Warren Levinson: Slow Dancing on the Old Swamp Road

BY  |  Wednesday, Feb 15, 2012 9:00am  |  COMMENTS (14)

Driving from my house to Manhattan means crossing five rivers: the Third, the Passaic, Berry’s Creek, the Hackensack and the Hudson. Getting across the Third can be a bitch if I happen to hit it on a rainy day when parents are dropping their kids off at the middle school, but the only one I really think about is the Hudson.

Catch the Lincoln Tunnel at the right time and the rest of the trip will take care of itself.

Or at least it used to be, before the reconstruction of Route 3 and its bridges started in earnest a couple of years ago. Now an easy ride through the tunnel on the westbound ride no longer presages getting home when dinner is still warm. Going east, the radio traffic reports (usually outdated anyway, unless Helicopter Man is eyeballing your route Right Now) cover the backup at the tunnel, but rarely deign to take note of what’s doing on lowly Route 3. Continue Reading

Remembering Whitney

BY  |  Monday, Feb 13, 2012 8:58am  |  COMMENTS (0)

This morning in East Orange: Students and faculty at the Whitney E. Houston Academy in East Orange remember their namesake in a ceremony in front of the school. Earlier this morning, the students walked in procession from the school on Dodd Street to Whitney’s childhood home.

Houston went to the same school, which was then called the Franklin School. “We didn’t call her Whitney. We called her Nippy. She wasn’t but so big,” said Principal Henry Hamilton, who remembered the singer as first grader.

Photos by Warren Levinson. Continue Reading

Before the Big Game…

BY  |  Sunday, Jan 01, 2012 3:02pm  |  COMMENTS (0)

Before the Cowboys and Giants do or die, the stadium at rest welcomes you to the new year.

Scott Raab and LeBron James: This Time, It’s Personal

BY  |  Tuesday, Dec 20, 2011 8:46am  |  COMMENTS (11)

Photo: Ken Allison

If you ever watch old tapes of David Letterman, I strongly commend to you the shows from 1993, when Letterman was in the process of being rejected for the Tonight Show at NBC, but hadn’t yet signed his big deal at CBS. Inside, he was miserable.

On camera, he was never funnier.

So it is with Scott Raab’s new book “The Whore of Akron.”

Raab gives full throat to the sorrow of Cleveland sports fans and their endless drought. No baseball championships since 1948. No football championships since 1964. Scott Raab knows. He was there. Now he brandishes his ticket stub like his personal splinter from the True Cross. No basketball championships since ever. Continue Reading

Ashenfelter 8K: Brisk, Brilliant Beginning to Thanksgiving

BY  |  Thursday, Nov 24, 2011 10:44am  |  COMMENTS (0)

The Ashenfelter 8K had 2850 runners on a brisk and brilliant Thanksgiving morning. The winner was Mike Soroko, 23, of Kinnelon in 24:56. Rebecca Wassner of New York was the top female finisher in 28:36.

Ashenfelter 8K 2011 Winner Mike Soroko

Top Baristaville runners were 16-year old Reid Hawkins of Glen Ridge was 27th, with a time of 27:46 and Karen Merz of Montclair was 173rd at 32:30.

Olympic gold medalist (3000 meter steeplechase, Helsinki 1952) and race namesake Horace Ashenfelter (bottom) was on hand to congratulate participants

House Fire on Gates Avenue, Montclair

BY  |  Saturday, Jun 18, 2011 8:43pm  |  COMMENTS (3)

At least two firefighters — and possibly more — were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital after fighting a house fire on Gates Ave. in Montclair this evening.

The fire broke out around 7:20 p.m. and the smell of it carried into the south end of Glen Ridge. Three Montclair fire engines and a Montclair fire rescue unit arrived on the scene; EMT units treated firefighters.

Continue Reading

“Private Eyes” at the J City Theater

BY  |  Thursday, Apr 07, 2011 10:30am  |  COMMENTS (1)

Nothing is as it seems in “Private Eyes,” a witty Steven Dietz knockoff of Tom Stoppard, in production at the J City Theater in Jersey City. What starts out as an arrogant director auditioning an actress for a part turns into something very different when he repairs next door for lunch, and something very different again when another director appears on the scene.

Before long, we’re asking ourselves: OK, is this the play within the play, or is there another layer? Are we watching something real, or a dream or a cuckolded husband’s revenge fantasy or a rehearsal? And what’s real anyway, given that we are in a church basement off Hamilton Park, craning our necks around support columns to see the action?

Because nothing is quite as it seems at this theater, either. Continue Reading

GR: Fire at the Congo

BY  |  Saturday, Apr 02, 2011 2:21pm  |  COMMENTS (4)

They were cleaning up after the Glen Ridge Congregational Church’s rummage sale when “We heard a big zap!” said Lynn Ritchkoff, a congregant and sale volunteer.

A ballast from one of the overhead fluorescent light fixtures apparently exploded, sending smoke into the basement auditorium and chasing about two dozen volunteers and the last of the sale patrons outside. The small fire was attacked by fire extinguisher and the Montclair Fire Department.

No one was hurt. Damage was minor.

Mercy and the Firefly, Now at Luna Stage

BY  |  Thursday, Feb 24, 2011 12:30pm  |  COMMENTS (0)

Amy Hartman’s “Mercy and the Firefly,” getting its world premiere at the Luna Stage in West Orange, is a harrowing and grimly funny bit of work. A nun on the run shelters a teenage killer, the Mercy of the title, fleeing from gang-ruled East Los Angeles to the gritty Pittsburgh of sister Lucy’s childhood.

No one is going to look for Mercy there, but Homestead harbors its own demons for Lucy, a nun who ranks on the piety scale somewhere between Helen Prejean of “Dead Man Walking” and one of the sisters from a convent on “The Simpsons.”

Hartman keeps melodrama at bay with humor. She doesn’t shy away from the jokes in introducing the play’s other two characters: Oliver, Lucy’s borderline junkie ex-boyfriend, and her cracked mother Viv, who dresses her own broken wrist in duct tape and a 7-11 bag and prepares (Symbolism Alert!) last meals for prisoners on Death Row. Continue Reading

“…And Then I Wrote a Song About It,” at Luna Stage

BY  |  Thursday, Dec 09, 2010 11:30am  |  COMMENTS (0)

As telephone companies race to eliminate their paper directories, I realize time is running out on this cliche, but I would pay money to hear Nick Cearley read the phone book.

Cearley populates the stage in Eric Weinberger’s new one-man show, “…And Then I Wrote a Song About It,” at the Luna Stage in West Orange, through December 19.

Cearley plays Randall Klausner, a gay man singing and dancing his way through New York in the ’80s, the heyday of disco and the early days of AIDS, in a mostly vain pursuit of three things, in shifting order: stage stardom, a steady boyfriend and acceptance from his repressed, disapproving Holocaust survivor father.

Continue Reading

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