Lipstick on a pig

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

We live in a brave new world – and if I can mix my metaphors – one filled with doublespeak.

In particular the concept of sharing, which is not sharing at all, but taking, and where the concept of “greed is good” seems to continue to benefit the wealthy over everybody else.

We get a lot of talk about entitlements for the poor and working class, but hear very little about how entitled the most affluent feel when it comes to following rules.

In my city, we have abated projects that cater to the rich, while saddling the cost of schools and county on the backs of more traditional home owners. This appears to be a kind of urban renewal, in which traditional owners eventually get driven out by higher and higher taxes, which in turn allows their properties to be redeveloped – if not into insanely high residential towers, then instead into two family homes that are really three or more. Still worse is the fact that what replaces the idea of The American Dream of home ownership is a new wave of rentals. In truth, homeownership has been a dinosaur since the Reagan Era, when those who own homes became sitting ducks for local taxes.

Of course, new comers to the city have an argument that they are taxed at a significantly higher assessed value than residents who have lived in the city for decades. But this is something of a false argument since new residents knew what the cost of taxes would be coming in and over the long run have invested much less to the tax base than those living in the city for decades.

The latest schemes involve a pack of whacko drivers scooting around the city pretending to be taxi cabs, only they are not regulated by anybody, and so we live with a pointlessly ineffective government who cannot control anything that happens with these vehicles until they have done whatever evil they have done.

This is kind of underground economy, selling services the way drug dealers do, providing ways of getting around laws that have not yet caught up with technology. This greed is called sharing, when in fact drivers – who believe they are getting a good deal – are exploited in order to provide services to an elite too indignant to wait for traditional cab services. Instead of providing apps for cabs, the city throws up its hands and sighs, saying it can do nothing.

The latest scheme most benefits the wealthiest in our city. Properties with the most elite occupants are suddenly becoming hotels, sponsored by some national organization that does not honor zoning laws, and while fully taxed, benefits those who need the wealth the least, people who have already established themselves and seek to eek out a bit more capital on their residential investments. Many of these are real estate companies or developers, who are doing business in the pretense of offering underground service. This is not sharing in the way hippie communes meant it.

This concept of sharing is nearly atrocious as abatements in steering even more wealth to the rich, if not quite as unfair as the tax structure associated with capital gains – where people who actually do hard work to make their money must pay a higher rate than those who make their money by investment.

The concept for the city is that somehow some of this new found wealth will trickle down to other less fortunate people such as local business. Trickle down didn’t work under Ronald Reagan because wealth tends to horde wealth, and while tourists that use these facilities might spend locally, it won’t be in my hometown, it’ll be across the river in NYC. We of course are trying to mirror New York, but as President Obama once pointed out in another context, it’s like lipstick on a pig.

In the end, all we are really seeing in one more aspect of wealth distribution in which the wealthy benefit most.

This concept of sharing might be best compared to the Soviet model of socialism: those on top do best, the rest have to suffer whatever inconveniences the system imposes.

That wedding long ago

Monday, October 12, 2015

The boardwalk is a haven for weddings.

This day a few days after John Lennon’s 75th birthday is no different – although it took one complete stroll around Asbury Park and nearby Ocean Grove before I found it.

The weddings vary, from simple to ostentatious, sometimes with tiny tots in suits and ties as ring bearers, sometimes not.

The ring bearers when they do take part are usually dressed up, and uncomfortable, a fact that appears to make them misbehave. One kid last year -- part of a photo shoot on the beach -- shed his shoes and appeared to be heading towards the ocean tiny tuxedo and all when they corralled him.

These scenes and others remind me of the day when I was that small and my aunt, Alice, got married.

I was about seven at the time, and extremely jealous of Big Pete, who was to become my uncle.

Alice had filled in as my mother, when my mother was committed to Graystone – the now demolished mental institution in Morristown.

Alice took the job seriously, singing songs to me, reading stories to me, making me feel loved when I already felt abandoned.

Years later, after Alice’s untimely death at 41, Big Pete told the story of his first official date with Alice – how he first had to run the gauntlet of Alice’s very large brothers, only to discover that she was bringing me along on the date.

I didn’t serve as ring bearer the way these poor kids did in Asbury Park, but I was given the royal treatment at that wedding long ago, dressed up, and shown off, as if I really was Alice’s child.

For the family, this was one of the most significant events, the marriage of my grandfather’s youngest daughter, a woman that was his favorite, and perhaps the favorite of the entire family, all of whom seemed to love her as much as I did. I know her brother, Ritchie (who I later cared for when booze drove him over the edge – he never recovered from Alice’s death) celebrated her wedding as if it was his own. No two siblings were ever so close as those two were, and during her life, Alice managed to save Ritchie from himself, just as she saved me.

