Aroma Palace in Montclair, serves more than 100 regional dishes from northern and southern India. Sreekumar Cheramparambil, charming host, owner, and faithful Baristanet advertiser, invited us for dinner this week to mark his one year anniversary in Baristaville. The meal was food Nirvana. Details, on Food.

What’s going on with home sales in Baristaville this spring? Anecdotally, I’ve heard competition is growing among buyers for homes priced under $800,000. The words “bidding wars” have been uttered. Homes languishing, homes snapped up in a weekend… Info on local sales for the month of May, and one realtor’s perspective, on Real Estate.

Regular followers of Baristanet know that we’ve been having technical difficulties all week. Some readers have been getting malware warnings and have been unable to get onto the site. Many readers have had difficulty commenting. Please know that our technical staff has been working nonstop on this all week. Nobody has been more frustrated than us. We’ve gotten used to all comments at the end of our posts — even the cranky ones — and writing without instant feedback barely feels like writing.
We now think that we have identified the source of the problem and eliminated it, but it required us to completely take down all our ads and re-install the software. We will be replacing them, manually, all day.
Thanks to everyone who reported their technical problems to us. Thanks, readers, for your patience all week. And a special thank you to our advertisers for their patience while the ad database is reconstructed.

Take a walk up Bloomfield Ave. through the lens of photographer Wilson Davalos.

From Deputy Lieutenant Scott Buehler, Montclair Police Dept:
Assault
On 5/25/10 at approximately 11:30 p.m., police were approached by a 51-year old Montclair male who stated he was approached by three black males in the area of Hartley Street and Bloomfield Avenue. He further stated that one of the males addressed the victim by his name and said “What’s up?” The male then struck the victim in the nose with a closed fist, causing bleeding and swelling. The other two males had no interaction with the victim. Police located the group on Mission Street. Shaquan Bennett, 25, of Montclair, was arrested after being identified as the male who had punched the victim. No action was taken against the other two males. The motivation behind the assault is unknown at this time. Bennet was charged with simple assault, with bail set at $2500. Bennett was also found to have a warrant out of East Orange, with bail set at $735.

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