody else in Jersey City with something to hawk. Presumably he means his own. "No, that's o.k", I assure him, thanking him for his interest. In the liner notes to Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Stuart Murdoch wonders why he's only ever propositioned by grimy old men. Stuart, I feel your pain, and not for the first time.
Balance Salon is a swirl of activity. A woman from the Jersey Journal is there to write them up, Sade is on the sound system, art is on the walls, all three hairstylists are in action. If nothing else, this is a great spot to hang. The proprietor, whom I now know as Carla, recognizes me from my prior visit; she's been playing my album in the salon, she says. Hmm, I'm not sure how much I'd like having my hair styled to "The Man From Nantucket", but hey, McCall, take a compliment, for once. She offers me a bubble-gum flavored candy cane, coffee, a shot of whiskey. She is hilarious, talkative, accommodating. My glasses off for the haircut, I can't really see what's happening around me, but I can still chat a bit. The woman to my right does some promotion for the Waterbug Hotel, and invites me to their New Year's party. I give my regrets, mentioning my show in Williamsburg. "Don't you need some pink streaks in your hair for that?", she asks, her voice dripping with the usual Jersey antipathy for Brooklyn style-consciousness. Oh, these two-river misconceptions. I can't disabuse them all.
Back out onto Newark Avenue, the sun setting back over the Palisade. It's beautiful out on the city street, as usual. But if handsome buildings were all there was to downtown Jersey City, we might as well be living in Clinton. A downtown is nothing without indelible characters, and I'm very happy to have met Carla and Sean, both of whom are a trip, and in very different ways. There's a public culture here. I can't think of anyplace I'd rather spend New Year's Eve than Pete's Candy Store (well, Maxwell's), but I'm sad to be missing the Waterbug event. We'll catch up with those guys as we rock forward into 2004.
December 29, 2003
An addendum to yesterday's nervous report on local retail schedules: our grocery, Lee's Fruit & Vegetables (309 Grove St.), has finally reopened. This is good news, and not only for those of us who would like a little arugula around here. I began to worry when they blew their original re-opening date -- they were supposed to be back in mid-November. Weeks passed, the newspaper didn't come down from the windows, and in the wake of the closing of the Book Room, I feared that Grove Street had lost another resource.
About a week and a half ago, a sign appeared on Lee's door. No, I can't make this up:
"Confucius say we re-open by Thanksgiving. Confucius good philosopher but terrible electrician and refrigeration repairman.... Great Wall of China not built in one day. Thank you for your patience we will reopen before Christmas."
They're back. Somebody inform Confucius.
December 28, 2003
We tried to do as much of our Christmas shopping as we could in Jersey City. Growing up in North Jersey, I've never disliked shopping malls -- that'd be like a Floridian hating sunshine -- but small businesses and local enterprises make me dizzy with patriotic fervor. As it turned out, we were rewarded for our faith: guided by the 2:14 map, we found retail options far more offbeat and interesting than those in Hoboken. The problem we encountered, though, wouldn't have been an issue had we confined our shopping to the Mile Square, where proprietors, hung over or not, crank it up at ten o' clock every morning. Jersey City, by contrast, can't decide if it's open for business or not.
Well, okay, that might be overstating. Let's just say that Jersey City businesses -- the interesting ones, now, not the cookie-cutters at the Newport complex -- keep, um, unusual hours. If you yourself keep unusual hours (and if you're reading this, you probably do), you might sympathize; you might be inclined to reward our shops for their commitment to subverting conventional business practices. Me too, buddy, me too. But you can't patronize a closed store, and it's hard to sustain a shopping spree when you've got to juggle conflicting schedules as you go. Ten to seven might be boring industry standard, but when everybody's on the same wavelength, it's one less troubling factor to worry about when you're trying to find presents.
