NJ Indy - April 23

NJ INDY

INSIDE

The real climate crisis

Forest bathing in NJ

Chats with Guster and Lucius

Inside ‘New Jersey is the World’

Fermentation hub in South Jersey

Eating farm-to-table in Old Bridge

WHAT’S UP, JERSEY?

The amount of days to wait before you start testing your home-fermented kombucha. Read more about how South Jersey’s Fermented Food and Beverage Supply provides tools and knowhow to start homebrewing and fermenting a variety of foods on page 24.

ON THE COVER

We don’t really know, ha! We thought, conceptually, though that it hit on some of the climate and sustainability stories in this issue, which is out through Earth Day (April 22). Stories like those on eco-fatigue (page 5), forest bathing (page 6), farm-to-table cooking (page 22), fermenting foods (page 24) and little tidbits scattered in music, events and more.

<<< All these themes that he had in there that felt sort of corny when I was a kid, it was the first time I heard them and I was like, ‘Oh, he actually wrote the songs for people like me.’ I just didn’t understand how meaningful that was because I’d never ventured out and been around anyone who didn’t get it. >>>

New Jersey is the World creator Chris Gethard on moving to LA and feeling homesick upon picking up a Bruce Springsteen album. Read more about how Gethard and Co. marry the odd combinations of culture that exist in NJ on page 9.

PLUS: Commentary (pg. 4), Music: Guster and latewaves (pg. 12), Concerts (pg. 15), Events (pg. 18), Jersey Beer Tour: Kings Road Brewing (pg. 26), Best Bites in the State (pg. 27), Free Book Store in Camden (pg. 28), Exhibitions (pg. 29), Savage (pg. 30), Poetry (pg. 31)

NJ Indy is a collective of local writers and creators. We live around the state, but the paper is headquartered in Stockton. Publisher is Matt Cortina. If you want to write for NJ Indy, email him at matt@njindy.com. Any typos in this issue were put there as part of a secret code. See if you can figure it out. Errors or corrections, please email the publisher. We occasionally publish satire; if you can’t tell what’s satire, just assume all of it is.

This is the sixth edition of NJ Indy. Future editions will magically show up at select locations throughout NJ on the first weekend of every month. For more, visit njindy.com. All content is ©NJ Indy, LLC 2023, so don’t steal it, but we don’t know who would. This issue is free. If anyone charged you for this, let us know so it doesn’t happen again.

To respond to anything in this issue, or just to get something off your chest, email editor@njindy.com.

Evan J. Dittig’s Shred.Co recently opened a new indoor skate facility in Fairfield to continue the group’s efforts to expand the skate community and teach kids and adults how to move. Read more on page 30.

We chat with the folks behind Old Bridge’s Heirloom Kitchen, including Chef David Viana (pictured here) about their restaurant and cooking school concept, expansion, and why it’s such a good fit between chef and restaurateur. Read it on page 22.

You’ve heard Lucius on the radio (or streaming service), seen them collab with Brandi Carlile, The War on Drugs and more, and if you’re anything like us, you’ve wondered how they merge their voices into one, unique, magical sonic experience. Read how they do it on page 14.

Photo: Michael Persico

Photo: Max Wagner

Photo: Jordan Galliano

Exciting news, people: Utopia is on the rise!

Space Commander Elon Musk has announced that His Magnificence (i.e., him) intends to construct his very own private town on 3,500 acres of farmland near his new Tesla plant southeast of Austin, Texas. More than a town, Musk explains that he will create utopia in Texas, promising an “ecological paradise” where his Tesla workers can live and do fun things like swimming, pickleball... and paying rent to him.

The gabillionaire is certainly rich enough to erect his own Muskopolis. But, alas, the “utopia” name is already taken. Indeed, I’ve been to Utopia, Texas, a small town west of San Antonio that was founded in 1855 by (cover your ears, Elon!) Swiss Socialists. Of course, history shows that a company town is ruled by the company, not by residents (much less socialists). And Musk has made clear at Tesla, Twitter, etc. that his personal whims rule over workers, consumers, our environment... and even truth.

Which brings us to that ecological worker’s paradise he’s promising. Even as one arm of his empire was extolling his vision of a Garden of Eden situated along the beauty of the Colorado River, another arm was scheming to pollute it! Musk is asking Texas’ corporate-controlled regulators to let him use the site to dump 140,000

gallons a day of his industrial wastewater into the Colorado.

Excuse me, but that turns Elon’s ecological paradise into a fraud. Worse, it adds up to Musk pouring 50 million gallons a year of his waste into the river, fouling the main water source for dozens of towns and hundreds of farms downstream.

Musk seeks to extend the long, sordid history in our country of company-town hucksters, and his latest Texas scam is proof that we should never trust a billionaire promising us paradise.

Why can’t ill seniors get even a scrap of dignity from Congress?

What’s wrong with us? Our nation’s moral compass, I mean.

I don’t like being a downer, just focusing on wrongs, but some wrongs stand out as morally abominable, such as this one. It’s about hundreds of thousands of our low-income elders who, toward the end of life (when frail and most vulnerable) find themselves cast into a part of the Medicaid system that has been deliberately structured by Congress to subject them to needless deprivations and daily indignities.

These are our loved ones with serious health problems who need long-term care in

nursing homes, and two-thirds of them rely on Medicaid to cover their costs. To get this benefit, they surrender all of their income, which goes to defray their nursing home expenses. Of course, for a decent existence beyond mere survival, we all rely on a few little things that are basic to our humanity. So, Medicare authorizes each state to set a monthly “personal needs allowance,” so their elderly patients can cover their hygiene and grooming products, a book or CD, a small gift for grandchildren, a chocolate bar, etc.

Good! But then Mr. Mingy walked in. In 1987, Congress set the minimum for this allowance at a meager $30 a month—under $8 a week! Congress has not raised it in the 36 years since, and most states still provide only a pittance, despite inflation and monopoly price gouging on practically everything. So, our state and national “leaders” (who freely dole out massive corporate subsidies and tax giveaways to billionaires) are leaving ill seniors with so little spending money that they must ration their toothpaste and scrimp pennies to buy a rare treat from the vending machine.

I know this is small in the global scale of human indignities, but that makes it an even bigger moral failure for our society. It would take so little to do so much for so many.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com. ©2023 creators.com.

Take a whiff of Elon Musk’s ecological paradise by Jim Hightower

On the surface, the climate crisis looks like this: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in March that indicates we’re on the precipice of passing 1.5 degrees Celsius in global temperature rise due to human activity, and if we don’t make wholesale changes to the way we live, devastating consequences await us.

Sounds familiar. Right as they may be, many of us are desensitized now to these constant catastrophic warnings. Like, WTF do we do with that information besides shake our heads and say, “Now, I’m definitely not voting for Trump in 2024”?

Got it, we’re fucked.

But wait, there’s hope. Elect the right politicians, buy this cola, put your money in this bank, donate to this nonprofit, offset your carbon from flying this airline and maybe we can stave off the apocalypse.

That’s the climate crisis. It’s the LED light bulb. It’s the reusable grocery bag. The hybrid car, farm-raised chicken and reusable straw. Plant-based Reese’s. Change your habits, Jane and Joe Schmo, and buy these new green products we’ve developed (...just don’t buy from the unsubsidized little guy we’ve squeezed out of the market.) Support these politicians, fuckface, because the alternative is worse. While you’re busy with that, we’ll be on a private jet to the global summit on how to solve climate change, coming up with benchmarks we will not reach. And we’ll be raising millions of dollars for our “green” nonprofits to put out a press release every once in a while.

OK, I’m cynical. That’s not a great thing to be. But more so, I’m just good old-fashioned pissed off. For decades, we’ve been told to “do our part,” and change our habits all while those in power neglect those of us most affected by the climate crisis and pacify us by saying they’re working on some distant, super-duper, net-zero, 100% renewable (based on 2006 emissions, of course) future that lives somewhere over the rainbow (a rainbow, as it

turns out, caused by burning vinyl chloride).

Have we made strides? Sure. Have there been wins, like the PennEast Pipeline? Of course. And are we at least talking about the right things now? Yep. But, big picture, who’s made more progress in the last 15 years: everyday climate activists and environmental justice communities, or neoLibs and Costco? Indeed, it feels like decades of righteous environmental advocacy haven’t prevented cataclysmic climate change, and with Earth Day on April 22, we’re about to see a whole bunch of greenwashing from the worst climate offenders; they may offer us a trinket— maybe a tote bag!—to show that you and they really do care.

Look, I’ve been writing about environmental issues my whole career, and invariably someone will say once every few months, “Well, what are you doing? Do you have an electric car? Do you only use candles in your house? What about all the paper you waste distributing your dumb paper? You are as bad a creator of climate change as anyone else.”

What those idiots fail to realize is that I, and many of you I assume, would make sounder, actually impactful eco-conscious choices if the powers that be created a framework for us to do so. We want to buy local food and end our reliance on an industrialized food system that is making us sick, but industrialized ag continues to get so many subsidies it artificially lowers the price of the shitty food we buy from them. We want to drive electric cars, but they’re expensive, and charging them, with stations few and far between, is impractical. We want to take public transportation, but the options just aren’t feasible for many of us with, you know, lives. We want to lower how much fossil fuel we use in our homes, but energy companies are legal monopolies and dictate change on their own prerogative.

The climate crisis is that those who have the power to change things attempt to placate us with all the right words and very lit-

tle of the right, revolutionary action that needs to be taken. They pretend to give us agency, like we’re kids, when they know they control the reigns.

And yet.

Don’t we feel bad throwing plastic in a garbage can, even though we know only 5% of it gets recycled anyway? Don’t we believe in the promise of renewable energy and put up solar panels on our houses if we can afford it? Don’t we feel better picking up trash from the beach or riverbank, even if we know it’s going to be burned, release noxious fumes and count as “renewable” in this state?

Yeah, because we’re decent people. And our natural inclination is to do something even if that something has a minimal impact for life on Earth. We believe, whether we say it explicitly or not, that we send goodwill into the world and into ourselves when we make the right climate choices.

Fuck politicians and corporations for taking advantage of that, but it needn’t prevent us from doing more. So my thought is, for myself at least, a shift in perspective. We make choices that are good for the Earth and our neighbors (even the ones who think climate change is a hoax) not to effect some grand outcome, not to play this game that the politicians, corporations and the Big Greens want us to play, but because they’re the right choices. And we make these choices of our own volition. We do what we can knowing we are neither savior nor cause of the climate crisis. If enough of us vote for third-party candidates, move off-grid and buy from the natural grocer, maybe collectively we can create change. Maybe not. But if we go down in flames, we do so with a clean conscience.

Jesus, that’s dark. Anyway, happy Earth Day.

Cortina, Publisher

—Matt

The real climate crisis is not what we’re told it is

The profound sensory experience of forest bathing in New Jersey by

Matt Cortina

When you show up to your first forest bathing event, the trees will look like trees, the clouds will be clouds, the dirt… just dirt. But after a couple hours of guided meditations and a walk through the woods, they transform. In a rustling young tree branch, you might see your child. In the clouds, an answer to a perplexing prob-

lem. In the dirt, everything. You won’t expect it. You won’t really be able to explain it. And that’s kind of the whole point.

Though people have been communing with nature for centuries to improve mood and health, the modern practice of forest bathing, or nature therapy as it’s also commonly called,

started in earnest in the ’80s. Citing an increase in work burnout, the Japanese government encouraged people to practice forest bathing (or shinrin-yoku), which could be as simple as walking or sitting in a forest, or doing so with a group, while practicing curated meditative exercises, or invitations, that activate the senses.

That’s what I did before the winter at Duke Farms in Hillsborough with certified guide Richard Collins, who runs the forest bathing practice The Friendly Territory. Collins had been traveling to Japan for some two decades for work, and noticed people kept mentioning he ought to try forest bathing. He had regularly meditated, and so was interested in the practice, and eventually tried it.

“Maybe six years ago, I went out and did it and I had what I consider to be a profound experience,” Collins says. “It shocked me how profoundly I felt forest bathing there. I came back thinking I’m going to do this as a practice. I was thinking about semi-retirement, and this struck me like a bolt of lightning. This was so beautiful and so full of potential for the U.S.”

Collins trained with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs, where he undertook a six-month program, involving lessons on how to conduct a walk, a week-long immersion in the woods, weekly meetings with a mentor, foraging exercises and practice walks.

Collins opened his practice in the pandemic, which, as you might imagine, was fortuitous timing—people who had plans to go on vacation or were otherwise sick of being inside had a chance to do something interesting in a safe environment.

But woven into the fabric of forest bathing are benefits that are not only realized in times of stress, isolation and sickness, as in the pandemic, but in the ups and downs of everyday life. There are mountains of anecdotal evidence from forest bathing practitioners, and several countries (South Korea, Canada and Finland, to name a few) incentivize the practice through various methods.

But there’s also plenty of clinical research that bolsters the claim that forest bathing benefits both the immune system and mental health. When we commune with trees, we breathe in phytoncides, a natural compound released by trees to fight pests and disease. Turns out, phytoncides have a positive effect on humans, and increase the production of natural killer (NK) cells, which fight off certain diseases.

While the immune response to forest bathing is quantifiable and communicable, the mental health benefits are trickier to quantify and much more difficult to communicate. But they’re present, and they’ll be the thing you take away immediately from a

forest bathing program.

Collins is aware of that awesome power of nature and sees his role in the process as to facilitate connections between person and environment.

“We are not therapists,” Collins says. “The forest is the therapist. The guide’s job is to hold the space. We create a sacred space and then our job is to hold it without ego. What we always like to say is whatever you get from this is between you and nature. I don’t want to get in between that.”

Our program at Duke Farms began with a short introductory speech from Collins about what we were undertaking. Collins asked us to partner up with a stranger and talk about a memory involving nature from our childhood that sticks in our heads. Then, Collins guided us through our first invitation, a 25-minute meditation under the cover of trees, where he prompted us to sense nature in different ways—“Hear the farthest sound, now the nearest,” “Touch the soil, then bring your hands to your nose,” “Open your eyes slowly, as if you’re waking up.”

After each invitation, the group convened in a circle, where we could hear everyone and no one was in front of or behind another. Collins asked us to speak about our experiences, and emphasized both in the meditation and the circle, not to judge ourselves or one another.

“The secret of the circle is [people] have to feel safe and not judged,” Collins says. After each person speaks, “I basically just say, ‘thank you’ or, ‘that was a great insight,’ because if you give anyone credit, then you’re taking away credit from the next person. You have to stay neutral. Everyone has something to say and as our walks go on, people start opening up more and more. With each circle, they open up a little more and a little more and by the end, they’re wide open.”

After spending time in these invitations taking input through your senses, and not necessarily your logical mind, it’s hard, at first, to use that mind—the one’s we get caught up in everyday—to describe the experience. You might say something that your logical mind wouldn’t, or that it would’ve judged you for saying, or that you wouldn’t have shared with a group of strangers if not for the priming Collins provides.

But dang, is it wild to hear what comes out of you and to see what crosses your mind when you try to process, in the

moment, the experience of the invitations. After the first meditation, I couldn’t stop thinking about the 20 seconds we focused on sound. If I paid attention, I could hear one of the farthest sounds, and I could hear the nearest one, when just minutes before it was a cacophony. A beautiful one, but jumbled nonetheless. And I was struck with the thought that I don’t know where one sound begins, and one ends. What’s in me, and what’s without. What’s sound, even.

