The Tris McCall Report
I'll get back to writing about 111 First Street tomorrow, but tonight, I'd like to take some time to address a truly asinine article that ran in the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine. A few people sent the link to me, since they thought I'd be interested in Paul Goldberger's attack on the Jersey City skyline. And of course I am, in the same way I'm interested in Marie Antoinette, and Mayor Bloomberg's casual suggestion that average New Yorkers should take their families to Athens for a weekend junket during the Olympics. The unreconstructed classism of certain segments of the Manhattan press continues to poison relations between New York and New Jersey.
In Goldberger's article, the Jersey City waterfront is compared unfavorably to New York City, London, and Paris. Well, blow me down. We only threw the thing up a few years ago; exactly what was he expecting? Unlike Manhattan, which is already done, and has noplace to fall but apart, Jersey City is a work in progress. This side of the Hudson is still growing, and in some ways, it's just begining to grow. Contrasting our nascent skyline with those of established cities to make some kind of gratuitous Jersey-bashing point is just the sort of thing that Uptown New Yorkers like to do between dinners at Le Cirque.
But hey, we're accustomed to visits from snobs across the river. We can even hold our tongues and listen to their patronizing speeches. What we won't put up with is ill-conceived aesthetic judgements under the guise of learned opinion. Goldberger writes in the arrogant tone of an architectural know-it-all. I don't know if this guy has a background in the field or not, and I really don't care -- when somebody is as wrong as he is, it doesn't matter to me if he designed the Eiffel Tower. He points to the one building on the skyline that isn't too hot as our only asset, and ignores or disparages everything else, much of which is pretty super. Well, not super on the level of the Battery -- that's not something we can afford. Yet. But from Christopher Columbus Avenue to the end of Essex Street, we've fronted the Hudson with buildings that are commendably pleasant to look at.
Goldberger is correct about one thing and one thing only: the Newport towers are ugly. This is the architectural equivalent of pointing out that Mickey Mantle was a good baseball player, or that the Mississippi River is muddy. Of course Newport is ugly: it was built at the absolute outset of Jersey City's economic revitalization. We didn't have the dough yet to blow on ornamentation; the crummy-looking LeFrak tower blocks were all we could afford. Heaping on Newport is a long-standing tradition in Jersey City, too. It's really easy to do, and it's usually done in the name of some vague progressive goal. But the presence of Newport unquestionably contributed to the renewal of interest in the Jersey City downtown during the mid-nineties, and the current boom in riverside property values is testament to the long-term success of the Newport experiment. Goldberger hauls out the tired old lines about how Newport is a suburbanite's interpretation of what a city should be, how the buildings are disconnected, how it's a tough pedestrian experience, and how it's overy sanitized. We know, we know, buddy; we've been through this a thousand times. Newport was the price we had to pay to make the rest of it happen.
A charitable architecture writer -- or just somebody with a sense of history or the realities of development in cities that aren't the world's most powerful financial centers -- would grasp this immediately. Instead, Goldberger wants to dip his pen in the Newport inkwell, and slime the rest of the skyline with it. By conflating Newport with the other commercial construction on the waterfront, he glosses over the specificty of the buildings, and makes it seem like there's nothing but condominiums between the malls and the Goldman Sachs tower. "In between there is a set of office buildings called the Harborside Financial Center; a long, low Hyatt hotel on a pier stretching out into the Hudson; and a few more condominiums." Wrong. In between, Mr. New Yorker, is much of New Jersey's most interesting urban architecture. Since Goldberger is too arrogant to have done his homework, and since his condescending Upper West Side readers are probably too lazy to correct him, allow me to do it myself:
101 Hudson, between Exchange Place and York Street. This tower is the second-largest in New Jersey, yet it sticks up with none of the ostentatiousness of the big Goldman Sachs silver finger. Instead, it manages to suggest art deco without losing its modern feel, and without being cheeky about it. Most deliberately, 101 Hudson is meant to evoke the Jersey City Medical Center, our town's most remarkable building, and a crucial piece of our Democratic history. The Medical Center is the most visible link to our New Deal past and the days of the Hague machine, and the decision to update and quote the famous beast of the palisade at 101 Hudson is characteristic of our respect for our history. That's not something I expect the New Yorker to give a damn about, but hey. It matters to me.
Then, there are the outstanding Hartz Buildings at 70 and 90 Hudson. These aren't too big: as a matter of fact, they're modest in scale and make up for their square dimensions with a cool classicism. The huge arched windows at the bottom of the buildings are echoed by smaller fenestrations at the top; the windows create a sense of openness, and a steady rhythm along the boardwalk. There are columns leading to the entrances, wide and bright lobbies inside. The two Hartz buildings resemble Newark city skyline architecture, but newer and brighter.
Goldberger also seems to have spaced on the many buildings surrounding Exchange Place, including the odd-shaped, oval PATH train station itself. I can imagine an architectural buzzkill having a problem with the Exchange Place tower, since it's got a certain cheesiness to it, and probably requires a sense of humor and detachment to appreciate fully. But the triangular fin on the top of the cylinder that fronts the building is a visual signature for the waterfront, and it gives the building a slightly tipsy feeling. It's also sharp; threatening. The message is simple, and familiar enough to anybody who understands the Jersey spirit: don't tread on us, we've got a sting. We may not be much on the attack, but we're hell itself on D.
Like the Katyn sculpture that I'll write about at length some other time, many of the buildings on the Jersey City waterfront are best understood by framed by the Manhattan skyline. Despite what Goldberger wants you to think, they don't blend in: as a matter of fact, the best and most interesting ones are loaded with weird angles and prickly edges -- as if we're telling an encroaching New York City to keep its distance. Even the reviled Newport does its part: its newest and most interesting tower appears to be collapsing in on itself. If in isolation it resembles Mohegan Sun, the lights that flash across its triangular codex at night make it look like a building on fire -- a controlled burn directed across the Hudson, ready to slide down and slip across the water.
Beyond the writer's lazy dismissals, there are his factual inaccuracies and bewildering comments to contend with. "It is not easy to traverse the place on foot", sniffs Goldberger "even if you don’t mind walking the equivalent of thirty Manhattan blocks, because the streets don’t always connect -- a lot of the time there aren’t any streets." Now, what the hell is he talking about here? Washington, Jersey, Marin, and Grove traverse the length of the downtown, including Newport. Montgomery and Christopher Columbus (which becomes Newark) run from the river to the western slope of the palisade. You can walk along the Hudson from Portside to the Holland Tunnel. Is it too much to ask, New Yorker, that you guys consult a map?
