Issue 214: Measles on the PATH
Swatchkeeper to the stars, a big week in city politics, and Andrew Jerome Washington Remembrance Day.
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Katie and David
PATH PSA: Next stop, measles
The PATH train was already having a summer of hell before somebody decided to ride every train in Jersey City with a full-on measles infection between August 13 and 15.
According to our friends at Gothamist:
“The person with measles rode during morning and evening commute hours on the three days they used public transit. They took the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, specifically using the 8th Street station and also rode PATH Newark - World Trade Center Line and spent time at Exchange Place Station in Jersey City.”
Look, we hope that person is OK and we’re not here to take “political” positions, but measles was eradicated in the U.S. 25 years ago, before some people collectively lost their minds and decided to fight diseases with vibes and dandelion tea. There’s no scientific evidence that the MMR vaccine is bad for you. There’s a whole lot of scientific evidence that measles sucks, and in the worst cases can cause brain damage and death.
One thing we learned from this story? Measles symptoms may not appear for 10 to 14 days after exposure. Per Gothamist, New Jersey health officials say PATH commuters should be on the look out for: “high fever, cough, red eyes, a runny nose, and a distinctive rash which appears a few days after symptoms begin, usually beginning with red spots at the hairline.”
Neighborhood Character: Diana Koka
Diana Koka, co-owner of Archive Collection, at her studio at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City (Photo: Katie Jennings)
Diana Koka oversees a vast library in her third-floor studio at Mana Contemporary, but instead of books, it’s a collection of thousands of vintage fabric swatches.
Clothing designers searching for unique prints or inspiration for new collections — from mass market manufacturers like Target and Walmart to bespoke high-fashion like John Varvatos and Carolina Herrera — head to the Archive Collection, where Diana and her business partner Ruth Heget have sourced and catalogued thousands of these swatches.
The collection started with antique textile books. Back in the 1800s, the sales people for textile mills would carry leather-bound books showcasing dozens of fabric swatches to prospective buyers. While Ruth, who lives in Brazil, focuses on sourcing vintage fabrics, Diana is the keeper of the archive in Jersey City.
This week we caught up with Diana in her Mana studio, where she has everything from a red French toile fabric from the 1850s to a Korean ginkgo leaf swatch from the 1990s. On Sundays you can find her at the Lincoln Park Farmer’s Market, where she sells fresh and silk flower arrangements in vintage vases for her new side project, which she calls Alberton Florist.
The Call of the West Side: Originally from Hungary, Diana moved to New York City in the 1990s and to the West Side of Jersey City in 2008. “We were in Queens, and everything was just already quite expensive there, and one of my really dear friends already lived in Jersey City.”
“I have my love/hate relationship with [Jersey City]. But when my son was about four years old, we ended up staying for Halloween in our neighborhood instead of going down by Grove Street. And that's when I saw what a nice community we have, because there were so many families out. It was a really nice, warm Halloween evening, and the kids had so much fun. We fell in love with the neighborhood, and just being close to Lincoln Park.”
The Move to Mana: Archive Collection was based in New York City’s Garment District for three decades. “With the pandemic, we had to close down because we had no business for almost six months. I put everything in storage, and then I was like, OK, the business is starting to come back. I need an office space.” That’s how she ended up at Mana Contemporary.
Vintage Inspiration: “Our business is working with companies and designers in all different fields. It can be a paper product company. It can be home children's swimwear, lingerie, wallpaper companies, anyone who can use our designs for inspiration.”
Designers come to Diana with a theme or mood board, like birds or flowers or plaids. She will scour the archive for relevant swatches. Designers then buy the original swatch and often give a new twist on an old pattern. “The truth is, everything has come full circle. You can look at this design and you can recolor it, and once you give it a fresh color, it will look completely different. But your beautiful design is there already to work with.”
Direct-to-Consumer: While the bulk of the business is selling to designers, Diana and Ruth have also started selling some digitalized patterns directly to consumers, as well as starting a consulting business for regular people who are redecorating their homes. “Let’s say you would like to redo your daughter's room, and you would love one wall to have a really funky wallpaper. So you come to me and I would do a custom wallpaper for her.” The process involves a design consultation, mood board, ownership of the original print design, a digital version and the printed textile or wallpaper.
Branching Out: This spring Diana started her side project Alberton Florist selling arrangements at the farmer’s market. “I always love flowers. And even here, my favorite designs are floral designs,” she said. For years, Diana had been arranging flower bouquets for the lobby of her apartment building on Fairview Ave. “One of my neighbors, who became a dear friend, she's like, ‘Your bouquets are looking better and better, like they're just so funky, and some of them so quirky and so different,’” which motivated her to see if she could turn it into a business.
