It was a hot August day, and we had done a lot of walking.
We just wanted to get a few beers and cool off in the couple hours before the
train back to New York came. I had done a good deal of research before our
trip, and had made a list of several places in this neighborhood that looked
promising, but when we got to them, they were all either closed (it was only mid-afternoon)
or way, way too fancy-looking for the $15 I had in my pocket.
As we walked back to Newark Penn Station, figuring we’d just
drink in the train station bar until the train came, we noticed a place: Titanic
Bar and Restaurant. You could see the train station from the sidewalk, a couple
more blocks down Market Street. So we’d have to get pretty drunk to miss the
train.
We walked in. The wood-paneled walls gave the place an
inviting feel that also reminded me of a ship’s cabin. The bar was full of Mediterranean-looking
people, drinking coffee out of tiny cups or beers with labels on the bottles we
didn’t recognize and watching the Portuguese soccer game on TV. We saw two
seats next to each other, apparently free. We walked over; James pointed at
one, and asked the woman sitting next to them if they were free.
“Are these free?” he said.
“No,” she said, while simultaneously gesturing toward them
invitingly.
“Is anyone sitting there?”
“Yes, yes,” she says, again gesturing us to sit.
I go to sit. James is still a little confused, reading more
into her words than her eyes and body language. Like everyone else in the bar,
she’s obviously a native Portuguese speaker; her English was pretty shaky.
As we drank our beers and noticed more shiplike details –
the windows that looked like portholes, the chandelier that was a ship’s wheel
hanging from the ceiling with lights dangling from it – we thought about how
much the Ironbound, the traditionally Portuguese and Spanish neighborhood we
were in now, felt like a different world from the neighborhoods just a few
blocks away, on the other side of the train station.
We got to Newark Penn Station around 10:30 a.m., and walked
from there, through a section of the downtown, to the Lower Clinton Hill
neighborhood. Lower Clinton Hill has, according to Wikipedia, one of the
highest concentrations of vacant land and empty buildings in Newark. The
neighborhood certainly does have its share of vacant, overgrown lots and blighted,
boarded-up buildings, but it doesn’t seem like a huge number to someone who
grew up in Upstate New York, where some of the cities have seen much steeper
population losses than Newark. That’s one thing about Newark that reminded me
of Paterson – it’s full of people. The downtown was bustling; even in Lower
Clinton Hill, there are always people on the street and most of the buildings
are occupied. It feels a lot different from Schenectady, Utica, Buffalo, etc.,
which feel empty and where you can walk down some streets and not see a soul.
A couple other things about Newark reminded me of Paterson,
too. The architecture of the downtown did. And so did the inordinate amount of
litter – sometimes, it felt like you couldn’t take a step without narrowly
missing a food wrapper or cigarette pack.
Another thing, that I hinted at above and that is very
noticeable, was the extreme racial segregation. Walking down Market Street,
toward Clinton Hill, James and I were the only white people on a crowded street.
On the other side of Penn Station, in the Ironsides, almost everybody we saw
was white, and the feel people who weren’t looked more like well-dressed
tourists than Newark natives. This sort of segregation isn’t unique to Newark,
of course; it’s a pattern you’ll see in a lot of northeastern cities. Maybe it’s
just more visibly obvious in Newark.
Anyway, check out the Titanic if you’re there. And get some
Portuguese barbecue. We ended up eating at Clinton BBQ, on Clinton Avenue in
Clinton Hill. We had originally planned to go to Bragman’s Deli on Hawthrone
Avenue, an old Jewish deli which is apparently fairly well known, but it was
closed because the owners were on vacation. Starving – by now, we had been
walking for maybe two hours – I saw the barbecue place and we decided to stop
in.
We stood there stupidly for a minute, staring at the
take-out menus. Two large men recommended we get one of the combination
platters, for $14. The two men looked happy but a bit defeated; they were
getting a box for all the food they couldn’t finish.
A bit more cautious, we got a half-platter, for $9 – ribs,
chicken, a side of yellow rice and a salad (you have choices of sides, and can
get beef or pork ribs). The ribs were amazing, and even the small platter was
almost too much for the two of us to finish.
