Has Hoboken got the last of the water from Sandy out of downtown yet? They have? OK, then let's commence to the rules before this verbal knife fight begins.
Hoboken has a delightful waterfront (and for the sake of talking about "downtowns" waterfronts count) and a great pier you can watch movies on and grass filled parks. They have events to fill the parks well too. It's a very nice, calm and family friendly waterfront when water isn't pouring over its banks into the main downtown. Jersey City too has a lovely park, J. Owen Grundy Park which, while less grassy than Hoboken parks also offers up the premiere view of New York City. Grab that camera and in Jersey City you get uptown, the WTC, the Statue of Liberty and the Verazano-Narrows bridge. Jersey City does have two things that Hoboken can't match. The Colgate Clock so New York can tell what time it is and The Katyn Monument, yes the one with the Polish soldier getting stabbed right through the back. Seriously, a giant clock and a grand violent statue? Advantage Jersey City. We will take away ONE point from Jersey City because the Great Vampire Squid of Goldman Sachs is located on the JC waterfront.
Downtowns have to be ruled over by someone or other or nothing gets built, cleaned up, or done. Hoboken recently had a mayor go to jail. Jersey City's last guy most likely at some point thought he was going to jail. We love Dawn Zimmer here. She stood up when nobody else would and called Chris Christie a big fat liarhead. The guy here now in Jersey City despite promises of grand design for the middle class and low-income residents has returned to his roots of the Great Vampire Squid to peddle giant casinos and race tracks. We'd almost give this advantage to Hoboken right now but for one thing; Beth Mason. You can't have someone like that in your city governance and not get points taken away. Right now we're going to call this a tie though Hoboken does seem to want to get to the bottom of their real problems faster than JC does who like to gloss things over far too often.
Architecture is a tricky call isn't it? You have so many classic Americana buildings in downtown Hoboken, the Castle Gatehouse brings European flair whereas Jersey City's downtown is quickly being remade and the old warehouses are either being torn town or updated into unrecognizable mush. In fact the only castle in Jersey City is the White Castle on Kennedy Blvd. in India Square. Jersey City does have some new exciting buildings going up like the three offset book looking buildings at Greene and Bay St., and the new buildings going up at the Grove St. PATH station. JC must lose points for the horrid looking "POS" building at 111 First St., the Lloyd Goldman wonderment to below-average and the new Toll Brothers "thing" going up along Marin Blvd. Skyline? Please. Jersey City has one. We also know both cities have some gorgeous churches and great looking buildings here and there but Hoboken wants to hold onto their history far more than Jersey City and when it comes to architecture that counts. Advantage: Hoboken
Food and Drink means different things to different towns. Hoboken is filled with bars and small restaurants that with the exception of a couple have all the ambience of an Applebees or TGI Friday's. That's because Hoboken skews younger. Show Johnny a 20-something "foodie"and he will show you the horrors of Brooklyn. There are good restaurants in Hoboken but when compared to the new food destinations of Jersey City, this is a clear cut victory to JC for the food part of this debate. Thirty Acres, Left Bank Burger, Razza, Taqueria, Satis, Orale, and Talde is on the way. Now comes the drink part of the discussion. Hoboken loves to drink and serve drinks and make money on drinks and loves making money on tickets for open-carry and public drunkenness. They have a very well known Day of Drinking which became so famous they had to change it because it became too dangerous. Jersey City takes a decidedly lower profile when it comes to imbibing. Maybe again because Jersey City takes on the role of adult when it comes to Hoboken's tween persona because again, Jersey City skews older. No puke in our shrubs. You can get the same beer and liquor in Hoboken you can get here with one new coming exception, Departed Soles gluten free craft brewpub coming to 150 Bay St. this fall. Advantage: Jersey City.
As this debate slips away from our bathtub shaped friends, Johnny can hear the cries of CRIME IN JERSEY CITY coming from the Mile Square City. Truth be told in the proper part of downtown there isn't much crime. Go ahead and complain Johnny is somehow skewing the maps or stats or however you want to cut it. Sure, Jersey City in places has a big problem with crime. Nobody will deny that but in a comparison of "downtown areas" JC doesn't knuckle under here. If we're choosing city vs. city yes, Hoboken wins this test, but it's not. Johnny could easily pivot here and talk about downtown artists and art spaces and the murals going up all over in Jersey City but that may seem like piling on.
So what have we learned? Jersey City is a true up and coming small city powerhouse with a great waterfront, a clean downtown with new construction, the best food outside of Manhattan with an ok in a "we're trying" kind of way city government. What have we learned about Hoboken? While it has some beautiful buildings and a pleasant downtown, it's flood prone and Buddy Valastro and Beth Mason both work there. Residents and visitors drink like vikings and then the town floods some more. They keep moving their big parade earlier and earlier every year so that this year's St. Patrick's Day parade in January 16th at 7:30am. If we have to hear that Eli Manning lives in the Hudson Tea Building one more time we're gonna yack. Yes, even more than the bushes and shrubberies in Hoboken are used to come springtime.
Advantage downtown Jersey City it is!
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