Newark - Unfriendliest City in US

[Cachorro Louco]

Newark a wasteland??? I worked the past 3 weeks in Camden painting one of the water towers, and that place it is just fvcked up.. Midday half of the store are closed, at least one in three houses are either burned or abandoned. 

 

Newark still has potential, but they have to come out with something creaative to stand out.

[2ELIAS6]

the problem with newark is the trash population that resides there, the area can only be cleaned up so much where does all of the garbage flee to? Newark is what it is, theres only so much you can do with an area, newark is just one of those dumpy areas

[Satans Hockey]

EAH is still there but they close often on non-event nights. Also saw they instituted a new rule where before and after events the bar area you are only allowed to drink and no food orders will be taken. This sucks as about 1-3 times a year either myself or me and a buddy of mine like to sit at the bar at around 4ish, order food and beer and leave around 5:30. Now we cant do that.

Dinosaur is still there. That might be my new place now. Loft is still there and so is HK's. Monk room a block or 2 south of the arena sounds good as it opened back in March or April. It's a pizza and craft beer bar and the prices seem decent. They also opened up Chipotle next to Dinosaur and apparently building a Mercato's (sp?) Tomato Pie next to that. They also have that Indigo hotel around the corner from the arena on Broad St that is supposed to have a bar/lounge on the ground floor and a rooftop bar. You also have to include Joe's Crab Shack at the Marriott and from what I hear another burger place is going into the old Uber burger spot but haven't heard much going on there.

Monk had a 2 beers for 5 deal of you wore Devils gear. They had a good assortment of beers too. I hope they do that again this year and that will be my go to spot if they do.

[newarkdev01]

Giving the new owners credit when it is due. They actually invested/lent to the Indigo project so that it could finally get finished. I think what Hanini/Fidelco are doing with Rock Plaza combined what RBH group is dong with four corners and teachers village will allow for an expanded entertainment group that connects the NJPAC with the colleges with the Arena district. The issue is that the rest of the city outside of the Ironbound is severely economically depressed and isn't going to change anytime soon. As a resident of the city's Ironbound section I have been happy to see the shift but I also realized the crazies on the other side of the city live in garbage and that isn't going to change in this generation but that won't hurt the development of downtown because they need the money to support their slums.

[AEWHistory]

I've never spent any real time in Newark, but being from Trenton I am leery of the suburban crowed of naysayers of claim that all of Newark is a dump, all the people are sh!t, etc. Until about 6-7 years ago the crime in Trenton was never as bad as the reputation, but to hear peeps in the suburbs talk you would have been taking your life in your hands venturing too close to the city. I had friends who wouldn't come to my home even though there had been no violent crime in my neighborhood in years (decades?) whereas where they lived had recent murders. It didn't matter to them: they were told they were in a safe area and Trenton was dangerous. Eventually the reputation took its toll and has badly undermined the city, although Mack helped that along nicely.

Now compare Trenton and Newark to Atlanta. If you go to Atlanta the city looks lovely, clean, etc. It looks much nicer than our dirty NJ cities. And yet the likelihood of having someone mug you, rape you, carjack you, or just shoot you are all MUCH higher. But I guess some people prefer to have pretty scenery while getting shot in the head. As for me, I'd rather be safe with grime than be a corpse somewhere that's all pertied up. It is just lipstick on a pig. That said, maybe if we changed our attitudes toward our cities here in NJ than maybe they'd become places of pride once again. Once upon a time Trenton Central HS was the best public HS in the nation. That's a laughable concept today.

EDIT: as to. Those who feel that Newark, Trenton, and even Camden cannot come back I would say that this is entirely dependent on future events. For example, if the cost of gas were to rise suddenly, or mass transit become dominant, then I assure you the cities here would dominate again. The fact is we have adopted policies in the USA that destroys cities. We are one of the few nations that allow this to happen, but we do. However, times change. It may be ten years, it may be a century, but there will be a time when the pendulum swings again. And it will probably swing back as well. That's life.

Owell, rant over, back to your regularly scheduled hockey....

Edited November 7, 2014 by AEWHistory

[thecoffeecake]

only a few uber-PC people are drinking the "Newark is a virbrant city" kool-aid.

