The Jersey City Independent"

New Jersey’s Flying Fish Brewing Company launched the newest beer in its Exit Series Monday night at Copper Mine pub, a craft beer bar in North Arlington. The beer, called Exit 16, was designed not only to be a delicious double IPA, but also to educate the nation about the Meadowlands, the plight of the Hackensack River and how great New Jersey is in general. Indeed, the Jersey Pride emanating from Flying Fish’s Andy Newell and Hackensack Riverkeeper Captain Bill Sheehan was inspirational and nearly brought tears to my eyes.

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing cookies from Jersey City’s Feed Your Soul. This weekend, I got the chance to get drunk on them in the form of Cookie Jar Porter, the newest beer in the Brooklyn Brewery’s Brewmaster’s Reserve series, inspired by Feed Your Soul’s Honey Oatmeal Raisin cookie.

- As the federal corruption trial of Leona Beldini continued yesterday, her defense team got religion on FBI informant Solomon Dwek, who fingered former state Department of Community Affairs commissioner Joe Doria as someone he planned on giving a cash bribe to. Bob Braun has more on Dwek, and the Journal has more on who [...]

In addition to beer, I’ve always had a fine appreciation for metadata. That is, I love to know anything and everything I can know about a thing, particularly a thing I really like.
So, for example, I’m the kind of kid that begged his parents for Star Wars schematic books so I could really understand [...]

Well friends, our secret is out. This past Thursday night my wife Steph and I took a walk around the neighborhood, over to Buon Appetito for a slice, down to the waterfront, back up through Paulus Hook and eventually to our destination, Zeppelin Hall. As we approached from the back, still a good hundred yards [...]

Editor’s note: Who couldn’t go for a beer right about now, after this kind of week here in Jersey City?
Beer correspondent (nice title, huh?) Jonathan Fitzgerald is on vacation this week. In his absence he asked a friend, fellow Jersey resident and writer Kevin Gosa, to assume his beer blogging responsibility. (Clearly, he takes this [...]

Confession: Surveying the long row of beer taps at Zeppelin Hall is quickly becoming one of my favorite pastimes. I would definitely spend a lot more time walking back and forth considering my choice if a.) I wasn’t sure that people, including the bartender, were annoyed by my level of concentration and b.) I didn’t [...]

I was in Edinburgh, Scotland for a little less than 12 hours, around this time seven years ago. I was with some friends that I had made while studying abroad in Nairobi, Kenya, and we decided to put off returning home by spending a week traveling around the United Kingdom. I’m not sure why we [...]

Editor’s note: The Independent is happy to bring regular contributor Jonathan Fitzgerald into the fold for some blogging. He’ll still be writing features on a regular basis for us; those will just be supplemented by his occasional informal musings on the blog. This is his first post — enjoy.
I realize that I’m not the first [...]