“We Never Locked Our Doors at Night”: Newark on the 'Net, Minus the Mob

Abstract

In an episode of recently concluded HBO series, Sopranos, New Jersey mob boss decides to show his teenage son Newark neighborhood. We're talking history A.J. Your family's Newark's history. His son, though, remains unimpressed. Well who gives a shit about Newark? I'm making a point, Tony counters. This used to be beautiful. A hundred percent Italian. He then laments state of disrepair along Garside Street, commenting on filthiness and crime he sees all around him. I mean, look at, look at all these buildings here. Most of them are falling down to ground. He then points to his family's parish church, a symbol for him of vanished Little Italy that has been replaced by boarded-up crack dens. But that church is still standing. You know why? Tony asks his son. The bricks? A. J. guesses. Because our people give a shit, that's why. Every Sunday, Italians from they drive miles to come here to pray. To keep this place alive. To which A. J. asks, Yeah, so how come we never do? (The Sopranos). irony of this violent mob boss lamenting intrusion of crime and danger into his formerly safe which all Italian here, need hardly be remarked. Periodically throughout series, flashbacks show us that in 1950s, when streets were clean and safe, Tony's father and Uncle Junior were not above using baseball bats and meat cleavers to convince shopkeepers delinquent with loan payments of errors of their ways. And some of what was built by Italians (and, as we shall see, Jews) in working-class Newark was not exactly sanctioned by Chamber of Commerce. Clearly, Tony is building for himself a selective and usable past out of memories that like bricks lie all around him on Garside Street. Yet there is another irony to Tony's trek. Why don't we come here? A. J. asks, and it is evident that for all of Tony's loving evocations of old neighborhood, where his people built something, Garside Street and poverty of life in its coldwater flats are things he and his people did everything they could to flee as soon as they could. Yet even if, like Tony, most white ex-Newarkers avoid city in favor of leafy green suburbs of McMansions to which many of them have escaped, thousands of former city residents do return to city of their youth- virtually. New technologies, particularly Internet, have enabled exiles from urban America to creatively recoup the neighborhood from comfort of their cul de sacs, without having to traverse city streetscapes they imagine as demonstrably more dangerous and lethal than they were in their youth. One such imaginative recreation is http://www.oldnewark.com, a cornucopia of oral histories, photos, and historical vignettes of Newark's theaters, ethnic shops and neighborhoods, fire companies, restaurants, parks and much else that gave texture to New Jersey's largest city from roughly 1910-67. Newark is not alone as phenomenon of virtual city has become a common one. In Europe especially, virtual cities have arisen as new combination virtual city hall and chamber of commerce, where one can an array of shopping, entertainment and city services, all without ever having to step over a homeless person or negotiate gridlocked streets. point of such virtual cities, Aurigi and Graham argue, is to present urbanism's thrills and cultural amenities without poverty and contestation that may disconcert or threaten upscale computer users in time. Of course, they note problems of poverty and unequal access to resources or political influence persist offscreen (Aurigi and Graham).1 Other cities' Web sites offer a mix of historical vignettes and information on current amenities in real cities they virtually replicate. In virtual analog of Jersey City, information on current offerings at Liberty State Park coexists with Frank I am Law Hague, who has not held sway at City Hall since 1947 (Olszewski). …