And so, to communicate that to the circle, I said something along the lines of, “I’m aware of something much bigger and deeper than myself that I can’t explain.” Look, it’s not Rumi, but it’s what came out. And it was true.

As others spoke in the circle, there were plenty of people nodding along to those who could put words to what we were experiencing. In one invitation, Collins asked us to take a string of twine tied into a small circle, place it anywhere on the ground that calls out to us, and look at it for 10 minutes. After, we were instructed to roll over and look at the sky.

I did not know how to express what this experience delivered, except that it delivered something. In the circle after that invitation, one person said what I had experienced perfectly and beautifully. They said, “You look at the ground and it’s a small area but it feels so massive. You turn to the sky, and it’s a bigger area, but it feels so small.” And I’m paraphrasing because, in the moment, informed by his experience, he said it much better than I can with my logical brain after the fact.

Though Collins has been doing walks for several years, he, too, still has moments of wonder. On an invitation to pick up an item in nature that called to us, he said in the circle that he picked up dirt, and, by the end, had a looser grip on what dirt really is.

“It came to me that I did not know what dirt is,” Collins says after the fact. “It’s this beautiful combination of blood and bone and water and soil and rock and cosmic beings. I don’t know, but it’s magical. We like to call it dirt, which has a bad connotation with it. We put words on things, but that restricts things.”

The examples of the power of the circle are numerous. One person who said they had social anxiety and seemed uneasy talking at first, ended up coolly sharing wonderful insights by the end. A 9-yearold came to a walk one time, Collins says,

and “blew everybody’s minds” with their insights. Collins says he’s surprised by what comes out of people in the circle “every single time. I’ve never not been surprised.”

People come from all walks of life to forest bathing. Collins asked us in the introductory circle to tell us why we were there. Though it may not be the exercise’s primary intention, it serves as a benchmark for where many people end up.

“I’ve had people in the opening circle say … ‘Because my wife made me come,’” Collins says. “You know right there you’re going to get some resistance. But I find the bigger, tougher they are, the harder they fall.”

Collins is quick to pass off credit for the powerful experiences many of us had during the walk. Nature, as he said before, is doing the work, and when people trust themselves, listen to their bodies and submit to the experience, they and nature alone generate the benefits of forest bathing.

But Collins is also pretty good at this, and takes care to make sure the circle remains a judgment-free and safe space to share, and that the invitations are maximally beneficial to the group. The first two invitations—the quiet meditation, and a quiet walk through the forest listening and looking at nature—are the same in almost

every walk, Collins says, because they’re intended to get practitioners in the proper space.

“After that, things always change, but those two are the base foundation of the walk,” Collins says. “If I can, in the first one, quiet your mind down even a little bit, doesn’t have to be a miracle that you’re stoically still, and then in the walk, slow you down physically, now I’ve created a foundation for the invitations to follow.”

Collins decides “in the moment,” which invitations will follow the first two, based on what he’s hearing from the circle participants. And he occasionally reads poems from which he feels the group might benefit.

But the work also begins long before, and after, any given walk. Collins says he spends at least five hours in a natural area before deciding whether or not to hold a walk there. Currently, he holds monthly walks at several locations in Morris County. After a walk, the weight of conducting a walk requires a bit of decompression.

“The hardest thing is holding the space for two and a half hours,” Collins says. “When I get home, I am exhausted. If you truly hold the space of people and you keep it sacred and you keep track of everybody and hold the meditative space,

that takes an incredible amount of energy. For me, the hardest part was building up the stamina for two and a half hours and not losing my focus. It’s very easy to drift off and lose your attention because it’s demanding. The foraging, a lot of the other things, were tricky but not too difficult. Once you start practicing, you realize how important it is to hold the space.”

On the last invitation, we were told to pick a scroll out of a bag. On the scrolls were handwritten invitations, and we each got different ones. I picked a scroll that said to be with something that makes me smile. I walked around a bit and eventually felt called to a small branch growing out of the trunk of a very large tree. I didn’t know why it called out to me. But toward the end of the invitation period, the wind picked up and the leaves on the branch started batting my face. Sometimes lightly, sometimes way up in my business. Then the branch would retreat, only to suddenly, almost playfully, tap me again. In just a tiny moment, the branch was my kids on the couch doing silly kid things and climbing all over me. Maybe it was a coincidence, but the sensation, the feeling I got was identical. One and the same. Logically, it wasn’t the same, of course: this tree and my kids. But in something deeper within me, something much harder to communicate, it was.

So, you know, I’m hooked. As are others—Collins says in the U.S., forest bathing is today what yoga was 20 years ago. And I don’t know what Collins experienced on his first forest bathing trip, but he’s, obviously, hooked too. Now that he’s been doing it regularly for years, he can communicate some of what a long-term forest bathing practice feels like.

“I’ve grown more in the last three years than I grew in the previous 40 of meditation and anything else I did,” Collins says. “With meditation, it’s nice to sit in a quiet room but if you can’t be present in the world through the daily activity of somebody yelling at you or honking at you or all the little inconveniences, then does meditation really work? This practice has made everything more real and brought everything into sharper focus. For me, the connection with nature has deepened and deepened and deepened, and my realization is we’re all just part of one being.”

Find a list of and sign up for Collins’ upcoming forest bathing events in New Jersey at thefriendlyterritory.com.

“With meditation, it’s nice to sit in a quiet room but if you can’t be present in the world through the daily activity of somebody yelling at you or honking at you or all the little inconveniences, then does meditation really work? This practice has made everything more real and brought everything into sharper focus. For me, the connection with nature has deepened and deepened and deepened, and my realization is we’re all just part of one being.”

by Kyle Nardine

Through his years going to shows in New Jersey’s punk and hardcore scene, Chris Gethard learned the value of getting shit done.

“I’m much more of the mentality of if you want something to happen, you make it happen,” explains Gethard. “You find the other people who are into it, you team up and you make it happen.”

Making things happen for Gethard also meant convincing his longtime friend Mike Dolan (Mike D) to come on his comedy stream, and talk about the time he quit his job at McDonald’s.

“Chris called me one day and he’s like, ‘Hey last night I was doing this livestreamed comedy talk show and one thing led to another and somehow I got on the topic on how you work at McDonald’s and what happened to you and how you quit that job, and the crazy story that happened. People reacted crazy to it and they thought it was too crazy to have happened,’’’ remembers Mike D.

“And then he asked me to come on and explain the story. I’m not really a public person, and I’m a textbook introvert ,so I was like, ‘Alright, because you are my guy, Chris.’”

Mike D did go on the livestream to explain his unfortunate incident with hand puppets at the McDonald’s. The duo then realized their other lifelong friend, Nicky Bonadooch, was in the chat as well. What was supposed to be an hour stream turned into a marathon streaming event.

“The three of us start talking and it turns into this epic event,” says Mike D. “It was supposed to be an hour stream and it ended up going for almost five hours and at some point it was 2 o’clock in the morning. A day or two later Chris was like, ‘Everyone loved this and we should turn it into a podcast and see what happens.’”

The podcast ended up becoming New Jersey is The World and it’s still going strong a few years later. NJITW gives listeners an alternative talk show about Jersey that isn’t NJ 101.5. They debate about topics like who is the least Jersey person ever born here, and what would add or subtract time to the New Jersey doomsday clock, but also dive deep into the food, music, small businesses, politics and culture of our state.

For Gethard, NJITW is not only a chance to showcase his love for our state, but to also hang out with the people he grew up with.

“I’ve been around some of the funniest people in the world because of my career and I would put my friends I grew up with up against anybody,”

says Gethard. “I had this idea in my head and all of a sudden it’s like I’ve moved back home, I’ve got these funny friends and I never shut up about Jersey. It’s the pandemic so none of us have anything to do, so let’s start getting our stories down.”

Gethard’s story begins in West Orange, or WoTown, as locals call it. Gethard describes it as a “typical North Jersey experience.” It’s also where Gethard’s love of music and comedy developed.

“One of my formative experiences was the first show I ever went to in a church basement in West Orange,” explains Gethard. “My second show was in my friend Bonadooch’s backyard and they had gotten a message from a band from Florida that was like, ‘Hey, our Jersey show fell through, can we hop on this barbecue that you guys are throwing on July 4th?’ That band ended up being Less Than Jake on their first tour. The guy who threw the first show was my buddy Mike D. The second show was put on by Bonadooch. I’m still making stuff right now with the same exact guys who introduced me to punk rock when I was 13 years old.”

For the hosts of NJITW, the VFW halls and church basements provided them with a set of ethics and guidelines for life, and they still carry those lessons years later. Mike D was influenced by zines he read as a teenager, and realized that a lot of the places in the zines were in the Garden State.

“I feel like I had kind of fallen into an amazing underground river that was operating just below the surface of what you see every day,” explains Mike D. “And I thought it was an extremely cool secret to be in on. We would go to school and all the kids we went to school with were like, ‘OK, we’re all gonna go drink behind a dumpster this weekend,’ and I’d be like, ‘OK, have fun. I’m going to see like four different shows over the weekend that are all right here and they’re all run by kids like us,’ you know? It was just amazing to me that this whole sub-world existed. And to me it was just a much cooler and better world than what I saw kids around me being into.”

Gethard parlayed the lessons he learned in the punk scene for a career in comedy and podcasting. The experience of going to improv classes at the former UCB Theatre in New York felt a lot like going to shows at the Meatlocker in Montclair.

“Back then, the theater I found was in this old shutdown strip club,” says Gethard about UCB. “It was really scrappy, it wasn’t famous yet at all. And it’s kind of like nobody cared that I was young,

nobody cared that I had a real North Jersey accent at the time. I mean I said coffee and dog horribly and all these things that I could maybe feel self-conscious about. Instead it was just like, well if you work hard and you’re funny, then you have a place here. And that was very cool and very empowering. And what it really reminded me the most of was going to punk shows as a teenager all over New Jersey.

“The way that the UCB theater was built in its earliest days, it was all just about, can you contribute to the community and are you talented enough to not get swallowed up? To me that felt the same exact way as seeing a band when I was 15 and finding out that the kids in the band were 18, you know? Like to be a teenager and you go to a show and this band blows you away and you buy their seven-inch at the merch table and you find out like, oh the bass player isn’t even old enough to have his license yet.”

Gethard grew deeper into comedy when he moved to New Brunswick to attend Rutgers. He had a mixed experience attending our state’s flagship university.

“I walked out of New Brunswick with a lot of good stories, that is for sure,” explains Gethard. “I’ll tell you I didn’t have a great experience at school. I wound up being medicated for depression for many years of my life, and I would have been depressed wherever I went. But looking back at it, Rutgers has a huge campus and I think there were 40,000 people there when I went there. And if you’re an 18-yearold kid who’s kind of depressed and doesn’t know how to talk to anybody about it, going to a giant school where there’s 200 people in every lecture hall, 400 people in your Intro to Philosophy class, it’s just built for you to feel like nobody’s noticing. ... But I also look back and I go, it’s such a motivating force because part of where my head was at was realizing like, I don’t want to live a standard existence. I don’t think I’m someone who’s built for a shirt-and-tie corporate life and I was sorting that all out.

“So that is what led to me kind of really trying to give it a go as an artist and really pour myself 110% into the idea that I was gonna make something else happen for myself.”

After leaving Rutgers, Gethard worked for Weird NJ, and it was a formative experience for him

New Jersey is the World brings together all the weird pieces that make up the Garden State

Credit: George Kopp

learning more about the state. He also moved to Los Angeles for a little bit, and that’s when he felt how absence makes the heart grow fonder.

“In 2003, I went to a music store on Sunset Boulevard,” remembers Gethard. “I picked up a couple things and then saw Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits and I’m like, ‘Am I really gonna do this?’ I bought it and it wasn’t until I was 3,000 miles aways that I finally understood ‘Thunder Road.’ Being that I grew up there, went to school there, even in my early years of doing comedy, going over the river, I was always coming home. It’s one of these things where it’s hard to see what you’ve got when you’re standing in the middle of it, you know? So to go to a place that moves at a different pace, to go to a place where all of a sudden I’m kind of the only person who grew up in NJ. And then you hear these lyrics that are all about like, I have this drive and this feeling that I gotta get the fuck out of this place, you know, which is so many of the songs on Springsteen’s Greatest Hits. His album just comes down to, like, I need to get in a car and drive somewhere else. And I had done it, I had driven somewhere else, all of a sudden it was making me homesick, this feeling of growing up around people who worked really hard, growing up around people where some people had a lot and some people didn’t have two pennies to rub together.

“All these themes that he had in there that felt sort of corny when I was a kid, it was the first time I heard them and I was like, ‘Oh, he actually wrote the songs for people like me.’ I just didn’t understand how meaningful that was because I’d never ventured out and been around anyone who didn’t get it.”

Listening to Springsteen in LA hit Gethard like he was going down the Cannonball Loop at Action Park, heading towards the water. Besides NJITW and his other podcast Beautiful/Anonymous, Gethard is most known for his work in the HBO documentary Class Action Park about the infamous Vernon amusement park. One of the first episodes of NJITW was about Action Park and in some ways Gethard thinks it’s a metaphor for NJ at large.

“The thing that NJITW has kind of made me see that I didn’t always see when I was younger was how much of an ecosystem Jersey is in terms of not just its culture, but its politics, its food, all of those have these weird commonalities that tie together,” explains Gethard. “We all know that the politics are very shady and you don’t have to scratch the surface to understand that machine politics is kind of alive and well here, maybe more than any place else in the nation. And we all think it’s backwards and messed up and bad, but no one does anything to stop it. And to me that’s exactly the same as Action Park, right? Like, kids are dying there, we’re not getting it shut down. To me it’s the same reason that we go, ‘Well, the best food that we have to offer is a breakfast meat that is disgusting and we’ll fight to the death over what the name is.’’

“That’s a very common attitude here, too, how people always think of the gritty side of New Jersey and that’s the stereotype that we all really embrace and love. But then you start to think about actresses like Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep and you’re like, well those are people as classy as it gets, how do they fit in and get as much love in the same

state that loves Arturo Gatti? Springsteen sings all these songs about being working class, but he lives in a cul-de-sac and he just sold his back catalog for a billion fucking dollars. Like how do those things fit together? You know, like how does the politics of someone like Corey Booker fit in with the films of someone like Kevin Smith in the way that there’s all these moving parts that seem very disconnected by looking at all of them. With NJITW, you start to see that for a small state that is ridiculous as it is, there is a real beating heart to it that infects everything.”

Along with NJITW’s WoTown show, which is Gethard, Bonadooch, and Mike D., Gethard also has a series on Newark called Newark Conversations, and a series on South Jersey called South Jersey is the World Also. In his Newark series, he talks to people who are making an impact in the Brick City. It’s a forum to correct the out-of-pocket shit people who grew up in the ’burbs sometimes say about cities like Newark.

“My father went to high school in Newark and I lived a 10-, 15-minute drive away,” Gethard says. “And we were taught throughout my childhood that Newark is the stolen car capital of the world. It’s dangerous down there, it’s trouble, there’s no reason to go there. You sit there and you realize, man, we’ve got this huge city for all sorts of people, art, and culture. And we were just taught to avoid it, you know? My dad has deep affection for Newark; my grandfather worked there, my father went to high school there. It’s more just overall culture and it just really bothers me now that I’m older to think back to that and go, man, like in 1967 there was a race riot in Newark and a lot of the towns around literally pulled the bridges up so that people couldn’t enter town, and I kind of feel like the bridges went back down

physically, but not mentally. ... I think a lot about the relationship between the cities and the suburbs in the state, because it’s not just Newark, it’s Camden, it’s Paterson, and it’s Trenton. A lot of the cities kind of caught this label in the ’80s that they were ‘unsavable.’ And it’s just not reality. The whole state would be healthier if we could figure out how to get all these things to work as a system.’’

