Tag Archives: Weehawken

Big Yellow Taxi

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Last night nothing special once again, though seeing Julio and Stine and Alexander was special indeed. After that it was all pretty boring. I edited the titles of tracks on some cd’s that Annemarie sent me last year. That was a painstaking labor of love, trying to figure out what was what since they all couldn’t be by Benny Goodman.

I watched Carole King who is a nice Jewish lady from Brooklyn. Oy. She’s a love that one. Then it was The Who live in London 1977. The concert where they got two clips for the movie, The Kids Are Alright- Baba O’Reilly and Won’t Get Fooled Again.

The rest of the show was ok. When they started doing Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues (which for some reason people think the Who’s version is great, I think it’s leaden and plodding) I threw in a DVD of The Specials called Too Much Too Young. A nice collection of video clips and some live footage but over all the narration was dreadful. Flat boring and monotonous.

It was like the filmmaker/Narrator Brian Zabawski was reading something off wikipedia and didn’t read the words. Properly. Gets an E for Effort though, especially since I never went about making a Specials DVD of my own.

After that some SNL repeat with Tina Fey then off to bed for me. Bill was at his mother’s so I had the big ass bed all for my big ass. Slept really well, woke up went out, got papers and bagels. After breakfast I sat by the computer and was reading the Daily News, the Voice of the People section, also known as the Letters to the Editor.

I usually enjoy it and as I read I noticed a letter from Hoboken, with a name that was awfully familiar. What are the odds, I thought, of someone having the exact same name as me? Then I realized that I had sent a letter to the editor courtesy of MoveOn.org the other day and today they published it. Ha!

Not the first time the Daily News published a letter of mine. I think this was the third time. They never publish my letters regarding cars running red lights though. The New York Post also published a letter a few years ago about the smoking ban in bars, which if I recall was also published in the Daily News. I thought it was pretty funny. Bill was thrilled when I texted him about it.

cut n’ paste
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/letters/index.html

Today was a beautiful day especially after the deluge of yesterday. I got some new bike shorts and gloves the other day and it was a nice enough day to take a spin around Hoboken. Rode up to 16th Street and looked around. Summer vacation is over for most if not all residents of Hoboken since there was no parking anywhere.

Rode down Sinatra Drive on the Hudson River and forgot all about the Italian feast. Today’s the last day. Procession through town, big heavy of the Madonna, fireworks and feast bombs. I missed all that. Apparently they stopped right in front of my building.

I rode past my old apartments in Hoboken. 1st Street and Park avenue, the mosquito infested illegal loft where I lasted about a month after donating a gallon of blood to the mosquitoes, leaving my loft mates high and dry but not in the lurch since I found 2 other people (Doug and Kate) to take my space.

1st and Park. It DID NOT look like this in 1984.

Then I rode by 201 Madison Street which was my first ‘real’ apartment. Lived with Jet for a while. I think I was there for about 2 years, moving out when the rent hit the outrageous rate of $500.00.
201 Madison

Back view- top 2 windows on right. My kitchen

From there I went to 1124 Willow Ave. The basement apartment. Had a few wild parties there and it was also the party center after McSwells closed at night sometimes. I lived there with Jimmy Lee and then eventually Barbara Granite who turned out to be a little off in the head. I lived there from 1986-1989 or so. It was a hovel. Thought I would live there forever, though I think that with most every place I move to.


Never had a door with a lock on it then….nor bars on the windows

But Barbara Granite moved out and I couldn’t find a roommate so I moved in with Kevin Craughn on Madison Street, across from where I originally lived. I don’t remember too much, it was 1990. That was a hovel too, only on the top floor. Kevin and I barely got along but it ended on a good note relatively speaking.
216 Madison Street

Definitely DID NOT look like his then

I moved out of there and into 710 Jefferson which was a nightmare. I had to be interviewed by the landlord in order to be a roommate. Barry’s roommate actually. He was on tour somewhere when I moved in and I had very little furniture, sleeping on a piece of foam.
710 Jefferson Street

the building in the middle

All the while Zed had been with me through most of these apartments, except for the loft. He had the run of the place most times, except when I lived with Kevin. Kevin’s cats intimidated Zed so much that he rarely came out from under my dresser for most of the year. Then when I lived at Barry’s place, Zed peed on his futon which Barry brought up soon after my mother’s funeral. I apologized but I obviously had other more important things in my life at that time.