I'm going to single out a couple of places, but the problem seems to be pandemic among the "cool" stores in town. For instance, hip little multicolored posters for Space 27D (242 10th St., in the old Park Foundry building), still blanket the downtown area. You might expect that they'd have business hours commensurate with the comprehensiveness of their self-promotion. Nope. During the holiday rush, 27D opened its doors from four p.m. until eight p.m. on weekdays. Mind you, this wasn't on the poster; to find out, you actually had to walk out to the foundry and read the times off of the door to figure out why the hell the store wasn't open. (They've got no website, as far as I can tell.)
What's frustrating is that Space 27D turned out to be the best houseware/gift store I've ever been to on this side of the Hudson -- Bleecker or Smith Street selection at very Jersey prices. Stylish and artistic, it's exactly the kind of place that Jersey City residents should go out of their way to patronize and encourage. Since you will get this noplace else, I'm taking the liberty of posting their confusing hours, and so badly do I want Space 27D to succeed (and for other businesses of its kind to feel comfortable opening in Jersey City) that I'm determined to learn metatags so that searches for the housewares store turn up this page:
Operating hours for Space 27D, awesome housewares/gifts store, 242 10th St. at Jersey Ave.:
Sunday --12 noon - 6 pm, Monday -- closed, Tues-Fri -- 4 pm - 8pm, Saturday 10 pm - 6 pm.
There. If I got any of that wrong, they can choke me to death the next time we go for a visit, or just holler at me the ordinary way.
Hours for Iris Records (114 Brunswick Street, inside an ancient-looking pharmacy building) are easier to memorize, but no less unusual. In case you don't already know, the vinyl-only record store, stuffed from corner to corner with rare albums and even more obscure twelve-inch singles, is open from 3 pm until 9 pm on Fridays only. Well, okay, we figured: we could head out to 27D on Friday, cut through Hamilton Park and up a few blocks, and raid this candy store for presents for all the record collectors in the extended family. Wrong again. Turns out Iris is closed, period, until Jaunuary 9.
It's not just retailers. Marco & Pepe (289 Grove St., at Mercer), my new favorite restaurant, took the holidays off, too. Speaking of the holidays, I've already mentioned our problem with Holidays (281 Grove St.) -- it would without a doubt have become our everyday cafe had we just been able to figure out their inscrutable schedule. "Seven to seven, every day", we were told. Unless they meant 7 am until 7:01, I can't possibly guess what they were on about.
In conjunction, the unreliable hours create an atmosphere of commercial instability. Many of the businesses on the 2:14 list are more or less brand-new; they're taking their first tentative steps out into the vast ocean of capitalist enterprise. It's hard not to worry about their ability to stay afloat, or whether or not the first sign of choppy waters will make everybody leave the beach. Balance (18 Erie St.) and Hudson County Art Supply (381 Monmouth St.) both greet visitors with the well-polished front so common to established hipster businesses, but both proprietors are quick to tell you they've only been around for a few months. This was their first Christmas season; I hope it was a good one.
December 18, 2003
Because of my critical acumen, or just my loud mouth, I have been asked by several people to do a top ten albums/singles for 2003. I know the convention these days is to have them ready by Thanksgiving, but I need more time than that. Our annual Critics Poll -- the real most wonderful time of the year -- is held on the first Sunday of February. Until then, here are two special year-end lists -- a top ten and a top five -- to hold you over and keep you rocking.
December 15, 2003
Quick story: cold day, windy, I'm sailing all over Jersey Avenue in my big jacket. I've just dropped off a roll of color film at Grove Art & Photo (107 Christopher Columbus), and now I've got an hour to kill before my prints are ready. There's nothing I particularly want to eat at the Ground, but I know Shaun Towey works there, and I want to reiterate my appreciation for the job he did at Uncle Joe's on Saturday night. I also want to talk to him about setting up another show -- this time with Marc Maurizi of Cropduster -- and mention Mishka's continued interest in playing on a Jersey bill.