South Jersey is the World Also touches on the people and things that make up the area from about Florence to Cape May. SJISTWA co-host and producer Andrea Quinn got involved after hearing NJITW say some inaccurate things about South Jersey.

“I would comment a lot on the Patreon on what they were getting wrong about South Jersey,’’ says Quinn. “Geth or someone would make really wild blanket statements about what things are like down here. Originally Geth pitched SJISTWA as a short series. He emailed one day and was like, ‘Hey, is this something you would be interested in doing?’ Every week I would bring up a South Jersey person, place or thing I wanted to highlight. It eventually became Geth and I working out why our sides of the state are different and what we have in common.”

But the OG show for NJITW is WoTown, which comes alive because of the long friendship between Gethard, Bonadooch and Mike D.

“We’ve never been envious of each other.” says Bonadooch. “We’ve always all helped each other whatever goal we were shooting for. So everybody’s really supportive. This comes from being on the punk rock scene. There was never anything that you were embarrassed to talk about or say you were into because somebody was gonna think you were weird.’’

In the future, Gethard would like to have Brian Fallon and Kevin Smith come on NJITW Gethard would also like to do a show dedicated to the volunteer organizations around the state. Gethard is a volunteer EMT in Morris County, and he says that it’s pretty punk-rock.

“I promise you, if you’re someone out there who wants to change the world ... the place to start is what’s right in front of you in your hometown,” says Gethard. “Because there are food kitchens right now that need people to help hand out food. There are first aid squads all over the state that are shutting down because volunteers are in their 60s and they’re retiring to Florida and young people just aren’t signing up. There’s volunteer fire departments, there’s homeless shelters, there’s stuff right in front of you where you could walk in the front door and they put you to work today helping your neighbors in a way that’s eye to eye, that’s not theoretical, it’s actual work that can happen right now. And it’s in the cities, it’s in the suburbs, it’s in the rural parts of the state.

“So, it’s gonna feel dumb saying it, but as someone who’s gotten a lot of credit over the years for being kind of brought up punk rock and converting that into a comedy career, joining the EMT squad in my town is one of the most punk rock things I’ve done in a real long time. Because it’s about community and it’s about localism and it’s about helping the people right in front of me who need help right now. I just encourage everybody, let’s make volunteerism cool again.”

Find out more at newjerseyistheworld.com.

CULTURE

Shred.Co expands the North Jersey skate community

by Connor Reddington

“Skateboarding is not a crime.” The mantra that was popularized in an era when skaters faced the brunt of society’s misguided disdain, and bogus legislation, is becoming somewhat of a relic. From underground pastime to Olympic sport, the perception of skateboarding has experienced a radical shift. Parents and authority figures who used to discourage or prohibit skating have finally recognized its positive impact and are now actively encouraging kids to get involved in the sport via different initiatives and programs.

In Essex County, two new manifestations of the sport’s mainstream evolution can be found at Rand Park in Montclair and Shred.Co’s new facility in Fairfield. The former: repurposed tennis/basketball courts that now house a bisected skate park with an evolving layout of ramps/obstacles and a newly completed skatable course designed by an Olympic skater and architect. The latter: a commercial unit that has been transformed into an indoor skatepark and headquarters for a skateboard instructional program.

Shred.Co founder/operator Evan J Dittig has been involved in the North Jersey skate scene for over a decade. Quickly disillusioned by the 9-to-5 life after graduating college, he struck out on his own, founding a skateboard instruction business in 2017, Shred.Co [formerly Skate Now], which has grown incrementally since. Over the years, he has helped countless people of all ages, skill levels and abilities pursue skateboarding, while simultaneously supporting the local and global skate communities. I recently sat down with Dittig to discuss the new indoor space, Shred.Co’s mission and his vision for the company.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. Read the full interview at njindy.com.

Your history with skating?

I started skateboarding when I was 11, and I’m 28 now, so I’ve been skating the majority of my life. As a kid, I never liked team sports and I didn’t really have anything. I tried playing guitar once and was like, “Eh, this is too hard, this isn’t for me.” So skateboarding became my thing and my parents were really supportive of that. They would take me to drop in at different skate parks, and I built a ton of stuff like boxes in my driveway with my dad. So that’s kind of how I started skating and how I was able to get better, because we didn’t really have skate parks where I grew up in Wayne. There were no local places to skate so I would just skate in my driveway and all my friends would come over. As I grew older, we would take NJ Transit to the city and skate downtown, and then we’d meet new people and film [our skating]. Then I started doing the whole sponsorship thing where I’d get boxes of shoes and boards and stuff. Underground (Skate Shop) was really helpful with that; connecting with them helped me meet new people and travel and film. Mark Matthews

(owner of Underground Skate Shop) helped introduce me to the right people and he even inspired me to start the skateboard lesson business—huge shout out and thank you to him for all of that.

Why did you pick Fairfield for the Shred.Co indoor park?

Pretty much just because the space was available, but also it’s a pretty centralized location to all of the areas that we work with. It’s about a 20- to 30-minute drive from just about everywhere. [The place] has a good little charm to it, it’s exactly what we want. The rent is really decent, it’s not too big where we’re paying an exorbitant amount in rent and trying to fill it with kids. It’s a good place to start and see, like, “Can we grow from this?”

Apart from open skates and individual lessons, what sort of programs are you running?

Well, one of the things we just started doing here is an all ability skate session—all ability sensory skate—which is working with kids with developmental disabilities, autism, ADHD. We started that program outdoors in Montclair, actually. We have a really good partner with Cornerstone, which is a youth group in Montclair. They bring the kids to have a free opportunity to skate: learning how to push, how to ride, how to drop in. We do some skateboard games and stuff like that. [The kids] are so receptive to skateboarding and have such a good time… all of our all-abilities clinics have been met with such an overwhelming response of kids coming and skating. We had a therapy dog come in and the kids loved it. We were anticipating 15 to 20 kids, and we had like 40 kids come out.

What are some of the most fulfilling moments since founding Shred.Co?

In terms of the business as a whole, from day one, I would say the most fulfilling thing we did was we sent out about 150 pairs of shoes and 10 complete skateboards to rural Africa—Zambia. One of my friends Johnny, who runs a skateboard program out there, I met him in South Africa, at a global skate summit. He’s essentially just a really dedicated skater and he was teaching his community how to skate, but they were using wooden boards with roller skates… and they had about three boards for 50 kids. So we heard his story in South Africa and we’re like, “We want to help these guys out.”

Our friend Steve, from Solid Foundation (a non-profit organization in Paterson) had a connection to one of the Vans stores in Garden State Plaza; so they got all the returns and stuff (shoes and boards) that they couldn’t sell or didn’t need anymore and donated them to us. Then I had a random phone call with a guy that works at DHL who had also heard about Johnny’s story,

and we partnered up with DHL and they shipped everything out for free.

Every winter-ish we do a little campaign to “spread the shred” where we are able to get used boards, new boards and donated parts to ship out to organizations in different countries. We’ve sent boards to Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. We recently went to check out the new skate park at Rand Park in Montclair; while you helped finish one part of the park, the “Candy Courts” section was designed and done by an Olympian, right? Can you tell us a little bit about it?

So, Alexis Sablone designed the park. She’s an architect but also an Olympic athlete, too, which is amazing. She designed [Candy Courts] to look like art that you can skate on so that the town would be like, “Oh, this is cool. We’ve got all these new sculptures, but it’s also a skate park.” It’s completely different from any other skate park that’s around the United States, honestly. We’ve seen people and pros from all over coming there. It’s been really cool to see it grow from just a tennis court with a flat bar and maybe a box that people would drag onto it, into a huge skate park created by an Olympian.

What do you believe is your mission with respect to skateboarding and your business?

I would say just improving wellbeing through skateboarding. Whether it’s mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing or developing socially—skateboarding is beneficial in all of these aspects. Regardless of who you are, or your skill-level, skateboarding is going to give you fulfillment and happiness. You’re gonna make friends, you’re not gonna be sitting on the couch on your phone, doing nothing. If you’re struggling in life, or if you just have a rough day at school, you can come out and skate and not think about any of that; you can be fully present in this skateboarding activity.

Credit: Jordan Galiano, courtesy Shred.Co

Guster is almost three decades into their career, and if you’re a longtime fan—as many of us are, latching onto 1997’s Goldfly or ’99’s Lost and Gone Forever for dear life and never letting go of this band that ceaselessly churns out indie/pop/rock songs with catchy melodies and whose downto-Earth persona and happy-making live shows become annual rituals—well, shit, that makes ya feel old.

But a funny thing happened with this threesome—Ryan Miller, Adam Gardner and Brian Rosenworcel—turned foursome (Joe Pisapia for a bit and now Luke Reynolds) in the last few years. Their two most recent albums, Evermotion and Look Alive, brought in new sounds, rhythms (electronic drums are a Dylangoes-electric change for a band that famously started with Rosenworcel banging hand drums) and totally fresh sonic arrangements on songs that still, impressively and undeniably, bring the catchiest of hooks and the band’s trademark juxtaposition of cutting and silly lyrics.

It’s a remarkable evolution for a band that easily could’ve fizzled away or phoned it in playing old favorites for diminishing crowds. It’s blasphemy to say—at least for the old diehards—but Guster, today, might be better than ever.

Rosenworcel understands how it goes.

“If you take a band like Spoon or Wilco that I love, I’m really attached to the album

The evolution of Guster

by Matt Cortina

I discovered. And it’s hard to evolve with the band, but a lot of our fans have, and the evolution was necessary for us as artists,” Rosenworcel says. “I mean, definitely you have people who will come to a show now and be like, ‘I haven’t seen Guster in 20 years and they didn’t play any songs I know.’ That’s not actually true; we mix it up live quite a bit, but that’s the gist. … Most people from the Goldfly days at some point couldn’t roll with the changes. That’s fine.”

After reinventing their sound on the last two albums, Guster is actually going back to some of its roots on the album it’s finalizing now. They recently recorded a few songs with Ron Aniello (famously Bruce Springsteen’s producer) in his Asbury Park basement; Aniello worked with Guster on Keep it Together and Ganging Up on the Sun. They also worked extensively with producer Josh Kaufman (Josh Ritter, Bob Weir, The Hold Steady, Craig Finn) on the forthcoming album, and as Rosenworcel says, the producer pairing lent itself to heading back toward Guster’s acoustic foundations.

“We have been on an evolution. I think about recording in 2020 with this sort of background of upheaval that made us choose to record with Josh Kaufman … who tends to make music with acoustic guitars and pianos and softer drums, so it might be the first point on this evolutionary track where we kind of maybe brought it home a little; like, took a step back,” Rosenworcel says. “It’s tough to know because we don’t always have perspective on that. But, the melodies and the songwriting are really the

focus always. We know we have an album when we have enough songs that have bulletproof melodies and lyrics.”

The hope is that the three songs on which they’re working with Aniello will “cap off enough material for us to find an album that has some sort of thread to it,” Rosenworcel says. The songs on the album have been in the works through the pandemic and the band is feeling kind of itchy to get that work out there.

It’s a different place for Guster to craft a new album than they were some two decades ago on the heels of the uber-popular Lost and Gone Forever. That album, which catapulted the band to a new level of popularity, “just flowed right out of us with our dream producer [the illustrious Steve Lillywhite]” and captured the poppy, melodic, acoustic majesty that was early Guster. The follow-up, Keep it Together, “was a disaster,” Rosenworcel says.

The band was learning new instruments—“bass guitars, amps, keyboards and the kind of drum set you play with sticks.” Plus, Pro Tools, recording software that opened a Pandora’s box of editing possibilities. They spent hours, weeks, months working and had little to show for it. It was tough to reinvent the Guster wheel, especially as they were noticing a more mature, evolving indie pop sound coming to the fore in Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and The Strokes’ Is This It. So they brought in Yo La Tengo’s producer Roger Moutenot, asked friends like Ben Kweller to come in and jam, got a studio in New York, took a trip to Nashville, and eventually grinded out what would

become Keep it Together—only to have it rejected by Warner Bros. because it didn’t have a single (“Amsterdam” and Homecoming King” eventually came together).

Twenty years after Keep it Together, Rosenworcel can look back on it with a sense of amused detachment, but also a clear memory of the frustration that recording that album brought—it was, after all, a good album, even though that wasn’t clear in the moment, and the stakes to deliver another hit album, whether Guster felt it or not, were higher.

“All that hard work, all that creativity and focus on sonics,which was the first time we really focused on sonics, I think paid off,” Rosenworcel says. “But as far as pressure to deliver a good album, I didn’t know. We released it and played a big free show in Boston that had so many people there and we signed all these albums, and I went home and checked my email and there was, like, not one message from anyone. Like, ‘Hey, good album,’ ‘Hey, good record.’ So I thought everyone hated it, but over time people kinda really started to appreciate it.”

It’s a little surprising to learn about the turmoil that went into recording that album (or any Guster album) given the happy-go-lucky persona of the band. This is a band after all that would often come out in costumes, whose “Guster is for lovers” T-shirts were ubiquitous in the pleasant indie rock crowd of the early aughts, went through and replaced all the vocals on an album with spoken ‘meows’ to combat piracy, and sometimes sent Rosenworcel out at the end of shows to (endearingly) butcher renditions of tender ballads like “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

Guster is a knowable, relatable band, seemingly (from the outside) immune to the rigors of the music industry. Rosenworcel hilariously cataloged the bands travels in an early-internet Road Journal that was at its best when he was detailing touring capers like how Jack in the Box wouldn’t serve a sweaty drummer in the early morning who had walked up to the drivethrough window.

But, of course, it’s a more accurate description of the band. And, in time, Rosenwor-

cel in particular has been able to flesh out his perspective as, you know, a human being and not just the drummer in this beloved band that says funny things on stage and on the internet. His Twitter account (which is a good stand-in for the now-defunct Road Journal) is a great follow and offers a platform for Rosenworcel to push outside the bounds of Guster’s relatively apolitical leanings and speak truth to the absurd

can have and of the limitations of the platform.

“I think you can find allies, which is nice, but then the Elon Musk takeover of the site, which led to the loudest voices becoming the more extreme voices didn’t do anything good for my sense of, I don’t know, stability on Earth,” Rosenworcel says. “So yeah, it can be a dark place and the less time you spend on there, probably the better your mental health is.”

The evolution of Guster, and its individual members, is not only limited to Rosenworcel dunking on dumbasses, Miller singing more lead vocals than Gardner (a circumstance of songwriting, Rosenworcel says), and the band having the freedom and confidence to explore new sounds. The band will play with the Boston Pops and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra in June and July, a match made in indie pop heaven (listen to the band’s album with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra for evidence) that displays the depth and flexibility of the band’s songwriting.

world in which we live.

For instance, the Guster Twitter handle, run by Miller, “is not allowed to say Donald Trump Jr. is dumb, but I am, and that’s a great tweet right there,” Rosenworcel says.

