Portland and Jersey City
A while back, when Portland was ranked one of the best cities in America for walking (a judgment with which I completely concur), I urged locals not to get too cocky, as Jersey City, N.J. was not far behind us.
From the ages of 12 to 21, I got my high school and college education in Jersey City, and for three years in college I was a professional reporter on a daily newspaper there, The Jersey Journal. When that stint was up, I took a flyer on studying law on the West Coast, and, well, that was pretty much the last that Jersey City saw of me. I know from Jersey City, and although I will always love it just the way it is, being ranked alongside it in a livability survey is like being ranked next to Paulie Walnuts in a beauty contest.
The parallel between the two cities in the walking survey was odd enough, but lo and behold, the two cities now wind up literally back to back in another ranking study -- this one on the most liberal municipalities in the country. Something called the Bay Area Center for Voting Research has just released a study on the most liberal and conservative U.S. places, based on some methodology that's likely so silly I can't even be bothered to look it up. Detroit, Mich. is rated most liberal, and Provo, Utah's most conservative.
Portland's in there at 29th most liberal; Jersey City is 28th. Can you beat that?
A closer look at the study shows that there's two kinds of liberalism: ghetto and Berkeley. Places like Detroit and Jersey City make up much of the former; places like San Francisco and Portland make up the latter.
I'm glad to have graduated from one to the other. Many of my contemporaries (including my brother and my blogging cousin) missed that jump, and morphed instead from ghetto liberal to suburb conservative -- Detroit to Orange County, as it were. I think my move was an easier one on the soul. Ted Kennedy is still more fun at parties than Trent Lott will ever be.
| Posted at 10:32 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (12)
And Birmingham, Alabama beats both Portland and Jersey City...not to mention being more liberal than NYC? Surveys...gotta love 'em.
While born in Jersey City, my Dad moved his family out to Long Island when I was one (and got an editorial in the Jersey Journal thanking him for leaving...he'd been active in organizing the teacher's union.) Still, we never escape our place of birth, we're asked all the time and there it is on my passport.
My granpa never left, though, so I got to visit a lot, his old tenement with the goats, chickens and pidgeons. Knocked down by now, no doubt, and replaced with condos as it's becomes a bedroom community for the young NYC workers who can't afford Manhattan.
Posted by Frank Dufay | August 12, 2005 2:10 AM
the more people quote studies and lists, the less i believe them...
...if you want to read a truly great study, check out the washington post article yesterday that claimed LA has a higher population density than New York City.
Posted by justin | August 12, 2005 3:45 AM
Yea, Teddy is a lot more fun, unless you have a skirt and need a ride home...
Posted by brother gary | August 12, 2005 4:22 AM
Frank Lautenberg is a party animal too. He's looking forward to a wild time at a "Weekend at Bernie's".
Posted by Cousin Jim | August 12, 2005 8:59 AM
Too scary. Between this and Tony Bourdain's "No Reservations" hour about New Jersey (on the Travel Channel this week) my Oregon-at-the-center-of-the-universe attitude is feeling threatened. Maybe a moonlight drive to Chappaquiddick will settle me down.
Posted by Ronald M | August 12, 2005 10:25 AM
Frank: What hospital were you born in? Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital?
Posted by Jack Bog | August 12, 2005 11:04 AM
"I was a professional reporter on a daily newspaper there"
So there were some unprofessional reporters on that paper?
Posted by Auggie | August 13, 2005 12:33 AM
Frank: What hospital were you born in? Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital?
Jack, you posed a question I couldn't answer. And with my Mom deceased, I couldn't ask her. But I've got her papers, and, yup, there on the little birth annoucement: "Born - April 13, 1951; Weight - 7 lbs, 15 oz; Place - Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital."
Interesting. And thanks for asking. I never realized I was born in a place of such historical significance...and, no kidding, soon to be turned into condos. :-)
Were you born there as well? The card says we lived at 3 Wegman Court.
Posted by Frank Dufay | August 13, 2005 4:33 AM
So there were some unprofessional reporters on that paper?
Heh, there were indeed.
Were you born there as well? The card says we lived at 3 Wegman Court.
Nope, St. James Hospital, Newark. But I did cover that hospital on my reporter's beat, along with the Jersey City Medical Center next door. In the '70s, those were public hospitals -- the Margaret Hague was operated by the county and the JCMC by the city, as I recall. Don't tell Mr. Sten...
There was a Wegman and a Stegman. I'll have to Googlemap the former when I get a minute.
Great memories in J.C.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 13, 2005 12:28 PM
Frank:
Here's where your mom brought you home to.
That's in a section of town called Greenville. You were right on the railroad tracks, on the other side of which was industrial wasteland. Now there's a nice state park there looking at the Statue of Liberty's backside, and the New Jersey Turnpike extension, which probably was just going up around the time you arrived.
I played basketball in Bayside Park once. A couple of my buds, the Kerber brothers, were from over there. Fred Kerber now covers the New Jersey Nets basketball team for The New York Post. His brother, Cubbie, taught us how to nurse a "'ball and a beer" so as to be able to drink and shoot pool all day.
Put on Springsteen's second album, and you will get the rest of the picture of how it was circa 1970.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 13, 2005 1:21 PM
77% of all statistics are wrong.
Posted by david bean | August 13, 2005 7:58 PM
Here's where your mom brought you home to.
That's in a section of town called Greenville. You were right on the railroad tracks, on the other side of which was industrial wasteland.
Y'know, Jack...that's more than my folks have ever told me about where I lived in Jersey City. No photos, besides the one of me on my first birthday, sitting in my high-chair with a piece of cake, wearing mittens. The mittens, I was told, were to keep me from scratching myself bloody from my itchy rashes...wonder if that had anything to do with living across from an "industrial wasteland." :-)
Anyway, it helps explain my Dad's drive and work ethic (teacher by day, Rhinegold beer warehouseman at night) to keep the distance between our nice home in Bethpage, Long Island, and where we'd come from. (Hard work and the GI Bill and Jersey State Teacher's College.)
Helps explain, too, why the sound of trains passing through our Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood late at night, feels right to me. The wistful sound of a train whistle, calling me home...
Thanks.
Posted by Frank Dufay | August 14, 2005 4:07 AM