The Jersey City Independent "

To break up the long drives he would regularly make between New Jersey and Michigan, North Carolina and Maine for his job as a skate shoe sales rep for Converse, Chase Whitaker took up thrift shopping. Over time, he amassed such a collection of vintage menswear, military tchotchkes, and taxidermied ornamental animals, that he decided it was time to shift gears, as it were, and create a shop of his own.

Photos: Steve Gold Editor’s note: This story appears in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of NEW. You can download the entire issue here, or find a print copy at one of our many distribution locations. One weekend in January, in a quaint general store in upstate New York, Sawyer Smith stumbled upon a pair of taxidermied [...]

Daylight savings is right around the corner, which means your New Year’s gym resolutions have reached their statute of limitations and you feel like a lethargic slob again, right? Alas, you’re not alone! The health club scene isn’t for everyone. (Fluorescent lights, grunting muscleheads and endless soul-deadening revolutions of the elliptical? Over it.) Good news: There are plenty of local workout alternatives that don’t involve stepping in someone else’s sweat. Read on for six ways to get a gym-free body that’s fit for the Jersey Shore in no time. (Tanning not included.)

On a blustery Tuesday evening last month, a motley crew of art-supply-wielding locals trickled in to LITM for a meeting of the Jersey City Drawing Club. We were there too, to talk to the club’s founder Emily Przybylinski about this new social group that’s equal parts booze, conversation, and colored pencils.

When the Chamot Gallery opens for business next week in a glossy 650-square-foot street-level space in the recently renovated Library Hall Lofts building on Grand Street, it will be the first high-end professional art gallery in Jersey City’s Bergen Hill neighborhood. But its proprietor, Charles Chamot, is hardly a newcomer to the local arts scene.

Of all the mafias that may or may not have been meeting in North Jersey on a rainy night earlier this month, it’s likely only one of them was gathering over organic cookies.

Gülick, center, spends some quality time with her bunnies (photo by Virginia Kamenitzer) A larger-than-life severed stuffed bunny head and a bowl of chocolate eggs greeted patrons at the door of LITM last Tuesday night for the opening reception for Megan Gülick’s “Battered Bunnies.” Inside, Alice in Wonderland was projected onto a wall to pulsing [...]

Photos: Mark Townsend Editor’s note: This story appeared in the Fall/Winter 2008/09 issue of NEW. You can download the entire issue here. When Kirk and Chris Bray hit the beach on Martha’s Vineyard in mid-July, they weren’t able to fully relax. “I did stitch some belts on the beach, and in the car on the [...]