“I got hooked on Twitter definitely in 2020, and I didn’t realize how much I needed an outlet just for my general thoughts [and to] just be an individual and not have to be, like, the drummer behind the scenes who doesn’t talk into the microphone,” he continues. “So it definitely was something that resonated with me. … I don’t think we’ve actually been shy at all about speaking out about guns or the environment or anything, and the lyrics are not subtle sometimes when we get a little political. But we’re not gonna go on stage and cram that down anyone’s throats. I think people come to a show because they want a break from that.”

Rosenworcel, an outspoken gun reform advocate and whose pinned post is, “I am waiting for Donald Trump to wake up and start tweeting, so I can zing him with a crushing reply. Wake up Donnie. REFRESH. REFRESH. What has become of me,” is both aware of the power that a well-crafted message

“We have a lot of songs that we were able to go through and make charts for, and then we’re also, like, old and looking for any way to get a new thrill on; thrilled to have the power of all those awesome instruments and musicians behind us,” he says.

Gardner also launched Reverb several years ago, which works to make tours more sustainable and eco-friendly and has worked with artists from Billie Eilish to Dave Matthews, Lorde, My Morning Jacket and more.

For three dudes who started jamming in their dorm room at Tufts in 1991, it’s remarkable where they’re at today. And that many of us, who started listening to them shortly thereafter, are still with them.

“It’s still really fun,” Rosenworcel says. “We wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t. New music injects some new life into the setlist and it never really gets old to feel like audiences are listening to your music and appreciating it. It’s an important legacy, all those albums, and getting on the bus with your friends—and, we are friends—feels more important than ever in light of COVID and everything.”

Guster plays White Eagle Hall in Jersey City on April 6.

Photos courtesy Guster

Lucius on their alchemical vocal arrangements, recent collabs and getting back to making music

by Matt Cortina

We hold the truth of Lucius to be self-evident. Turn on “24” off their latest album, Second Nature, and within seconds you’re transfixed by how frontwomen Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe unify their voices into something singular, powerful, evocative and unique.

It’s different than what you might experience listening to other illustrious vocal duos like Simon and Garfunkel or The Righteous Brothers, where you can hear the differences in each voice—with Lucius, it’s hard to track where one voice begins and the other ends, even as Laessig and Wolfe harmonize, change timbre and volume. Their voices are water particles barreling together down a river that flows over flat beds, crashes over boulders and thunders through waterfalls in many different directions, but, somehow, together. It’s one.

That unique voice is one big reason why Laessig and Wolfe have been asked to collaborate with dozens of artists over the last few years—notably Brandi Carlile (with whom they shared the SNL stage this year), Roger Waters (with whom they toured the world), The War on Drugs, Tweedy, Ingrid Michaelson, Harry Styles, John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Kurt Vile, The Killers and more.

So in-demand have the two been in the last few years that Lucius (which is rounded out by Dan Molad (drums) and Peter Lalish (guitars)) didn’t release an album for six years until they dropped Second Nature last year. The album takes the band down the road into disco with reverberating tunes you’ve definitely heard on indie radio abundantly over the last year, and pushes the duo into arrangements that showcase their ability to create unique sonic effects with their voices.

“In a way, it kind of feels like we’re just starting to get back to things,” Laessig says. “We’ve been so lucky to have these wonderful collaborations with Brandi, we went on tour with Roger Waters for three years. We’ve done a bunch of wonderful collaborations, but we haven’t been so attentive to our thing in a while. So we’re getting back into the groove. We put out Second Nature this year; we were really excited about that.”

Laessig and Wolfe have a seemingly endless toolkit when it comes to arranging their vocals to effect certain moods and match the vibes of their songs. Because they’ve been doing it for so long—the two met at Berklee College of Music in 2005—Laessig says they’ve developed communication skills to direct where they take vocals on any given track.

“When we go in and record vocals, there’s a lot of experimentation. [Wolfe] and I have been singing together for so long that we have sort of our own language—weird ways to describe different kinds of timbres and things like that. We’ll experiment with layering or, you know … we’ll swap parts because of where our voices sit. If we want something to sound more belty, then Jess might sing the top and vice versa. I can’t even remember what we did on the record, because on tour we’ve already swapped with each other a couple times. When you do it live, it also translates slightly differently as well. There’s different ways to sing it live. All tour with different songs, we’ve been swapping when we sing what.”

Their vocal ability is a marvel, and even

amid alluring rhythms and sonic adornments like synths (they both play the keytar) and irrepressible rhythm, their voices are kind of… out there. Laessig and Wolfe don’t shy away from having their vocals laid bare, and, them being human and all, it’s worthwhile to wonder what happens when one isn’t feeling 100%—can these carefully crafted, synchronized, attuned voices handle, say, a cold? A bad night?

“Because we know each other, you can read when the other person is having trouble or needs that support and you can kind of fill in the space,” Laessig says. “It’s really cool in that way; we have that balance and do talk about that a lot. As a solo artist when you’re completely alone, you don’t have that crutch to lean on if you need it, so I think we’re really lucky in that way.”

The mutual support extends to songwriting. Laessig and Wolfe often write songs over coffee, talking, as friends, through issues they face and bouncing ideas off each other on how to package the emotions of those issues into song—love, heartbreak, motherhood, divorce, joy, isolation and more. That intimate process of co-writing is personally beneficial, Laessig says.

“It’s therapeutic. You know, writing a song on your own is incredibly cathartic if you’re able to find the most concise, clear and beautiful way of saying how you’re feeling,” Laessig says. “If you find that lyric and you’re like, ‘That is what I’m feeling,’ it’s the best. For me, I’m not always that good at expressing myself outside of song. But the songs are like that

Photo: Max Wagner

for me. And I think when you bring it into a co-writing situation, it does give you different perspective sometimes. Or maybe it’s not exactly what you thought it was. The other person says this is how I’m hearing it and takes it into another realm or another feeling.”

Now, powerhouse musical duos (and, of course Lucius is a band, but Laessig and Wolfe are the engine) don’t necessarily have the best track record of sticking together for the long haul, particularly when fame and acclaim come their way. But almost two decades in, Laessig says she and Wolfe are as good as they can be.

“Jess is a godmother to my child. We’re good,” she says. “Our goals are the same and the way that we try and look at the world is very similar. So I think writing is pretty easy. We’re trying to get at the same point a lot of the time. Touring is hard and this business is hard and I think ultimately it’ll come to some sort of meltdown at one point or another and we’ll be like, ‘What’s going on?’ and we’ll talk it through and feel better and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. I think as we get older and have families, we’re getting better at knowing our limits and being able to communicate.”

Now that the proverbial seal is broken on Lucius’ new music, the hits won’t stop coming. They have another album finished, which, true to their trajectory, takes a different musical tack, and they’re working on another as well. Laessig is close to the vest about just what those albums will sound like, though.

“You’ll have to wait and see. It’s its own world,” Laessig says. “We like to explore different avenues. I think it’s been a blessing and curse for us. We want to stay engaged just as we want our audience to stay engaged. We just keep exploring. I guess if you stop, then you’re done. Art is like, you just keep searching. So we have fun with it.”

Lucius plays White Eagle Hall in Jersey City on April 11. Tickets available at whiteeaglehalljc.com.

Asbury Lanes, Asbury Park

5: Richard Lloyd Group, Ribeye Brothers, Baquenne.

7: Titus Andronicus.

8: The Plot in You, Holding Absence, Thornhill, Banks Arcade.

14: Renee Maskin, American Stereo, Jeff Linden and the Black Spot Society, more

16: Castle Rat, Wolfspeak, Tiki Torture, Dignitary.

20: Mister Tickle Hands, DJ Foggy Notion, Noshows, Areublue, Lilly Marshall.

21: Jarod Clemons & The Late Nights, White Wing, Personal Space.

23: Samia, Christian Lee Hutson.

27: Band of Gringos, Via Ripa, Surfing For Daisy.

28: Karmic Juggernaut, Out of the Beardspace, We Used to Cut the Grass.

Bond Street Bar, Asbury Park

23: AMMO, Grawlixes, Phantom, Unknown Liberty.

House of Independents, Asbury Park

6: Unwritten Law, Authority Zero, Mercy Music, Eternal Boy.

7: NOAHFINNCE, Bears In Trees, Action/ Adventure.

8: Strawberry Girls, Body Thief, Standards, Tang.

13: Fake Names.

15: Hodera, Flycatcher, A Boy Named John.

20: Origami Angel, Sweet Pill.

22: Kevian Kraemer.

28: Jessie Haines, Natalie Farrell.

29: Felly, ThankGod4Cody.

Stone Pony, Asbury Park

8: Green Knuckle Material, All Systems

Go, Halogens, 54 Ultra, Side Control.

14: Hot Dress, The Azures.

20: Ruston Kelly.

22: Gina Schock.

23: Houndmouth.

25: Father John Misty.

29: Sunny Day Real Estate, The Appleseed Cast.

Trinity Church, Asbury Park

1: SOMA, Meteor Meteor, Jerry Kaba.

Anchor Rock Club, Atlantic City

7: cumgirl8, Cheeky, NOT YER BABY, UgLi, Molly Ringworm.

8: twentythreenineteen, Friend Hospital, In-Dreamview, Slo TV, Bike Routes.

22: Ruby the Hatchet, The Outsect, Reckless Randy.

23: Illusion of Solace, Prevailer, What Lies Below, more

28: Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, Another Michael.

29: Gorilla Biscuits, Paint It Black, Gel, Good Times, Off The Tracks.

Twin Elephant Brewing, Chatham

28: Geoff Rickly, Warren Swan.

Dingbatz, Clifton

6: Joe Buck Yourself, Beneath The Green, Shut Your Face and The Shut Ups, Porch Rockers.

11: Satan, Night Demon, Haunt.

14: Hed PE, Crazy Town, Tantric, Adema, Concrete Dream.

15: Badfellaz, Pyramada, Love’s

Over-Rated, Crown Victoria.

27: DMC and the Hellraisers, Resection, The Witch.

Factory Records, Dover

1: The Martyr, Liminal, Ghostwreck, Hosticide.

2: Our Marvelous Lives.

12: Mike Borgia.

29: Son Lewis and Tony Sky

29: Sicomac Band

Flemington DIY, Flemington

14: Toads, Fracture, Liminal, Silithyst, Downhill.

16: Stay in Nothing.

22: Prayer Rope, Faraday Ribcage.

Crossroads, Garwood

2: TV Moms, Rites of Springfield, Goalie Fight.

6: Free Throw, Can’t Swim, Equipment, Early Humans.

7: Anvil, Midnite Hellion, Don Jamieson, Corvid Corpus.

8: Brian Erickson, Levy Okun, The DTs, Phillip Nasty & The Magic Grill.

12: Makes My Blood Dance, Two Fourteen, Forever Yours, more

13: Brendan Kelly, No Trigger.

20: One Eyed Jack, Juggling Suns.

Pet Shop, Jersey City

6: Sir Synthesis, Desert Sharks, Lkffct.

13: Connor Bracken & the Mother Leeds Band, Widely Grown, Philosopher Pirate.

White Eagle Hall, Jersey City

1: Bass Drum of Death, Dead Tooth.

6: Guster, Karina Rykman.

11: Lucius.

26: The Jayhawks, Freedy Johnston.

27: Sullivan King, Level Up, more

28: Gorilla Biscuits, Indecision, more

29: Fucked Up.

30: Shayfer James, Sarah and the Safe Word.

Jimmy’s Lounge, Kearny

6: Midnight Psychic, Pissed, Little Miss Carriage, Public Disturbances.

8: Spitshine, Camino Walker, more

10: Floatomen, Vespid, Kaizo, Circle Back.

13: Jag One, Progress Avenue, Meteor Police, The Walls.

20: All Under Heaven, ASkySoBlack, High.

Madison Community Arts Center,

22: Groovy, The Love Robots, Becky Crosby, XS:IQ, Tru Exact, Matt Hadder.

Silver Stream Studio, Montclair

1: Jonathan Francis, Joe Allocco, Brian Rothenbeck.

Mayo PAC, Morristown

8: Boney James.

13: Johnny Mathis.

18: Chicago.

QXT’s, Newark

11: HELL, Sunrot, Unhinge, Keefchamber.

NJPAC, Newark

12: Andrew Bird

28: Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. 29: Audra Mcdonald.

Ale ‘N Wich, New Brunswick

4/23: Doc Hopper, Mikey Erg Band.

Cinco De Mayo, New Brunswick

8: School Drugs, Stall, Deathcycle, DVZN WON.

27: Struck Nerve, Broken Vow, Torena, Not One Truth, Dead Torches.

State Theater, New Brunswick

8: The Rascals.

16: Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo.

20: Little Feat.

26: Cold Weather Company.

Shawn’s Crazy Saloon, North Arlington

23: Break the Cycle, Torment, Deluzion, Greed Worm.

Princeton Folk Music Society

21: Alan Reid.

Starland Ballroom, Sayreville

14: Dying Fetus, Suicide Silence, Born of Osiris, Aborted, Sanguisugabogg, Crown Magnetar, Slay Squad.

South Orange PAC, South Orange

13: Michelle Cann.

16: Vince Ector’s Organatomy Trio+.

Stanhope House, Stanhope

7: Kristi Jean.

15: The Billy Hector Big Band.

22: Regina Bonelli.

Debonair Music Hall, Teaneck

5: The Queers, Suzi Moon, The Raging Nathans, The Young Rochelles.

7: Soraia, The Neverends, King Like Mom, Lost Romance.

28: The Sigils, Human Zoo, Kailie Simpson.

Millhill Basement, Trenton

21: 19DRT, Keefchamber, Green Inferno, Gristmill, Rube.

Lizzie Rose Music Room, Tuckerton

8: Eliza Neals.

16: Marielle Kraft.

19: Selwyn Birchwood.

29: Katie Henry.

Photo: Max Wagner

Asbury Park’s latewaves calls themselves out

by Kyle Nardine

In between Asbury Park-based rock band latewaves’ debut EP Partied Out, and their first LP released in 2021, Hell to Pay, singer and guitarist Mike Pellegrino had a realization—the same realization that Taylor Swift sang about in “Anti-Hero,” and a similar epiphany that Lebron had after Kyrie Irving got traded to the Mavericks.

That realization? Maybe he was the problem.

“I had to swallow the big gigantic pill of that maybe, just maybe, I might be an asshole, too,” explains Pellegrino. “Not the whole thing, but maybe I can be doing some things better on my end, too. I had to come to an acceptance that I had to deal with the cards I’m dealt and that I need to focus on what I have the power to accomplish.”

Every one of us has been frustrated with where we were at a certain point in our lives, and not reaching the milestones that society has set for us. Pellegrino went through these motions in regards to music. It’s a major theme of latewaves’ first EP Partied Out

“My frustrations definitely reflect where I was mentally at the time,” says Pellegrino. “I had a bit of a victim mentality, and things wouldn’t just work out. In the past I have been in bands where we would get to a level of going on a big tour and then the band breaks up or the label doesn’t want you. I’ve played showcases for all sorts of labels and the feedback was always, ‘It’s good, but it’s not what we are going for.’ I did not want to admit that there’s no fast track in doing this. I thought you needed the look, the blue checkmark, all that stuff. I really thought that’s what you needed to succeed in the music industry. I was fed up with that aspect of it, but it doesn’t matter now because we are in our lane and love what we do.”

