Chilltown Bears

When we realized the rain was letting up and we’d have a nice day after all, we decided to venture into Newark today for it’s Gay Pride.  I went to college at the Newark campus of Rutgers University a million years ago.  It’s the home of NJPAC, the Prudential Center, Riverfront Stadium where the Newark Bears play baseball, other colleges and universities like Seton Hall Law School and NJIT, museums, galleries, and much much more.  Joe and I go to Newark from time to time for the best Portuguese/Brazilian food around, in the Ironbound District.

With as much as there is to enjoy there, the event today made me sad. The parade down Halsey Street had less than 100 marchers, very few people on the street watching, and the festival in Washington Park that it lead into wasn’t well attended.  I’m sure that to some extent it had to do with the rain early on today, but unfortunately it had mostly to do with homophobia that’s still rampant in Newark.  It’s a large city that’s only a few miles from Manhattan, and home to many institutions of higher learning, yet only a choice few are brave enough to be out and proud on a day like today.  Of course until just recently there was no pride event in Newark at all and last year the Mayor even started raising the rainbow flag over City Hall for Gay Pride.  It’s a long uphill battle, but there’s hope.

We were pooped and wanted to get a bite to eat.  I had heard of a soul food restaurant called JE’s, on Halsey Street at Willow, so we decided to check it out.  I read that it was packed on Sunday’s for the after-church crowd, so we expected a line.  Whoa, was there a line, LOL.  We went in to see if we had leave our name, but it was just too crowded.  In a total reverse-Rosa-Parks moment, we also couldn’t help but notice people stare as we were the only white people in the place, heh.  Our stomachs were making that oi-oi-oi-oi-oi sound, so we dashed back to the car (parked at the fabulous Newark Museum) and drove off to the nearest big-menu commercial place on the way home, Houlihan’s in this case, and treated ourselves to cold drinks, a mound of nachos, and an early dinner.  Yum. [script carlos]

Best Father’s Day I’ve had in a while. CARLOS