I've been to Rochester a lot (grew up in Binghamton, schooled in Syracuse, so we're neighbors in that regard) - verrrry different from Newark. I live 1 mile from Newark right now (crossing the city line makes a big difference).
Newark is an incredibly depressed town. My view may be biased because I formerly worked with law enforcement there, but I would (not sarcastically) guesstimate that at least 50% of the "employment" involves crime or city/state corruption. On the plus side, Newark has a tremendous amount of heroin - possibly the largest industry there.
I can't think of a single grocery store that would fit my Upstate New York definition in the City of Newark. I'd definitely agree with bodegas and fast food joints being the primary source of sustenance. Unfortunately, the homicide rate in Newark (which is far higher than the official numbers), makes it a good bet to not worry about longevity if you're a life-long resident.Just thought I’d include this link from the website for The Economist. It’s got some of the stats I was thinking of. I’d also recommend the documentary Street Fight , which is pretty accurate and describes how politics work in Newark.
I know you included “supposedly,” but Bullshit. I live in shit-ass Woodlake, CA. We have one supermarket, and one good grocery store that is smaller, about the size of 5 or 6 standard convenience stores. I work in loverly Visalia, CA. It has AT LEAST 4 supermarkets and only 100,000 people.
I define “supermarket” to mean something like “a store with at least 20 aisles, PLUS a separate produce section, PLUS a separate meat section.” Like, a real fuckin’ supermarket.
Joe
My New Jersey town of 18,000 didn’t have a supermarket for over a year. The nasty FoodTown closed, and it was 11+ months before ShopRite opened.
As others have said, probably due to size constraints. I can’t believe what the quote is implying, that the city is so mismanged a grocery store chain won’t put a store there- I mean, everyone eats, if nothing else.
Come to think of it, San Francisco has over half a million people, and due mainly I would say to size restraints, I can’t think of any supermarket in the city limits, except for the Safeway near the ocean on 48th Ave.
Certainly you mean “10 aisles”? I don’t know if I’ve been in a supermarket with 20 aisles, ever. But I agree on the produce and meat section.
I work in downtown Newark, and we talk about this all the time. Newark’s been allegedly going through a “renaissance” for the past 5 or 6 years. In that time, two luxury apartment buildings have been renovated on either side of my building. One is now occupied mostly by Rutgers-Newark campus students sharing the luxury apartments that were supposed to be for families, and the other isn’t quite finished yet (but will have a lovely bowling alley and fitness center when it does). The consensus is that no one in their right mind would move here unless they opened a good supermarket/grocery store. In the downtown area, we don’t even have good bodegas, but we’ve got a billion dollar stores and discount stores, so if you need something disposable you’re in luck.
The situation outside of downtown is better, but not all that much. I understand that many people who can go to nearby South Orange for food shopping,while the poorer people with no access to anything but public transportation rely mostly on bodegas and small dingy stores like the C-Towns that monstro referred to. The renaissance is happening very slowly in Newark.
When I lived in Manhattan, the supermarket situation depended on what neighborhood you lived in. Only the wealthier neighborhoods had nice supermarkets; the rest were stuck with dingy, smelly stores. When I lived in Chelsea, before gentrification hit, we had to walk from 22nd street to 14th to go to a pretty stinky Associated store. There was a D’Agostino’s nearby, but it was more expensive and had less stuff. By the time we moved out, we had a Whole Foods two blocks away, and new buildings going up like crazy for people with high disposable income. Until downtown Newark gets people like that moving in, I don’t expect them to be getting a nice supermarket any time soon.
Safeway has at least nine supermarkets inside San Francisco city limits, according to the search I made on its own web site. I personally have been to the one in the Marina district (very famous in the 90s as a place for meeting the opposite sex) and the one on Webster St.