Evidently it is. "The light rail.... connects the mall, the path stations, and Liberty State Park, just to the south." Absolutely, positively wrong; another attempt to make it seem like everything in New Jersey revolves around the shopping plaza. The Hudson-Bergen light rail is referred to dismissively as a "trolley". Call it whatever you want, Mr. Goldberger, but get your facts straight: it runs from Hoboken to Bayonne, and spurs deep into the underprivileged neighborhoods of the central city before reaching its western terminus at NJCU. The only Jersey City PATH station it intersects with is Exchange Place.
We are reminded, faux-broadmindedly, that "cities are heterogeneous by their very nature. They are built around public places, the most important of which are streets, and they are resistant to too much order." Well, thank you, Jane Jacobs. In between rehashing these irrelevant public planning platitudes, we're again castigated for preferring cleanliness over filth, and reminded that our downtown has no depth. Considering its newness, I think it's pretty amazing that we have as much as we have. And there's more on the way.
Because of their long history and their insistence on using the same typesettings that they did when they were printing J.D. Salinger in the 50s, The New Yorker has a reputation for quality. It's undeserved. These days, the New Yorker is as crappy as any other magazine, pandering to its audience as shamelessly as the Post does. They may think that writing about something as banal as New Jersey excuses them from the need to fact-check, but chances are, their readership doesn't care about journalistic integrity anyway. Most current New Yorker readers are looking to have their superficial and unexamined assumptions about Manhattanite supremacy reinforced. That's as pathetic as the magazine's desire to run gratuitously snooty pieces like this one. Of course the New York skyline is superior to Jersey City's. Of course we've made our mistakes. But we've risen from those mistakes with a clear idea of what our future ought to look like -- which is a hell of a lot more than you can currently say about New York. If Uptowners are now so insecure about their own city's flailing that they need to come across the river and kick violently a municipality that's just getting started, they're in worse shape than even the election of Bloomberg would indicate.
July 29, 2004
Nothing cataclysmic yet. These days, that counts as good news. Here's the update:
-- Nobody currently at 111 got evicted outright yesterday. Most of the artists who were called before the judge were granted postponements. That means we'll be back in court early next week to do it all again, but by then, the Democratic convention will be over, the mayor and his aides will be back from Boston, and it's not inconceivable that they could intervene in some way.
-- The Old Gold smokestack is still there. It's surrounded by scaffolding, though, and could now be demolished by hand. That could happen at any moment.
-- The historic preservation of the warehouse district is moving forward. Wednesday's meeting went well for the preservationists, and now the City Council needs to approve the idea. They probably will, but that won't stop Goldman and other landlords in the district from challenging the landmarking in court. It remains to be seen whether or not the move toward preservation in the district will help or hurt 111. It might be setting up a race against the clock that the artists can't win. For instance, Goldman's decision to begin demolition work on the 110 building feels like a deliberate challenge to the preservationists. "You're trying to landmark this building? Fine, we'll knock it down before the city can act." The legislative process has never been known to beat a sledgehammer to the punch, know what I'm saying?
-- The August 14 street celebration, is off, as far as I know. I'm not sure if anything else is being planned in its stead. I'll keep you all posted.
Thank you for reading this site. In the past two days, I have had more visitors to the Tris McCall Report than I've ever had before. This suggests to me (as if I needed any more evidence) that 111 and the Arts District is an issue of crucial import for people all over Jersey City, and, indeed, all over the NYC metro area. It's a battle that's meaningful to anybody who believes in workspace for artists, grassroots community development, and neighborhood self-determination. If you haven't already, please sign the smokestack petition, talk to your city councilpeople and legislators, and lend what support you can to the 111 First Street community. The real Democratic convention starts at home.
July 28, 2004
Walking along Warren Street on an unseasonably cold day, in the direction of 111 First Street, just hoping the smokestack is still there. I can hear the sound of men working, shouting, hammers on brick. Well, damn, have they started ripping the Arts Center apart already?
As it turns out, the hammering is coming from the roof of 110 First, straight across the street. This is also New Gold property; another historic building that Goldman wants to demolish and replace with a luxury rental tower. My first reaction is relief -- 111 First is safe, at least for a few hours. The roof and ornamental parapet may, regrettably, be coming off of 110, but at least nobody is threatened with displacement.
Then I get a little closer to Bay Street, and I realize what's happened. New Gold has erected a fence along First Street, effectively turning the entire block into a construction zone. The artists at 111 First had big plans for a midsummer street party, complete with information tables, family activities, marching bands, light sculptures: the whole Mothership shebang. The big black barrier in the middle of the road (not to mention the threat of falling bricks) scotches the project. If the artists are going to put on a consciousness-raising event, they're going to have to do it elsewhere.
Inside 111, the mood is grim, but firm. Twenty artists -- including several I've written about at length on this site -- face the blunt end of a judge's gavel tomorrow. There's still time for the city to intervene. But those sands are running out. With them, the dream of the Powerhouse Arts District is also fading to a cold, barren dawn.
In the 111 courtyard, the Old Gold Smokestack still stands, wedged between two walls of the building. It's impossible to imagine how New Gold could get a crane or bulldozer within thirty yards of the smokestack without destroying 111 First Street in the process. That may be the point. But if New Gold even attempts to do this while the building is occupied, somebody is going to get hurt. Would Goldman risk injuring his tenants? It doesn't seem like that's his style. The smokestack gambit might be a bluff: an attempt to occupy the energies and resources of the Tenants Association while he prepares his legal arguments against them.
The construction company handling the demolition has draped cloth banners over the windows closest to the smokestack. Are they there to shield the building, or obstruct views? They don't do either very well. In fact, they most resemble carnival bunting. Black and white, rippling in the wind, they spill down from the roof on either side of the courtyard. They frame the smokestack, and present it to the viewer like a parting curtain at a vaudeville house. On a different day, it's easy to imagine the artists at 111 First appreciating the scene for its aesthetic value.
Today, it looks funereal, though -- portentious, mysterious, threatening. The smokestack peers out from between the sheets like a doomed horse, sedated, still and waiting to be put down.
This in from Henry Sanchez:
PETITION STOP THE DEMOLITION OF THE 130 YEAR OLD SMOKESTACK AT 111 FIRST AND THE OTHER HISTORIC STRUCTURES IN THE POWERHOUSE ARTS DISTRICT.
