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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNice Richie Havens Tribute: "Rock stars do not live in Jersey City."
>>>>A working musician in an age of the rock star (rock stars do not live in Jersey city) Havens continued to record, tour and perform in small venues long after many of his contemporaries retired or died.
As luck would have it, I had a brief but very memorable encounter with the man many years ago when we both much younger. It took place at an event at the New School where Havens was to speak and it was my job to make the speakers coffee. I was a 18 a year old guitar playing fool and one intrigued and flabbergasted by Havens unique rhythmic guitar playing which I loved but which made no sense to me whatsoever in terms of playing. I summoned up the courage to ask Havens how he did what he did. The man was the epitome of grace and decency, patiently explaining to me the mysteries of open tuning and its strange fingering, demonstrating as best he could without a guitar. There was not an ounce of idiot rock star in the man.>>>>>>
http://raginghorse.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/richie-havens-r-i-p/
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)Maragaret Hague hospital, like they say every political campaign.
Sadly, Jersey City is becoming the sort of place that pushes out middle class; that is how I ended up in Florida. Long before 9-11, Yuppies who worked in Manhattan moved there, which was literally a 10 minute bus ride to the World Trade Center. Of course, prices shot up; oddly enough, the neighborhood that was really affected was downtown, which was the poor area. Manhattan people bought out tenements and made condos.
After 9-11, this flame got hit with Gasoline. Now downtown has skyscrapers. It makes me shudder to realize I lived in a humble area, and that the house I lived in, half the size of where I live now, is worth a Million dollars. Now, let me raise you one, we had a working class/borderline tenement right on my same street, where my aunt lived. A developer came in and restored it to it's 20 art deco glory, it looks like a set piece from a Batman Movie. Condos there go for 1.5 million. This was the place my mother wanted me not to hang out at, because there were violent gangs and pushers there.
smokey nj
(43,853 posts)They were condos but they didn't really sell, so now they're expensive rentals.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)In Brooklyn, where are lot of former working class areas go condo. Then again, even Harlem is getting condos. I doubt even the Bronx will be safe.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Apparently, a lot of these new buildings are being financed by overseas money. That's what I've heard.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)but I find it funny that, for so long, the Manhattan types looked down on Jersey City, even though WE have the statue of liberty; now half of them moved to exactly the place they slammed, and worse, they made sure to vote for Chris Christie. I do sympathize with the native Florida types at times, after all, to them all of us are NYC transplants.
malaise
(268,724 posts)One of the great ones