Not today, though: Shaun's not here. I do recognize the guy behind the counter, though; it's Mark Cyst from ferocious indie-rockers Mezzanine~C14. Before I can greet him, he takes the initiative. "Aren't you're the guy in Jersey Beat?" he asks me. Well, yes, sure, I write for Jersey Beat all the time. No, that's not what he means -- he wants to know if I'm the guy pictured in the mag. "It's either you or somebody who looks just like you", he says, producing a copy of the new issue from behind the counter. Sure enough, Jim Testa has run a shot of me playing guitar at Pete's Candy Store to accompany his review of Shootout At The Sugar Factory. I check out the picture. Damn, I'm even wearing the same jacket.
We talk a bit. He's a little astonished by my Jersey Beat column because I've reviewed his old band. Old band? Turns out Mark preceded Matt Hyams as bassist for the Vitamen. He left the group before I had a chance to see them, but he remembers playing on "Molested", "Friendfucker", and other twisted Blockton favorites. He knows Cover Me Badd and describes Jens Carstensen as a great bassist. I promise to swing back by the Ground tomorrow and pick up a copy of his record, but in an important way, I've already fully assimilated him (and with him, at last, the entirety of the Ground café) to the family.
People like to say "it's a small world" and play dumb games about Kevin Bacon, and of course it's all nonsense. There are more than seven million stories in the naked city, and few of them will ever overlap. Yet the milieu we inhabit -- indie rock -- is pretty tightly circumscribed, and sometimes it really does feel like its dimensions can be navigated and charted. You can run into a former member of a favorite act; you can get recognized from a photo in Jersey Beat. The spots in which we congregate are few, but they form a constellation of associations and a network worth navigating. They provide weirdos like us some familiarity, some solid ground, in a world largely hostile to our ambitions.
December 14, 2003
I'd had a terrible experience playing Uncle Joe's in 2002 -- in many ways it was the low point of the year for me. I took the stage as synthesist for the Denver Zest that night, and at that time the group wasn't exactly focused. All of our amplifiers were turned up to deafening level, Jesse sang from the back corner, we had no monitors, and I had the distinct impression that I was playing in the Holland Tunnel. The sound was loud, chaotic, unpleasant. To make matters worse, Tom Brislin from Spiraling was in the audience, trying to drum up interest in his record release for Transmitter. Brislin is one of the guys whose opinion of my own playing and musicianship really matters. I think he came away from the show convinced I thought a synthesizer was more a stage prop than a musical instrument.
For me, it was a stage prop; I couldn't hear myself and nobody could hear me (though I had the volume on the SH-101 turned up as high as it would go) so I did my best to be visually interesting. But in Summer 2002 there were no stage lights at Uncle Joe's, so I am sure I looked to those who were watching like a goofy dancing shadow. Palomar followed us to the stage, and obviously spooked by our disastrous performance, played a low-energy, low-volume set that was, by their high standard, uninspiring. I'd wanted Palomar to cross the river and show everybody in New Jersey that they were indeed the model city indiepop group, as I'd been telling everybody they were. Instead, because of the limitations of the space, they lacked their usual command.
Fast-forward to December '03. Uncle Joe's has been overhauled; the space changed, rearranged several times. There's a new sound system, new decorations and a new configuration -- the drinks, though, are as cheap as ever. I'd already seen the Heavenly States and Roadside Graves play a show in the back room that sounded just as good as anything done at, say, Luxx in its heyday. Still, I was astonished by how rich Ankles guitarrist and Uncle Joe's soundman Shaun Towey managed to make everybody -- especially me -- sound. Karwreck, a group from NYC, brought in three treble instruments, all of which were electrified. Thanks to the conscientious mix, I could differentiate among them at all times.
Bringing loud electric guitars into this room is still a dodgy proposition, and its dimensions (small) are unalterable. If you're a heavy-metal band, or if you insist on playing through Marshall amps, this might not be the stage for you. Certainly there are better-sounding clubs in Jersey City's future. But nobody ought to be intimidated about playing Uncle Joe's anymore. For more than a year, I called it a cool hangout that only passed for a rock club because of a lack of real alternatives. No longer. They've figured out the space. This is a legitimate rock and roll club now, and best of all, there's no "Cruel But Fair" sign on the wall.
