Stuck in Newark

I like New York, NY. But I get downright nervous when the state doesn't have a namesake city in it. There is a Washington City in Washington State. Just as there is Oregon City and California City in Oregon & California respectively. Now you might point out that there is a Jersey City in New Jersey; but that doesn't cut it.

So like I said I am a little suspect of the Garden State for not have a namesake city, though it does have a Garden City in New Jersey. What are they embarrassed about?

Anyway, so there I was in the home of the NY Giants and the New York Jets, staying in downtown Newark steps away from Seton Hall School of Law and a few blocks away from Rutgers (where today's NY Post headlines screamed HO HO HO at Imus' $20m extortion from CBS), and also where NY Yankee Phil Rizzuto is hailed as a hometown legend (having lived his last years in nearby West Orange, NJ).

While only miles away from the island of Manhattan, Newark is still mired as a crime ridden corrupt landscape that needs to be cleaned up (i.e. the tragic execution of those 3 students recently). It hails itself on the city signs as a Renaissance City. What renaissance are they thinking about? Within 1 1/2 miles of the city center I saw trash trucks dumping into a local refuse yard. I saw auto recycling yards tearing up cars. I saw buckled & potholed streets. And tons of litter and crap in the roadways I tried to cycle on. Or what the CNBC financial reporter called the armpit of the NE.

Oh yeah; I went for a ride today in this heap - zigging and zagging streets south to a little seaside village called Perth Amboy on Raritan Bay. Perth Amboy?? Sounds like a place where the immigrant Aussies like to congregate, but actually is a combo of quaint seaside houses with a Latino (PR) influence (where they just banned the feeding of feral cats).

On the way down there I stopped in the oil storage town of Woodbridge (whose city sign was sponsored by Shell Oil) to ask a couple of guys directions (eating lunch on a rock wall) as I thought (mistakenly) that I had missed a turn. The one guy asked where I was from? Seattle area out west. Ya, don't see too many folks riding a funny bike like that around here dressed in tight clothes, WHAT'S YOUR NAME (he commands)?? Erik, what's yours? SHELL (he barks). Oh you work for Shell Oil? No Chevron, why? No reason....(so Shell works for Chevron, just so you have that straight).

On the way back downtown I took a slightly different route and was looking across the water separating me from Staten Island and the Fresh Kills landfill. Now I don't know if it's a New Jersey thing or a New York thing but shouldn't the authorities be digging that place up instead of looking under a barn in Milford Township, Michigan? It just makes sense, right?

I did manage to get in a decent couple-hour ride despite the mostly glum landscape, and I'll bring my bike again to continue to look for a quality ride, maybe next time up the Palisades Parkway north of the GW Bridge? And the possibility of a visit to the US Bicycling Hall of Fame in nearby Somerville, NJ; if I can ever get them to publish an address (or do I just hang around their P.O. Box?).