The Jersey City Independent "

Share/Save This September 17, the Historic Downtown Special Improvement District (HDSID) and the Jersey City Craft Mafia are putting on the first-ever All About Downtown street festival in Jersey City, and they are looking for vendors to participate. The daylong festival, which will run along Newark Avenue between Grove Street and Jersey Avenue, will feature [...]

A long-awaited proposal to revise Jersey City’s law governing food truck and street carts was tabled Wednesday night by the City Council after food vendors made an impassioned plea to defend their businesses from what they saw as misguided legislation.

After weighing changes to its food-trucks law for more than two years, Jersey City is finally set to revise the ordinance, with a bill being introduced to the City Council this week. The proposal is wide-ranging and would change everything from how food trucks and street carts are legally defined, to how many licenses the city can issue, to how long vendors can stay in one place.

Share/SaveThe Taco Truck has grown a lot since launching two years ago as a food truck serving Jersey City and Hoboken. First, they opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Hoboken last year. And now this year, The Taco Truck is heading a little west, inking a deal with the Red Bull Arena in Harrison to serve [...]

Share/SaveThe latest food truck to try its hand at the Downtown Jersey City scene is La Sonrìsa, an outfit whose chef Ariel Rodriguez began selling food at the Hester Street Fair in NYC and has now expanded with a truck that began serving empanadas, rice bowls, sliders and coffee near Harborside this week. The truck, [...]

Share/Save- Castagna Faces New Food Truck Charges: Former Jersey City Health Officer Joseph Castagna has now been charged with pocketing license fees he collected from food vendors. He was among those arrested in last July’s federal corruption probe, and he was at one time also being investigated by city police for potentially issuing more food [...]

As City Hall continues to consider potential changes to Jersey City’s food truck ordinance, about a dozen vendors have formed a coalition to push for substantive reform, with assistance from the Street Vendor Project, a nonprofit that works on behalf of New York City’s street vendors.

Share/Save- Reed Street Shootout, 1 Year Later: The shootout on Reed Street that ultimately took the life of JCPD detective Marc DiNardo was shot a year ago today. The Journal has a series of stories, including an interview with his widow, Mary; a report on the building, which it says remains a “shabby, rundown blemish” [...]

Share/Save- Students Not Graduating: About 2,900 New Jersey high school seniors did not graduate last month because they did not pass the state’s alternate high school exit exam, known as the Alternate High School Assessment. Students in about 65 districts were affected, including Jersey City, Paterson, New Brunswick, East Orange, Newark and Union City, according [...]

Share/Save- Fulop Opposes Proposed Food Truck Law Changes: As we reported in May, the longstanding issue of what to do about the city’s law governing food trucks seems to finally be inching towards a conclusion. Two of the main revisions outlined in the draft ordinance we told you about back then — extending the length [...]