Yea, uber-PC people, and those of us who spend our time in urban studies and community planning academia. If you want to see a sh!thole, take a ride around the "downtown" of whatever hell suburb you come from.

[DevsMan84]

Yea, uber-PC people, and those of us who spend our time in urban studies and community planning academia. If you want to see a sh!thole, take a ride around the "downtown" of whatever hell suburb you come from.

Lol urban studies where blighted communities are being blamed on everything and everyone but the people living in such communities. I can't imagine any town in somerset county being worse than newark, but continue the kool-aid drinking

Soon enough you will realize at least half the stuff you lean in college is nothing but PC bullsh!t. It will take a few years but soon enough you will see the light and agree with me.

Edited November 21, 2014 by DevsMan84

[Jerrydevil]

Yea, uber-PC people, and those of us who spend our time in urban studies and community planning academia. If you want to see a sh!thole, take a ride around the "downtown" of whatever hell suburb you come from.

Why do you think we, or our parents and grandparents who moved there, are in the suburbs? It's to escape "vibrant diversity."

[devils102]

I've been to Newark once, and at the risk of being offensive, I did find it quite ugly. But the people we ran into were all friendly. We were tourists from Canada though, so maybe they assumed we were stupid and were trying to be nice, not sure.

 

The friendliest/unfriendliest debates are fun, but ultimately so subjective.

 

I'm sure if you went into a bar in Quebec City and started speaking English you wouldn't get the most friendly reception, same as if you walked into a place in Southern Ontario and started speaking French. You guys probably have similar dynamics down there. As long as you aren't noticeably different wherever you travel and aren't a total ass you'll probably find most people are fairly friendly. 

[thecoffeecake]

Why do you think we, or our parents and grandparents who moved there, are in the suburbs? It's to escape "vibrant diversity."

I think you or your parents or grandparents moved to the suburbs because of deindustrialization. Employment shifted to the office and service sectors from the manufacturing sectors, and into the suburbs. We also live in a terribly racist country, which permitted discrimination on the basis of color for much of these economic shifts. Racist white people fled the city, where property values were plummeting, and minorities were almost invariably unable to get loans in new suburban communities. White flight happened, and we actively prevented "vibrant diversity", so racist whites could raise their kids behind the white picket fence of environmental recklessness and economic irresponsibility.

 

That's why you live in the suburbs. Welcome to the story of America's inner cities. You sound like an a$$hole, open a book.

Edited December 9, 2014 by thecoffeecake

[DevsMan84]

I think you or your parents or grandparents moved to the suburbs because of deindustrialization. Employment shifted to the office and service sectors from the manufacturing sectors, and into the suburbs. We also live in a terribly racist country, which permitted discrimination on the basis of color for much of these economic shifts. Racist white people fled the city, where property values were plummeting, and minorities were almost invariably unable to get loans in new suburban communities. White flight happened, and we actively prevented "vibrant diversity", so racist whites could raise their kids behind the white picket fence of environmental recklessness and economic irresponsibility.

 

That's why you live in the suburbs. Welcome to the story of America's inner cities. You sound like an a$$hole, open a book.

 

That's a typical explanation from what sounds like an armchair urban planner/researcher who spent most, if not his/her entire career as a professor instead of looking at what the real issues were.

 

The industrialization part would make sense if it was a gradual shift, but it wasn't.  Newark still had a very sizeable white population until the race riots in the late 60's.  That is when the white flight happened when the entire neighborhood was trashed in the name of civil rights and they no longer felt safe as they were now targets.  In a few short years the population of Newark rapidly shifted as the white population left to the suburbs along with most of the industry.

 

Again this wasn't a decline that took many decades in the making.  It was a shift that happened within a 10 year span which is fast for a city.  This also happened to many other cities as well, including other towns/cities in NJ (Plainfield comes big into mind.  From the late 1800's until even the early 60's Plainfield was actually a summer retreat for wealthy NYC residents.  That pretty much changed in a hurry with the race riots of the late 60's as well).  The white flight happened because of the riots, not the way you have it which seems to be the other way around.

