Hackensack, NJ Community Message Boards

One of my hobbies/interests is ethnic food/food from around the world. Name a region and I'll tell you what they eat and I've probably tasted it.

So of course I noticed the African/carribean market on Anderson Street. Bought some "chin chin" (never heard of it) and some palm oil, gonna fry some plantains in it eventually. I was surprised, they had everything, kenkey, instant fufu mix. Everything except for african yams, but those you can get in the anderson street grocery, the red one right near the tracks.

But I'm surprised. Hackensack has a West-African population? Or the area in general? Since when? How lond has this been going on? Are they more nigerians or ghanaians, or both? Or something else entirely? How about religion? Maybe it's one of those things it's usually one religion coming over here because back in the home country they face strife.
Is there more in the area? I'd guess the dense areas around Hackensack, like as far as Clifton. But I honestly don't know.

It just seems weird/funny/interesting to me. Growing up I'd heard of Greeks, Armenians, Iranians, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Italians in the area, but not Africans.
Not that I'm complaining. As far as I'm concerned immigrants are our greatest natural resource in New Jersey, because they make such varieties of tasty food.

no, I meant woops that that was the police shooting range. They should put a sign there saying so if they don't want people there.

The peeing I'm still gonna do either way if there aren't any public restrooms (I didn't know there was one, but it was locked anyway the other player said); there's plenty of woods there, especially along the river.

Soccer, Saturday Mornings Johnson park, 9:30 AM, Field 2, enter from River St where it says "Hackensack DPW", field is in the back.
Will be through the Summer of 2012 at least, the permit lasts that long.

You're not working out enough and you know it. Grow some cojones.

Stuff I've tried in Hackensack and you should too:

Been doing boxing training with Don Somerville. He teaches mornings and evenings in the Bergen PAL on Hackensack Ave. Go to him and get a killer workout. Get into it and do it regular, get the glovers and wraps and weighted jump rope and an interval timer and keep it up regular. I can post Don's number if anyone wants

Ice house hackensack. There's adult hockey leagues there. The more amateur divisions play on Sundays

Battista dance studios (Now Rogers dance studio). Go learn dancing. It's awesome. Though I actually would NOT recommend them. They focused too much on perfect form way too early before I knew any moves. Also, they're kind of expensive. Now that I'm in South Jersey weekdays I found a good dance instructor. Up here where's a good one? I don't know. But they're a convenient place for social dances to practice. Though I might not recommend that either, it was all old people. Then again, I don't know how the other posters here are. Ideally myself I'd like to find social dances in Hudson County that focus on one kind of dance. So far only found a swing social dance in Jersey City.
Married? Try dancing. Private lessons are expensive, but they cover a couple. Learn to have fun together on date nights, keep that spark alive, and avoid divorce. If you're into it, few things will keep that spark alive as well as dancing. Christ, this young couple at that swing social dance looked like they wanted to eat each other as they were dancing.

Apparently Solari's has dancing Friday and Saturday evenings. Fridays is more just a live band plays, so it may be rock and not dancin, but Saturdays is more latin stuff, so you could dance merengue, salsa, etc.
So you could eat dinner there and dance.
This I haven't actually tried yet.

Ethnic foods/exotic foods. Bangkk Garden, awesome thai place. You got ecuadorian places. In the Anderson St market you can actually get breadfruit, and mamoncillos/guinepas, and actual African yams, and other crazy produce. The other day I tried canned ackee (a Jamaican things, as is breadfruit). There's also a Filipino place, and I think another one too. One at least near Fairmount park called Tropical Hut. If not their lunch food, you'll like their desserts. Filipinos are like the kings of pastries/deserts. They have so many varieties. You could also head over to Jollibee in Bergenfield, which is a Filipino market.
Go expand your food horizons

Go out and try something new. You're being adventurous enough and not havinng enough fun and you know it.

That is sweet pea, which I didn't know grew on its own as sort of a weed sometimes, but I have been seeing that. And Morning Glory. Got two more purplish morning glories after that pic.


So after parting from the African guy, I went to my car and made a sort of little bouqet with some rubber bands I had in my car. Later, I stopped at Battista dance studio (now Rogers dance studio) to pick up the schedule of their social dances (I've been taking lessons - swing/lindy hop, salsa, merengue, NY Hustle). I gave the flowers to the receptionists there. They seemed to like it.

Later today went to S&J leather/shoe guys on Anderson St to talk to them about replacing rubber soles with leather ones for dancing. Apparently what they do is grind down the rubber and just glue on the leather.

Then later since it was still such a nice day, I walked to the Filipino place and got some food there and ate outside. I found a fig tree too, which I can later try to pick some if they manage to ripen.

And while we're on the subject of wild/urban foraging, you can get ginkgo nuts from the female gingkgo tree over on FDU campus, on the Teaneck side. It's in front of the admissions building or something, in the U driveway that is off the main road.

Anyway, here's one more picture of the weird area in Johnson Park

As I was eating, some African dude was walking and interrupted me and asked me if I could help him understand something, since he's new to the country. He lives in New York (I'm guessing the city) and was driving here, siad he works as a nurse, and it was raining or a water main broke, and his car had gotten flooded, and the next day it died on River St. He said it had to get towed, and they had towed it to Brookside mechanics or whatever on Zabriskie. He wanted to know if the town is responsible, I told him I'm pretty sure no. I know a little bit about law and I know that there have been incidents where towns have been liable for stuff like that, like when NYC was liable because some guy tried to kill himself but didn't succeed and he sued NYC and won (I know, stupid - the verdict was that from a strict liability standpoint technically the city could have trained the driver better which would have avoided injury). From what I understand, the old English "The king can do no wrong" thing still applies, which I told him about. We were chit chatting and he was like "You know, this country isn't a democracy". In general trying to get sympathy. I should have said "You're right, it's a republic", since I sorta believe the same thing, we need more referendums, more direct democracy.

Anyway he said the cops said it was a mile away, I was like it's more like a mile and a half. I looked up the train shcedule on my phone, but train was too long a wait. So we parted.

I forgot to mention that I had picked these flowers while walking around Johnson Park:

As you can see there was also this odd shed/building thingy there.

Anyway, so I then walked along the river walkway in Johnson Park, eventually I made my way to this mulberry tree near River St that luckily had branches low enough to pick from. So I started eating some mulberries from there, just for fun. Here are the mulberries: