Bayonne

Surrounded on three sides by water, Bayonne could certainly be called insulated, even given its position at the heart of the New York metro area. But a new light-rail line from Hoboken and Jersey City has made this affordable, tight-knit city accessible, and if I ever move back to the area I might actually live there.

Bayonne is also where my uncle, the writer and journalist Steve Roberts grew up, and he wrote a book about it. I decided to check it out.

The light-rail let me off at 34th Street. The houses generally all looked the same; wood or aluminum three story houses, right next to each other but not touching. In other words, not the row houses one associates with Northeastern cities, but still close to the street and defining it.

I ended up on Steve Roberts' street, 31st between Avenue A and Newark Bay. As a boy, it was filled with Russian and Eastern European Jews and their children. Knocking on the door of the house that resembled his description of his boyhood home, I picked the right one, with a small Marine Corps flag in the tiny yard. A woman named (if I remember correctly) Cindy Callahan answered the door (so much for the shtetl). Two of her kids were at the Gothic-style Bayonne High School three blocks away; one was learning to be a teacher.

We chatted about the book, though what I really wanted to know was how much renting one of third floor rooms under the rooftops in the city would cost. I've gotten to the point where I will gladly give up hipness for a real room with a bathroom.

At the end of the street, much-maligned Newark Bay looked oddly beautiful with the giant containerized-cargo cranes all in a line on the other side, the rectangular cargo boxes piling up on the docks that destroyed Manhattan's (you need a lot of "upland" storage areas for containers. Not much of that in Manhattan).

Going back to the light-rail, I was struck by the beauty of the library, complete with the name of some of the great thinkers engraved on it, like the one at Columbia University. The High School and the Library were from the era when people took pride in civic buildings and built them to last, to provide immigrants and others a sense of what was important in a democratic society.

One wide street contained the most desirable properties, actual two-story brick with real lawns around them. Many were being used as Doctor's offices.

But on to the entertainment. A building with a giant carved wooden beer keg on top of the entrance. This was Hendricksons, a bar/restaurant from the 1870s that was hand-redesigned in the 1930s by a Bavarian architect. The place was small but beautiful, with stained-glass windows, intricate wood carvings, painted scenes of the old country, and barrel-vaulted ceilings.

But the tight-knit city is not lost in a time warp, no matter how much I'd like that. Snatches of Spanish could be heard on the main street, as well as on some signs. A city built by immigrants continuing the tradition.

It was only about a ten-minute ride to Exchange Place, where one can get the PATH train to downtown Manhattan. It's a little more to Hoboken, where the lines run to Midtown.

Better check Craigslist for rents soon.