[Jerrydevil]

I think you or your parents or grandparents moved to the suburbs because of deindustrialization. Employment shifted to the office and service sectors from the manufacturing sectors, and into the suburbs. We also live in a terribly racist country, which permitted discrimination on the basis of color for much of these economic shifts. Racist white people fled the city, where property values were plummeting, and minorities were almost invariably unable to get loans in new suburban communities. White flight happened, and we actively prevented "vibrant diversity", so racist whites could raise their kids behind the white picket fence of environmental recklessness and economic irresponsibility.

 

That's why you live in the suburbs. Welcome to the story of America's inner cities. You sound like an a$$hole, open a book.

 

We certainly do live in a racist country. Whites chased from the cities their people built. Uncontrolled Third World immigration. A media that defends or excuses riotous blacks and despises working class whites. Affirmative action. A culture ruled by political correctness, in which whites must be very careful what they say at work or in school.

Racist country indeed.

[thecoffeecake]

That's a typical explanation from what sounds like an armchair urban planner/researcher who spent most, if not his/her entire career as a professor instead of looking at what the real issues were.

 

The industrialization part would make sense if it was a gradual shift, but it wasn't.  Newark still had a very sizeable white population until the race riots in the late 60's.  That is when the white flight happened when the entire neighborhood was trashed in the name of civil rights and they no longer felt safe as they were now targets.  In a few short years the population of Newark rapidly shifted as the white population left to the suburbs along with most of the industry.

 

Again this wasn't a decline that took many decades in the making.  It was a shift that happened within a 10 year span which is fast for a city.  This also happened to many other cities as well, including other towns/cities in NJ (Plainfield comes big into mind.  From the late 1800's until even the early 60's Plainfield was actually a summer retreat for wealthy NYC residents.  That pretty much changed in a hurry with the race riots of the late 60's as well).  The white flight happened because of the riots, not the way you have it which seems to be the other way around.

White flight happened for a myriad of reasons, only one of which was the riots. It's true that the riots were a major, single event that chased a lot of whites from the inner city, but white flight happened gradually throughout the twentieth century, as did deindustrialization, contrary to your claim. It started immediately after World War Two, with expanding neoliberal economic narratives making outsourcing possible, with the growth of the automobile to allow for less centralized manufacturing, American production falling behind newly industrializing countries, things like that. Industry didn't flee Newark, or anywhere, in ten years. It wasn't until Reagan that America's industry finally and almost completely died.

 

White flight, to get somewhat back, was also a product of many factors. Everyone would have left the city during the last sixty years of the twentieth century if they could have, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, whoever. You can argue that simply the city didn't satisfy the sensibilities of the time, or that inner cities were disgusting and dirty crime ridden hell-holes, both of which are true, but the point remains the same. The difference was white people had the financial, social, and cultural capital to leave. When the inner city lost favor in America, blacks were struggling with the legacy of slavery even more so than they are now (obviously). Whether you deny racism exists today is another argument, but in 1945, laws still actively oppressed the black community. The amount of wealth blacks collectively held compared to the percentage of our population they made up was incredibly disproportional. That's not something up for debate, and it's something that's still true, to a lesser extent. Blacks couldn't get mortgages, and no one could get a loan for a business or development project in redlined black neighborhoods. Property values, did, and still do drop the second one black family moves into a neighborhood. Our institutions at the time were still outwardly racist, and blacks couldn't enjoy the new suburban American dream lifestyle. That's why whites left and no one else did.

 

We must have differing opinions on what the "real issues" are. To me, having grown up in the suburbs and lived in the inner city, the real issues are a total lack of middle class employment opportunities, an almost entirely abandoned American inner city, ripe still with crime and poverty, social programs that don't adequately support even a small percentage of the people they need to support, sprawling residential and commercial subdivisions developing what's left of our natural environment while millions of residential and commercial units in urban areas remain vacant. Laws that don't protect the water we drink, the food we eat, our limited natural resources, our cultural heritage, or our working class, black or white. These are things that are happening. Whether you choose to see them going from the front door of your nice home, to your car, to your office and back or not is another issue.

Edited December 16, 2014 by thecoffeecake