You don’t have to be squeamish or euphemistic to think of the lavatory as the reading room. Bathrooms guarantee a kind of solitude that can be hard to find elsewhere in the apartment, and reading requires concentration. If you’re in the loo, you’re (probably) not on the computer. As literacy continues its agonizing decline, the […]
Tris McCall
Tris McCall has written about art, architecture, performance, politics, and public culture for many publications, including the Newark Star-Ledger, the Bergen Record, Jersey Beat, the Jersey City Reporter, the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City Independent, and New Jersey dot com. He also writes about things that have no relevance to New Jersey. Not today, though.
Posted inUncategorized
Rogue Waves June: Jersey City Jazz Festival and More
The Jersey City Jazz Festival pitches a big tent. This year’s event is the most varied in its history, with very little redundancy in a lineup that involves more than two hundred musicians at thirty shows spread over four early June nights. Tonight’s ticketed kickoff event at White Eagle Hall (337 Newark, $25, show at 8 […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Diana Schmertz: An Artist Takes on Book Banning and American Politics
If they’re sufficiently harsh, words can leave an impression. Lately, some of the harshest and most wounding have come from state legislatures. Certain lawmakers have framed non-straight Americans as a threat to children, and they’ve sought to excise their stories from school curriculum. Book banning — once thought of as a relic of a more […]
Posted inFood and Fun
The Vegetarian Option: Ondo
We’re launching our vegetable-forward exploration of Jersey City’s most acclaimed restaurants with a look at the modern Korean eatery Ondo (3 2nd St.). Korean food is often associated with barbecue, bibimbap with slices of spicy pork, and giant platters of bulgogi in thick folds. But what if you aren’t interested in eating meat? Is there […]
Posted inOther Fun Stuff
Review: The Beyoncé Laser Show at Liberty Science Center
In autumn 2022, Liberty Science Center reinvigorated the laser show genre with a half hour set dedicated to the music of Taylor Swift. That was great — so great that it was a sure thing that the science museum would try again with another artist. It was also inevitable that that artist would be Beyoncé. No other major […]
Posted inArts and Culture
The Downtown Art Crawl, Step by Step and Studio by Studio
Crawling implies slow and deliberate movement. Babies crawl, caterpillars crawl, traffic crawls when you’re stuck in a jam. The designers of the Downtown Art Crawl — the same people behind Art Fair 14C and the upcoming October Jersey City Art Week — are believers in careful appraisal. They don’t want you blazing through their event. […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Alone in Deep Space, Clarence Rich Takes on the Ancients
It is arguable that Clarence Rich is the best known visual artist in Jersey City, even if most of the people who’ve seen and appreciated his work wouldn’t recognize his name. In a town of hundreds of muralists and spray-paint taggers of middling quality and questionable imagination, he’s the real deal — a street artist […]
Posted inHeights, Performing Arts
Diners at Box Cafe Eat and Drink to Immersive Dance Performance
Bars and restaurants are often disaster areas. The floor of a café can be a cavalcade of dismay. The stood up, the broken up, the lovelorn, the hopelessly inebriated and the would-be heroes, the frustrated rockers and out-of-control dancers: they’re all hanging somewhere in the shadowed corners of the public house. Going out means putting […]
Posted inPerforming Arts
Rogue Waves May: Live Music in Jersey City
There hasn’t been much action at Monty Hall (43 Montgomery St.) since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s been a shame. Any room affiliated with WFMU — the legendary free-form radio station upstairs — is bound to have exciting bookings. For years, Monty Hall was one of the most reliable spots in Jersey City to […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Review: “50 Years of Beats and Sneaks” at MANA
Everybody has seen sneakers dangling from phone wires by tied-together shoelaces, but no consensus on their meaning has ever been reached. Do they indicate a place to buy drugs? Are they a marker of gang territory? A tribute to a lost child? Do they signify that someone nearby has graduated college or gotten married? Less romantically, […]