To: The Honorable L. Harvey Smith * Councilman Peter Brennan * Councilwoman Mary Donnelly * Councilman William Gaughan * Councilman Jeremiah Healy * Councilman Steve Lipski * Councilman E. Junior Maldonado * Councilman Viola Richardson * Councilman Mariano Vega
The owner of 111 First Street, Lloyd Goldman, wants to tear down the most prominent part of the building: The 130 year old Smokestack. This spectacular and highly visible structure is a piece of all of our collective history. It is unconscionable to destroy the historical integrity of the 111 building. The owner, Lloyd Goldman, wants to do this for no reason except spite.
Help us prevent this from occurring by telling our elected officials and Mr. Goldman: "The 111 Smokestack and other historical structures in the prospective Powerhouse Arts District needs to be preserved and honored as a part of Jersey City's important assets and historical patronage".
______________________________ NAME
______________________________ ADDRESS
______________________________ PHONE #
Copy this petition into an e-mail message, sign it, and send it back to the tenants association or Henry himself.. Here's Henry's original mail, which contains contact numbers for councilpeople:
Dear friends, I am writing this letter to inform you that despite our efforts at 111 First Street, the owner of the building wants to tear down the most prominent part of the building: the 130 year old Smokestack. Help us prevent this from occurring by telling our elected officials.
The owner, Lloyd Goldman, wants to do this for no reason except spite. (FYI he is taking us to court to evict us beginning on Thursday, July 29th. He will be taking 20 tenants at a time.) We have tried over the past weekend to prevent the demolition of the Smokestack, however, today it is beginning to look grim. We are prepared to throw our bodies in front or inside the chimney to stop this from happening.
Help us TODAY by writing or calling to our elected folks. They need to hear from you.
Call our write our elected officials :
Mayor L. Harvey Smith: 201-547- 5200
Councilman Mariano Vega 201-547-5108
E. Junior Maldonado 201-547-5283
Mary Donnelly, 201-547-5101
Peter Brennan 201-547-5060
William Gaughan 201-547-6817
Steve Lipski 201-547-5172
Viola Richardson 201-547-5360
City of Jersey City 280 Grove Street Jersey City, NJ 07302 and
State Assemblyman Lou Manzo 201-309-0770
FYI, the Jersey City Historic Commission will consider whether our warehouse district is an historic district on Wednesday night. This could help us by providing a court ordered "injuction" from demolishing our smokestack. But... our elected officials need help to persuade the owner to prevent the demolition of this important landmark.
Thank you, Henry
Lloyd Goldman has a calendar, too. He chose his dates wisely -- he knows that most of the political leadership of Jersey City is up in Boston this week for the Democratic Convention. I don't think we'll be able to get Harvey Smith's attention. Still, it can't help to try. Some of these councilpeople are, no doubt, attending to their districts this week. Let's make sure they all know what's at stake.
July 26, 2004
Not content with taking the artists at 111 First Street to court, New Gold Equities has evidently also decided to annoy them to death. The plan -- one that might be enacted on as soon as tomorrow -- is to knock down the poor smokestack in the central courtyard. New Gold's claim is that the smokestack is a structural hazard. The artists deny this, and I can't blame them. It's a central feature of the building, and its loss would be felt by everybody who appreciates Jersey City architecture. It's also self-evidently sturdy. I'm no structural engineer, but if you wanted to pick on a building that looked as if it was about to tip over, you wouldn't start with the 111 smokestack. You wouldn't end with it either. Spared Goldman's cranes, that smokestack would probably outlast us all.
The New Gold team wants to knock the smokestack down because they want to create a hostile environment for the artists in 111 First Street. They know how much it would hurt the people who've put so much work into the building to have to watch it mutilated by bulldozers. They are also clearly grooving on the great psychological value of leveling the artists' huge stone cylinder. By attacking the phallic symbol in the middle of the courtyard, Goldman seeks to emasculate the movement that resists him. In so doing, he's looking to clear space for his own plan -- which, true to form, involves erecting his own tower in the place of the smokestack. His, of course, will be bigger than ours.
Goldman's attempts to get it up are as pathetic as they are typical. Either he must think there are no psychographers at all in Jersey City, or he's so wealthy and unconcerned that he's not afraid of coming off like a frat guy involved in a pissing contest. There is nothing sorrier than the actions of wealthy, patriarchal egomaniacs. Unfortunately, those actions leave it to the rest of us to pick up the pieces -- quite literally, in this case.
I can say this stuff: I'm not in the building, and I don't have to mollify this jerk. I know there are plenty of other people in town who feel the same way I do about this. Better speak up now, guys, before it's too late.
July 25, 2004
Back up. That was an enormous pain, but the storm is over. I transferred most of my files from the old desktop to the new laptop, and for now, the site is on the movable hard drive. No more service interruptions now.
July 20, 2004
My hard drive crashed last night. Right now, I am trying to retrieve what data I can. It's a bad situation. I will continue to update this site, and others, as regularly as I can, but I'm scrambling.
More importantly, yesterday's e-mail is probably unretrievable. I lost many unread messages. One of them may have been yours. If you sent me mail yesterday, please re-send it. Thanks, and sorry.
July 19, 2004
At least twenty tenants at 111 First Street got eviction notices today. These aren't the relatively toothless "notices to quit" that were served in May by New Gold Equities. These are official court documents -- summonses. These tenants must appear in Landlord/Tenants court on July 27 and 29. Should they lose their case, they could be tossed from the building.
Establishing a precedent in this initial court battle means everything. If the Tenants Association can come away with victories, then they have pretty good grounds to continue their fight, and New Gold will have played their best and most frightening card. If the authority of this first wave of notices is upheld by the courts, the management will probably be able to apply the same rule to the rest of the tenants.
So this is it: this is what it comes down to. If Jersey City is going to have an arts district based around 111 First Street, the tenants must win this case. If Lloyd Goldman manages to chase the 111 artists out of town, there won't be any arts district. Oh, they might play pretend for a little while with a fabricated neighborhood made out of transplants and vaguely-bohemian commuters who can afford 350K condos. But that's not what the Powerhouse District is supposed to be, and everybody (including Mr. Goldman) knows it. 111 First Street, as presently constituted, is what the Powerhouse District is supposed to be.
People read this site and ask me questions about Jersey City. They want to know what I think of a particular band, they want to know what neighborhoods are safe. And then so many ask me -- how can we keep Jersey City from turning into Hoboken? I'm not exactly sure what people mean by this, but I think it has something to do with preserving a choice to live in a community that isn't wholly determined by Wall Street values.
