Word: newark
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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These first few conversations at college and home were always defensive-I could never adequately explain why I wanted to go to Newark. I blamed it on simple idealism, little patience with another summer of long commutes and the widening gap between what was taught to me and what I wanted to learn. Having grown-up in the famously quiet suburbs of Ohio, I needed to get away from my past-if only for a summer of teaching reading and writing to children...
...spent many hours over the summer sketching the abandoned buildings of the city's past. Many of my memorable conversations came about as I sat alone trying to resurrect Newark in pencil and paper...
...Raymond, an un-apologetic drunk, as I sat drawing the vacant S. Klein department store on Broad Street, Newark's main avenue. Nursing a brown-bagged beer at 10:30 on a Friday morning, Raymond sat down next to me and remembered aloud how S. Klein's once anchored the vibrant string of stores along Broad in the fifties and sixties. Thinking back to those days, he praised the treatment of the "little guy" under Mayor Hugh Addonizio, the politician whose bungling and corruption led to the catastrophic 1967 riots...
...later realized Raymond's comments were driven less by his knowledge of political regimes, and more by his memories of the Newark he grew up with. As an old man, he could remember the days when Broad Street bustled with the best shopping in New Jersey. He blamed the city's current distress-sidewalks sparkling with broken glass and grand old buildings in shambles-on the present-day political leaders, rather than unfortunate legacies from the past. He showed me that not all of Newark's past should be buried, that some should be reclaimed and restored...
...antithesis of Raymond the next day in the form of a mounted Newark police officer outside the brand-new New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). As we talked about Newark, he blamed the bad reputation of the downtown on the bands of homeless men like Raymond who roamed the streets. He shook his head in disbelief when he told me the city built the $180 million NJPAC in the midst of five homeless shelters and next door to the city's main church soup kitchen...