Welcome to HobokenLand!

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Karen Lenar
First published May 17, 2005
On RealHoboken.com

Ayn Rand, American author and social critic, once wrote, “I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.”

What is the spirit of Hoboken?

When describing Hoboken to people, I find myself flailing a bit. It is not strictly a yuppie town inhabited by manicured women, nor is it solely a blue-collar neighborhood of dirt stained hands.

It is a crisp, clear day in May when………

…the shops prop open their doors underneath white blossomed trees that have already started to thin, coating the sidewalks with soft petals. Stilettos and sneakers and shiny loafers trample over them in the mad rat race of life.

…the line for Fiore’s spills into the street on Saturdays, and Lua has assumed “it” status for cocktail meeting.

…the young and the old and the forever in-between congregate along the sunlit waterfront. Some bring sushi, some bring hangovers, and others simply bring themselves.

It is the sum of its parts, the souls that live and breathe from fourth floor walkups and from balconies protruding from River Street apartments. It is the 3rd and Madison law office which replaced the shifty liquor store; it is Biggie’s Clam House sitting next to yet another revamped apartment.

It is the waft of funnel cakes during Italian festivals; it is the comfortable recognition of the familiar and the curious anticipation of the unknown, and it is the melding of these continual occurrences that makes Hoboken vital, alive, never static.

And we, the yuppies, the townies, the young, the old, and the forever-in-between, are Hoboken. We are the fuel that makes this town real.

Were it not for us trudging to work, sitting on our stoops, attending the street fairs, frequenting the bars, arguing politics and sex and religion with intoxicated fervor, then our town would run dry. Quite literally, in fact.

So here at realhoboken.com, we are attempting to capture the spirit of our beloved mile square town, we’re adding our spike to the punch bowl, our bloggin’s and our views and reviews, and whether you’re groaning at the thought of yet another Hoboken site, whether you’re incensed by the latest Joe Concha story, whether you’re just pissing away your time at work… well, at least you’re living, damnit! And somehow all this synergy, all this anarchy, all this apathy, contributes to make Hoboken what it is, this seventh day of May.

Let’s just walk the earth, a friend of mine so simply uttered. So that is what we do, day in and day out. We coexist and cohabit and copulate in a mile square town, an area that is but a speck on a map, an olive in a martini glass.

What it all means we haven’t figured out. But we sure as hell try.

So cut us some slack in our quest to create a vision, our brewing and spewing and vomiting forth of ideas, or better yet, don’t cut us any. Just walk the earth either way.

Trample on some petals while you stand in line for Lana Lounge on a Friday night or Madison’s on a Monday.

Enjoy and celebrate your Hobokenality, whether you have Marc Jacobs shoes or you have bare feet, whether you’re young and wise or old and naïve.

Me? I like to be forever in-between.