HOBOKEN, NJ - A Critical Review

Jogging and Architecture

I’m strolling uptown from the Hoboken path train on a clear blue summer day. The noon day light overhead casts no shadows on the wide clean block. I’m now crossing over onto the west side of Hudson Street. Hoboken is an embarrassment of rich architecture and baby stroller technology. Back in the 90’s I’d laugh it off as a shithole too far from Brooklyn. I’d only venture out here to see musical geniuses like Hazel Adkins or the Flat Duo Jets play the old Maxwells stage on 11th and Washington. That place is gone now along with all the grime and crime and garbage. I miss Maxwells but it’s a fair exchange now that I live here on that same block. I often tell my New York friends that living here is like living on the set of a movie about Brooklyn. The streets are wider, the trees are greener, it’s cleaner, less noisy and although the homeless thrive downtown, most of them are dudes and feed off the college kids from Stevens U. I live on the pretentious upper east side, just a block away from a gorgeous Hudson River view of mid-town Manhattan. Up here on the North end, homelessness is an out of sight out of mind situation for most folks. I often stare out the window of my third-floor brownstone walk up and wonder if anyone living in the cookie cutter, urban high-rise complex across the street ever fought off a hard day in their life. The folks I see come and go from those buildings all look like cartoon versions of investment bankers or corporation men. I think they call them Salary Men in Japan. They all look very content. Across the street from them is Elysian Park which was the backdrop for the famous film, “On the Waterfront “, starring Marlon Brando. He won an academy award for that.

Here I Hoboken, the architecture, the history and the panoramic view of Manhattan alone are enough to jerk off your imagination. The first official game of baseball was played in this town. Maxwell House Coffee and Frank Sinatra were both born here and the Dutch opened the first known brewery in the Americas here in 1663. Everyone jogs in Hoboken. They call it going for a run, but they are jogging. They jog through the quaint little side streets and all the old Italian grandma’s riding the stoops of the buildings their parents bought for ten grand a couple generations ago and are now worth millions. In the mornings, they jog past all the nerds and meatheads strolling around Stevens College campus and then jog past the same goofball twenty-somethings as they stumble wasted out of the menagerie of downtown sports bars at night. They jog up and down main drag Washington Ave. and they jog along the waterfront as the ferries and ships cross the Hudson River into Manhattan. It’s not all jogging though, There’s also the architecture. If I hadn’t mentioned it before the architecture here is quite stunning. It’s a sentiment that bears repeating.