if one of these bottles should happen to fall- jersey songs by tris mccall
. news . lyrics . glossary . essays . bio . discography . faq. links . email .

Glossary Albio Sires: Mayor of West New York, and soon-to-be Democratic assemblyman from the 33rd District. Sires is another of the recent spate of young-ish, thoroughly capable (we'll see about incorruptible) politicians who represent the first coming of direct Latino electoral force. His election in 1997, after the long reign of the DeFinos, marked another transfer of power from North Hudson Italian leadership to a new Latino political elite. back Atlantic City: Have the casinos helped or hurt? There's no real contact between the big hotels and the rest of the city, but institutional gambling has, at least, provided Atlantic City politicians with something of a tax base. That these taxes have come at the expense of poor and working-class gaming addicts should definitely be noted, but with white flight so prevalent downstate, gambling has probably saved A.C from becoming another Asbury Park. (If you haven't been to Asbury recently, it's always worth a trip; it's New Jersey's own Roman ruins). back Baltimore: The movie Diner was shot in and around Baltimore. Many of the silly assumptions about the freewheeling New Jerseyites come from films that weren't even set, or shot, in the state. back baseball abstract: It used to be published annually by Bill James, one of America's greatest writers. That he chose baseball as his subject of study is a notable aside, but not a necessary one. Plus, James is a Royals fan, and so is Tris McCall. back Bergenline Avenue: The main commercial strip in North Hudson County. Bergenline begins at the Jersey City border of Union City, and proceeds north through West New York, Guttenberg, and the pruning-hook of North Bergen. It's booming now (thanks in part, to an UEZ designation), and it's almost unbelievably exciting: the block is crammed with discount stores, Latin record shops, Cuban and Caribbean restaurants, hairdressers, nightclubs, etc. Salsa and merengue blare out of the open car and apartment windows; and the non-stop business activity is conducted in Spanish. Pat Buchanan's nightmare come true, and a completely functional multi-cultural dream for the rest of us. back Bernie Kenny: Hudson County's man in Trenton. State Senator Kenny is either Bernie or Bernard -- depending on what he's running for -- but Tris digs him anyway. back Bob Janiczewski:The Hudson County executive, de facto leader of what's left of the old county Democratic party machine, and one of the most influential backroom politicians in the state. He isn't an ideologue, but an ideologue could probably never succeed in his job. He's backed and worked hard on behalf of Robert Menendez so far -- much in the way that Frank Hague, in the twenties and thirties, championed former governor and senator A. Harry Moore. back Bowery and Bleek: The street address for CBGB and the CB-313 Gallery; still the two best live music clubs in NYC. But they aren't Maxwell's. back Bret Schundler: Republican mayor of Jersey City, and a real Tom Kean. His ascendancy to City Hall broke an eighty year succession of Democratic mayors, a few of whom justified Jersey City's reputation for corruption. Schundler in no way resembles the mostly Catholic Democratic politicians whom he replaced: he looks and talks like a preppie investment banker -- which is exactly what he was before being elected. When former mayor Gerry McCann was hauled off to prison, the young Republican began to look like a pretty sensible alternative. Tris McCall disagrees with Schundler on many policy issues, but the mayor has a vision and an enthusiasm for Jersey City, and he deserves his shout-out. back burning paint: Probably from the Cook & Dunn factories in Carlstadt and Kearny. Most complain about the smell on the New Jersey Turnpike, but most do not try living without the fuels and petrochemicals that are manufactured in the industrial parks and refineries that fly by outside the car windows. back Cape May: A sweet little ice-cream parlor of a resort town, down at the southern tip of the state. The bed and breakfast scene there is pretty hopping. back Casting-Off Place: An approximate translation of the Iroquois "Weehawken." "Hoboken," appropriately, means "the land of the smoking-pipe." back Commuting out to Wall Street: Like Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler once did, plenty of Hudson County residents work in Manhattan's Financial District. They don't, generally, go up to Bergenline Avenue; rather, they hang on Hoboken's Washington St., the Paulus Hook area of Jersey City, and in small, yucky waterfront edge city communities. Many, like the character in The View From New Jersey, come to Hudson County seeking a bedroom, a place to park themselves between promotions, and end up finding something much deeper and more meaningful. back Congressman Menendez: The rising star among the new Hudson County Cuban politicians, Robert Menendez was mayor of Union City before replacing Frank Guarini as U.S. Representative. Tris felt Menendez was well on his way to becoming the state's first Latino senator, but a certain prominent Democrat (who does