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Johnny working on his Yoda this morning...

When you speak of Johnny, do speak well; The failed EV parking program that encompasses the block between Marin & Provost on First St. has now turned most of those EV spots over to actual parking people actually use. With the parking crunch downtown from all the construction, residents have been forced into 'streets away from home parking.' It made no good sense to take an entire block of prime city parking, you know, the kind that pays the city back with permits and fines, and turn it over as part of Shuster's abatement "giveback" for the Art House and Jokeman. Johnny railed on this ridiculous plan from the hop. He did his research on how many EV's were sold in Hudson and Essex counties that might just need to come park on a one block section of First St. in downtown Jersey City, and not all that easy to get to. Just about the only cars seen charging were owned by Maven, the company that partnered with General Motors on the chargers. Johnny wondered that almost every time he sent his research to the city and showed how poor the plan was he'd see Maven cars charging over the next couple days. This idea comes straight from the playbook that if a McDonalds isn't selling enough cheeseburgers at a location Ronald McDonald comes in and buys 100 to get the numbers up.

Time and time again Johnny posted pictures and showed councilwoman Candice Osborne as well as Rolando Lavarro, council president, of an empty street that could certainly be used. Since this wasn't any kind of 'We'll do this for one year and see how it goes program' rather than just a bad idea for an abatement give back we're going to go ahead and say the squeaky wheel gets the grease and Jersey City gets some badly needed parking back.

The UCLA basketball team can thank Johnny now.

Shuster is back with more "badvertising"

Last April, Johnny pointed out the badvertising, borderline racist advertising for Shuster's Oakman (The Jokeman) property on First St at Marin. FYI, it's one of the Jersey CIty Desk's biggest stories counting eyeballs and unique hits. Thousands of hits.

People seemed stupefied that a company in this day and age would let their outward advertising on a property look so very white with no people of color being seen anywhere, pretty much like if you weren't white you need not bother inquiring. Now the Jokeman is back advertising (they just haven't sold those as quickly as they thought they might, Johnny hopes he's played a part in that in some small way) and they've now gone from "wow, that looks racist" to "Wow, that's racist."

What the Oakman ads show now is a mixed-couple, she's of Asian descent and he is white. They show this very white looking couple going about an everyday life at The Oakman and WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, an African American shows up in an ad....

He's the bellhop, of course.

Two years worth of advertising and Shuster actually makes themselves look WORSE advertising this place almost every time. They simply cannot tell us in good faith there isn't something racial going on either with them or the people they constantly hire to do their ad work.

It's time Shuster tells us which one or they can continue to not fill The Jokeman.

Yet another waste of Jersey City taxpayer money

Developers can say they'll do a lot of things "for" Jersey City when they come hat in hand before the planning commission, city council et al. Some say they'll build a small elementary school downtown, in the richest area, a school kids from Greenville have zero hope of attending. Some say they will do something down the road, like Toll Brothers who probably lied when they said to get their abatement for The Morgan said they'd build a community theater. Word on that from sources downtown say it'll never be built, Toll will cry poor but Johnny digresses. A lot of promises are made to take your tax money "in lieu of payment" ie taxes like you pay.

Shuster, when they wanted tax money to build their very unnecessary igloos on First St., (Shuster is, by the way, complaining about the new city law that requires them to pave side to side after tearing up a street -- how's that for gratitude?) the Art House and The Jokeman said they would provide the city with parking out front of both places, roughly an entire city block they would dedicate to parking and charging of electric vehicles, ie Chevy Volts, Nissan Leafs etc. This was Shuster's "giveback" to the city for getting huge abatements.

Problem is, the spots are never in use. By never we mean never -- as far as EV's are concerned. Shuster contractors and employees now get FREE PARKING out front of their buildings because NOBODY is using the 30 or so electric spots. Shuster guys just move the cones for their own contractors and workers and YOU pay for that. Yes Jersey City, YOU pay for Shuster employees to park for free on city streets.

Now, the city in it's infinite wisdom was using this EV charging location as a test case, ie can we do this elsewhere and have it work. No doubt developers all over Hudson County would line up to get the abatement deal Shuster got, we'll GIVE you the parking spaces, just contract someone to come put in chargers. That's it. Simple.

Johnny is going to make a bold statement but he's pretty certain he can back it up with his long history in auto media; Nobody from Jersey City got down and did the full research on exactly how many EV's there are in Hudson County, how many are registered in Jersey City or the surround. Nobody did a count, nobody thought to look around message forums or boards looking for EV drivers around the Tri-State looking for downtown plug-in parking. If the city did any of this Johnny would be A) Surprised B) Our subpoena for JC's data on this would be immediate from the Jersey City Desk legal team.

Bottom line, somebody THOUGHT this would be a great idea. But, instead of running a test program in another slice of downtown, they built in millions in abatements around a failed plan. Instead we have an utter waste of millions of taxpayer dollars.

FAIL to city planning (again), FAIL to City Council (again) LOSS for Jersey City taxpayers who had a block of parking taken away and handed to a contractor to collect money off your street that has no cars.

Johnny has one more prediction on this; When someone from the city government does read this (and they do, Johnny sees their IP addy's coming in) they'll simply think the program is an even bigger hit than they'd hoped because someone is talking about it, it's how Jersey City government works.

The Oakman in downtown Jersey City, it's for white people!

Perhaps you have seen the ads hanging off a dump of a building, maybe you've seen them in the PATH system or maybe, just maybe you were unfortunate enough to walk by the huge placards for 'The Oakman", a new unnecessary pile of bricks and sticks on First St.

What an ad it is too! Just look at these images, can they get any more white people in it doing douchey poses? Hey, they're ALL excited about the Oakman and who can blame them. It looks like fine luxury living for white people. Oh sure, they may bitch and whine and snivel once this story goes live and hits the Twitter but ya know what? The Oakman should step up, be responsible and stand behind their advertising. This is the face they WANT to show Jersey City. This is, after all, their introduction to you as a city. And what an introduction eh? Have minorities or people of color ever been dismissed out of hand any quicker or subliminally told to keep walking you're not welcome here?

Either the people behind The Oakman (The Joke Man) spent time on marketing and figuring out their potential markets downtown in Jersey City before they built a multi-million dollar building OR they simply pasted shit on a sign with no thought at all behind it. These are their available explanations. Any other explanation is implausible.

The Jokeman (Johnny added the thought bubbles such as they are):