December 12, 2003
Freezing cold and blustery, no night for the fainthearted. Still, there's no good reason not to make the trip to the Waterbug Hotel -- the bill is more attractive than it's been so far, and for God's sake, McCall, it's five blocks north. We're at Marco & Pepe's first, though (289 Grove Street), checking out the local upscale eatery. This joint could be in the West Village: everything about it harmonizes with our values, right down to the very unusual-looking silverware. The duck and wild mushroom soup is knocking me out; it's the perfect remedy for the freezing conditions. The restaurant is busy but not too crowded, and the clientele is youngish and attractive. If Hoboken is supposed to be the high-rent district here in Hudson County and Jersey City the upstart, why are all of our restaurants sophisticated and classy, while theirs all serve glorified beer nuts? Well, they can keep their City Bistro and their frat-packed Black Bear. Every place weve gone to in Jersey City so far has been far superior. Now we've just got to be sure they all stay afloat.
Overcoat over sport jacket over shirt over undershirt, and I'm ready to roll. Literally roll, yes -- I look and feel like a cotton ball. Stepping out in style I am. Hipsters are walking in and out of the Waterbug, but I don't hear any music coming from the building. Maybe the noise regulators have lowered the boom, and only mamby-pamby acts (like me) are allowed to play there. Hey, the Jazzy City Dance Studio sign is still up on the outer wall. I'd run into Sean from the Ground Cafe earlier in the day while dropping off fliers, and he'd described the space as a legit performance venue. It's still impossible to imagine this as the fate of Dan's apartment.
Up four flights to the top story we go. Holy shit, it is a legit performance venue -- as capable a spot to host big productions as Uncle Joe's. Large stage, art hanging on the walls, seats, a bar -- it's like a Jersey version of the Mighty Robot. There are sofas and tables; one woman, curled up with her dog, has fallen asleep. No, really, it's cute. The space feels more continuous with the arts reputation of the city than Uncle Joe's. A very nicely balanced hybrid of loft and club, my compliments to the chef.
No compliments to the ventilator though. It feels like a wigwam in here. It's smoky as hell; hot, humid, and crowded. Jeez, what are these people going to do during the summer? Guess that's why God invented air conditioners. Tonight's event is called Weird Acid, as eveybody in the downtown probably knows -- I have beheld the effectiveness of their postering with the envy of the terminally incompetent. It's hosted by the Abaton Book Company, who've attracted my sympathy and interest ever since Joe Harrington, in the pages of Sonic Cool, associated me with their wunderkind Marianne Nowottny. He called us Jersey singers representing bright hopes for the future of rock. No kidding.
Nowottny isn't on the bill tonight, but Perhapstransparent artists Pothole Skinny are. Is there a relationship between Abaton Book Company and Perhapstransparent? Hmm, could be. I've always liked Perhapstransparent's artists, even if they do all sound like Incredible String Band. Recently, I stumbled across a Jersey City address for the label, and that surprised me -- I'd always assumed they were Brooklynites. Abaton Book Company's merch dominates the room, propped up on an end table, displayed like an art-punk curio cabinet. The merchandise station is occupied by a young woman dressed in a wooly black hat and get-up that looks like it was pulled out of Lauren Bacall's wardrobe. Girl, you look sharp, but aren't you hot under there?
We sit down just as the show starts. In the far corner, I recognize the owner of the Balance hair salon, but it's grown quiet, and I'm not in the mood to make a fuss or catch anybody's eye. Pothole Skinny are an arty semiacoustic three-piece; two guitars and a drummer. In a nice reversal of standard conventions, the left side guitarrist (and frontman) runs his acoustic signal through effects and takes most of the leads while the electric player weaves complicated patterns. This doesn't sound like Incredible String Band, it's more like Gastr Del Sol. Just kidding; it's mostly instrumental, but I'm feeling it anyway. And damn, the singer has a great psychedelic voice, I wish he'd use it more.