not merit a shout-out) withdrew his support, sinking the nascent campaign. Menendez' voting record exemplifies the politics of Hudson County: fiscally generous, with an eye toward enterprise-zones, somewhat socially conservative, and hostile to the Castro regime. His heart is generally in the right place, but his ties to waterfront developers should be noted. David Wells: We cheered him not merely for his accomplishment, but for what he exemplified: a triumph of the unhip, the unpretty, the hilarious, the often vulgar, the misshapen, guile and improvisatory spirit, the strength to wring the greatness out of what does not look, at face value, like championship material. back Echo Queen: One of many diners on Route 46, and a favored hangout of the real Frank Hagues. back Emily's pose: Several years ago, Tris, Matrix, DScribe, and a few other Weehawken rockers chose to set to music several poems by Elizabeth Harrington Post. Dear Governor Kean is the poem that Tris selected. At the time, Ms. Post was taking classes at Drew University, where Kean, in an academic semi-retirement that suited his temperament perfectly, served as president and head luminary. It must have been frustrating for her, as it was for all of us, to have the Governor so near, and yet so completely unaccountable to her and her classmates. back Empire State: There aren't too many scenesters in Hudson County. If exclusivity is what you want, the very heart of hipness and chic is only minutes away. The tunnel only costs four dollars. back ferry: A ferry connects Weehawken to Midtown Manhattan and Battery Park City. A ferry connects Hoboken to Battery Park City and the financial district. Jersey City runs several ferries to Manhattan. All are advertised as the "civilized" commute, and the implication is plain: if you don't want to have anything to do with the largely Latino community in Hudson County proper, you can live in edge cities along the waterfront, commute to work by boat, and pretend you're existing in some surreal extension of the Wall Street district. It's easy to pretend you're above New Jersey. The real estate market caters to snobs of all sorts. back Firesign: Short for the Firesign Theatre, a group of four lunatics who have recorded some groundbreaking narrative fiction. back First Card: A credit card popular among recent graduates, and other suckers with big plans. back five-deck shoe: When playing blackjack in Atlantic City, five or more card decks are shuffled and placed into a plastic dealing dispenser. This is to discourage card counting. Counting out of a five-deck shoe is an impressive feat. Tris is more of a craps/baccarat man himself. back Frank Hague: The most powerful machine boss in New Jersey history, Hague ruled the state Democratic party from his seat as Jersey City mayor -- a position he held for thirty years. He may or may not have said "I am the law,",and Tris thinks it's immaterial whether he did or not. Clean government types and other phonies often consider the spoils-system logic of the Hague administration the epitome of urban corruption -- but his guaranteed electoral pluralities brought federal spending and public works projects to Jersey City. More troubling were his repeated union-busting activities, and massive breaches of civil liberties. Hague was urban, autocratic, intolerant, unpretentious, ambitious, and willing to devote his muscle to constructing something grand out of base materials, and, as such, he epitomized New Jersey as did no other politician. back Frank Marciano: A candidate for mayor of Hoboken in '92; Marciano earned his shout-out through of the clarity of his vision for the local stretch of the waterfront: he saw parks, public gathering-places, performing centers, and light rail where others could only imagine condominium complexes. Marciano didn't win, but now that his vision has been somewhat realized, Tris felt he merited an acknowledgement. back Galaxy Towers: Guttenberg, a sliver of a town just north of West New York, contains this massive condo complex, replete with an indoor shopping center, a movie theatre, a travel agency and an investment bank, and commuters galore. back Goldman Sachs: A large, ridiculously influential NYC brokerage firm. Former treasury secretary Robert Rubin was a partner there, as was Jon Corzine. If Mr. Corzine does decide to seek Frank Lautenberg's Senate seat, it won't be the first time that NYC money got spent to win a New Jersey election. back grapefruit league: Spring training. Tris enjoys grapefruit, and berries, but doesn't much like bananas in his breakfast cereal. His favorite color is blue, but he enjoys wearing green and purple. back Grove Street: Not exactly a bohemian section of Jersey City, the Grove Street area runs south for four blocks from a busy PATH train station, shuttling commuters to the financial district and Basquiat wanna-bes to Christopher Street. Here, arty trustafarians set up their post-collegiate experiments in expensive lofts and apartments, co-existing with recent immigrants and neighborhood old-timers. A few blocks to the northeast is the bloodless, antiseptic Newport condominium and office complex, due east lies Jersey City's own modest financial district, and directly