I guess it seems strange to think of ancient history while strolling Asbury Park, but I did, feeling the same sadness and joy as I did then, seeing something similar in the faces of the tiny tots who had been vested the duty to serve up the ring, symbol of future happiness for these couples.

Later, while seated on one of the benches on the boardwalk near the Stone Pony, I heard some of the sounds from another wedding (or perhaps it was the same) coming out from one of the seaside eateries, voices of hope, and joy, and though I could not see the bride and groom going through the rituals of a reception, I envisioned Alice, beautiful Alice, from that day when my whole world changed, and she went on to start a family of her own.

I cried that day as a young boy nearly as much as I did the day she died years later, sensing that things could not be the same.

And yet, hearing the joy in the voices of this Asbury Park wedding, somehow old wounds seemed to heal, and mingling in with the sound check from the Stone Pony’s outdoor act, the silly reception hall music, and the crash of waves on the beach, I was seven again, and no longer crying.

 

Alice & Big Pete

Lennon-aid

Sunday, October 11, 2015

I like routine.

It saves me from having to think about stupid stuff.

So I get Chinese food on Friday, do my shopping on Saturday, and take a trip to Bubbles on Kennedy Boulevard on Sunday to do laundry (which an occasional trip to Secaucus if the JKF store doesn’t have The Times).

I used to go to breakfast at the Coach House on Saturday where I could look over the published copy of my newspaper and ponder the universal meaning of life.

Now I just stop in there for a cup of coffee to go before crossing the street to the Salvation Army where I search for DVDs to replace the VHS tapes I watch while exercising.

This week, I had a bunch of stuff to donate, especially a bunch of books – many of which I have acquired for my Kindle. I also sorted through my summer clothing as I changed for winter wear, and found some things are too old or ragged, or even too large for me to wear.

They had a book table out on the sidewalk with piles of interesting volumes that drew my eye even as I was dumping books inside. Between trips, I noticed the pile at grown and was attracted to several volumes I had not seen during my previous trip, volumes that seem to broach subject areas – such as history of New Jersey and poetry – that I’m always looking for.

I stopped and perused several of these until I realized that they were some of the same books I had just dropped off. The guy inside was bringing them out as fast as I could bring them in.

At least, I know my own tastes.

From there, I normally journey to the Shop Rite in North Bergen – going to the Big Lots store first, the dollar store and then the food store.

But half way down Paterson Plank Road traffic came to a halt. The road was closed and I was directed back up onto Kennedy Boulevard where more streets were closed, and traffic looked like it does before a major holiday.

I decided it was easier to go home and wait out the quagmire in the comfort of my own home – I’ve decided to learn all the songs of The Beatles’ first album now that I have an electric guitar again.

I guess I’m caught up with John Lennon again. He would have been 75.

It’s called making lemonade when life gives you lemons. Or in my case, making “Lennon-aid.”

It’s inevitable.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

I knew with the threat of rain I was taking a chance walking into Hoboken yesterday.

But this had been a week from hell, where between finishing the debate video and getting my stories done, I had barely seen outdoors except driving from here to there.

I needed the air and to stretch my limbs and the walk from my house on the Western Slope of Jersey City to 14th Street in Hoboken did just that.

A few drops wet my brow during the walk in. But during the day, rain swept over Washington Street, making even my usual mid-day coffee ritual somewhat moist.

I lingered a little too long in the office, finishing up a few small items before the long weekend. This allowed seriously dark clouds to sweep over the city, and my journey up the viaduct from Hoboken, through Union City, proved more than a little challenging. The rain hit just as I got to the metal footbridge over the viaduct into the Union City portion of Washington Park.

So did the lightning, a terrifying matter since being in a metal cage (essentially) at an extremely high elevation seemed like a bad idea.

When I got to the other side, the deluge hit, and the best cover I could find for the moment was behind a large tree, whose trunk blocked out some of the torrential rain being blown towards me.

But I still got soaked, even putting my denim jacket over my head.

A woman jogger came passed me in a hurry. But until I saw her circle around again, I thought she was rushing for better cover. Soaked as she was in her green jogging suit, she seemed unabashed by the slash of rain and the claps of thunder.

Still I waited, rain dripping off the tip of my nose.

When the down pour slackened slightly, I decided to continue the walk, even though I was barely half way home.