He stops the set at one point to give a long and rambling account of the misfortunes of his evening -- running out of gas, locking his keys in the car, something about the other guitarrist's girlfriend. It's all delivered in a monotone, and it's as hypnotic as the music. The entire room feels drugged by the guitar effects, the heavy smoke, the heat. A piece of art on the back wall teeters and falls on the drummer's head. Everybody watches it happen, but nobody shouts out -- we're all too dazed. Toward the end of the show, two guys at the bar begin a loud conversation about real estate and the viability of opening a performance venue. Normally I'd object, but here I can't help it, it feels like part of the show; a seamless extension of the trippy guitar and the muffled rhythms. It's like I'm living inside Robert Fripp's Exposure.
Set ends, my lungs are burning. I'm not used to the cigarette smoke. We push through the crowd and toward the exit. I leave some fliers for my Uncle Joe's show on the end table, apologizing for their shoddiness as I do. If I'm going to contribute to this rock city, I need to get all my aesthetics in order.
December 10, 2003
I have to be the worst poster-hanger in indie rock. I can't get them up straight, I mangle the tape into little balls, I tear off the corners, I am a menace to construction paper and lampposts. Worst of all, when I've got to hang posters, I suddenly become timid. It's not that I'm afraid that the cops are going to hassle me, it's that I get hugely self-conscious about taping my name up where others can see it. Hanging posters makes me feel like a self-absorbed jerk.
But hey, I am a self-absorbed jerk. So self-absorbed, in fact, that the very idea of hiring a postering service makes me tremble; if I can't hang it myself in the spot I want it, I'd rather it didn't go up. So here I am with a bag filled with posters, kicking my way through my new town. I'm just going to have to swallow my trepidation, hang a few, and get some real problems.
Unlike Hoboken, where every metal surface is festooned with adverts, announcements, and wheat-pasted remnants of shows gone by, Jersey City feels like a poster-free zone. Hmm, this could be good or bad -- I won't have to fight for space, but what if the sanitation police are particularly stringent? It's some small relief there are some posters up, but they're all for the same place: a home furnishings store called 27D. Hey, isn't that Liz Phair's seat number in "Stratford On Guy"? Maybe the proprietors are fans.
Van Vorst Park is more like a rink; it hasn't been plowed, and there's mud and ice everywhere. I'm starting here because there are public posterboards, and those ameliorate some of my queasiness about the enterprise. One of the boards, though, is in the middle of the tundra. I'm not going to chance it. I hit the northeast and southwest corners, and leave it at that. Some kids from the Montgomery Street library stare. I'm tempted to explain I have a show on Saturday, but think better of it. Jack Chick says rock and roll is devil music, and I'm allergic to corrupting children.
It's perfect weather for me, upper forties and overcast. I wouldn't want every day of the year to feel like this, but I'd sign right now for three hundred out of three sixty five. My first illicit number goes up at Mercer and Jersey, on the blank face of one of those big metal boxes of obscure functionality that dot most city streetcorners. I'm sure it's performing a public works service of some importance. Maybe my poorly-taped poster will somehow catch in the internal mechanism and cause a blackout. Maybe my selfish will to put up little green posters will destroy the city.
Thank God for the Ground. There's always a poster up in that window advertising an Uncle Joe's show; dare I add mine? Hell, only one way to find out. I bustle in, all smiles and welcoming handshakes. The owner is thrilled; we shoot the breeze about indie rock for a little while. It's warm and cozy inside and nobody is hassling me, but I still can't get the poster up straight in the window. Guess I will be the local crooked rocker. I look over the array of fliers on the hipster counter, and immediately have flier envy -- how come I can never make a decent-looking flier? All mine look like litter. Anyway, here's a series of nifty-looking adverts for art exhibits, an announcement for three one-act plays, an encouragement to go to a LGBT counseling center, and a bright red postcard for the White Star Bar on 230 Brunswick. Now there's a place I haven't investigated yet. Chances are, if they're dropping off fliers at the Ground, they're looking to attract artists. I push off in that direction.
