When I was a very little girl, I grew up playing hopscotch and jump rope on the streets and the sidewalks. Jersey City was a concrete wonderland, gritty, and breezy. Things got more and more dangerous, and Jersey City became this danger zone, a mouse trap waiting to snap.
The present. While JC was “cleaning up”, it seemed to me the soul of Jersey City had been cleaned up too. Lately, things resemble only a shadow of the sunny urban streets I remember. I’m happy that things are safer, but sad that Jersey City is hardly a wisp of what it once was. The pretense of cruiser bikes and adults hula hooping in the streets make me wonder if there is hope at all. Things are becoming so… homogenized. Oh, well.
The possibility of traveling and leaving Jersey City for a couple months is becoming more and more tangible. An electromagnetic phantasm, this opportunity can disappear the second you reach out to confirm its presence. In the meantime, while my mind sits in a departure lobby, I’m having a lot of fun sweating it out in the infancy of this summer in my home town. I went to the Hamilton Park Festival, yesterday, and it felt like the Jersey City I remember.
