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I really don't think Jersey City will ever turn out like Hoboken did; the mentality of the residents are different overall. Not that there's anything wrong with either, it's just that if you look at these condos in Jersey City compared to residences in Hoboken, you'll notice the difference. Jersey City is growing and cleaning up, and although there are more bars and nightlife, they are not the typical young, crazy bars and places that are found in Hoboken.
i really dont think you even need a car to live in hoboken. Most residents who work, commute to jersey city via the njt light rail, take the path to nyc or just stay in hoboken for their job.
I wish I'd seen this thread when it was active. LOL. A lot of nonsense in it. Hoboken is growing less and less interesting because of the masses of suburban twits - largely youngish boring couples with no imagination - who have moved in and not because of young kids who like to drink. That's actually who colonized this town after a small scattering of artist/musician types first came in the late 70's/early 80's.
And whenever I see someone disparagingly refer to fratboys I visualize the commenter as a dweeb who got mocked all through high school assuming the person was even noticed. So lame.
An interesting thread for a young grad student moving to downtown Jersey City.
I'm no expert on NYC, but it seems to me that the city is prone to extremes of either gentrification or violent instability. People with lots of money want the glamor and energy of New York but are afraid of the violence and chaos, so they try to wall off those elements they find unattractive. That, to me, is what gentrification is about: not "suburbanites" or "frat boys" or any of the above, but the anxiety of "haves" trying to move in among the "have nots" and then driving out the "have nots."
The interesting thing I noticed in my first scouting trip to downtown Jersey City is that parts of the area are already in the process of gentrification, but you can see the blend of two distinct aspects of the area, its working class side and its luxury class side. There are plenty of upscale restaurants in the area that charge over $20 an entree, but there are also neighborhood Italian, Mexican, etc., joints that obviously are more geared to people without a lot of money to spend. You can see that too in the mix of more yuppie sorts of novelty shops and 99 cent stores, upscale groceries and bodegas. It's interesting, and nice, to have that mix in an area where people seem to get along with little tension and fear. I would hope to see it stay that way. The thing that makes me the saddest about gentrification is to see lower class families driven out, when they have been the heart and soul of a place for a long time. I would like to see that not happen in downtown JC, but I can't imagine it not happening as the area becomes more desirable and rents go up.
To echo what was said above, if you're going to reverse commute from Hoboken you need to live close to the PATH or close to the lightrail/bus to get you to the station. If I were to reverse commute I would live in downtown JC near the PATH. You have easy access to the suburban trains at Hoboken Station and at Newark-Penn.
It's funny, I posted something similar in the Philadelphia forum about Manayunk. I too called it "city-lite" I have friends in Hoboken and Manayunk and for all of them it's like a waiting room. They're there for a specific purpose and that's to get their career started in the big city, party, meet their future spouse and then start looking for a place in the 'burbs to raise their kids - in that order.
An interesting thread for a young grad student moving to downtown Jersey City.
I'm no expert on NYC, but it seems to me that the city is prone to extremes of either gentrification or violent instability. People with lots of money want the glamor and energy of New York but are afraid of the violence and chaos, so they try to wall off those elements they find unattractive. That, to me, is what gentrification is about: not "suburbanites" or "frat boys" or any of the above, but the anxiety of "haves" trying to move in among the "have nots" and then driving out the "have nots."
having been in NYC in the late 90s and having witnessed much of what has happened in Philly over the last 9 years I don't think that's how it happens. "Gentrification" comes first to already stable, middle-class neighborhoods or, in some cases (the JC waterfront being one of them), to former industrial or warehouse districts. It's usually the artists and musicians who are in first. Followed by intrepid students. Followed by gays. Followed by young couples looking to get their hands on their first house for cheap. Then come the bourgie folks and their boutiques and expensive restaurants. That's when you have people who want their life in the city to just as quiet and clean as their life was in the suburbs. That often involves a big dose of fear of people with less money than them.
It's only after 10-20 years of this expansion that these stable neighborhoods become posh, absorb the blue collar areas around them, then start bursting at the seams and start butting up against really poor neighborhoods that you get the hue and cry about gentrification.
And the idea of people being displaced in the face of rising rents is a problem that's unique to the New York area. Homeownership in Philly is above the national average so when neighborhoods change it's because most of the original residents made a lot of money by selling their properties. There have been recent studies published, and featured in the NYTimes, that point out that neighborhoods don't change dramatically because people are being forced out. Neighborhoods change slowly and through a natural attrition. The average american moves every 7 years. I've changed neighborhoods every 2 years, on average, over the last 10 years.
I'm not sure why people get bent out of shape about it. Neighborhoods change. I live in a very multi-ethnic neighborhood. My black neighbors joke with me about the other white people moving to the neighborhood and how we're getting together to push them out. And I joke back with them, saying "c'mon, you know we just let you borrow it. You've been here for 35 years and now we're taking it back." Of course, i'm not serious but my point is that neighborhoods aren't museums frozen at a particular point in time. When irish immigration was big this was an Irish neighborhood. Then it was Italian. Then it was Polish. Then it was black. Then it was Vietnamese. Then it was Cambodian. Now it's Indonesian. They bring their customs and their stores with them. It's not going to be any different if the next big group is white folk from the suburbs (or from the mountains of Virginia)
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