Dear Editor:
Call me Scrooge, but the fun of the Cake Boss has long since gone stale. The lines at Carlo’s Bakery in Hoboken are downright annoying, constant, every growing, and need to be addressed. The lines begin forming at 6:30 a.m. and continue to grow all day long, sometimes stretching down to the former Barnes & Noble. The cannoli hunters take up most of the sidewalk on Washington St., block the intersections on Newark St., as well as take over the sidewalks that intersect with Court St.
It’s madness on Sunday morning when I’m just trying to get a bagel and some coffee and I’ve got to contend with the reality TV groupies. In addition to the sidewalk line up, the SUV driving dads are a real menace as they are blindly zooming around the couple of blocks nearby looking for a parking spot on the street that will accommodate their monster sized suburban vehicles. They are so frantic to get in line, so as not to miss a glimpse of one of Buddy’s cousins, that they have no time to yield to pedestrians in cross walks, completely ignore no turn on red signs and are generally driving around fast and furious in a panic while on the phone the whole time to those in line.
Business owners are furious about the daily chaos, but they won’t say anything for fear of coming across as anti-another business owner or complete curmudgeons. I do not believe it is my or any citizen’s responsibility on a daily basis to call City Hall or the police department to have this issue dealt with, nor is it reasonable for Hoboken to bear any of the costs to deal with Buddy’s golden “opportunity.”
Carlo’s Bakery is using our sidewalks and is creating a menace and they need to solve this problem, at their expense or the city should simple disperse the crowds that form. Other businesses that want to use our sidewalks and streets are charged a fee, why not Buddy? Bar owners who have crowds waiting to get into their establishments use rope lines to control the crowds, why not here? How about Buddy putting in a public bathroom to keep his fans out of every store on the surrounding blocks looking for a bathroom? If they don’t find one, the next best alternative is frequently relieving themselves somewhere on Court St. or, as I’ve seen numerous times, the Mom with the little boy peeing behind the car door.
Anonymous