« Sick | Main | KnitML & Ravelry »
February 18, 2008
Adventures in Montclair, NJ
We explored Montclair, New Jersey this weekend while pretending to be suburbanites in my family's house in West Orange (we were also busy overfeeding the family dog while his usual housemates were away).
Montclair is the next town over, and it's mecca for yuppie urbanites who decide they can't take the city and opt for a car and yard. In some ways, it's like a Vegas/Disney version of Park Slope. There's a better analogy out there, but basically, it has many city-worthy amenities while still being, at heart, very Jersey. There are walkable downtown areas. There are roving packs of hoodie'd teens. There are independent bookstores and coffee shops that remind us of the Tea Lounge. There are chic-looking clothing boutiques. There are TONS of restaurants. Some have names like "Soho (something)" or "Uptown" and are just flat out trying too hard. The decor in some is so ridiculous that we started laughing (think armchairs with floor-length slipcovers, mood lighting, elaborate arrangements of branches). Others look worth a try. There is far less pedestrian traffic than you'd see in the Slope, but the stores don't lack for visitors (people just arrive in cars).
Discoveries
- A Jamaican/Guyanese restaurant on Bloomfield Ave. with great Roti (D's discovery). I think I've tried sorrel drinks before, but the one here was really good. The doubles we had before roti were amazing -- fresh, with a touch of something sweet (mango puree?).
- THREE yarn stores. One was old-style (acrylic, pastel colors, closing soon), one was new, molded in the Yarn-Harlot tradition of the LYS (familiar with Knitty patterns, seller of snarky tee-shirts about knitting, with a web site and blog), and a third was somewhere in between.
- A British food import store packed to the brim with things like Marmite and digestive biscuits and Cadbury chocolate. We made a wonderful discovery -- tubes of Rowntree blackcurrant fruit pastilles and ONLY blackcurrant fruit pastilles. Normally you have to suffer through green and yellow pieces before you get the occasional purple one. In Heathrow last year we found bags of just blackcurrant and strawberry fruit pastilles and thought we'd lucked out. This store also sells pies of the savory variety (shepard's, steak & ale).
- A nice antique shop on Church St. that I prefer over Atlantic avenue versions, simply because of the reasonable prices and great collection of jewelry.
- A blight of luxury condos (well, at least one). See The Siena. With your order of an overpriced condo, you get a side of Starbucks, a gym, and absurd name and marketing campaign. Not that I didn't have a little inkling of a desire to see what it would be like to live there...but still.
- A great blog called Baristanet, which chronicles local happenings.
While it's fun to walk around the various downtown areas and shop and eat, my childhood as the kid at the bottom of the social order in the fancy private school there will always follow me around. I went to Montclair Kimberly Academy, where I wore all the wrong clothes and had a bird's nest for a hairdo. I participated in the same popularity contests that I imagine the well-to-do parents of my classmates did. I got a great education (including that exchange program in 7th grade), but a cockeyed lesson in social politics.
As much as I like the revitalized downtown areas on Montclair, I'm wary of people who are going to these silly restaurants to show off their cash -- there's something small-town about that behavior.
Posted by csageday at February 18, 2008 11:16 PM