New Brunswick, New Jersey. Home to the major state university as well as two large hospitals and the global headquarters of Johnson and Johnson. How does a city of 55,000 like this get away with not having basic commercial services like dry cleaning, shoe repair, or a non-ghettoized grocery store? One could perfectly well live and work or go to school here, or easily commute by train to New York, yet need to drive miles out of town just to buy food or get clothes cleaned. Or, with the aforementioned “second places” right here, you could try to get away without a car, but yet not be able to take care of basic chores.
Since this is IMHO, is your city lacking something obvious and necessary?
My hometown of Ames, IA, pop. ±50,000, has exactly one shoe repair, a shop the size of a large walk-in closet that’s open about half the time. It’s a notoriously casual community, anyway; most live and die in molded sole shoes.
I don’t really live in a city now, more of a suburban sprawl, but there is nothing resembling a fabric or notions store for about 30 minutes in any direction. (Distance hereabouts is measured in units of time, a prized commodity - which explains the lack of interest in home sewing.)
New Brunswick is the only city I’ve seen that was essentially bulldozed and rebuilt, back in the 1970s.
I grew up near there. My uncle used to run a gas station at the foot of George Street. The city used to look completely different, with a very active main street filled with all sorts of stores.
Three things happened in the 1970s. They rerouted Route 18, got rid of a lot of Urban Blight, and Jand J decided to build a brand new World Headquarters building. In the process, they tore down several big brick factories near the river, moved Route 18 over by quite a bit, and J&J bought up a huge chunk of downtown and flattened it. For a long time the only thing not J&J that remained was a Gino’s fast food restaurant, selling burgers and KFC. Appliance Stores, two or three movie theaters, and lots of small commercial services bit the dust. An old tavern, whose core was pre-Revolutionary, got bodily lifted and carted off to East Jersey Old Town.
Even things that weren’t in the area owned by J&J died. Carroll’s hamburgers, J.J Newbury’s , lots of small shops.
The new gentrified main drag has restaurants and hotels and things, but no shoe repair places. Lots of residents, I think, went out to the suburbs. If you get in a car and drive, you can find plenty of the things you’re talking about south on Rt. 18, or across the Raritan in Highland Park.
A community is too small to support many basic commercial services, but wants them anyhow.
Real estate prices and commercial lease rates are too high. Small entrepreneurs – the type that usually own businesses like shoe repair stores, dry cleaners, and the like – can’t afford to set up shop.
Real estate prices and commercial lease rates are too low. This makes very low-end businesses with low profit margins economically viable, so commercial districts begin to fill up with used car lots, auto repair shops, bulk mulch sales, “redneck hobby” businesses like combination trampoline and truck cap dealers, and so on, to the exclusion of commercial uses that serve the day-to-day needs of area residents.
By “home sewing”, I hope you’re not including quilting, because there are scads of quilters in central Iowa. There are quilt shops in Goldfield, Webster City, Iowa Falls, Jewell, Lake City, Algona, Pocahontas, Humboldt, and Fort Dodge – just to list the ones I’ve been to.
My little town has nothing, which is to be expected, but I’m amazed that a city of 55,000 doesn’t have a dry cleaner.
Forgive me, I segued a little too quickly from Ames to Westchester, NY, where I live now. Ames has fabric stores, Hobby Lobby, all kinda stuff like that.
Oh, whew! I might be moving to Ames in the fall. (Not sure yet, hubby’s applying for a job at ISU.) I don’t think I could survive without a fabric store!
Easton Ave. a little further down towards Somerset has most of the things you mentioned. I know there used to be a taylor and a cobbler on George Street, but that was ages ago.
Princeton has everything walkable but at 2x the price. Maybe more. I rarely use the services here.
I am moving to New Brunswick in two months! I will be there several years. How wonderful to hear from a native!
I was meaning to ask, do they even have, like, a Hillers, or Whole Foods, or some kind of farmer’s market equivalent? If I have to go to WalMart or some kind of big-brand supermarket I’m going to have to slit my wrists. :mad:
Whole Foods? Ha! There isn’t even a big-brand supermarket in New Brumfus. (Unless you count C-Town as a “big brand.” )
Seriously, I’m laughing my ass off here. You’re in for some BIG culture shock. New Brunswick is a great town in a lot of ways, but iwakura is not exaggerating. Yeah, I’m sure there is a dry cleaner or two within the city limits, but just barely.
Try a Yahoo or Google local search. There are 9 dry cleaners in New Brunswick. Also two shoe repair shops, and another across the bridge in Highland Park. There is the New Brunswick Farmers’ Market on French Street. Besides the aforementioned C-Town, there’s a Foodtown at 20 Elizabeth St.
My post was actually brought on by my failure in finding a shoe repair shop in walking distance from Rutgers. Can you link to the two that you found, please? Note that the one called “Nathans” does not exist–I called.
Do you live in San Francisco? Because, as much as I love and appreciate the good, authentic Mexican cuisine here, sometimes I want fucking Taco Bell, And it isn’t here, or at least, not that I’ve found (haven’t looked THAT hard)
I thought “sesquicoastal” in your location meant the Midwest.
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