Right now, latewaves is going beyond the speed limit in their lane, but the band can slow down and reflect on how things have changed since Partied Out

“We didn’t know what we were really going for,” explains Pellegrino. “I thought we were gonna have five members with all the guitars and harmonies we added. It was kind of a rag-tag operation with that EP. We did drums in Portrait Studios in North Jersey, and then I recorded everything else in my apartment. I

had no idea what I was doing, and I had Logic open and YouTube open the whole time trying to figure out what to do.’’

Something else the band figured out with Partied Out was how to make do with their surroundings. Latewaves is a three-piece band, but it’s hard to tell with all the noise the band makes.

“I could go into grueling detail about the ways we have tried to fill out the space in a three-piece band,” says Pellegrino. “We get a lot of feedback that we sound like a big band and that we make a lot of noise as a three-piece band. It was a good way to throw us to the wolves, like, ‘OK, this sounds good in the recording, but how are we gonna make it sound live now?’”

“We had no choice but to figure it out,” says bassist Howie Cohen, “or else we would have sounded like a small band with a big record behind it.”

Latewaves, of course, did figure it out. They released their first LP, Hell to Pay, in 2021, and the experience of releasing that record is something that the Shore-based band will never forget.

“It was an incredible experience to have, and meant a lot to us,” explains Cohen. “It was gratifying, and it’s led us to great places.”

“Our producers took a liking to us, and helped us grow,” says Pellegrino. “They helped us grow as songwriters and musicians. Every word on that record was gone over by our producer, Vinny. Even what adjectives we would use. I would be in the vocal booth, and he would be like, ‘You need to rephrase that, it’s not how people talk,’ and I would be like, ‘It sings right?’ He would coach the shit out of you in such a good way. Shawna (Grabowski, drums), had experiences being coached like that, but I was never an athlete. It felt like I was on Remember the Titans.’’

In terms of the lyrics and meaning behind the record, Pellegrino believes that it’s more optimistic, but there’s a mix of emotion on the record. One of the more upbeat songs is “Enough is Enough.”

“‘Enough is Enough’ is one of the more positive songs on here,” says Pellegrino. “Even though it’s still kind of sad. That song is mostly about watching someone go through a hard time, and spiraling. The judgment we pass is

so easy to the point that we don’t know that we are doing it. Like if we’re in a better spot than someone and we see someone spiraling and going downhill it’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, what a mess.’ This song is more like, hey, you have been there, and you live in a glass house, and you don’t have a right to judge someone else for their shortcomings. There’s a lot of calling yourself out on Hell to Pay and that song is an example of it. No one is better than the next person.”

Latewaves will be playing “Enough is Enough” and more songs at their upcoming show at House of Independents on May 27. You might even hear some new songs as well from their upcoming LP.

“We finished LP2 in December,” says Grabowski. “It could be released later this year but nothing is set in stone. Every song has a different tone and vibe, but collectively it all fits very well together. We haven’t figured out the sequence yet, but when we do, it will be a fun listen.”

“With these new songs it’s still the latewaves you know and love,” says Pellegrino. “Time plus hard work usually equals a better product, and I think it’s the best shit we have ever done. I’m incredibly excited to show everyone what we did.”

Even though latewaves will be playing shows in Baltimore and NYC, there wouldn’t be a latewaves without another city on I-95, and that is New Brunswick. Grabowski would attend shows in the Hub City starting in middle school, and for Pellegrino, a Hunterdon County native, he would go to New Brunswick as a way to escape the land of cows in Hunterdon.

“Hanging out in New Brunswick magnified my love for punk music,” says Pellegrino. “It was great to see the community there. The reason why this genre is great is because of communities like New Brunswick, where it’s just as much about the people at the show as it is about the bands playing. I felt welcomed for the first time, and it felt like the puzzle piece finally fit for the first time in my life.”

latewaves will play House of Independents in Asbury Park on May 26.

Credit: Ali Nugent

LUNAR FAIRE

April 16

Sussex County Fairgrounds, Augusta

To include your events in future calendars, send an email to editor@njindy.com with details.

Dark Force Fest 2023

March 31-April 2, Sheraton, Parsippany

From VampireFreaks, the same company that brought you ‘Dark Side of the Con’ and ‘Triton Festival,’ comes the next evolution in dark alternative events. For three days, they take over the entire Sheraton Parsippany, with top industrial, goth, metal, alternative bands from around the world.

Shen Yun 2023

March 31-April 1, State Theatre New Jersey, New Brunswick

Shen Yun takes you on an extraordinary journey through China’s 5,000 years of divinely inspired culture. Exquisite beauty from the heavens, profound wisdom from dynasties past, timeless legends, and ethnic traditions all spring to life through classical Chinese dance, enchanting live orchestral music, authentic costumes and patented interactive backdrops. Revisit a time when scholars and artists sought harmony

The long dark frozen wait is over. It’s time to fluff your tutus, comb out your wigs and practice your glitter lips because Lunar Faire is back for season three. Come by for fire dancing, vendors, fortune telling, henna, wizards, potion labs, drag performers and so much more weird and witchy fun.

with the Tao, or the “Way” of the universe, and when divine beings walked upon the Earth to inspire humanity.

‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’

March 31-April 8, StageWorks at Studio 237, Pompton Lakes

StageWorks Presents the award-winning, internationally acclaimed theatrical experience

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 15-year-old Christopher has an extraordinary brain: He is exceptional at mathematics but ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched, and he distrusts strangers. Now it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher stands beside his neighbor’s dead dog, Wellington, who has been speared with a garden fork. Finding himself under suspicion, Christopher is determined to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington, but his detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a thrilling journey that upturns his world.

Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market

April 1-2, Cure Insurance Arena, Trenton

The Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market is a DIY craft fair and cultural celebration which occurs three times per year and features food trucks, live music, live tattooing and more, plus a carefully curated collection of hundreds of unique artists, makers and small businesses hailing from more than 25 states (and Canada) that sell everything from vintage clothes and toys to original artworks, vinyl and cassettes, oddities and taxidermy, collectibles, curiosities and much more.

Springtime and Family Festival

April 1, 8 and 15, Alstede Farms, Chester

Have fun and learn some stuff at this Easter and springtime festival. Your admission ticket includes scenic hay wagon rides around the farm, visiting and feeding the baby farm animals, participating in an Easter egg hunt, and photo opportunities on your visit with the Easter bunny. Go on a self-guided museum tour and journey through the evergreen adventure maze.

Performer from Diotima at Lunar Faire. Credit: Julian Leshay

‘Moovin’ + Groovin’

April 1, McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton

American Repertory Ballet brings this acclaimed production, featuring works by three of today’s most exciting and innovative choreographers. The program features: Claire Davison’s Time Within A Time, set to the music of Fleetwood Mac; Ja’ Malik’s Moving to Bach, set to Bach’s Sonata for Violin Solo No.1; and Caili Quan’s Circadia, inspired by an eclectic music mix ranging from Boban Markovic Orchestra to Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution.

Atco Battles Alzheimer’s

April 2, Flying W Airport and Resort, Medford

Back for its ninth year of music, fundraising and education, this year’s event will feature five bands, food trucks and a full bar—plus the Dunk Community Cruise will be available for your morning coffee. This year’s bands are GoodMan Fiske, the Julian Brothers, Cat 5, Screaming Matilda and 99 Reasons.

on this fascinating hobby and explain how he conducts his research. In addition, he will have his favorite finds on display.

Sushi Rolling Class

April 4, Saku Hoboken, Hoboken

You will work with Saku head chef Sensai Eddie to make three different types of sushi rolls: California, salmon avocado with seaweed on the outside, and a spicy tuna hand roll.

Full Moon Meditation and Ritual with Crystal Singing Bowls

April 6, Soul Aligned Wellness, Toms River

Join in for this monthly magical full moon evening of healing as the full moon rises. You’ll be led in a guided meditation along with a full moon ritual. Plus, sound healing with crystal bowls and closing class with musical mantras/ songs/affirmation cards. BYO blanket, yoga mat and crystals.

Lunar Faire Pink Moon Preseason Pop

April 6, Moon Drop Pop, Sparta

Join in for a pre-Lunar Faire season party in the woods. Come by for “enchanted cuteness, mini potions lab, handful of vendors, group spell, mysteriousness, performers and merriment.” Wear pink.

Downtown Cranford Super Mario Stroll

April 7, Eastman Clock Plaza Park, Cranford

Celebrate Super Mario Day in Downtown Cranford by getting your ticket for the Super Mario Stroll. With each ticket, you will get a tote that will include a map of participating businesses to get your Super Mario themed item and a movie pass to get a ticket for The Super Mario Bros. Movie at the Cranford Theater.

Manhattan Comedy Night

April 7, Mayo PAC, Morristown

Get some comic relief with this popular standup series showcasing the rising stars of comedy. Mature content, language. Adults only.

Women Playwrights Series

April 12-26, Kutz Theatre, Hackettstown

A selection of original works by new female playwrights. Includes a playwriting seminar and four stagings spread out over two weeks.

Taste of Spring

April 14, Rahway Recreation Center, Rahway

Now in its 20th year, this event has been widely recognized as the largest tasting event of its kind in the NJ/NY metro area, typically with upwards of 40 eateries and bakeries, plus an additional 40 stations of national distributors of fine wine, boutique beers and aperitifs. With live music, good food, wines and beers from all over the world, Rahway’s Taste of Spring is an event not to miss.

Vintage Computer Festival East

April 14-16, InfoAge Computer & History Museums, Wall Township

Are you looking to view and play with retro computing systems? Are you curious about the history of computing and technology? If so, then the Vintage Computer Federation (VCFed) is the perfect place for you. You’ll get to see and use vintage computers, learn about their history, and purchase rare parts and accessories. Plus, you’ll be able to network with other computer enthusiasts and have a great time.

Colonial Tea Tasting and Talk

April 15, Kingsland Manor, Nutley

Vegan in NJ Monthly Market

April 2, American Legion Post 346, Neptune

Join in for this monthly market with vegan food, book, grocery and other vendors.

Metal Detecting

April 4, Brookside Community Church, Mendham

Join 20-year Mendham resident Brian Cox for a presentation and discussion of how he discovers and saves Mendham history through metal detecting. Cox has found numerous treasures from Mendham’s past. Cox will share information

Up Close and Personal with Randy Jackson (Zebra)

April 7, Factory Records, Dover

Deko Entertainment and Factory Records bring you an intimate night with Randy Jackson in “The Lounge.” Not only do you get to enjoy the show and hang with Randy, but you also get the Randy Tote Bag filled with the brand new re-issue of Randy Jackson’s China Rain, and some of Deko Entertainment’s latest releases. Randy Jackson is best known for his role as frontman for the band Zebra.

Learn about the British East India Company and the five teas that were tossed overboard 250 years ago at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. Enjoy sandwiches, desserts and Colonial teas in a historic setting as you transport back 250 years.

Cherry Blossom Walking Tour

April 15, Branch Brook Park, Newark

Guides will show attendees around the beautiful, blossom-rich southern division of the park and share information about the park’s founding, the construction of I-280 highway, Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Barringer High School and more.

Gateway Regional High School, Woodbury Heights

SJ Geek fest is a small, geeky, one-day celebration of your geekery featuring comics, tabletop games, video games, toys, cosplayers and much more.

Invasive Plant Foraging Workshop

April 15, Duke Farms, Hillsborough

Join professional forager and New Jersey backyard gardener Tama Matsuoka Wong in a workshop on foraging invasive plants. She will discuss how many of these plants are used culinarily and medicinally in their cultures of origin, particularly in Asia. This skills-based workshop will demonstrate how to work with and cull invasive plants to control their spread in the landscape while enjoying their nutritional and flavorful properties.

Pizza and Ghost Hunting

April 15, Union Forge Heritage Association, Clinton

Enjoy some pizza and ghosts with NJ Ghost Detectives, at the Joseph Turner House. There’ll be a Paranormal 101 talk and an exploration of the house.

Murder Mystery Dinner

April 15, Cincinnati Lodge #3, Morristown

A fun night of intrigue, suspense and mystery, Everyone is a suspect and begins once you enter. Come to find out who done it.

Up Close and Personal with Joe Bouchard

April 15, Factory Records, Dover

Deko Entertainment and Factory Records bring you an intimate night with former Blue Öyster Cult member Joe Bouchard in “The Lounge.” Joe will hang and play, and you’ll also get the Joe Bouchard Tote Bag filled with his latest CDs (Strange Legends and American Rocker), signed poster, complimentary chocolates and some of Deko Entertainment’s latest releases.

Forest of Frogs Nature Hike

April 16, New Weis Center for Education, Arts and Recreation, Ringwood

There’s nothing quite like the echoing sound of wood frogs and peepers filling the springtime forest. Join in for a short hike at an easy pace where you will visit our vernal pools and hear and hopefully see frogs and other amphibians that are active in the spring, while learning about their life cycle, seasonal habits, mating and survival strategies. Mud or rain boots are recommended.

Earth Day Herbalism

April 16, Mystic Ginger, Blackwood

Join Mystic Ginger Apothecary owner and herbalist Kellie D’Ascenzo as she guides you

Battle & Brews

Brooks Arts Center, Bound Brook

Learn about Bound Brook’s historic role in the Revolutionary War and the current happenings around the area. This free historic walking tour around Bound Brook will give you interesting tidbits about Bound Brook’s past and present. Along the way, you will stop at participating restaurants for food and drinks (restaurant partners will provide free samplings of food). A complimentary beer will be provided at a venue stop. All other desired beverages are for purchase by attendees at each bar.

through learning about local flora and fauna, and backyard foraging in South Jersey. Learn about the medicinal and magical properties of local botanicals, as well as how to utilize them in herbal remedies. Includes everything needed to make a bottle of herbal infused oil, as well as a salve how-to.

Great Swamp Bike Ride

April 16, Trek Bicycle Stirling, Long Hill

Join Trek Stirling every third Sunday of the month on beginner/intermediate level group road rides around the Great Swamp Wildlife Refuge, a popular area for local riders with scenic farmlands and wildlife all around to appreciate.

RAIN – A Tribute to The Beatles

April 20, Mayo PAC, Morristown

RAIN – A Tribute to The Beatles performs songs from Abbey Road and the rooftop concert, in addition to many of your favorites hits. This mind-blowing performance takes you back in time with the legendary foursome delivering a note-for-note theatrical event that is the next best thing to seeing The Beatles. Experience the world’s most iconic band and get back to where you once belonged with RAIN – A Tribute to The Beatles.

Nimbus Dance: ‘Falling Sky’

April 21, Grunin Center for the Arts, Toms River

Nimbus brings a soulful program to the Grunin Center with Artistic Director Samuel Pott’s Falling Sky, which contrasts humanity’s indomitable strength with the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Weed & Wine

April 21, Trappy Hour Lounge, New Brunswick

When a Black-owned winery (Bent Wine Co.) and a Black-owned cannabis company (Stone & the fam) come together, you get a damn good time! Wine, charcuterie board, merch and more.

Earth Day 10K

April 22, Washington Crossing State Park, Titusville

The second annual Earth Day 10K will be run on a mostly paved gravel road with fields and horse trails, with awards and after party at Patriots Crossing Tavern (half-mile from the start-finish). Each participant will receive a ticket for a free beer or glass of wine. For every 100 participants, organizers will plant a tree in the park to celebrate Earth Day.

Earth Day Celebration at Herronton Woods

April 22, Herronton Woods, Princeton

A day of natural immersion with hikes, food, talks, natural experts, a geology walk and much more. Visit herrontonwoods.org for more information.