Ed
Oops- forgot those…and the one in Castro as well- now that’s a neat one to go into at night 
Because those are suburbs, not northeastern rust belt economically depressed cities. You might as well say “I can’t believe there are no trees in the Sahara Desert: I live in a much smaller area and there are plenty of trees.” You’re not comparing equal things.
Another large NJ city, New Brunswick, has one supermarket downtown, a C-Town. The other ones are pretty far out towards the suburbs.
I agree that there must be something in the definition of supermarket. And for demographic studies that are targeted at the economic situation for low-income families, key factors are going to include (I’m guesing) – (1) the availability of fresh produce and meat and all basic staples, (2) sanitary conditions, and (3) retail prices that don’t include the super-markup imposed by convenience stores.
I’m sure there are plenty of places where you can buy food, but the question is do they concentrate on highly processed, pre-made, high-fat, low nutritional value items that are sold at huge markups? When it comes to low-income peole, my understanding is that one of the key problems is teaching them to buy raw ingredients at low prices and cook them themselves rather than just pulling pre-processed boxed items of the shelf and zapping them.
Right, and don’t forget about all the Albertson’s, Cala Foods, Andronico’s, and many other neighborhood supermarkets. So SF is not starved for supermarkets. Like others have pointed out, it’s purely business economics that drives the number, size, and locations of these retail outlets. In my neighborhood a very convenient (for me) Albertson’s was shut down when it was just not generating enough return for the chain.
Youre right. It is bullshit. Detroit doesn’t have only one supermarket. It has only two.
I might add another comment about scarcity of consumer goods in Newark, and one that is perhaps more telling: there are no bookstores, but there are colleges and universities.
Or, rather, there are only university and one or two “mom & pop” bookstores. I’ve always been amazed by this, given the affinity students had during my not-so-distant college days for lazing about in the cafe at a Barnes and Noble. In Newark, there is Rutgers University, Essex Community College, and Seton Hall University School of Law, but no B&N, not even a Borders or the last vestiges of some of the other chain stores. There’s a B&N in Jersey City 239,000, there’s even one in Hoboken (pop. 40,000); but not enough business for one in Newark with nearly 250,000 people.
Experience around here tells me that it’s probably because there aren’t many potential book customers, so the students just have to stick with ebay and the college store.
I’ll compromise and go 15 aisles. All 4 supermarkets in my 100,000-pop city have about that many.
Joe
Oh yes–I work at a publishing company in downtown Newark filled with people who love to read, and we complain bitterly about the lack of bookstores here. We’re right by Rutgers and Seton Hall and there isn’t a bookstore in sight, except 2 college bookstores on Market Street.
And it’s been that way for eons. I lived in New Brunswick in the 80s, mostly without a car, and I’d bicycle in cold weather 5 miles to a Grand Union rather than shop at C-Town. They had a great selection of Spanish-named coffee and yucca, and everything else looked like it fell off a truck in 1972.
Since then, there’s been a ton of fancy-pants housing built downtown, and therefore a lot of deep pockets roaming about, but still no supermarket to go with it. I’m sure lack of available space and the enormous rent that such a space would command is 90% of the reason – I’d be curious how many people living in those (soulless, fraudulent, prefab) new condos own cars and do their shopping at distant supermarkets rather than in small local shops. I haven’t wandered around NB in a while, but I can’t think of anyplace that one would buy produce on a walk from the train or bus.
Same deal I would imagine with putting a big Barnes & Noble in Newark near the college. Someone would have to subsidize their rent for them to take the gamble.
This part of Elmwood’s quote refers to the criteria I mentioned:
I lived there until Sept. 2006, and there’s a Safeway near Fillmore a couple blocks south of Geary (the “unSafeway” as a friend has called it), one along Marina near Ft. Mason, another off Market near Castro, an Albertson’s at about 30th and Clement, something - Cala? on Geary at 25th or so, a Whole Foods on California, and a host of Trader Joe’s if they count…
I bet there’s more too.
On preview, I see I’ve been beaten to it - Cheers,