The artists at 111 First Street have been here longer than I have. They've been here longer than you have, too, I'd reckon. If anybody's been fighting that fight, they're the ones who've been on those barricades. Through the lives they've chosen for themselves, they've led by example. Now, their fight is our fight, too. This is where we decide what kind of community we want to have. Here is where we draw the line in the sand.
July 15, 2004
I didn't know where yesterday's City Council meeting was held, and I wouldn't have been able to attend even if I did. Still, there ought to be some public communication from the clerk's office for those of us who'd like to attend. This kind of problem -- this scarcity of important information -- is why we need a municipal website.
Anyway, the Council declared the warehouse district an area in need of redevelopment. I think everybody, including New Gold Equities, expected this outcome. It doesn't mean that anything is salvaged, and it certainly doesn't mean that the blocks will now become an actual arts district. Remember: only artists can make an arts district happen. Legislation and government can only create the conditions conducive to arts work.
July 14, 2004
A man named David Casson wrote to me yesterday, calling my attention to a new neighborhood revitalization effort. His street, Monticello Avenue, is about to get funds to implement an urban renewal plan. The community association had already won a Smart Growth grant for the project. All that was left, he told me, was for the City Council to approve the initiative. He expressed confidence that this would happen, and that a new arts and culture district would soon take the place of disused storefronts on Monticello. Come up, he encouraged me, and see the plan for yourself.
One of my ambitions is to walk every block in Jersey City. Modest, I know, and not fraught with much peril, but hey. And I've never been to Monticello Avenue or the surrounding neighborhood. I'm off.
I catch the light rail at Marin Boulevard, a block from our house. The skies are threatening, but I'm not really worried. Usually when I get on the light rail, I'm heading in the other direction: toward Hoboken and Maxwell's. This time, I'm leaving the Downtown behind, and making the right turn after Liberty State Park, climbing the palisade, into the African-American neighborhoods south of Montgomery Street.
Off at Martin Luther King Boulevard; up the street toward Monticello. I have about ten blocks to cover before I get to Communipaw Avenue and I'm slowing down; I might as well take it in. Right off the bat, I'm wondering whether people could be coaxed to make that walk to the proposed district. Casson sent me elaborate bus directions, but I always think train stops are more feasible areas for urban revitalization. Well, maybe that's my own prejudice: I might just be nostalgic for a steam-powered past I never experienced.
This neighborhood is poor, very poor, nothing at all like the Downtown or the Heights. It's friendly, though, and there are lots of people out on the street. Some of the buildings are really fantastic, too. One of the things you forget when you spend all of your time in an area that's been recently developed is that there's very little that has more character than long-standing single-proprietor retail establishments. The names and signs alone are fascinating -- here's an old store selling uniforms, there's a strange-looking sandwich shack, over there is a shop selling dresses with patterns that make them look like gigantic umbrellas. Rock! I am digging it. As in Harlem, relative poverty cannot obscure architectural glory. Some of these blocks -- Bramhall in particular -- are absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to have to come back up here and take more scrupulous notes.
I reach Communipaw. According to Casson, the district should be right on the other side of the street. I jaywalk, and almost get hit by about forty cars. Sorry, motorists, but I want to see the plan. Can't stop to gawk at the strange temples that line the east side of Monticello, I'm looking for Independent Beauty Supply. Ah, there it is: a long glass-paneled pharmacy and center of action. Middle-aged women wearing the yellow t-shirts of the Jersey City Recreation Department swing in and out of the building. A group of kids on the corner throw around a ball; a Latino man with a goatee and a sweat-soaked suit fiddles with a cellphone. This doesn't look like a city plan; this looks like a city in action. Where's the proposal?
Oh, there it is -- posted in the display window of a warehouse annex of the Beauty Supply. It's a full urban design proposal and plan; the kind you'd submit to a contest or a review board. To the credit of the neighborhood organization, they've made it easy to read. The neighborhood group wants to harmonize signage on a block of Monticello perpendicular to Emory St., fix up the storefronts and restore the brick facades, add a new sidewalk, replace the streetlights with faux gas lamps, and attract a few new businesses to the area. The lamps will have wrought-iron filigree, just as they do in South Orange, and a cool little JC monogram on them. No mention of arts or performance spaces, but hell, if the community group can achieve this much, they'll have reason to crow.
Not that Monticello Avenue is lacking attractions for an urban explorer. I look out at the east side of the street, and check out the crazy-looking old churches there. Passing their doors, some cool graffiti has been scrawled on the sides of the buildings. I suppose the community organization won't want to preserve that part of the streetscape, and I can feel those familiar waves of development ambivalence. It strikes me again that there are neighborhood revitalization plans all over Jersey City, in various states of actualization -- there are always local boosters and urban patriots anxious to organize resources and tidy up a bit. I'm usually a supporter of chaos rather than order, but I acknowledge that most Jersey cities have their municipal entropy quotient covered. There's no way to begrudge the Monticello group their objective -- this area used to be one of the town's busiest commercial centers. Changing patterns of public transit suggest to me that this area won't soon rival Newark Avenue, but a modest comeback seems entirely possible.
I walk over to the block that has been, at least in theory, refashioned by the community group. Several of the storefronts have been closed, but I do notice that the Ward F headquarters is pretty hopping. This was the heart of Cunningham territory - the underserved African-American communities south of McGinley Square, now represented in the City Council by Viola Richardson. Many of the plate glass windows display memorial pictures of the late mayor. No shots of Harvey Smith, though. It occurs to me that I don't know where Smith's power base is, or whether he's a geographically-centered politician at all.
Besides the Ward F storefront, I can see that a new bakery is set to open in one of the abandoned buildings. I could imagine a performance space here, for sure -- but then I can imagine a performance space anywhere. Would hipsters from other neighborhoods make the trip up here? I have found that it's never possible to underestimate the degree to which African-American neighborhoods scare the hell out of whites. Then again, Journal Square has its undeserved nasty rep too, and the kids packed into the Loews for that Bright Eyes show. But the theatre is across the street from the train station. The ten block walk to Communipaw could feel like the road to Samarkand for some reluctant pedestrians. Reliability (and regularity) of that bus service from Exchange Place is going to be crucial. For now, I'm just happy to see that the neighborhood organization is getting their improvement plan off the ground. I'll keep you posted on its progress.
July 13, 2004
"Robert Menendez Basta Ya!" was discussed in today's issue of Roll Call. Wow, now every congressman on Capitol Hill is going to want a song. You have to buy an account with Roll Call to get the article off the site, so rather than getting you all legislative aides with franking privileges, I'm just copying the piece to the TMR.