Art in the Garden

April 22, Calgo Gardens, Freehold

Calgo Gardens’ happy gathering of amazingly talented, local artists and artisans. Artists include watercolor and acrylic painters, jewelers, potters, photographers and many others with unique, creative ways of expression. Stroll the beautiful grounds, enjoy the seasonal plants and flowers, relax on the patio, listen to live music, get a snack at The Tulip Tree Cafe… and of course, support your local artists.

Community Day: Celebrating Earth

April 22, Newark Museum of Art, Newark

This year, Newark Museum of Art honors our great planet with a day full of artmaking, education and performances that center around endangered animals, climate change and farming. Join in for music by interactive kid’s podcast, Noodle Loaf, traditional Lenape performances and demonstrations, planetarium shows and much more.

Baby Goat Birthday Party

April 22, Muddy Paws Farm Rescue, Southampton

It’s been a circus of a year at Muddy Paws with six new baby goats. Join in to celebrate their first birthday with a circus theme party. Visit with all of Muddy Paws’ rescued animals and help the baby goats celebrate. Plus: party games, cupcakes, popcorn and fun.

21 Charcuterie Workshop

Geek Flea 21

April 22, 663 Kearny Ave., Kearny

Browse over 50 tables of toys and collectibles, knick-knacks, video games, crafts, art and more. Welcome spring with the coolest geeks in North Jersey. Entry is free.

Piano Battle

merce, this event features small bites, samplings and demos at restaurants, lounges, cafes, juice bars and other uniquely Asbury Park locations.

Millburn Street Fair and Craft Show

April 23, Downtown Millburn

Come on down for a day of family fun with original and interesting arts and crafts, artists, crafters, vendors, food, rides, live music, DJ, performances and more.

National Geographic Live: Coral Kingdoms and Empires of Ice

April 26, Mayo PAC, Morristown

Explore rarely seen undersea worlds with two photographers creating a visual voice for the world’s oceans. David Doubilet is a legend in underwater photography. Together with his wife and underwater partner, photojournalist Jennifer Hayes, in just one remarkable year on assignment, he explored three unique marine environments for National Geographic. Join them to explore the rich and diverse waters of Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, part of the “coral triangle.” Follow them into the world beneath the Antarctic ice, then north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence to see whales, wolfish and harp seals.

Power Bottom: The Best Damn Comedy Show in Asbury Park!

Join local biz gather & graze charcuterie at Propagate Studio for a fun, interactive, educational and delicious charcuterie workshop. Learn all of the tips and techniques to create the best tasting and most visually pleasing charcuterie board.

The Beer Run 5K

April 22, Historic Village at Allaire, Wall Township

Run (or walk) through a historic 1800s village and cross the finish line into a craft beer festival featuring some of the best beer and eats NJ has to offer. Your ($14.95) ticket includes race registration, 12 5-oz. pours from participating breweries, a tasting glass and festival access with live music, lawn games, food trucks and more.

India Fair

April 22, NJ Convention & Expo Center, Edison

Showcasing designer wear, jewelry, handicrafts, fashion wear, property vendors. Plus, Bollywood celebrities, fashion shows, entertainment and vendors from India and all over the U.S.

April 22, Mayo PAC, Morristown

Internationally acclaimed pianists Andreas Kern and Paul Cibis go headto-head on stage, charming audiences with a variety of classical pieces. The two artists, with distinctly different performance styles, take turns to perform pieces by leading classical composers. Who performs it best? You decide!

Record Store Day

April 22, Record stores in NJ

The independent record store event of the year. Stop by one of more than two dozen NJ record stores (including some of our favs like Factory Records, Princeton Record Exchange, Vintage Vu, Jack’s Music Shoppe, Revilla Grooves and Gear, Randy Now’s Man Cave, Vinyl Addiction, and Sweet Vinyl) to celebrate vinyl culture with unique releases, events and more.

Asbury Park Restaurant Tour

April 23, Asbury Park

Asbury Park once again showcases its culinary scene with the 10th annual Restaurant Tour. Hosted by the Asbury Park Chamber of Com-

April 27, Capitoline, Asbury Park

The best and brightest stand-up comedians on the East Coast! Plus giveaways for BBQ and cash.

Castle Point Anime Convention

April 29, Meadowlands Expo Center, Secaucus

A day of exciting events such as anime showings, game tournaments, artist alley and informative panels. Come and experience anime and Japanese culture and have a fun-filled weekend.

A Day of Wine, Romance and More

April 29-30, Brook Hollow Winery, Columbia

Book and wine lovers unite for this one-of-akind event. The largest book signing event of its kind in New Jersey, with over 60 local authors representing a wide range of genres. Grab a glass of Brook Hollow’s excellent wine and take a stroll. Meet the actual authors and peruse their books. Whether you’re looking for your next book boyfriend, a heart-racing thriller, or something for your child or grandchild, you’ll find it here.

Propagate Studio, Stewartsville

by Killian Meara

David Viana is in complete control at the pass in his open kitchen, where he calmly plates dishes before they are picked up and taken to tables. There is no anxiety on his face as he delicately spoons sauce onto a plate, no panic in his movements as he deliberately arranges each ingredient. He smiles often as he talks with his staff, a genuine sense of ease and comfort emanating from him. This aura of tranquility is something not always seen, nor easily attained, in an industry notorious for its stress-inducing work environment, but Viana, at the age of 42, seems to have figured it out.

and cooking school founded in 2013 by Neilly Robinson and her mother, Judy Rosenblum. Viana, who has over two decades of cooking experience, joined the team in 2016 and has worked with Robinson to establish Heirloom as one of the best restaurants in New Jersey. For Viana, being brought onto the team was a windfall of good fortune after a long period of instability.

“By the time I met Neilly and Heirloom, I was about to quit,” he says. “Neilly is the one who talked me out of it.”

The two were brought together through their mutual friend Dan Richer, owner of the lauded Jersey City pizzeria Razza. Robinson had been holding dinners at Heirloom featuring guest chefs and connected

Viana is partner and executive chef at Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge, a restaurant

‘A natural, organic fit’

Chef David Viana, faced with career burnout, found a home at Old Bridge’s Heirloom Kitchen, just when they needed him.

Clockwise from top left: Tuna tartare with coconut, pineapple, peanut, jalapeño, cilantro, Thai ice cream | Duck with foie gras doughnut, cauliflower, pistachio, wheat berries, apple cider jus | Chef Viana plating octopus piccata at the pass. Photo Credits: Neilly Robinson

with Viana for a collaboration on Richer’s advice. At the time, Viana was working as executive chef at the Kitchen at Grove Station, where he received critical praise from the New York Times and was awarded three stars by New Jersey Monthly. After being blown away by his food, Robinson invited Viana to come and host a dinner.

“He was very impressive,” Robinson says. “The dinner was great, and I think he definitely felt a kinship to Heirloom and our space and what we were doing. It was just a very natural, organic fit.”

A few months later, Viana and his team ended up leaving Grove Station. He continued holding dinners at Heirloom and also helped Robinson teach a few cooking classes, but eventually moved on to open Barrio Costero in Asbury Park.

“It was a crazy, crazy opening for him,” Robinson says. “He was working 80-plus-hour weeks, just working to the bone.”

However, Viana came to realize that Barrio was not a good fit for him and made the decision to walk away. With yet another failed attempt added to his name, Viana was at a crossroads in his career.

“I was like, ‘OK, I think I’ve hit my wall,’” he says. “I haven’t really gotten anywhere. My bank account is always empty. I’m living paycheck to paycheck. … I haven’t found a level of success that I thought I could. It’s not everybody else’s fault anymore at this point. I can only look in the mirror.”

Viana, whose parents emigrated from Portugal, was raised in Elizabeth. He had never envisioned for himself a life on the line—a life of burns and cuts and measurements. Instead, he had every intention of going to law school after attending Seton Hall for criminal justice. Upon graduation, Viana took a job as a probation officer in Union County and quickly understood he had chosen the wrong field.

“I realized once I got involved in the criminal justice system and the court system that it was really soul-sucking and corrupt,” he says. “I realized it was not what I thought it was.”

While deciding his next steps, Viana looked back fondly at his time working in restaurants throughout college. Though he never took those jobs seriously, he began to reconsider his position on cooking as a career.

“I started thinking, ‘Maybe I belong in the kitchen,’” he says. “I was enjoying my day better even when I was doing something that was much more tedious and arduous and paid less.”

So, he enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan and completed a one-year program in 2003. His career started in the city working under chefs like Bobby Flay and Michael White. His talents eventually landed him a position at Eleven Madison Park, a dream come true for any cook looking to join the big leagues.

Seven years later, Viana and Robinson now have a thriving business. Aside from the original Heirloom location, they have also opened an outpost at the St. Laurent Social Club in Asbury Park and are working on a new concept in Strathmore set to open this spring, Lita. Named after Viana’s mother and inspired by his Portuguese upbringing, Lita will spotlight the food he grew up eating—food he now looks back on with a twinge of sentimental pleasure. The idea for Lita came about during the pandemic lockdowns, when Viana had found himself with a lot of extra time to cook.

“I started finding this moment of wanting to recreate certain things that I had in my childhood that I hadn’t had in a long time,” he says. Food always played an important role in Viana’s life. His family used to gather every Sunday at his grandmothers for dinner, where they would spend time together around a large communal table.

“My grandmother made everything from scratch,” he says. “I’d literally be sitting there having breakfast and I’d see her start plucking a chicken for lunch. She was always covered in blood or something. It used to freak me out.”

The perfection demanded in that kitchen started to wear on Viana and the burnout so many fine dining chefs experience began to set in. This led him to take on a six-month stage in Portugal, where he worked at the two Michelin starred Vila Joya. He made the move back to Jersey and worked his way through different kitchens, but those feelings of exhaustion never let up.

“The signs were all there,” he says. “I was just blowing past all of them because I wanted so badly to be a chef and to be successful at it. I was really creating my own fucking spiral of bad choices with bad people.”

After he left Barrio, Robinson approached Viana with an offer to be a partner at Heirloom and help her run a weekend supper club. When Robinson had originally opened Heirloom, it was only as a cooking school and retail boutique. She started hosting dinners to try and bring in more revenue, but the novel concept was still struggling to survive. Bringing on Viana to start a part-time restaurant was a last-ditch effort to try and save her business.

“We both had nothing to lose,” Viana says. “That right there is very powerful.”

Viana says he didn’t realize it then, but it was watching his grandmother all those years ago that instilled in him the passion for cooking he now has. With Lita, Viana wants to reinvigorate that food of his youth while doing justice to his grandmother—presenting her dishes to a new audience so that they can revel in nostalgia with him.

Viana is no longer cynical about cooking or his life in the kitchen, a fact with which he entirely credits Robinson.

“Having someone let you do the thing you know best and trust your judgment was a big thing that I hadn’t found yet,” he says. “And that’s what Neilly brought to the table.”

Viana has now found the level of success he was searching for, although he jokingly admits he’d feel unfulfilled if he dies without getting a Michelin Star.

“I know that I’m a chef in New Jersey, so that’s not likely,” Viana says. “But, you know, life is long. I don’t know where I’ll be next.”

For more info on Heirloom Kitchen’s Old Bridge and Asbury Park locations, and Lita, go to heirloomkitchen.com.

Credit: Neilly Robinson

Credit: Michael Persico

FOOD

South Jersey’s Fermented Food and

and fermenting

by

For good reason, when we talk about sustainable eating, we often center those discussions on eating local, mostly plant-based food. When we eat local, we’re of course supporting local farmers who, in many instances, practice sustainable and/or regenerative farming practices. The food they produce is better for us and better for the Earth, because that type of agriculture cultivates and cares for the land, and reduces the emissions associated with industrial farming and the transportation of that food.

That said, eating local is only part of the sustainable picture. What we do with the food we buy and that our local farmers grow is an important aspect of reaching sustainability and reducing food waste. And one way (which often gets forgotten) to achieve those ends is fermentation.

Take it from Mica McCullough, who co-owns Fermented Food and Beverage Supply Shop in Hammonton, with her husband, Eric Schmehl. McCullough has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sustainable practices, and when Schmehl began toying around with the idea of opening a homebrew shop in South Jersey, she knew broadening the prospective business’s offerings to include fermentation supplies would coalesce with her work in sustainability. McCullough says her studies in sustainability only touched on fermentation, despite the fact that it’s a proven way to improve health and keep foods from going to waste.

“If you have a community garden and have 2,000 pounds of cucumbers and can’t give them away, fermentation is a great way to

make them shelf-stable so you can eat them later. It’s a key component of food sovereignty that’s totally overlooked,” McCullough says.

Fermented Food and Beverage Supply not only stocks and sells homebrew supplies—equipment, yeasts, malts, hops, etc.— but also tools and ingredients for fermenting everything from kombucha to cheese, bread, wine, yogurt, tempeh, kimchi, sauerkraut and more. And the Hammonton shop is one of the few in the state to offer such a wide array of homebrew and fermentation supplies, which include unique, local ingredients only available from them.

The idea started when Schmehl was bequeathed a homebrew kit and, like so many others, just got really into it. Seeing few places in the area to get supplies (and guidance), Schmehl and McCullough opened in downtown Hammonton as a place to not only offer those supplies, but host workshops, serve as a sounding board for homebrewers and fermenters and provide a community gathering place.

Now, fermentation can be scary to newcomers. You’re introducing microorganisms like yeast and bacteria to food to hasten its decay and transformation. There’s a lot of conventional non-wisdom about the so-called dangers of fermentation, but McCullough says Fermented Food and Beverage Supply serves to knock down those barriers and get folks on the right track in their fermentation journeys.

“One of the reasons Eric and I wanted to open the store is because there’s a lot of fear,” McCullough says. “A lot of people worry they’re gonna give themselves botulism. It’s a totally unwarranted fear. Our bodies have evolved to know what looks like it shouldn’t be eaten.”

Fermentation is a centuries old process, after all. And it’s what food naturally wants to do. It supports a variety of our biological systems, makes food easier to digest and provides beneficial gut bacteria. And, if you do it right, it makes food pretty damn tasty.

“Fermentation is waiting to happen,” McCullough says. “It is a natural process that wants to happen, that will happen if we create the right conditions. This is not a really appetizing way to think about it but I’ve heard fermentation referred to as controlled rot. … I don’t want to eat controlled rotted milk, but I do want to eat [cheese, yogurt, etc.].”

Fermentation is also one of those

‘We want a world full of people who know how to make bread’

Beverage Supply Shop wants to get you brewing

Matt Cortina

processes that has ebbed away from modern knowledge, in the midst of industrialized food production and grocery story-ready everything. Like many others, McCullough remembers a different relationship her parents and grandparents had with food than many of us can access today.

“We did a little fermentation when we were growing up,” she says. “My mom was from the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. A lot of those skills that were her dayto-day life skills she passed on to my sister and me. It wasn’t fermentation proper but it was a familiarity with food and of growing food and canning it and making fresh sauerkraut and things like that.”

Fermented Food and Beverage Supply shares that knowledge not only with customers who come in curious about creating their own something or other, but in workshops and in private classes. In these settings, it’s easier to troubleshoot what went wrong for folks in the fermentation process, and thus what might keep them from exploring the process more.

