Newark

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.