I'm very pleased that there's a link to the piece on Wonkette.com. I've always wanted to be mentioned by Wonkette, but I didn't want to actually have to run for anything. Or pull down my pants.
Two points:
#1. I actually think the lyric to "Robert Menendez" is very succinct.
#2. He's still my congressman.
Ode to Menendez
New Jersey rock musician Tris McCall has immortalized Rep. Bob Menendez (N.J.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, in his song "Robert Menendez basta ya!"
McCall describes his album as a snapshot of his day-to-day experiences in Union City, the Menendez stronghold where the musician used to live. Part of that "urban landscape," he says, included what he calls "Column A" (Menendez and the Hudson County Democratic Organization). Column A apparently refers to posters of Menendez plastering the neighborhood.
"At times, Palisade Avenue looked like those depictions of third-world nations where the face of the Commandant is plastered across every billboard," McCall says. "You'd wake up one morning and the night squads would have painted the sidewalks red with Column A posters: on lampposts, car windshields, in every other window."
It's difficult at first as you're hit by the rambling lyrics to figure out whether the artist, who says he has never met Menendez, actually likes his former Congressman. But then these lyrics stand out: "Robert Menendez redeems us all every lonely public servant waiting for the call roar of the engines those brakes and calipers a little too tight with the waterfront developers."
McCall explained to HOH that the song isn't as much about Menendez the politician as it is about the "Menendez phenomenon as a manifestation of my neighborhood's will to make its voice heard." McCall says most of the song is "extremely positive and optimistic, just like Union City."
Ain't that cute?
July 12, 2004
What the hell is going on down at the Sandbar? This nightclub, all the way at the southern end of Marin (but still a five minute walk from my house), has been in the papers twice over the last week, and not for civic commendations.
You have to cross the light rail tracks to get there, and so far, I haven't bothered. But judging from these articles, and the Honka Monka-looking promo material they send around, I think the club attracts a Latin crowd. Also, the nature of the complaints -- the dreaded "quality of life" issues -- makes me think that neighborhood asasociations are getting snarky. Only a cove separates the club from the condo complexes along the Mooris and Essex pier. This looks like a case of cultural conflict in action. I'm going to have to pay the Sandbar a visit.
July 11, 2004
Nine o'clock in the morning, and it's hot already. I have about ten thousand deadlines today, but my usually-dysfunctional caller I.D. says that's Shandor Hassan on the phone. Shandor called on Thursday night, informing me that Harold Seide, the lawyer for New Gold Equities, has decided to take various neighborhood organizations -- including ProArts and the 111 Tenants Association -- to court. They're trying to get an injunction to stop the warehouse district from achieving landmark status. Or so we think. Details are sketchy. We don't even know where the new courthouse is. Regardless, it seems like it's important to make a show of force.
Only this morning, Shandor is telling me there's been a change of plans. Several members of the tenants council -- including Nicola Stemmer and Nancy Wells -- are making the trip up to the courthouse. But the majority of the tenants have decided to pay a call on the new Mayor. Shandor is inviting me and a few other people down to the Mayor's office. Well, what the hell, I can't turn that down.
This will be my third trip to City Hall in four days. The organizers of the Jersey City Studio Tour have asked me to help out, and that's meant a couple of trips to the Office of Cultural Affairs. That's in the basement of the building, and if my trip to the Planning Center put me in mind of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, this one is even more reminiscent: a little alleyway of a workspace, papers stacked all over. Cutural Affairs liaison Greg Brickey assures me they'll be moving up to the top floor soon. A good omen for the arts?
We could use one. All tenants at 111 First Street have received notices to quit from New Gold Equities. This doesn't mean all that much -- they'd have to win a court case to evict the artists -- but it's yet another affront to the community. The steady drip of bad news is wearing on the patience of the occupants. Most notably, Charles Chamot, proprietor of the gorgeous Chamot Gallery on the fourth floor, finally reached his breaking point. He packed up his stuff and relocated to Greenville. Now there's a padlock on the door of the most prominent gallery at 111.
So frustration is evident. But for now, the rank and file of the Tenants Association is holding fast. And here they are -- assembled in a City Hall antechamber, talking strategy, saying hi, waking up.
We're ushered into a conference room. The artists take seats around a long, oval table. On the far wall, there's an aerial map of Jersey City. Artist Erdir Zat stands by the photo, scanning the waterfront, looking for the shot of 111. His face lights up when he finds it. He turns to me with a big smile, his index finger resting on the warehouse roof.
Mayor Smith bustles into the office. He's smiling, but anybody could tell he's pissed off. He didn't know this meeting was happening. My open door policy is Tuesday, he says, what makes you guys come in here before I've even had my morning coffee? Oh, shit, this very large man is miffed at us. Henry Sanchez, who's had some experience dealing with angry politicians, takes the lead for the group. This is an emergency meeting, he tells Mayor Smith, and Reverend Hoffman told us to come to this office.
L. Harvey Smith turns to an aide, and asks him to summon the Reverend. Well, damn, I recognize that aide: of all things, he came to see me play at Maxwell's last week. Jeffrey Jotz, who used to work right here in City Hall, brought him along to the show. That's David Donnelly, the son of councilwoman Mary Donnelly. Under the lights of Maxwell's, I was the attraction: we had a sold-out house, and there's a certain authority that goes along with playing a big show. Here, under the incandescent light of City Hall, he's in charge of this meeting. It's a smaller county than you'd think. The guy you are rocking one night might have the destiny of your city in his hands the next day. Remember that, I tell myself, when I'm tempted to misbehave onstage.
Hoffman arrives. He's tall and elegant, but looks impassive -- I'm trying to remember if I recognize him from a Cunningham event. Mayor Smith squares up and tells the Reverend to "stand in the corner and help him bear this". Gulp.
In Dungeons & Dragons, the available charisma-based social skills are Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate. L. Harvey Smith specializes in Intimidate. He sits squarely in his chair, glowers, talks bluntly, and looks straight at his addressee, an implicit challenge in his eyes. He's a former basketball player, I have been told, and he's got under-the-boards tenacity. I don't know for sure, but I am guessing his was not a finesse game. Our new mayor is more Charles Oakley than Ray Allen.
Smith turns to Henry Sanchez. I can tell Henry is nervous, but he knows the drill. He also knows the aide -- personally -- and that helps. We're here, he says, to see whether or not the community can work with the city to help shape the district, rather than a developer and owner. Sanchez tells the Mayor about Mr. Seide's move to block the Powerhouse District in court. This is a big indicator, says Henry, that the owner is not interested in working with the Tenants Association.
