Lincoln Highway road trip minus 2: Jersey City.
Yesterday, I did more pre-road trip explorations and drove along part of the Lincoln Highway in Union City (adjoining Weehawken) and Jersey City, on both the original route from Weehawken which was used before the Holland Tunnel was constructed, and the post-Holland Tunnel route to Lincoln Park on the Hackensack River for our first Abraham Lincoln sighting.
Most of the route which was formerly the Lincoln Highway is John F Kennedy Blvd. Once one leaves Weehawken Heights it gets very gritty until reaching Lincoln Park at the edge of Jersey City. This is not the Jersey City one sees from New York (Exchange Place, Newport and Paulus Hook) with brand new apartment buildings, shiny high rises, restored areas with all those row houses and killer views. (Katherine lives in Paulus Hook along the Hudson near Liberty Park – nice up and coming area.) In Union City (formerly West Hoboken) it is hard to get any sense that this was once the Lincoln Highway. Union City is very Latin, and I shall return. There is a huge cluster of restaurants, including some well regarded Cuban places. El Artisano is supposedly the best Cuban food in the entire metro NY/NJ region. Gotta check it out! Thence to a former Muffler Man, now Carpet Man, right under the Pulaski Skyway – yes, this is THE Carpet Man (a little worse for wear and at a very dodgy location) from the opening credits of The Sopranos.
The next photo on the drive was also taken from under the Pulaski, looking over towards that old plant in Kearny across the Hackensack River. Iconic. From Lincoln Park (taken at the incongruously located golf course amidst the post-industrial landscape along the river), a shot of the bridge where the former Lincoln Highway, now “U.S. Route 1-9 Truck”, crosses the Hackensack.
Also pictured is our first Lincoln – known as Lincoln the Mystic, a statue by James Earle Fraser commissioned in 1929, and unveiled in 1930, by the Lincoln Association of Jersey City. A plaque states that it was built with “contributions from the schoolchildren of Jersey City”. It has been beautifully restored. Finally, an exterior shot of nearby Miss America Diner, also located in a pretty dodgy area – I really need to be more careful – but it seemed safe enough to pull into the lot, although when I did so in the TT I felt just a little out of place. If you want to see huge cars – I mean, cars on steroids – come to New Jersey. That little California sports car of mine is an outlier, to say the least. New Jersey is supposedly the diner capital of America. After I went in, the owner came over to the table to make some conversation – he said that he saw me taking pictures and the car. One thing you get in diners here is good conversation. Sort of like it used to be in English pubs before the primary qualification to work the bar at a pub became English as a second language. I usually say that I am from California rather than Brooklyn – it’s better as a conversation starter – and it turned out the owner spent the better part of a year there back in the 70s, so he became my new best friend and started reminiscing. Omelette with toast and hash browns, orange juice, coffee: about $10. A little on the pricey side for a diner but this one was a classic. These explorations are at their best when I can get a good conversation going like that.
More Jersey City tomorrow – Journal Square.