During the seven years that I lived on an old fishing boat a Liberty Harbor Marina, I soon became attached to the sunken pilings and skeletal remains of abandoned wooden boats, their mastodon ribs jutting up from the yards where they’d been laid to rest. I loved the cobblestone street that leads into Liberty State Park and the ghostly aura of the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal.
In the original Harbor Casino, a waterfront dive that has since been demolished to make room for condos, old timers told of the jerry-rigged shacks at the Greene Street Boat Club where you could pay a member a few cents to row you across the “creek.”
The Japanese have a term for the beauty of imperfection and decay-wabi sabi. The phrase not only embodies nostalgia for the past but acceptance of change-the glass-and-steel ferry terminal at Paulus Hook is as arresting as the rough-hewn pier crumbling nearby.
To me, that contradiction is the essence of this lively, chaotic, authentic, salt-of-the-earth city that we all call home-and it’s what lends a now-or-never urgency to its shifting contours. With that in mind, we’re inaugurating a “Parting Shot” photo feature. See below for details
Also in this issue, we continue our “Beyond the Boom” series, with JCM contributor and Jersey City native Ricardo Kaulessar bringing his insights to the incredibly important issue of our public parks.
The theme of the old and the new is continued in the “Saga of the Golden Cicada,” a feature about a little bar struggling to survive amid encroaching development. And in “Waiters Shed Their Aprons,” we talk to waiters and bartenders about their artistic pursuits when they’re not on the job.
In the end, cities are not about property but about people, which brings us to you-loyal JCM readers as well as newcomers to our ever-evolving community. Check out our regular departments. Let us know what services we can provide and what stories are waiting to be told.
Nothing is more important to us-than you.
“Parting Shot” photo feature
E-mail us (jcmag@hudsonreporter.com) your best digital image of something vintage Jersey City that’s on its way to oblivion. Judged on both content and quality, the winning images will be published in our pages.
Photos must be 300 DPI, and the image size must be 1500 x 995 or higher. Files larger than 5MB must be zipped. Be sure to write “Parting Shot” in the subject line. Snail mailers please send your photos to: “Parting Shot,” Jersey City Magazine, 1400 Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030.