Emboldened by the nice treatment I received at the Ground, I begin postering in a tizzy. Newark and Jersey, Christopher Columbus, Erie, no corner escapes my wrath. I still can't get the tape to come out straight, but screw it; if it looks a little mangled, maybe that'll be eye-catching. Oh, who am I kidding, this looks terrible. Still, they're going up. The Subia Cafe at 506 Jersey is inviting and pleasant, but has no hipster counter. I hang one directly across the street, and cross my fingers that the clientele is investigative.
Up Newark on a diagonal slash, headed for Brunswick and a neighborhood I don't really know yet. I pass the Metropolis Music Store (240 Newark Avenue) and do a little window-shopping. No synthesizers, but I do see a corkboard in the back. McCall, that's your cue. I enter in a burst of enthusiasm, and I think I take the owner -- behind the counter restringing a guitar -- aback for a second. No mind, after I introduce myself and talk about the day's mission, he's sympathetic. His store is bigger than Rivington Street Guitars, but it has much the same feel: handsome stringed instruments on the wall, hardwood floors, accessories, effects. He mentions that Jersey City could use another club. Don't I know it, mister. I tack one of my adverts to the corkboard and chat up my show before hitting the road again.
The Baker Boys Cafe (270 Newark) is directly across the street. I've always liked the storefront, but I've never been inside. Turns out these proprietors are just as sweet as everybody else I've met today -- they don't have a hipster counter either, but their glass display case has been taped up from top to bottom with posters. There's no room for one of mine, so I grab a menu and excuse myself. There's a display rack full of postcards that look similar to the ones at the Ground, and one in particular grabs me: it's got a map of a segment of downtown, and places of interest are marked with red dots. The White Star is one of them. The boundaries of the neighborhood are Brunswick and Erie, Second and Fourteenth Street, and they're calling it 2:14. Hmm, sounds like a biblical verse. Catchy, though, I like it, I like it.
Consulting the map, I can see I'm around the corner from Madame Claude, a French bistro. A French bistro? Uh oh, the magic words have been said. Sure enough, at 364 and a half 4th St. (Jersey City is lousy with "and a half" street addresses) stands the most adorable restaurant I've yet seen in town. I look inside; there's no Tintin on the walls, but there are other books above the tables like at Petite Abeille. Yes, I'm in love. Two French women are standing outside, conversing in their own language. I get busy with the tape. They immediately drop what they're doing and try to get me to put up a poster inside. It's really astonishing me how helpful everybody has been; if this was Hoboken, I would already have been kicked in the ass at least once today.
No time to stop for a croissant, I've got postering to do. The White Star Bar is classy and attractive, but it isn't open. A couple, decidedly not artsy, has been turned away at the door; even they want to know what I'm up to. Goddamit, why is everybody being so friendly? Maybe it's my godfather's double-breasted overcoat.
Down Pavonia two blocks, snow painted on brownstone roofs as if it had been placed there by a corny but well-meaning postcard-maker. The evening light reflects off the upper windows and the whole street is suffused with an undeniable radiance. Hamilton Park is well-lit and gorgeous in the twilight; even a yuppie walking a colossal barking daschund can't ruin the picture. I stick a few posters up, but I'm being unduly reverent. This may be the most beautiful block in all of New Jersey. I don't want to irritate anybody with my enthusiasm, but it's hard not to get swept up.
Across the Sixth Street viaduct, postering as I go. I'm actually running out of copies; this is a first for me. Well-intentioned, I often duplicate about seven thousand, and then distribute five -- usually to Robin. There's not much on Erie past the Subito Restaurant, and I'm getting a little cold. I'm noticing posters for an art exhibit at L.I.T.M. Huh? As far as I know, the L.I.T.M. space (140 Newark Avenue) hasn't even been renovated yet. Oh, it's Jersey City, and nobody can ever decide if they're doing business or not.
