The Jersey City Independent "

“Our sense of Prohibition has been shaped by Al Capone movies. My stories are local Jersey City tales — I tell about the ‘mom and pop’ Italian restaurants that made red wine in the cellar, like Pipi’s on Orchard Street,” Leach says. “But there are Capone-style places too, like the Sip and Summit at Journal Square [where people] entered via a phone booth from a cigar store next door.”

Towards the end of an episode of HBO’s prohibition-era drama Boardwalk Empire, the camera pans to Mayor Frank Hague bouncing two topless women on his lap, as one pours wine down his gullet. Hague is portrayed as a stereotypical political boss — a strong-arming, tough negotiator with rich tastes who likes his booze and women plentiful, and his envelopes fat. On the contrary, Hague was a teetotaler.

The academic journal New Jersey History has, well, a long history. It was founded as the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society back in 1845, and was published under the society’s direction until 2005. Since then, the journal has sat dormant, but this fall, historians at the society teamed up with colleagues at the [...]

- The Jersey City school district will receive $23.3 million in federal stimulus money, and several charters in the city are also receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars. – The future of the proposed 9/11 memorial at Liberty State Park remains uncertain due to a pending legal dispute, a larger-than-expected price tag and a daunting [...]

photo by Steven Hart “When it opened in 1932, in a Thanksgiving Day gala, the Skyway was hailed as a marvel of engineering,” writes Steven Hart in the introduction to his 2007 book The Last Three Miles. “Much of what was said back then remains true today — the Pulaski Skyway is a milestone in [...]

Many commentators have referred to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — aka the federal stimulus package — as President Barack Obama’s “New New Deal.” With a New New Deal in the works, it’s time for a look back at the first New Deal and how it affected Jersey City.

- Six months in, we have no budget. Jersey City seems to be waiting to see how Gov. Corzine’s proposed pension fund payment deferral plan shakes out before filing its 2008-2009 budget (the fiscal year started on July 1, 2008). If Corzine’s plan passed, it “would close the gap substantially,” Business Administrator Brian O’Reilly says. [...]