“When we do our classes, we ask people to let us know if [what they made] turned out good or especially if it’s bad because we can troubleshoot and help them. We want to help people be self-sufficient, or make and save,” McCullough says. “If you buy kombucha at the grocery store, it’s five bucks for a 12-ounce bottle. We want to help people on the journey to self-sufficiency. The nature of that is we’re putting ourselves out of business. We want a world full of people who know how to make bread. Even though you buy one sourdough starter and you keep that for life, that’s where the classes come in, where we introduce people to new classes and things that they don’t have the starters for.

“One of the biggest roadblocks for people is time. They don’t have the time to make sourdough or forget about the starter in the fridge. It’s a commitment of time and of memory; remembering you have things and they’re fermenting and remembering to check on them.”

It’s tempting when talking about restoring sustainable foodways to get a little grandiose; to say that all we need to do to improve our health and environment is to eat local. There are very real obstacles standing in the way of a more localized, less industrialized food system—namely cost and availability. It’s obvious to say, but you can’t get local bananas here; you can get local peaches, but only part of the year and they’ll cost more. That’s in large part because our food system has gotten so out of whack with subsidies for large, globalized producers and sellers that people don’t really know the true cost of true food.

Extending the life of local produce,

dairy and meat, through fermentation, is one way to extend the life, and value, of these local foods.

“I do think there is some weight on the consumer, but what I also think is our country’s agricultural history, specifically in regards to subsidization, has artificially created low prices that we’ve become accustomed to. Which is a challenge to overcome because then you’re continuing to reward the gigantic companies and continuing to prevent smaller companies from entering the race,” McCullough says. “I’ve heard 70 cents of every dollar spent in a local economy stays in the local economy. That money, when you give it to one of the large international grain companies or you give it to Walmart, that money does stay in the local economy.”

Educating consumers, as is part of the mission of Fermented Food and Beverage Supply, about how grocery stores stock shelves and why you might have to pay more or make an extra stop to eat local goes a long way in empowering folks to eat local and build a sustainable food system from the ground up.

In many ways, South Jersey is an ideal location for McCullough and Schmehl to grow Fermented Food and Beverage Supply—though they ship nationwide, it’s one of the few spots between Philly and North Jersey to access this type of shop. But also, South Jersey is a veritable bread basket in the Garden State, which McCullough only appreciated upon moving here and seeing for herself.

“I thought the name Garden State was a joke,” she says. “I thought, Isn’t the whole state pavement? When I visited and moved up here, I learned the Garden State is the part of the state we live in.”

McCullough and Schmehl grow food in their gardens but can’t sell that (or their homebrew) in their shop due to FDA restrictions; they can, however, use that to speak from experience when talking to folks about fermentation. Stocking the store—and it’s a candy store for those interested in natural foods—is driven in part by feedback from the community itself.

“A lot of it in the beginning was asking our friends, what would you be interested in seeing?” McCullough says. “A lot of feedback for sourdough starters, a lot for cheese, a lot of kombuchas. Some of the bigger, more well known items.”

And again, not everybody is going to

take to fermentation like McCullough, Schmehl, their customers and many of us. But maybe if we talk about fermentation in the sustainability discussion more often, more folks’ll stop by places like Fermented Food and Beverage Supply, try and fail, ultimately succeed and start to include fermentation in the discussion of how we make our foodways truly sustainable.

“I like fermented vegetables from a food preservation standpoint because it has a huge environmental impact in our country,” McCullough says. “It feels like a natural place to step in. But also I really enjoy having sourdough bread because it makes me feel… like, I’m not a homesteader, we still go to Shop-Rite, but that alone makes me feel like if there was some sort of apocalypse, we’d be OK. We can make bread, we can grow vegetables. Those are things that are starting to get lost, so it feels good holding onto those skills.”

For more information, go to fermentednj.com.

Jersey Beer Tour: King’s Road Brewing in Haddonfield

by Kyle Nardine

Haddonfield resident and King’s Road Brewing Company owner Bob Hochgertel remembers the first time that his friends were talking about the possibility of starting a brewery. All he could do at the time was laugh. There was no way that a brewery would open up in Haddonfield of all places.

“My friends and I were talking about what we can do to make a difference in town,” recalls Hochgertel. “And my one friend Chris Thomas, who is now my business partner, jokingly said let’s open a brewery. We all laughed because there was no way that Haddonfield would let us open a brewery.”

Like many other towns in the Delaware Valley, Haddonfield has its roots in the Quaker religion. The Quakers held strong beliefs in regards to being anti-slavery and helped with protecting runaway enslaved people who made it to the Underground Railroad stop in neighboring Lawnside.

The Quakers also held strong convictions on abstaining from alcohol, and many cities that were once Quaker hubs are considered “dry towns” meaning that no alcohol sales were allowed in those cities. Haddonfield voters in 1873 voted to ban alcohol sales in the Camden County city, and the rest was history. Or so we thought?

Thinking that their idea had no chance of succeeding, Hochgertel and company changed the conversation over to Chip Kelly and the Birds. While it doesn’t take a lot for Eagles fans to drink, talking or thinking about the Chip Kelly years will make any Birds farm grab some booze. A month later ,the brewery idea came up again, and the friends came up with the Haddy Special to get the idea past the goal line.

“A month later we all were watching a game and having beers,” explains Hochgertel. “My friend Michael Plunkett, who is a lawyer, asked us if we were serious about opening up a brewery. We were kind of shooting the breeze, and he said ,‘I researched why Haddonfield is dry and I researched the governance of a New Jersey brewery license, and they bypass each other.’ He said, ‘I think you can do this.’”

Plunkett and Hochgertel realized that Haddonfield isn’t dry the same way that shore town Ocean City is dry. The friends discovered that Haddonfield chooses not to administer liquor licenses to prevent chain restaurants from coming into town. But ultimately Haddonfield would have little say in the matter because the duo also realized that they needed a brewery license, and Trenton handles the distribution

of brewery licenses, not the local city.

Hochgertel still had to present his plan to the zoning board, and anyone who has been to a zoning board meeting in Jersey realizes that those meetings should be tied with the WNBA or MLS for the fifth professional sport in America. Zoning meetings are where dreams are crushed or the board uses their power to push controversial projects past the finish line. Understandably, Hochgertel was nervous.

“My wife and I open the door to the courtroom and it’s standing room only,” says Hochgertel about the board meeting. “Every seat was filled and people are lining up against the walls. I lean over to my wife and say, ‘It starts.’ What I mean by that was I assumed all these people there are the people with torches and pitchforks who would be like, ‘We don’t want a brewery in town,’ and it wasn’t that way at all. They were all there to support us, and the theme of their message that night was that we need to focus on the town they want to be instead of the town they used to be. One by one, person after person got up in front of the microphone and supported us. We didn’t arrange that and they showed up organically to support us.

“It was an amazing night and I still get the chills thinking about it. Other than the birth of my two daughters, and my wedding it was the best night of my life.”

Haddonfield’s support of a brewery in town wasn’t all talk either. The brewery opened up in December of 2017, and two years later in 2019 they moved two blocks away to a bigger location to meet demand. In 2021, King’s Road opened up a second location in Medford to increase distribution.

In 2023, that demand is still there, and when I visited on a miserable March day that reminds you that the early part of the month is still winter, the place was packed. King’s Road serves as the meeting spot in town for several different organizations.

Indeed, Hochgertel wanted the brewery to serve as the spot to meet in Haddonfield, but there was a larger goal in mind when he started King’s Road and that was to drive visitors to Haddonfield after dark.

Unlike neighboring Westmont and Collingswood, Haddonfield would taper off at night, and it was something that Hochgertel wanted to fix.

“The one thing I noticed about this town, and again I love this town, is that the town would shut down at 6 p.m.,” says Hochgertel. “I mean everything would shut down including restaurants. Here we have this incredible downtown, and everything is shut down at 6.”

Since the opening of King’s Road Brewery, chefs and restaurant owners in town have noticed a difference in more people coming to town. Andrew

Bodi, a chef at Verona, an Italian restaurant on King’s Highway has noticed a difference.

“Since Bob relocated Kings Road to the prime location on the corner of Mechanic Street, everything has changed,” says Bodi. “Our restaurant is seen populated with diners who have just made their way over from the brewery and elect to spend their night out in Downtown Haddonfield. Regardless of the season, evenings are now full of lively crowds that embrace everything that Haddonfield has to offer.”

There’s also another reason why King’s Road attracts a crowd and it is because of their beer. Hochgertel doesn’t have a homebrewing background, but being a former college professor, he learned about the process pretty quickly. He has hired brewers from established breweries such as Victory, Yards and Neshaminy Creek. Hochgertel and business partners went to breweries in towns that have a reputation for being “dry” such as Collingswood and Pitman to learn more about the process. They also visited nearby Tonewood.

The beer itself is well-refined and -crafted. The intro beer at King’s Road is King’s Gold ,which is a 5.2% ABV lager, and it’s the brewery’s top-seller.

“It’s our number-one seller in the tasting room and our number one seller in cans.,” Hochgertel says. “It’s a basic light American lager, and it’s a craft version of the mass produced beers. People always come in and say, ‘What do you have that is like Coors, Miller or Yuengling?’ I say, ‘Well, nothing, but I think you’ll like King’s Gold, and they do.”

King’s Gold will pave the way for you to try bigger tasting beers at King’s Road. Possibly 10.5% ABV type of big. Sinful Deeds is an imperial stout with a chocolatey aftertaste. With big beers comes big responsibility and that is something that Hochgertel understands.

“It’s a little boozy and every year we make a big imperial stout,” says Hochgertel. “This one was fused with chocolate and vanilla. We won’t serve this beer in a pint or a mug because it’s at 10.5%. It’s really strong and delicious. We split the batch and half of it is on tap, and the other half we put in maple barrels to age it. We are aging it six months in maple barrels, and we think it’s gonna be really special when it comes out.”

All in All, King’s Road is a great place to get a beer and hang out with friends, and the location makes it shine. Haddonfield has a quaint downtown with loads of good restaurants and small shops. It feels a little like Princeton’s cousin from South Jersey. There’s ample parking and public transit access from the Camden County burbs, Downtown Camden, and Center City Philly via PATCO, so there’s little reason not to go. So do it.

FOOD TASTE IT

Pork Chop @ Latin American Deli in New Providence

A sizable pork chop lightly fried so it’s crispy on the outside, fall-apart tender on the inside, with crunchy morsels of fat on the ends that melt in your mouth. A fried egg adds a silky coating to the plate, which also includes black beans, a tangy cucumber salad, rice and pico de gallo. But the joy of Latin American Deli is the new options every day. Stop by and you might be offered Cuban picadillo, pot roast, breakfast tacos, a pulled pork sub and much more.

Fried Chicken @ It’s Nutts in Titusville

Just north of Ewing, near Washington Crossing, is a classic Jersey roadside eatery: It’s Nutts in Titusville. We stopped by not expecting anything, really, and were pleasantly surprised by some righteous fried chicken. A slightly sweet, perfectly salted, and thin and crunchy skin holds in a juicy, tender chunk of chicken. We went for the breast, and while the cut at other establishments might dry out by the time you get to the middle, the chicken here stays juicy and piping hot throughout, and there’s plenty of that crunchy exterior for each bite. And go for the indulgent pairing with the best tomato pie outside Rhode Island.

Croque Madame @ Brick Farm Tavern in Hopewell

Generally we take issue with the term “farm-to-table” (overblown, yuppie-fodder), except when a restaurant goes to great lengths to bring ingredients from their farm to your table. That’s exactly what you’re getting from Brick Farm Tavern; much of what’s offered on their menu is grown on their 800 acres in Hopewell or sourced from other farms in the area. Local, sustainable, ethical—all terms that are integral to Brick Farm’s concept. This croque madame is a straightforward, classic sandwich (essentially a French grilled cheese with ham, topped with an over-easy fried egg).

Beyond Smashed Vegan Burger @ Sad Boyz in New Gretna

Call it a surprise to see a burger joint done up like the emo kids we went to high school with (and were) in the early aughts deep in South Jersey. Call it even more surprising that the burger we got there was fucking delicious. Though you can get full-meat burgers, cheesesteaks, breakfast sandwiches and more, we opted for the smashed vegan burger: double Beyond Meat patty, double vegan cheese, smashed with lettuce, tomato, pickles and vegan Sad Boyz sauce—with a side of seasoned fries. So well executed, all of it. The burger kicks the shit out of any of the chain burgers people like to argue over, and the fries are a little thick, very crispy and seasoned so well. If you’re anywhere near here, go to Sad Boyz.

ARTS

A free book program in Camden expands into an

old Quaker meeting house

by Kyle Nardine

Here’s a question. What is a city on the Delaware River that is gritty, has a decent skyline, has the best cheesesteaks in the area, and is home to the 76ers?

Hint: It’s not the City of Brotherly Love. The answer is Camden, and the city has started to look a lot different recently.

Thanks to some investment (which hasn’t been without controversy or concerns over gentrification), many of the parking lots near the riverfront are now home to an American Water headquarters, and a Hilton hotel, which is the City Invincible’s first hotel in over 50 years.

These buildings, along with the 76ers practice facility and mainstays such as City Hall and Cooper Hospital form a mini skyline of sorts for people to glance over the river from Philly.

Even though Camden is a city with eyes on the future, there are still reminders of the many iterations of its past. One of those reminders is the Newton Friends’ Meetinghouse in Downtown Camden on Cooper Street. The Newton Friends Meetinghouse was built in 1872 to serve as a spot for people of the Quaker faith to pray. It’s still in use today, though the purpose it serves has changed and expanded over the years.

Every Saturday from 9-2, it serves as a free bookstore for Camden residents and for the greater Delaware Valley. The bookstore is an extension of the Free Books Project (formerly the Camden County Pop-Up Library) headed by Tom Martin.

Martin had always dreamed of opening a free bookstore. Since 2017, he has handed out books on the streets of Camden, and him and his team installed “book arks” around the city to house books.

After attending a few meetings at the meetinghouse, he found willing partners for the bookstore with the folks at the Meetinghouse. Cindi Kammer, the Meetinghouse’s clerk, was looking for more ways for the community to use the building anyway, and so the Free Books Project and the Meetinghouse were a match made in heaven.

“I started attending meetings here every once in a while,” explains Martin. “I started talking to Cindy and she was mentioning how she wants to utilize the building to help the Camden community. And I was like, I want to do the same thing. I need a building and she needs a cause. So we took my cause and her building. It ended up being perfect.”

The cause of literacy is a hard one to argue against, and it’s one that Martin has been taking up for a while now. Getting books into the hands of children is important and it’s something that Sean Brown, an East Camden resident and book ark volunteer has witnessed firsthand.

“My mom was a teacher and I grew up with a lot of books,” says Brown. “But, unfortunately, a lot of younger people are more inclined to digitally read books than read a paper book. Research shows that having a book in your hands and actually being able to read it is very helpful. But also children read more when their parents read. I can’t tell my children to read if I don’t read. So to set an example, we

have reading time in our house.”

Brown sets the example by reading a ton of business books, and his kids are big into the Dog Man series. There’s a little bit of everything at the bookstore and that includes popular titles such as those by James Patterson and self-help books. There are also books that are written in Spanish as well for Camden’s Hispanic population. Julie Beddingfield, owner of Inkwood Books in Haddonfield, was a huge

help in making this happen.

“We have books in Spanish that are primarily thanks to Julie purchasing them,” explains Martin. “Last year we got a $5,000 grant from the Domenica Foundation to purchase books in Spanish. We have a giant Spanish-speaking population in Camden and we haven’t really tapped into that market.”