The Mayor's inclination is to cut through the bluster. He's not being rude, just confrontationally direct. How are you guys going to get the building?, he wants to know. Are you guys going to set up a co-op? He's been busy fighting for political survival, he's a little behind on the goings-on at Washington & First. Everybody in the room is worried about starting the story, and its accompanying argument, from page one. Hey, Mr. Mayor, read my website and catch up.
Bill Rodwell speaks up. He reminds the Mayor that New Gold has rejected the overtures of the Tenants Association. Henry talks a little about the court date, and expresses his wish that some of the Cunningham policies won't be extended into this new administration. We are looking for the city to create the right kind of conditions and environment for the arts district to take hold. Smith listens intently to everybody, and then loudly reminds the group that he was one of the original supporters of WALDO. He still sounds angry, but it also seems like he's behind us.
Yes, it definitely sounds like he's behind us. He wants to resolve the situation; he wants a meeting with the Goldman group. We should stop this injunction and come to terms with Lloyd Goldman. But how, Mr. Mayor? Well, I can't just go charging in and do something because one group wants to do it, he tells us. I'm not a lawyer, we need to get our attorneys here.
Is he creative-problem-solving with us here, or is he placating us? It's hard to tell, but I'm guessing it's the former. Plunkitt Of Tammany Hall, still for my money the best book ever written on American electoral politics, teaches us to forget about persuasion or the power of the pen -- the only way to get civic leaders to pay attention to you is to show them that you command votes. Well, we've got thirty people here, and in the fractious political landscape of Hudson County, that's not chump change. Smith is looking to put together his own crew: he summons planning director Bob Cotter and Charles Odei, the chairman of the rent board. This back room is getting mighty crowded. It's not exactly smoke-filled, but I'm sure Plunkitt would approve of our tactics anyway.
Cotter joins us on the speakerphone. Smith entreats him to jump-start the arts district, and put together a plan so he can "stop dribbling". Hey, basketball metaphors are just fine with me; beats legalese any day. Elizabeth Onorato reminds the Mayor of the rent hike issue, and Odei helps out a little. Initial reticence has faded away; we're all chipping in, now. One excited artist reminds Smith that should he back the district, he can count on the support of the arts community. Well… right. Henry Sanchez reiterates his desire to see an end to Cunningham's stalling tactics, but immediately recognizes that he may have gilded the lily. For the first time, the Mayor looks openly angry. He tells Henry to stop repeating himself, and that there's no carryover from one administration to the next. We are strenuously reminded that Mayor Smith is on the record supporting WALDO, and that he is 6'6", 260 pounds, and thus cannot hide. The subtext is apparent, too: don't try to push me around, I am bigger than you are. "I supported the WALDO district and voted for it.", Smith reminds us. "You may not know that. You know it now." Yes, Mr. Mayor, now I do.
Satisfied that he's made himself clear, the mayor turns the meeting over to Donnelly, Odei, and Cotter. As L. Harvey Smith leaves the conference room it strikes me that behind the bluster, the big man must have been impressed by our solidarity. He's facing a re-election fight that promises to be long, bruising, and above all, close. The arts lobby in Jersey City isn't a weak sister -- it's a powerful and deep voting bloc, organized by people like Bill Rodwell and Kathryn Klanderman. If Mayor Smith can establish himself as the champion of the arts district, he can probably pencil in the votes of a huge contingent of politicized aesthetes. If he takes the side of New Gold, well, no votes are tumbling out of that piñata.
The artists apologize to Reverend Hoffman for getting him in hot water with the Mayor. He demurs. He is sixty years old and his children are grown, he tells us, he can afford a little independence. The right thing to do is always the right thing to do. My God, what a Reverend this guy is. Still, we owe him a pretty big thanks for making this happen.
Bob Cotter takes the floor. He is tall, hawkish, businesslike. Everything I've heard about him has been positive: Cotter's predecessor, Mark Munley, represented to many the ineffectual side of the Cunningham Administration, and nobody here was sad to see him go, or to see Cotter get his job. He's much drier and more reserved than Mayor Smith is, but in his actuarial way, he's every bit as blunt. How are we going to acquire the building? We talk prices, tax abatements, legislation. Cotter explains (to me, at least) why Seide and New Gold are fighting the preservationists so ferociously: the city can buy time and stall development on a private building for a little while, but eventually, you run out of asbestos checks and code violations. But once a building is landmarked, the owner has to show it's economically impossible to sustain in order to get a permit to tear it down, or to alter it.
The artists leave the meeting feeling good. Since the burst of euphoria after the Mayday festival, it has sometimes felt like 111 has suffered setback after setback. The idea that the Mayor and his chief planner are on the side of the tenants is enervating. Yet somehow I'm a bit less sanguine. The discussed transfer suggested by the city and the tenants committee -- an exchange of lots and a plan to allow Lloyd Goldman to develop 110 First -- seems extremely complex, fraught with possible legal challenges, and riddled with contingency. But with the Mayor and the current administration facing challenges at every turn, it would nonetheless behoove the politicos to make sure the local artists are solidly in support of City Hall. The current state of political uncertainty might turn out to be exactly the climate Henry Sanchez wanted.
On Edward Fausty
I first encountered Ed Fausty's photographs at the Jersey City Museum. This wasn't a formal exhibition, though -- it was a slide presentation hosted by the institution, an opportunity for local artists to project their work on a screen, field questions, and make a few statements about intentions. That night, I saw many representations of Jersey City and the built urban environment: some were vexed, some friendly, some of the images felt violent, others personal and placid. All felt ideologically charged. Yet artist after artist -- Ed included -- took the podium and insisted that there was no political motivation for the displayed work.
You might think this disingenuous; something of a front. I did. Jersey City, Hudson County, and urban areas in general are in the grip of massive controversies over the direction of development, preservation, affordable housing. Communities stagger around under the burden of competing claims. Beyond that, Fausty takes as his subject the sprawling, majestic 111 First Street Arts Center building in which he works: a building threatened with destruction by forced redevelopment. The studios and old industrial roofscapes he photographs here are in peril -- should the landlord get his way, they'll be replaced by condominium towers. How could local artists -- chroniclers of the heart, really -- resist the temptation to make an intervention?
The photos Fausty projected on the museum screen elicited in me an immediate emotional response. I felt they vested in these bricks and walls a sort of animation; a life, borrowed from the artists who work at 111 First. His interiors pulsed with activity and vitality, and his exterior shots were stark, gorgeous, presenting the old industrial building as a rough-cut jewel amidst the cubic zirconia of the new towers. The pictures elicited in me an intense sympathy both with those involved in the struggle to save 111 First Street from the wrecking ball, and also with the artists, threatened with displacement.