west, Montgomery Street arches up the palisade, past the frightening, bizarre architectural anomaly of the Medical Center, to the dense, bewildering heights. Tris set Scumbaguette, his magnum opus, on Grove Street. back guayabera: A popular Latin shirt style. Check out any Rick Martin video for a visual demonstration, or just c'mon down to Bergenline Avenue in Union City. back Hoboken: In bad weather, the streets flood with rainwater. In good weather, the streets flood with alcohol. Occasionally imagined as a Jersey artist's colony, a bedroom community, and a site of historical interest, Hoboken is, in fact, a party town, and one with more stomach for jambalaya than for high culture. Consequently, it's one of the world's great rock and roll cities, boasting North Jersey's best rock club (Maxwell's), best rock record store (Tunes on Washington Street), and best rock equipment store (Guitar Bar). Just don't go there looking for the orchestra, and, on weekend nights, do watch where you step. back Hudson County: The Feelies caught the pulse of it. Best understood as an island -- it's cut off from the rest of the state by the Meadowlands swamps, and from Manhattan and the Bronx by the river. Hudson County lies at the confluence of several vectors of speed: the acceleration of the Manhattan financial and real estate markets, rapid, continuous immigration from Latin America, and the hyperactive ambition of a hundred little Tom Keans and Frank Hagues, bent on harnessing those forces of change and building a monument to urban ingenuity. The new census will show that they're succeeding. And meanwhile the streets go faster, and faster, and faster… back immensity: Jersey City will soon outstrip Newark as the state's largest city. New condominium complexes spread like a rash, like the obsessive play of a Lego-mad child, along the waterfront. Tris himself lives in Union City, the most densely populated municipality in the world. And right across the river, always in sight, is Manhattan. It's the occupied territory. back J.J. Florio: "If my overcoat knew what I was going to do, I would take it off and throw it away." That's Stonewall Jackson, but it could have been said by the tight-lipped, cards-to-his-chest, former Governor James J. Florio, Tris McCall's type of politician. He doesn't make many friends, and he's not afraid to piss people off. His tax hikes and his enforcement of redistributive justice in the state school budget got him compared to Karl Marx -- which wasn't fair to either of them -- but he never apologized for his unpopular policies, and he was very nearly re-elected. He may yet stand for Lautenberg's seat, and Tris will proudly pull the lever next to his name. back Jersey City: Reports of corruption, both past and present, continue to be overstated. The Hague machine didn't play politics by House of Lords parliamentary rules, but neither did it break laws with abandon or impunity. Former mayor McCann did go to prison, but it wasn't for political wrongdoing. The current officeholder, Bret Schundler, isn't even a career politico, and was elected without the assistance of any visits to the cemetary. It's enough to make a spoils-system nostalgiac teary-eyed. back mall: This could be the Newport Mall in Jersey City, or the snooty, high-class Short Hills Mall, but most likely it's the bustling Garden State Plaza in Paramus. Running through that mall with a TCBY would cause maximum dismay: we can imagine the narrator knocking his yogurt into the backs of young mothers pushing strollers into Maternity, smearing chocolate-stained fingers over the display items and glass windows at Brookstone, and, finally, dropping the chewed stub-end of the cone and the dirty napkin on the escalator and watching it stutter and jam as it gets chewed up by the final step. back market crash: How would a 40% drop in the NYSE affect Hudson County? Would commuters, faced with less imagined disposable income, stop going out to restaurants on Washington Street? Would the go-go atmosphere on Bergenline Avenue suddenly evaporate in a rash of business closings and limited liquidity? Would the current spirit of co-operation between immigrants and long-time residents turn sour? How dependent, exactly, is Hudson County on the white-collar industries across the river? Are we about to find out in spectacularly grisly fasion? back mass transportation: Neighborhood revitalization begins with transportation projects. The epicenter of every real estate hot spot in Hudson County, from Grove Street to Weehawken, is a train, bus or ferry station. On the flip, the county's poorest regions -- Union City, parts of Greenville, the Western Slope of the palisade -- are inadequately served by public transit. Tris remembers volunteering in '92 for Frank Marciano's campaign for mayor of Hoboken. Estimates at the time were that Hudson County would have a light rail system in place by 1999. It seemed like such a distant future… back Mayor Russo: Democratic Mayor of Hoboken. Anthony Russo has, so far, had it pretty easy -- his city has been booming, there's been no major scandal, and, consequently, there hasn't been much pressure for a development quick-fix on the waterfront. Those projects that have been approved