Beddingfield always had a book in her hands when she was young because her parents didn’t want to hear their children complain about being bored. Her love of reading grew and grew, and eventually she met Martin. Beddingfield appreciated the simplicity of Martin’s goal, which was to get books into the hands of people that needed them.

“Because I work in books for a living, I work with a lot of literacy organizations,” says Beddingfield. “This is the only organization I know that actually stands out on the street corner or goes to a place and puts books in the hands of the readers. It’s the connection of the book and the person who is actually gonna read it.”

Lachisha Laws and her goddaughter Zania Sims of Sicklerville have been familiar with the Free Books Project for years. Sims has been an avid reader her whole life, and likes the fact that the books are free.

“I like that you can get away in reading,” explains Sims. “Sometimes not everything is going as planned in reality. So you could use a fantasy book or any type of book in general to get away from it, and there’s a lot of books that have helped me get away from it.

“Not everyone has a lot of money to spend on books and this place will help people out a lot.”

Right now the plan is to continue to grow the free bookstore and get more visitors there. Even though not a ton of people live in downtown Camden, the bookstore is located up the street from Walter Rand Transportation Center, which is Camden’s main transit hub. Beddingfield would like to see the bookstore expand to offer more services as well.

“I really think it would be great to have all sorts of books for everybody and have a place where groups can come,” explains Beddingfield. “Maybe it’s a senior center or maybe it’s an after-school program and they can come and we do storytime and everyone leaves with books.”

For more information, follow the Free Book Project on their Facebook page, The Free Books Project.

OPEN EXHIBITIONS

As Is

ArtYard, Frenchtown, Through May 21

Curated by Benjamin Albucker and Margaret Parish, As Is is located in ArtYard’s second-floor Lynn & John Kearney Gallery. The pair—Albucker is an antiques dealer and Parish is an artist — sourced many of the items from their own collections. Others are on loan from other collectors, colleagues, and clients. “This is just a show about beautiful objects,” Albucker said. “The beauty, inherent in the objects we assembled for this show, is a type of beauty connected very closely with particular geometry, color and texture. This is beauty from history, from craft, from its conversation with other objects. This beauty is devoid of trend and fashion.”

Cristina de Gennaro: Sage Drawings

Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, Through April 30

As the artist wandered the trails around Taos, New Mexico, she found herself turning her gaze downward towards the earth, drawn to the eroding sagebrush, weeds and parched soil of the high desert floor and focusing on mundane spaces rather than grand vistas and sublime sunsets. These “humble” scenes reference decay as well as regeneration and mark the day-to-day erosion of a materiality bound by time. She photographed then drew the organic systems, exploring tensions between pattern and complexity, beauty and chaos.

Each One, Teach One Morris Museum, Morristown, Through Aug. 27

The work of over 30 artists who have taken part in the meaningful exchange of wisdom, ideas, process, career, culture, and more. The works of mentors are juxtaposed alongside the work of their mentees, highlighting the indelible impact the relationship has had on both parties. Featuring sculptural works, paintings, fiber arts, collage, and more.

El Cartel/The Poster: Puerto Rican Graphics Exhibition

William Paterson University, Ben Shahn University Galleries, Through May 5

This exhibition showcases printed posters created by leading Puerto Rican and Nuyorican printmakers at the Taller de Artes Graficas of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in San Juan under the leadership of master printer Lorenzo Homar, and at the Taller Boricua in New York City, between 1960 and 2013. These works capture the issues and reflect the conscience of Puerto Ricans living on the island and in the diaspora over a half century when graphic design became entwined with the movement for independence.

New Jersey Arts Annual: Reemergence

New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, Through April 30

This exhibition highlights the work of visual artists and craftspeople from around the state. This year’s exhibition theme is “Reemergence.” Artists, like most New Jerseyans, are taking steps to reemerge into an altered landscape. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, political and ideological polarization, and a collective reckoning with systemic racism remain critical to achieving the country’s promise. 127 works by 95 artists were selected for inclusion in the exhibition.

Saya Woolfalk: Tumbling Into Landscape

Newark Museum of Art, Newark, Through summer 2023.

With Saya Woolfalk: Tumbling Into Landscape, the artist has created an intervention exploring questions of identity and belonging in relationship to the land and multiple histories of the U.S.

Spring is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth

Studio Route 29, Frenchtown, Through April 23

Pieces that invoke thoughts of where we are and where we dream of being and also the death and mold and compost that comes into view with every tender sprout, growing in last year’s garden. Angst too! Itching for flowers, rushing towards new powers. The first smells of the berries of springtime waft. Poutily we droop towards our bursting bulb selves and poking our crowns above the frost we think we feel some sunny days.

You Belong Here: Place, People and Purpose in Latinx Photography Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, Through May 7

You Belong Here celebrates the dynamic expressions of Latinx photography across the United States. The exhibition brings together both established artists and a new generation of image-makers, who address themes of family and community, fashion and culture, and the complexity of identity in American life.

vanessa german: ...please imagine all the things i cannot say... Montclair Art Museum, Through June 25,

A large-scale, immersive, site-specific installation of mixed-media works by vanessa german—a self-taught sculptor, painter, poet and performance artist. german calls herself a citizen artist and is interested in art as a form of healing and protection, especially for African-Americans. Her primarily female power figures explore themes of strength, love and justice while engaging with the complicated history of race in the U.S.

Cristina de Gennaro, Sage Drawing VIII, 2018, Charcoal on mylar, 42” x 96”, Courtesy of the artist

SAVAGE LOVE

Quickies

by Dan Savage

You suggested stocking up on abortion pills NOW for friends in the future because they could wind up being banned. I naively thought a ban would never happen. Now, as you probably know, it’s on the verge of being banned nationwide any day due to the lawsuit in Texas. It looks like I’d need to go to a doctor to get them and I don’t want to have to lie about needing them. Is there any other way to get them?

Go to PlanCPills.org!

I look OK, I make good money, I have my own place, and I’m nice. But no one wants me, and no one stays, because I’m autistic. Everyone says, “Just get out there,” but it doesn’t work. I want a real relationship, but I would settle for an escort. But I don’t want to get robbed or killed. Everyone says, “Just get out there,” but it doesn’t work.

I can’t give explicit advice about finding escorts—it’s a legal gray area—but I can suggest that you follow sex workers’ rights advocates on Twitter, many of whom are sex workers themselves. Most of the women sex workers I know—personally, not professionally—have experience working with autistic clients. And while locating an experienced sex worker you would like to see in person will require some time and effort, the energy you’re currently expending being miserable would be better spent on this search. There are also dating sites for autistic adults like Hiki (www.hikiapp.com) that you might want to check out.

I’m a 43-year-old cis straight man. I’m going to see my doctor soon and I plan to ask him about testing for autism spectrum disorder, because more than half of my girlfriends and a few platonic friends have asked me if I might be on the spectrum. I don’t think a diagnosis will change my life, other than reframing a lot of confusing (to me) “breakups” with friends and girlfriends over the years. Any advice whether or how I should contact previous friends and girlfriends to let them know I received a diagnosis that might explain some of our problems? I’m still on friendly(ish) terms with most of them.

A status update posted to Facebook and/ or a story posted to Instagram—assuming you’re on social media and/or want to be out about your diagnosis—would probably reach most of your friends and exes. If that’s too public, I don’t see why you couldn’t just send a note to the friends and exes with whom you’re on friendly(ish) terms, particularly the ones who suggested you might be on the spectrum.

How does one effectively manage a throuple?

By not obsessing about what you’ve given up, lost, and/or never had—which would be absolute primacy—and instead being grateful for what you’ve gained, e.g., someone else to do the dishes, someone else to pick up groceries, someone else to walk the dogs, etc.

How do you use a dental dam effectively?

You remove the dental dam from its packaging, you place the packaging in the appropriate recycling bin, and then you carefully position the dental over the nearest trash can. You release the dental dam, you let it flutter into the trash can, and then you go to MyLorals.com and order yourself some of their FDA-cleared, ultra-sheer underpants designed for cunnilingus.

I’m pre-op, no-T, non-binary, AFAB. Do I belong on Grindr?

It depends on what you mean by, “Do I belong?” If what you mean is, “Am I allowed on Grindr and will I find someone there who might wanna fuck me?”, then the answer is yes. But if what you mean is, “Will I have a completely frictionless experience on Grindr and not encounter a single asshole who goes out of his way to make me feel like I don’t belong on a hookup app for gay and bi men because I have a vagina and boobs?”, then the answer is no. But by that standard… no one “belongs” on Grindr, where some people—where some assholes—have been known to go out of their way to make people, AFAB and AMAB, cis and trans, gay and otherwise, feel like they don’t belong.

My girlfriend has some body odor—underarm odor—that I notice when we play. Any subtle ways to tell her?

I’m not a “mansmells” kind of guy/pervert, but I like it the way my men smell… at least most of the time. When they smell too strong or sour or otherwise unpleasant, I usually just say, “You stink,” and point them to the shower. Try it.

Ever since birthing my children all of my masturbation fantasies include me having a penis. Is there a possible physiological reason for this? Or is it all in my head?

Physiological—“relating to the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts”—would seem to cover what’s going on in your head, as you’re a living organism and your head is one of your parts, so the distinction you’re attempting to draw between physiological and psychological seems false to me. Whatever is going on here, it’s interesting—definitely something to explore and enjoy.

How are you liking MILF Manor?

I stopped watching MILF Manor after the third episode—the challenges were increasingly lame, the MILFs didn’t seem serious about wanting to actually fuck the younger men, and the younger men

didn’t seem serious about wanting to fuck the MILFs. I’m watching Young Royals S2, now, and rooting for Willie, Simon and Marcus to form a throuple.

I’m addicted to PMO—“porn, masturbation orgasm.” How do I break this addiction and start having real sex?

If you’re having a hard time closing the laptop, pulling up your pants, and getting out of the house, you might have to do something radical—like canceling your internet service or getting your ass into therapy.

My 19-year-old daughter has never been in a relationship with a man or a woman. On social media, she identifies as she/her. She checked the “asexual” box on all her college applications. I have never asked her what her deal is, as I felt she would tell us if she wanted to. I’m OK for things to remain as they are, but I’m curious about her use of the term asexual. Does sex not serve her narrative or is she just not having any? She knows her parents are approachable.

If your daughter knew you were looking at her college applications—if you were helping her prepare them—then she essentially told you she’s asexual. So, I don’t think you would be violating her privacy if you simply said, “I noticed you checked ‘asexual’ on your applications. If that’s something you want to talk about, we’re ready to listen. If not, that’s fine too. We love you just the same.” And in the meantime, read up about asexuality at the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network.

Go fuck yourself, groomer.

Hm… I don’t need to fuck myself. You see, I have people for that—adult people. If anyone around here needs to go fuck themselves, hater, I’m guessing it’s you.

Send your question to mailbox@savage.love Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love

YOU, JERSEY

POETRY

Virginia

by Joe Ferreri

We want to publish your poetry and short fiction (up to 1,000 words) in the next issue (and subsequent issues) of NJ Indy. Send up to three submissions to Poetry Editor Kayla Harris at poetry@njindy.com, and we’ll consider them on a rolling basis for monthly publication.

She’s out of her mind, that woman. Makeshift matriarch when her sister–my grandma– was taken from me. Neurotic to no end, obsessive and compulsive, disorderly so. A sweeper of swept floors, a collector of prayer cards covered in cousins’ husbands and dead friends, a flincher at the kisses from the man she chose to marry. Somehow still a teacher, perhaps to the detriment of malleable minds. A valiant refuser of retirement, thinking it a sign of surrender, something she seldom considers. She could tell you exactly what village she’s “from” – near Naples on nanny’s side, Sicily on pop’s–but she’s never been, and never will. Too stubborn to leave the sixth densest county in the country, even after marrying a comically rich casket salesman, whose become the very caricature you’re picturing. Italian-American-New Jerseyan. Complaining about the air as the last breath is breathed, love draped so thickly in hatred and anger, so much so that it is indistinguishable. Coexisting to commiserate.

Joe Ferreri is a senior at Ramapo College of New Jersey, studying writing, English and literary studies, as well as creative writing. Much of his poetry draws on his life spent in New Jersey and uses our state as a backdrop.

ARTS

The latest installment at David Scott Gallery (for Berkshire Hathaway Fox & Roach) is Within View: Paintings and Drawings, a solo exhibition of works by Léni Paquet-Morante, an accomplished painter and sculptor with the Johnson Atelier Studio Program, in Hamilton. The closing reception for the show will be on April 16 from 2-4 pm.

Says the artist: “Following a shoulder injury making sculpture in 2021, I began what became an extensive series of small ink drawings made at the edges of brooks and puddles, at small piles of leaves, seeds and mud, and the surrounding detritus. ... Through this work, I explore a contemporary interpretation of landscape, which explores the visual complexity within flooded potholes as freely as that within natural, undisturbed environments.”

David Scott Gallery for Berkshire Hathaway Fox & Roach is located at 253 Nassau Street in Princeton, across from Blue Point Grill. Open Monday through Friday from 9-5, weekends, from 10-4. Pictured here: “Composed Shallow, Three Leaves” – acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”.

BOOKS

New release from an NJ author: Tell Me One Thing

Jersey City author Kerri Schlottman recently released her debut novel, Tell Me One Thing [Regal House Publishing]. It’s a good read.

Here’s how it goes: Outside a Pennsylvania motel, nine-year-old Lulu smokes a cigarette while sitting on the lap of a trucker. Recent art grad Quinn is passing through town and captures it. The photograph, later titled “Lulu & the Trucker,” launches Quinn’s career, escalating her from a starving artist to a renowned photographer. In a parallel life, Lulu struggles to survive a volatile home, growing up too quickly in an environment wrought with drug abuse and her mother’s prostitution.

Decades later, when Quinn has a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art and “Lulu & the Trucker” has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount, Lulu is surprised to find the troubling image of her young self in the newspaper. She attends an artist talk for the exhibition with one question in mind for Quinn: Why didn’t you help me all those years ago?

Schlottman, who has a background in art, was inspired by Mary Ellen Mark’s famous 1990 photograph, “Amanda and Her Cousin Amy,” which depicts nine-year-old Amanda smoking a cigarette in a kiddie pool in rural North Carolina. Upon Mark’s death in 2015, NPR interviewed Amanda and asked her why she allowed herself to be photographed. Her reply was: “I thought, ‘Hey, people will see me, I’ll get attention, it will perhaps change things for me.’ I thought it might be a way to get out, but that was not the case.”

Get the book at regalhousepublishing.com, and check out njindy.com for more with Schlottman.

MUSIC

NJ Artist to Watch: Florian’s Creek

Florian’s Creek is a genre-fluid artist from Jersey producing boundary-breaking music for introverts and outsiders. He considers himself a bit of a wanderer, in music, but also in life. With influences from everywhere from rap to folk music, the one consistent element to his sound is a dedication to music as a catalyst for catharsis and vulnerability. Featuring a blend of alternative, rock, and rap styles. His influences include Dijon, Soccer Mommy and Childish Gambino.

Since the age of 13, Florian has been producing beats in his bedroom. At the time, he felt his sound was too weird to be taken seriously as an artist, let alone a rapper. Eventually, Creek decided to embrace his unique sound. Using catchy melodies to explore awkwardness and melancholy, and channeling his insecurities into noteworthy and relatable art.

Florian’s Creek released his first EP with NJ’s Mint 400 Records in February, Happy Music for Depressed People. Get it wherever you stream good music.