But you could also say I was already inclined in that direction. Ed Fausty might. It's hard to know for sure. We can know the way Fausty describes his process -- he moves from place to place with his camera, attempting to catch idiosyncrasies, structural imbalances, breaks in rhythm. He's looking for cracks in the façade, odd arrangements of elements, evidence of human frailty and ingenuity inscribed on work-surfaces, the fingerprint of the creator in the dust of construction. He doesn't have to be a propagandist, or an overt ideologue. His heart tugs him it the direction of intense sympathy with his inanimate subject-matter, and his camera and printer does the rest. The photographs, awash with compassion, sit in wait for those willing to investigate these radiant corridors.
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I left the Museum with new eyes. Yet as I would learn during Mayday -- the 111 First event when artists threw open their studio doors to the public -- slides don't do justice to Ed Fausty's work. Fausty's prints are much larger and richer than what the slides could convey, but there's also a textural complexity to his images that defies flat presentation. He prints his images on large sheets of coarse, thick paper, bestowing upon them a dimensionality and softness that film reproduction fails to convey.
I think of Ed Fausty as an indiepop photographer. His work has many of the same virtues of the d.i.y. bands I love so much; the sonic pioneers working to capture fragile moments at the intersections of lives in transition. Fausty's work purrs with a tone similarly mournful. Edges are softened, but contrasts are stark. Detail is rich, the colors are pastel; muted, but somehow vibrant. He's a storyteller. He doesn't worry too much about making composition mistakes or being too polished. He is looking for an emotional response more complicated than catharsis.
He also lets the setting tell the stories. Characters are implied, but are absent in these frames. The photographs are intentionally depopulated, but there's evidence of human life throughout; if an object catches your eye upon casual inspection, chances are, it bears fingerprints of recent use. While actual bodies are absent here, replicas and object-substitutes take their place. The torn and broken figures in the sculptures, the falling angel cut-out on the posterboard in the Sullivan/Landes studio, the blue inkjet-stained footsteps of fellow artist Sandy DeSando, the "eyeballs" in the community gallery: all capture the body folded into industrial spaces, man-made frames.
Elsewhere, bodies make their imprints on brick-and-concrete spaces, and the bricks and concrete return the gesture. Disused vestiges -- details, really -- -- within the building awake and sing with a quiet vitality. A pipe on the rooftop becomes a plaintive questioner, a work fan stands peevishly accusatory, a rocking chair leans into the light like a tired veteran actor taking a final bow. It's cartoonish -- and the I discern influence of popular animators on Fausty's trained eye -- but this is no Disney scene, no cups and saucers dancing in freewheeling production numbers. Fausty's objects convey humility, difficulty, modesty, an upward struggle against the fearsome effects of gravity. Like the artists who work in this environment, they squat, rooted, defying the viewer to understand their purpose and functionality. The dignity of perseverance justifies their existence. 111 First Street is presented as one gigantic work of communal art, a collaboration not merely between animate artists, but also between living humans and inanimate matter. If it becomes tough to for us to tell where the former stops and the latter begins, well, perhaps we're beginning to understand.
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The photographs present in this collection can be divided along several axes, but the most meaningful is also the most apparent. Roughly half of the images preserve (possibly for the historical record) the interiors of studios belonging to Fausty's neighbor-artists. These are daytime shots, mostly; they're flooded with natural illumination. The light rushes like liquid through man-made channels, rivulets, cracks in the wall and spaces between hanging papers. The artwork creates pathways for the light to travel -- sometimes tentatively, sometimes boldly, assisted by these human agents but moving according to its own unfathomable compass.
When the interior shots are blurry, or fuzzed out, it's because of an outpouring of backlight. Fausty likes his light source to be behind the image. He also likes to show you that his light source is behind the image. In many of these photographs, Fausty shoots directly toward a window, light streaming at the lens. It's defiant, and he wants you to know it -- he wants to acknowledge the convention, and then disregard it.
The habitations and workplaces illuminated by this inrush of raw daylight are unconventional, chaotic, friendly, singular. They bear the stamp of individual lives spent in the pursuit of the aesthetic; and the stand as testament to the considerable exertion put toward that end. Planks of wood, screws, and innumerable tools line the walls of the Sullivan/Landes studio; Vadim Stain's bench becomes a terrain of exploration and discovery. Yet the evidence of artistic labor never looks ostentatious -- rather, the metal, glass, and paint appears to grow from the walls organically, like a thicket of uncultivated flora. This is artistry as unglamorous, workaday expressions of imagination and inspiration, set to the varying tempo of the internal pendulum.
To drive the point home, Fausty presents faux-timepieces -- circular objects mounted on studio walls that appear, at first blush, to be clocks. 111 First Street was a factory, and the interiors still suggest some of the expected industriousness and punctuality of assembly-line production -- we expect to see punch-clocks here, disciplining these craftspeople. Artists, Fausty seems to suggest, respect and echo the diligence, but always at their own pace. That palette oozing over with grey paint, that American Indian dial, that fan, this roll of tape, that undefined round object; they all carry the significance of the workroom clock. Each is individual, suited to the specific time demands and internal rhythms of the space. If the artists at 111 First are each authors of their own time, their relationships to temporality are made no less serious by their unconventionality.
Nor does the strangeness, the personal and singular feel of these interiors, belie the industriousness of the work going on there. Many of the photographs focus attention on created objects -- intricate, balanced, machinelike fabrications of wood and metal. The care and love that went into their assembly is manifest. The utility of the objects is not. Yet Fausty wants to push past utility to get at something deeper and more profound. We don't know what purpose is meant to be served by the objects, but it's impossible to deny their strange beauty, or the stamp of human intelligence that they carry. We're compelled to understand the value in the craft itself, in the process of creation; if we can't know if these are completed sculptures, accidents, frameworks, or elaborate tools for the manufacture of other artworks, we can begin to understand the arbitrariness of these divisions. We can stop worrying about classification, and begin to notice that which is ennobling and fascinating in all crafted objects -- something in wide excess of purpose.
Ultimately, it's unclear whether the utility of these objects is apparent to the artists who made them, and in whose studios they squat territorially or stand like sentries. What's apparent is that these are ideas; the product of artists' imaginative work, carriers of impressions, and the fruit of ceaseless questioning, signposts along the artists' quest. If spaces and internal landscapes can be seen as idea-maps of the brains of their authors, it's possible to view Fausty's studio shots as glimpses into the cluttered, kinetic, but always industrious minds of the 111 artists. The luminous windows become eyes upon the glowing world, and the imaginary wall-clocks function as a kind of aesthetic pituitary gland, calibrating changes and regulating aesthetic growth.