The Farmer’s Market: “The response is really good, very positive. I do the silk flower arrangements and the little ones do really well, they are anywhere from $10 to $20. They're pretty great for a little kitchen shelf, bathroom shelf, bookshelf, kids room. And then I started doing really well with potted plants. I've been looking around for really funky pots, and I propagate some of my own plants.
And then the fresh flowers. At home, I have a big antique china collection, and I wanted to incorporate my love for vintage and bring it into my flower business, too. So every Sunday I have a Sunday bouquet, and that's in one of my collected vases. This past weekend, I was driving around with my mom, and we were shopping for vintage vases. Sometimes people don't know what beautiful things they have.”
Alberton Florist at the Lincoln Park Farmer’s Market. (Courtesy of Diana Koka)
Off to the races
It was a big week in the city’s election calendar with Thursday’s filing deadline for municipal candidates. We now have a sense of the lineup going into November: 52 candidates have signed up to lead our fair city through the latter half of this decade, and none of them are named Steve Fulop.
The mayor wrote on X that it was a “weird feeling” not to be running again and it is kind of weird. Love him or hate him, Fulop’s been at the center of political life in JC for the last 20 years. His arch nemesis Bob Menendez is in prison, the Hudson County machine that tried to destroy him is a husk of its former self and Jersey City’s seen a 20 percent bump in population during the Fulop era. That’s not to say Fulop is responsible for any of those things but it’s an interesting end of an era.
Toward the future.
Commissioner Bill O’Dea put out his own internal poll showing him in a tight race for second place after Jim McGreevey. We talked a little bit about polls after Councilman James Solomon put his internal poll out, then McGreevey followed suit with his own and O’Dea joined the party this week. Those comments hold: We don’t have crosstabs or questions so it’s impossible to gauge these polls in any scientific sense and internal polls put out by the candidates are, as the youths say, sus. We’re too small a city to get independent pollsters like Siena or Patrick Murray (RIP Monmouth Polling Institute) to give us a truly independent poll so we’re left with handpicked releases from the campaigns which are obviously designed to paint the candidates in the best light.
That said, we are seeing trends across the three internal polls that at least put us in the ballpark of knowing what the hell is going on: McGreevey is currently leading the pack, Solomon and O’Dea are the strongest contenders to beat him, and Mussab Ali and Joyce Watterman are polling in the single digits. Traditionally, no one pays attention to elections until after Labor Day so these numbers may all be meaningless anyway. But as the vibes have indicated for the last year, it looks like a three-person race that could be headed to a December runoff unless there’s some tectonic shift in the coming months.
As for the Council? Bro, who knows. The Watterman and Ali tickets are looking pretty anemic post filing deadline. Also where did all these Ward B candidates come from? H/T to John Heinis for putting out the whole list here.
Speaking of polls: Have folks been seeing ads for this A2 Insights poll? It appears to be the brainchild of someone calling themselves Andrew Kim (not that one) who is an undergraduate poli-sci student at U Michigan. Neighborhood Character took the poll, which included questions about JC candidates and issues, and so far our bank account hasn’t been drained.
Odds and Ends
Can we just give Sam Pesin a break already?NJ DEP under Gov. Murphy has been really good about preserving and remediating Liberty State Park which, no matter where you live in Jersey City, is an absolute treasure. Paul Fireman’s privatization plans and fake front groups have not swayed the state toward calumny and destruction, which is refreshing in these times. BUT, Pesin writes in Jersey City Times that the new Suntex Marina plan would require 3 acres and 500 dry docks and he’s getting people to write in to DEP and register their complaints.
About those one-way street plans for Greenville: With Mayor Fulop officially declining to run again, and only four months remaining in his term, there’s zero chance those “plans” are getting off the ground. This whole episode, as long suspected, was a political stunt. And that sucks for everyone involved: the people of Greenville who felt totally disrespected, the street-safety activists who thought this was a legit policy debate, and Solomon and Councilman Frank Gilmore who had to deal with the fallout of a giant nothingburger.
Coming up!
Music at the (giant stone pillar that used to be a) fountain (before HudCo whiffed on the repairs): The “surf-noir” group Beninghove’s Hangmen (great band name) have not performed live since the pandemic and will be making their triumphant return Wednesday, August 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. We love this series and plan to be there.
Remembrance Day: The Drew Cubed Project is hosting an event to honor the memory of Andrew Jerome Washington who was shot and killed by JC police during a mental health crisis two years ago. The event, which includes a forum on policing culture and climate in the urban community, mental health resources, and art and dance therapy, will be held at Cafe Nostalgia, 409 Martin Luther King Drive, on August 27 from 3:30 to 8:30 p.m. More info here.
Hooked on Necropolis: The folks at ARTS 14C are putting together Necropolis 14C, “nine days of immersive terror” that will run from Oct. 24 to Nov. 1. More info here.