have been handled judiciously, and the new riverside park, named for Frank Sinatra, beats the hell out of a strip mall or parking lot. back metropark: Commuters stream into Metropark in Iselin, New Jersey, and hop trains into Manhattan. back Montville: An upscale community in Morris County -- just north of hip little Boonton. Located on the Ring of Fire along Interstate 287, the rapidly growing, edge-city logic suburbs stretching from the hilly New York border to the supersprawl of Bedminster and Bridgewater. The girls in Montville are pretty cute, but Tris always did go for that well-scrubbed look. back New Babylon: In 586 B.C, Jerusalem fell to the Chaldeans, who drove out the city's artisans, skilled laborers, and poets. These were forced to relocate to Babylon, where they lent their considerable intellectual resources to helping the construction of the empire. After a time, many of the re-settled Hebrews fully assimilated into Babylonian culture, which is perhaps understandable and forgivable -- opportunities for advancement were better, the cache and mystique of Babylon was more attractive, the ethical code nowhere near as stringent. And so the Exile swallowed up and overshadowed much of what was distinctive about the culture and practices of Jerusalem. back New Jerusalem: And yet, some of the Exiles -- those who could imagine more to life than prestige and empire-building -- were determined to return to Jerusalem, and redoubled their efforts to keep the distinctive characteristics of their culture vivid. After the Persian invasion of Babylon, they got their wish. What they returned to was little more than junk -- but it was their junk, and with it, they were able to manufacture their own meaning. From the wreckage of violence and the intellectual fragments of the empire, in the shadow of Babylon, in the midst of a desert, the Hebrews made greatness from dust and broken pieces, legible to anybody with guts and temerity to look close enough, and pay attention. back Newark: No matter how much fuss the state wants to make about the new Arts Center, major stretches of the city have still been abandoned. Newark requires more attention, and more care, than anyone currently wants to give it. Tris has nothing but admiration for Congressman Donald Payne, doing valuable work in difficult circumstances, and keeping the faith where so many have turned their backs. back Nick Sacco: North Bergen is a tough municipality to get a handle on; much of it stretches along the weird, largely ignored Western Slope of the palisade. Through it runs Tonnele Avenue, the industrial spine of northern Hudson County at the eastern fringes of the swamps. Nicholas Sacco serves as both mayor and state Senator there. back palisade: The major geological feature of Hudson County. The palisade is a long, tall, flat granite and gneiss deposit jutting out of the swamp, forming a rocky cliff on its eastern face (overlooking the Hudson River and New York City) and a smooth slope on the west (offering a no less spectacular view of the meadowlands, Secaucus and the smokestacks and industrial parks of Kearny). Three North Hudson towns -- Union City, West New York, and Guttenberg -- rest, in their entireties, atop the palisade. Jersey City spills across both slopes, and Weehawken dips down off the palisade to take in the Lincoln Tunnel, the ferry terminal, and the Riva Pointe edge city development. Only Hoboken, built on a silt deposit at the foot of the cliff, has no contact with the Hudson palisade. back Quick Chek: There are plenty of convenience stores in New Jersey. But there are plenty of convenience stores everywhere. back Richard Turner: Republican Mayor of Weehawken. Like most of the local officeholders, he's got a touchy decision to make. Does he allow developers to turn the waterfront into a large, ugly condominium, or does he ensure access for residents by building parks? back Route 46: The quintessential North Jersey strip highway. Diners, delis, box-style mass retailers, Italian restaurants, kids driving too fast. The girls comb their hair in rear view mirrors, and the boys try to look so hard. back Rudy Garcia: Robert Menendez's successor as mayor of Union City, and another of the young Cuban political leaders who have recently come to power in Hudson County. back S&P 500: In the midst of the ferocious bear market of the early seventies, investor John C. Bogle essentially invented the index fund by buying every issue on the Standard and Poor listing of the 500 largest U.S. companies. This move, ridiculed at the time, has now made Bogle and his thousands of adherents and inheritors very wealthy. Of course, an imprecise system like this only works when the market is going up -- luckily for index fund investors, they've seen, since the Nixon Administration, very little besides gains. back Sagittarius moon: A Sagittarius moon indicates a questing spirit, a proclivity for grape Gatorade, a purple necktie, and tendency to rock out to early Who records. Modern astrologers have turned a scrying system meant to predict cataclysmic world events into a narcissistic yuppie pick-up scene. back Sam Nunn: Former Democratic senator from Georgia who became a national figure by out-hawking the republicans