But while that reading is more than possible, it seems too solipsistic and abstract for Fausty -- a photographer so firmly tethered to nuts-and-bolts realities of urban living that his work often prominently features nuts and bolts. While he is intrigued by the internal experience of his neighbor artists, interiority isn't an obsession for him. Rather, he is interested in examining the alchemy that results when personalities encounter objects -- when imaginations are fitted into a workspace. What does it mean to inhabit a room? What happens to a place when it encounters an imagination? What sort of imprint does a human life leave on bricks and mortar, on drywall and steel girders, on exhaust towers and industrial rooftops? What is that spirit that is imparted to these places? What invisible fingerprints make these depopulated studios seem so animate? What is the spirit that shocks this ancient building to life?
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To answer this question, the photographer pulls back for a wider view. From the rooftop of 111 First Street, Fausty captures a town in transformation, and meditates upon the place of warehouse structures in a post-industrial cityscape. Fausty's factories stretch laterally, in stillness beneath foggy-night skies, as new construction throws a cage of light over the sleeping district. A ghostly illumination radiates from the earth even as the skies are impassive and stone-faced; in this inverted world, all illumination emerges from a generator beneath street-level. Are there fissures in the earth, from which a magma glow streams; does this industrial section rest on a volcano?
Fausty's stunning rooftop shots manage to appear simultaneously otherworldly and terrestrial; at once seemingly in touch with an eerie parallel reality and grounded in the specific post-industrial culture of urban New Jersey. Fausty never lets you forget you're in Jersey City, but the Jersey City he presents isn't the one you're used to. It's larger, wider, more fraught with possibility, quiet, foreboding, occasionally sinister, stretching roots deep into this toxic earth, and drawing force and power from that history. If these industrial structures are making a last stand, they're doing so with reserves on energy and a formidable stubbornness.
The electrified framework of the new buildings -- rhythmic, orderly, empty -- contrasts with the washed-out solidity of 111 First Street. In some of Fausty's shots, the rooftop looks like a plowed and furrowed field; in others, a desolate lunar landscape. Nonetheless, evidence of habitation pervades the frames: a chair here, a ladder there, a bag of charcoal briquettes, stars stenciled roughly on a brick obelisk. Humans have been up here, and recently. They've scrawled their own words on the walls -- not those of the state-sanctioned "God Bless America" sign glittering surreally on the towers in the background, but personal, private statements, inscribed beyond the reach of authority.
Yet these buildings cannot elude the wrecking ball, or escape the shadow of the cranes and pile-drivers. They sleep warily, conscious of their fragility and impermanence. In "Warren's Lair", Fausty's best known photograph, the old buildings of the warehouse district are awe-inspiring, but intricate and delicate as well. The elevators and ladder-staircases to unimaginable reaches, the smokestacks of the Powerhouse reaching into the grey sky like pleading arms, the skylight gleaming like a green capstone: these architectural elements feel as precious as they are endangered. Tremendous ornamentation is evident on the disused façade of the Powerhouse. Could we really knock down something that so much work, so much specific human imagination, went into constructing? Are lives, and thoughts -- our collective artistry -- really so expendable?
Fausty's photographs shower compassion upon every strange contraption and disused industrial element visible from the rooftop. Every detail is captured and preserved with immense care. Again, utility is transcended, and artistry is reinforced: it's impossible to know the purpose of these weird pipes and latticeworks, these drains and spires. Fausty shows us every screw and every bolt, anyway. Someone turned those screws; someone else imagined this machine. There is dignity in that intellectual exertion. If its fate is to meet the blunt side of the hammer, Fausty has been here to salvage its image, and to preserve some of that effort, that humanizing endeavor.
The 111 First Street factory is a focus of such endeavor, and in these photographs, its tale is told in a powerful visual language that acknowledges and celebrates its unruliness, its defiance of conformity. Unapologetically, Fausty shows us a wall of studio windows shot from the outside: some are boarded up, some inhabited. What recommends the wall to Fausty -- and what ought to recommend it to all of us -- is that no two fenestrations are the same. Each individual window has its own unique character. These differences happened through some untold combination of chance and design; and, as with the studios within, every happenstance is its own story. Fausty is here to document those differences, those unique qualities, these changes; to respect the objects and the individual lives they represent. Each window conveys a function, a life, a particular style. This building is an amalgam of these styles; yet it's also a unit, a solid front, a collective of projects. Overhead, a loop made of wire swings around in a dizzy circle like cartoon energy. It defies gravity, it is "the force"; it circles furiously, chasing its own tail, the metaphoric engine of creation, change, pure animation.
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In the months since Ed Fausty's slide exhibition at the Jersey City Museum, the controversy over the fate of the Arts Center at 111 First Street has deepened. Neighborhood activists, artists, developers, architects, politicians -- all have queued up to register complaints, opinions, advice. Most of those who have spent the time necessary to engage with the issue have taken the side of the tenants, arguing with force that the building is a vital Jersey City resource and that its closure would make our town a far more aesthetically impoverished place. I've been one of those voices. We've written letters to the editor, posted on websites, appealed to the City Council, and sharpened our positions in the heat of community meetings.
And yet I think that nobody has made the case for the preservation of the building -- and the projects within it -- quite as articulately and effectively as Ed Fausty has. In his immensely empathetic photographs, Fausty successfully makes an emotional appeal on behalf of an inanimate structure. By vesting so much life in these warehouses, Fausty insures that their loss will be felt acutely, and with the sympathetic pain that we'd experience if we'd witnessed the death of an animate creature. It's impossible to imagine anybody engaging with Fausty's pictures, and coming away without understanding the preciousness and singularity of 111 First Street.
This photographer may, in fact, have not set out to make an ideological statement. But every proclivity in his nature drew him to represent his surroundings with the zeal of a preservationist, the emotional attachment of a true Jersey patriot, and intellectual clarity of a critic. Edward Fausty's work stands as one of the most powerful pieces of true political art that I've seen in Hudson County. We're better for it. And this gentle but insistent voice is one to follow.
There is nothing in this world more bitter than love in the long days of June.
Mayfly, looking up when skies are blue.
April marches on.
February, you're my little Valentine.
January made me shiver with every paper they'd deliver.
A long December, but there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.
It's hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain.