As I exited the park, I saw the bus shelters, and realized I might have avoided some of the worst of the storm had I continued in the first place. The one on my side of Palisades Avenue was stuffed with two bicyclists and some young woman standing on the seat so as to not get dripped on. This left very little room for anyone else. But the shelter across the street only had one person in it. So I went and took cover there.

She was pleasant black woman from Hoboken, Born and raised there, she said, with a brief trip to Puerto Rico. She had been shopping on Bergen Line Avenue, got caught up in the storm when trying to change buses.

A number of buses passed but none were going to Hoboken.

She said her “sweetie” drove a tractor trailer truck up and down the east coast, getting paid well enough for them to continue to live in Hoboken. But she said she was being pushed out by the excessive rich people, the yuppies. Rents were going through the roof. Section 8 housing was being turned into market rate properties to accommodate. Businesses were no longer interested in selling to the poor when they had walking wallets stumbling around willing to pay high prices for everything.

She said she didn’t like the current mayor because the current mayor didn’t seem to represent anybody by the rich people, and could care less about people being forced out of town.

“We’ll hold on as long as we can,” she said. “But eventually we’ll move to Florida. I have family there.”

At this point, the rain has slackened enough for me to start walking again, and with my wet denim jacket over my head, I made my way towards the safety of the Western Slope, wondering if and when people like me will be forced out of Jersey City the way people like this person were from Hoboken.

It’s inevitable.

Pay your parking meters

Friday, October 09, 2015

Politics is described as “an organized” activity, a group of people gathering behind a common cause to achieve power.

This week proved the long-standing assumption that people seeking power often compromise their own beliefs, abandoning principle in order to advance their personal agenda.

On national level, political wizards operate behind the curtains to develop schemes that will lure naïve people into supporting questionable schemes, shaping myths out of papier-mâché so that masses of people will flock to the ballot box on their behalf.

This is no less true locally. Reformers wave flags that draw groups of well-meaning people to their cause, and then when achieving power, cease all pretense at being reformers.

They become the very thing they rallied against, often leaving the landscape littered with the remains of those who once championed their causes.

This is a lesson learned once more this week, leaving a host of disillusioned people to wonder whose cause to rally for, or to abandon the whole field – seeing politics as simply too ruthless and corrupt for ordinary people to engage in.

Wandering through this field of victims, I wonder how we ever get things done, and whether there are ever any good guys and gals when it comes to pursuit of power.

Or do people start out good, and then get perverted by the system they seek to reform?

Power is addictive and seductive. We get there and then we discovered the perks, and then we become the perpetrators of the political crimes we were so bent against when we started our reform movement.

Those who still retain faith or realize they’ve been duped, suddenly give up, abandoning the field of conflict so that no one stands in the way of the power grab.

Honest people feel the hurt deep in the bones, suddenly realizing that they have encountered a cancer for which they have no cure.

They become the walking dead, stumbling around leaderless, seeing everything as corrupt because they flags they followed proved to be the disguise for something they thought they fought again.

It is sad. It is reality. It is the reason why people do not believe in causes after the causes after proved false.

Bob Dylan put it best when he said we can’t trust leaders and must always pay parking meters.

A quarter for your thoughts?

Herschel Silverman: A spiritual man

  

September 20, 2015

Hersch Silverman is dead.

For me, he’s the last of the Beat poets, and the one I knew best.

I saw him last at a reading in the Hoboken Museum. He seemed frail, even a bit lost, although still capable – his reading as vibrant as ever.

I met him for the first time in the mid-1980s when we published him in Scrap Paper Review. This was after I had met Ginsberg, although Hersch seemed warmer to me, and less remote.

I often saw him at poetry readings, and he was always sending me chap books of his work.

When I got to Bayonne finally as a reporter, I managed to do several stories on him, but often also saw him on the street.

He treated the Hudson Bergen Light Rail as if it had been built for him personally, allowing him to walk down two blocks from his house to the station and reach New York City in a way that was much more of a struggle in the past.

Sometimes, he would pass the newspaper office when we were still located on 21st Street. He commented on my stories in the newspaper as if he thought I was superman for writing so many.

He was as big a fan of me as I was of him.

I loved the idea that I had become connected with The Beats personally, and loved the fact that he was a survivor.

He had a candy store across from the Bayonne High School years earlier, but never stopped caring about those who went to school there, especially the poets. He set up a scholarship fund for poets, and would go to the school each May to meet with the kids, to listen to their poetry and read some of his.