in the eighties. back Secaucus: Basically a big shopping center masquerading as a town. An oasis of dry land in the swamps, Secaucus has become ground zero for New Yorkers looking to benefit from the lower Jersey sales tax. Spread out on the fens, just past the WOR broadcasting headquarters, are scores of outlet stores hawking merchandise at cut rates. Closer to route 3, the dry, fast road to the Lincoln Tunnel and Manhattan, are the huge warehouse retailers that have defined the late nineties -- Home Depot, Nobody Beats The Wiz, Loews Theatres, The Olive Garden. Tris realizes that people actually do live in Secaucus, too, but he hasn't met any yet. Maybe soon. back Sharpe James: Mayor James took over Newark's city hall in 1986, and immediately set out to improve the city's bond rating by aggressively courting corporate money. The public/private partnerships that he has encouraged are not the miraculous urban panacea that some have claimed, but neither are they a fiendish betrayal of progressive principles. It's been a brutal job, and he's been willing to intelligently employ the limited policy tools he has at his disposal. Ultimately, that's all you can ask of a mayor. back Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom: One of many New York City law firms that are quite simply staggering in their size and scope. So many minds, so much hot air. back Sucked too much sugar off these pills: A paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw's statement of theatrical procedure -- he defended his use of humor and theatrical convention by calling it the sugar with which his polemical pills were coated. To which Granville Barker asked "what if the audience just sucks off the sugar, and spits out the pill?" back Tom Kean: Genteel, optimistic, and aristocratic, the two-term Republican governor from suburban Livingston spoke of inclusion, and for awhile we all believed that he could, by sheer force of will, pull us into his rarified, Princetonian world. Could New Jersey be classy, without becoming classist? Kean personified that ambition, and if, in the end, it was a hollow one, it was a fun ride, and we all got to hold our heads high, albeit for the wrong reasons. Governor Kean was exurban, intelligent, resourceful, genial, warm and welcoming, tolerant without being brainless, open to possibilities, and, as such, he epitomized New Jersey as did no other politician. back Trenton : Home of Poor Righteous Teachers, Tony D, and the state house. If you're lucky enough to be elected to state office, your punishment is that you'll have to spend a considerable amount of time there. Architecture in the capital district is really quite nice. back Twilo & Nell's: Hipster New York City dance clubs frequented by Jersey kids for whom the jukebox at the Skyline diner is not enough. back U.C.: A poor town, an occasionally underserved town, but not a slum. Originally German and Italian, Union City is now almost entirely Hispanic. Split nearly in half by the Lincoln Tunnel, the northern district is stark (few trees) and congested, yet Bergenline Avenue cuts a festive streak through the region. South of the tunnel -- and classic Cuban restaurant/grocery Mi Bandera -- the City become more residential; the colors more muted, the streets more tree-lined and occasionally breathtakingly gorgeous, and a bit unreal. And rising like a dream, like a recontextualized High Llamas album cover, from the center of town -- an ornate, baroque monastery that could make even the most hardened materialist pinch herself. back Washington Street: Hoboken's hopping main street, crammed with bars, ice cream shops, hamburger grills with faux-Irish names, hardware stores, clothes stores, cheese stores, sandwich stores -- but few chain stores. Restaurants open and close with alarming speed, signs go up and down, lights flash, entropy rules, and nobody has much time to stop and assess what's going on. Like putting your game of SimCity on the highest possible speed, and walking through the video simulation. back waterfront: What to do with the largely abandoned, but staggeringly valuable, properties along the Hudson River became an obsessive policy question for all County politicians. Prospectors pitched edge-city type projects, and in certain towns, Edgewater and Fort Lee in particular, access to the waterfront became vexed by the presence of condo complexes. After a tussle that lasted more than a decade, Hoboken activists reserved park space along the river. back Weehawken: The enormous houses on the palisade overlook midtown Manhattan, and the view is untroubled and stunning. Kennedy Boulevard East sweeps along the crest of the cliff; when the sun is up, it shines against the skyscrapers across the river and floods Weehawken with a heavenly illumination. The greatest place on earth to catch a rainbow. back West New York: A town on the go and on the rise. Parts of West New York still smack of urban squalor, but the pockets of inner-city desperation appear to be evaporating. Directly north of Weehawken and Union City, West New York is back William Gaddis: Author of JR and A Frolic Of His Own. There has never been a smarter or more penetrating chronicler of the American condition. back

- - - -