The Jersey City Independent "

Downtown Jersey City is a great place for trend-spotting. A cultural hub with a mix of suburban transplants, NYC commuters, international travelers and more, the neighborhood is full of the eclectic, the artistic and the fashion-forward. Marinell Montales, a part-time barista at the Warehouse Cafe, has created a place to celebrate the style of these residents: a blog she calls Downtown, natch!

Calling the decision to strip Council President Peter Brennan of his presidency “illegal” and “arbitrary,” Mayor Jerramiah Healy has announced that he will be vetoing the newly approved law.

Sara Marshall-Schkade’s salsas were born out of homesickness. Unable to find Tex-Mex food in Jersey City, the native Texan began to experiment. When she lost her job in corporate communications in 2009, she started to devote more time and effort to developing recipes and building her specialty foods business.

The Education Law Center and a Jersey City school board member are demanding Gov. Chris Christie’s administration account for what they describe as foot-dragging in approving requests for necessary repairs to school buildings.

The latest public meeting held on the ongoing superintendent search took place at School 11 on Friday with the prospect of a snowstorm looming. School Board Member Marvin Adames presided over the nearly two-hour forum. Two of the three board members on the ad-hoc search committee, chairwoman Carol Lester and Carol Harrison-Arnold, were present and [...]

A small group of protesters attended the Hudson County Council of MoveOn.org’s “Make the Big Banks Pay” rally on Thursday by the fountain in Journal Square. Dave Stump, the local council organizer, said the event was one of 137 similar rallies happening around the country and kicked it off with a “make banks pay!” chant. Protesters handed out fliers and asked passersby to sign a petition.

Last year’s Killing Horse Records Anniversary party made the Kearny-based record company a household name for the New Jersey underground scene. After a full two years of hooting, hollering, rocking and rolling, Killing Horse founders Mike Sylvia and Ryan Gross are still going strong.

After a resident living just east of Lincoln Park awoke to find his car propped up on cinder blocks and missing all four wheels — a brazen crime made worse by the fact the car was parked in the man’s driveway at the time — a neighborhood’s concerns over the level of crime in Jersey [...]

If there was one message that former New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow wanted to convey to the audience Friday at the Temple Beth-El’s Annual Sabbath Service in tribute to the late Martin Luther King Jr., it was the importance of being a “good neighbor.”

If we buy into the truism that “any press is good press,” here’s some good news for Jersey City: the New York Post reports that MTV’s Jersey Shore is considering Jersey City as its next location. City Spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill has confirmed that producers from MTV have expressed local interest in creating a spin-off that [...]