I didn’t like living in that building. The landlady and her family were on the first two floors of the building and always kept an eye open on who was coming in and out through the door being slightly open on their apartments. After that I moved back to Lodi to live with my father for a few months despite a lot of people warning me not to.
Jane Street, last house on the right

From there it was to Weehawken with William where we had a love/hate relationship for 11 years. Then back to Hoboken where I am at now. Zed didn’t make it to Hoboken, he passed away when I was living in Weehawken. I buried him in the backyard there, which has probably been torn up and paved over.

And I didn’t miss the procession of the Italians and the Madonna. They just passed by.

Sister Golden Hair

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Ugh, the day after St. Patrick’s Day. Not hungover, just a little buzzed last night, three pints only, no more no less. Slept really well after laboring with the editing of photos last night. Lately I’ve been having dreams that seem to resolve themselves by the time I wake up, though this morning’s dream seemed to take place on a deserted island ala Lost, in a Winnebago that was being shot at. That was where I woke up. I didn’t seem to be disturbed by being shot at in the dream, oddly enough.

Read the New Yorker on the way in and everything seemed to be fine, until I returned from an errand that took about an hour, and when I got back and sat down, I was exhausted. Eventually I rallied and got through the afternoon but it wasn’t easy. Yesterday was a good day, time spent in the love bubble with Bill. The love bubble is when Bill and I are somewhere in public, surrounded by people and all we feel is affection for each other. I doesn’t happen too often lately, both of us need to be in the same space, both mentally and physically and things being the way they are lately makes it difficult. I thanked Bill for that when I got back to Hoboken and waited for Corinne.

Got word from Chaz about our former neighbors in Weehawken. Three sisters, raising a boy and a girl. They were nice, thought our landlords were crazy. Never really hung out with the neighbors, just a friendly hello when we would pass each other. Chaz told me the youngest, the boy named TJ had died in a balcony accident somewhere. That was a shock. He must have been maybe 20 years old. I couldn’t find any information about what happened, if it happened. If it did happen I’m sure they’re devastated. I remember one time after a major blizzard, I was walking past a snowbank when I heard a cry and a scream. TJ was stuck on a snow drift, being pudgy, and his friends all deserted him. I walked over and dug him out and made sure he was alright before he ran back home. That’s what I’ll remember about TJ. A pudgy kid stuck in a snowbank.

In my search for information regarding TJ I googled Jane Street Weehawken. What came up was an apartment listing for my old apartment that I shared with William for 11 years. In those 11 years, the rent never went above $500, which we split. He had 2 rooms, I had 2 rooms ( a bit smaller than his though) separated by a room, with a shared kitchen and bath. It was great, and William was a great decorator, but his decorating sometimes got out of hand. I’d leave in the morning and comeback from work in the evening to find rooms painted a different color, furniture moved around. Sometimes the rent would go up, sometimes it would go down. Now the same apartment is $2200.

Crazy.

They took out the garden in the backyard, and I don’t know what else they did in the apartment, but man that was an eye opener. I split that scene after 11 years with William, 9 of those years silently resenting each other, hoping the other one would move out first. I surrendered when Julio found this apartment in Hoboken. No Pattie and Fred Kleinke banning Bill from the apartment more than 2 nights a week, though lately Bill’s only been here 2 nights a week.

I admit I lucked out with the timing of my moving out, William and Chaz and Kathe had to abandon their apartments about 6 months later when Pattie and Fred decided to sell the house and promised to deliver it empty, not offering William and Chaz a chance to buy it from them. Resentment all around. Even from me though I was already gone. What’s done is done and Jane Street, that magical time, and it wasn’t all bad, is history.