I stop by a well-lit hair salon. The posters in the window are familar to me now: art exhibits, 27D, the 2:14 district. The owner sees me, bustles outside, and escorts me in; she wants to talk to me. Really? Her salon is called Balance (18 Erie Street) and it doubles as a gallery; it's spacious and funky and instantly comfortable. She tells me all about a party they're having this Saturday. Sorry, I say, that's the date of my show. No, no, the party is from five to eight, she replies, come by before your performance, I'll introduce you to everybody! As it has all day, this relentless friendliness astonishes me.
She's going to the laundry around the corner, so she walks along with me. She's been in Jersey City for years, but she just opened Balance this October. I wish her luck, and wonder to myself how much of the ongoing cheeriness I've encountered is plain old business anxiety. None of the places I ducked into today had much commerce. Well, that's okay, I don't mind. Artists and businesses should work together; we can build something hip and happening right here as long as we're all pulling in the same direction. At a little after five on a beautiful evening, with the streetlights beaming through the fog of Grove Street, it all seems wildly possible.
Then I look across the street from the laundromat. The Book Room -- the only used book store downtown -- is liquidating inventory. They're going out of business.
Gulp.
December 9, 2003
Been in the mall, and sick as fuck of Christmas music? Me too! Fifty familiar seasonal songs and Kahrls... er, carols get the typical Tris McCall treatment in the 2003 Christmas Abstract. Don't leave 'til you read my take on Rudolph. Complete with top (and bottom) ten lists!
December 2, 2003
The Grove Street PATH station is a five minute walk due north from the Perception Room. To get to Exchange Place, it's ten minutes on foot -- three blocks north, five blocks east. Grove Street trains to the temporary World Trade Center station stop at Exchange Place, though, so if you're heading that way anyway, it feels a little redundant, not to mention lazy, to avoid the extra walk. Or at least that's what I tell myself. Since the ride from Exchange Place to WTC is so quick, it's really about even; you could make a time-saver's case for each route. And so I do, in theory. In practice, I've been taking Exchange Place to World Trade Center exclusively.
Part of it is the difference in feel: the Grove Street Station is grungy, timeworn, and cramped, and I never seem to land myself a seat on the Sixth Avenue PATH line. By contrast, Exchange Place Station is spacious, bright, radiant with business-district efficience and almost European in its imposing cleanliness. I don't travel during peak hours, so the World Trade Center trains I take tend to be half-empty; by the time I'm heading in to practice, most of the commuters have already made their trek. And at four minutes, thre trip is ridiculously short -- you've barely broken open your copy of the Daily News by the time you arrive.
But I'm kidding myself. Mostly, I've been taking trains from Exchange Place because I want (and it's fair to say, often crave) the experience of riding into the spectral new station in the deep footprint of the World Trade Center. If you haven't done it, I strongly recommend it. When the train rounds the last turn into the starlight, and the tunnel opens up onto the wide gray expanse of concrete and cables, trucks with spools of wire, and abandoned cement foundation scarred with fissures, blanched white with electric light, the effect is stupefying. If you can deal with the flood of emotion and bad memories, it's possible to imagine that this new makeshift construction -- tucked into the crater like a secret clubhouse -- has some healing power within its exposed girders and plastic-tapestried walls.
I'm going to do a station-by-station discussion of the PATH system and post it in this space, but it's hard to be objective about the new WTC terminal. It feels dreamlike; an imaginary concoction of architectural tropes and wraithlike images of the city under reconstruction. If its intention is purely functional, its effect is otherworldly; it gives the commute the untethered quality of space travel. For those of us who remember the dimensions of the station that events erased, its invisible walls are still very much present, hanging somewhere just beyond palpability. The ghosts of those bricks -- those panes of glass, those girders -- shadow our every step.
Go on and view the Jersey City Journal from November.