I remember going to his house to do a story on him. His wife had passed away, and though he had kids, he seemed very isolated. His home was a time warp, a flash back to the Beat era, post world war, when so many veterans had built their hopes on the GI Bill.

I vaguely recall he was a veteran.

He said he once brought Ginsberg to Bayonne, taking a tour of the industrial city. Ginsberg was very impressed with St. Henry’s Church, as if it reminded him of the great churches of Europe. For a time, Gregory Corso stayed with Hersch, but often wandered off, apparently in search of drink.

I remember how grateful Hersch was when I did a full issue of Scrap Paper Review dedicated just to him in the late 1980s, something that bonded us.

I remember how happy he looked at the Poetry Club in New York when they paid tribute to him back in 2010, and how he performed some of his poetry upstairs in the private apartment with a guitarist.

This was a man of peace, someone who thought the best of people, and who lived beyond the realm of politics. He shared a lot of this with Ginsberg, although there was something deeper in his soul that I could feel at each meeting, as if he was seeing me for the first time, and yet saw me also as a dear friend.

Hersch left a mark on this world that will never fade, partly because he invested his time and energy into people, who carry his memory with us, and who treasured each moment as if this was the most important moment in our lives.

I no longer cover Bayonne, so I did not have a chance to see him on the street as I often did when I still worked there. But I am glad for those chance encounters, knowing that his spirit will continue to walk those streets and ride the light rail, and when I do walk there, I will encounter it, just as I encounter him in my grateful memories.

Talent show

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

I could see the hurt in her eyes behind her glasses.

Even though she walked away with a prize, it wasn’t the prize she deserved. I knew it down deep and so did most of the audience that had attended the talent show that night.

She is the reason I had being a judge in anything, especially with something so subjective as talent.

In the past, I always did journalism contests at a distance, able to read a story or examine a photograph without having to look the author or photographer in the eye afterwards.

Even in those cases that I later encountered the contestant, I could generally live with the result since I always felt that I had judged fairly.

This was not the case on this night in Bayonne. I had marked this girl high, but failed to argue enough with the other judges as to why she deserved first place instead of the third place award she ended up with.

I’m not sure why I agreed to become one of the judges. One or the organizers asked me during a conversation with someone else, and when a nod is as good as a wink, I said, “Why not.”

And suddenly, I was on the billboard along with a school board candidate, the one time lead guitarist for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and actor, Tammy Blanchard.

After years of trying to wrangle an interview with Blanchard, I finally managed to get a story into our Bayonne magazine. But this was a phone interview. The only other time I had actually seen her in person was during a high school graduation when she gave out a scholarship to one of the students.

So I was a bit disappointed when she had to cancel to attend an audition in New York, though we did get a former director in her place.

Sitting next to George Cummings of Dr. Hook fame was a history lesson of local music, and a flash back to a time when pop music wasn’t so corporate controlled. He even sang me the dirty lyrics to his band’s biggest hit, “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” and it was all I could do to keep from laughing when we were supposed to look serious and judge-like.

The acts varied widely, although nearly all of them involved singing. This is likely why the one dance act managed to stand out and get awarded.

The musical acts varied, not only in style, but in era, and this proved somewhat of a problem since all of the judges were of a particular era, and some of the contestants – such as this girl – were two and a half generations later.

She performed one of Adele’s more difficult songs, and struggled through the beginning slightly, only to finally pull it together at the end.

Other acts included Frank Sinatra songs, Elvis songs, Motown songs, and perhaps because the judges were of an age that related best to these many of these acts scored higher over all.

Some of the scheduled acts did not show, and so apparently to give the audience their money’s worth, organizers allowed some acts to go on again.

This only confused the judging, especially in regards to this particular girl – who came back with a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” so powerful, it nearly made me cry.

But some of the judges felt the second performance should not figure in the final judgment and so discounted it – although in one or two other cases, previous performers came back as solo acts and got credit anyway.

The other problem with the younger performers is that they sang along with the professionally released recording, and so some judges could not tell which voice was which, and assumed that the quality they heard best came form the recording and not the performer.

This was not the case with the girl who sang Adele and later Judy Garland songs.

Judging became a confusion of what to include and not, and how to determine tie scores. I just handed in my numbers and went off to find the men’s room while the others figured out who got what.

And I tried desperately not to look around to see that girl for fear I would have to look her in the eye.

But I did see her later and how hurt she looked when the organizers announced that she had won third prize.

It is one of those moments you remember forever because you know she will feel the sting of it long after the event has become insignificant, a sting that may someday derail a potential career, although I hope (mostly for my own sake) it will inspire her to try harder, to spite us.