Nat's Sidewalk Stories

No guest this time. Nat closes Season 3 on her own with a few minutes on the nine conversations that made up the season, the thread she noticed running through all of them, and an honest account of how this show actually gets made — a one-person operation with no ads, no crew, and no studio. Plus what's coming in Season 4.

• What the Season 3 guests share isn't a medium, and it isn't even art — it's the decision that this city was theirs to act on

• Nobody in this season waited for permission, and nobody waited to be qualified

• The podcast isn't documentation of what other people make — it's the same impulse in a different shape

• Nat's job is being an artist; the show is made alongside that work, on purpose

• No ads, no video, no crew, no studio — recorded on Zoom and edited by Nat

• One conversation this season was lost to audio failure and will be re-recorded for Season 4

• You do what you can with what you have, and when it doesn't work, you do it again

• Ep. 321 — Woolpunk, fiber work out on the street

• Ep. 322 — Lucy Rovetto, painter and curator

• Ep. 323 — Nirupa Umapathy, who came here on a one-way ticket from Madras

• Ep. 324 — Melida Rodas, poet laureate of Jersey City and founder of the Jersey City Poetry Festival

• Ep. 325 — Elizabeth Deegan, who made a gallery out of her own house and garage in Greenville

• Ep. 326 — Chris Perez, who won't let a building go

• Ep. 327 — Ivy Huang at IMUR, running a gallery that's more than a gallery

• Ep. 328 — Jenna Geiger and Keith "Dutch" VanPelt at Deep Space, who made a gallery out of a garage

• Ep. 329 — DISTORT, a graffiti writer whose work you've walked past a hundred times

Nat is taking about two months off. Season 4 begins in the fall, opening with a conversation that had to be re-recorded after the original audio didn't survive.

Chelsea Castro is also coming back. Chelsea was Nat's guest at the end of Season 1, and the two have been working on an exhibition together, opening in January — more on that in Season 4.

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• Website: natkalbach.com

• Substack: in-depth writing that follows the episodes

• Instagram: @natkalbach

• Email: [email protected]

Music: Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

Share Your Story: What sidewalk stories have you discovered in your neighborhood? Share them with Nat through email or social media.

shownotes at natkalbach.com

Deep Space Gallery has been called the spiritual heir to 111 First Street — the legendary warehouse artist community that was demolished in 2007 and never stopped being mourned. What makes that comparison remarkable is that Dutch, one of Deep Space's co-founders, never once set foot inside 111. He didn't inherit that legacy consciously. He just built something that carried its spirit anyway.

In this conversation, Nat sits down with Jenna Geiger and Keith VanPelt, who goes by Dutch, to mark ten years of Deep Space Gallery at 77 Cornelison Avenue, built into the side of Bergen Hill. They talk about graffiti and lineage, the doula parallel for gallery work, the strange gravitational pull Jersey City exerts on outsider-y people, and a woman named Erminnie Smith who was doing something remarkably similar on Pacific Avenue in 1882 - with Oscar Wilde.

Jenna Geiger and Keith Van Pelt aka Dutch - Deep Space Gallery -photo credit Megan Maloy

Jenna Geiger

Jenna Geiger is the lead curator, co-founder, and co-owner of Deep Space Gallery in Jersey City. She has curated monthly solo and group exhibitions since the gallery opened in 2016. Her curatorial roots grew from an academic background in anthropology, where she developed a deep appreciation for art as a system of meaning, a way communities understand themselves and translate values across time. Before Deep Space, she worked as a family nurse practitioner and spent years as a doula. She brings all of that into how she holds space for artists.

Keith "Dutch" VanPelt

Keith VanPelt - Dutch - is the founder, director, and co-curator of Deep Space Gallery. He studied at the duCret School of Art in Plainfield, NJ, where he learned stained glass, and his work as a painter and muralist is informed by deep roots in graffiti culture. He built the gallery walls himself. He is currently working on a new mural, alongside ongoing stained glass commissions. He describes himself as someone who needs a prompt - and then delivers.

• Deep Space Gallery Website

• Location: 77 Cornelison Avenue, Jersey City, NJ (Bergen-Lafayette / Bergen Hill)

• Deep Space Gallery Instagram

• Deep Space Gallery Artsy

• Dutch’ Instagram

• You don't have to consciously inherit a legacy to carry it. Dutch never made it inside 111 First Street — and still built something Tris McCall called its spiritual heir.

• Their gallery philosophy was never a mission statement. It evolved from showing graffiti artists who were incredibly talented with some not formally trained, and the ethos grew from there.

• Jenna describes her role as a gallerist the way she describes her work as a doula: reading what the person needs, holding the space, not imposing a framework. Asking, "What is driving you to make art now, at this particular juncture in your life?"

• Jersey City has a force field. Jenna calls it the ley lines of this latitude and longitude, something that draws outsider-y people who are looking for places to congregate and express themselves.

• In the 1880s, a woman named Erminnie Smith was running a salon on Pacific Avenue where Oscar Wilde read, Thomas Edison demonstrated the phonograph, and five hundred people showed up on a Saturday afternoon. Her house still stands.

• Selling art is not just revenue. It's an act of endorsement: the collector is almost voting for an expression and sending it out into the world to live a life the artist will never fully know.

• Deep Space Gallery, 77 Cornelison Avenue, Bergen-Lafayette. Built into Bergen Hill. Gallery upstairs, The Hive flex space downstairs. deepspacejc.com

• Summer in the City Group Show at Deep Space Gallery August 8 - 22,2026

• 111 First Street: The legendary warehouse artist community in what is now the Powerhouse Arts District. Demolished 2007. Tris McCall called Deep Space its spiritual heir.

• 58 Gallery at 58 Cole Street, run by Orlando Reyes. Described as Dutch's introduction to the Jersey City art scene; ran approximately 2002–2012.

• Pro Arts Jersey City: Grew directly out of JCAST and the 111 First Street community. Continues the lineage.

• Art House Productions: Founded by Christine Goodman; described as the theater branch of the same creative ecosystem as 111 First Street.

• Elevator Studios: Run by Shimonna Stokes, near Hamilton Park. Collaborating partner in Wandering Lights Projects.

• Majestic Theater lobby: One of the off-site curation spaces for the Wandering Lights Projects collaboration.

• Dickinson High School: Where Jenna's grandfather, Saul Geiger, taught phys ed for 42 years and taught generations of Jersey City kids to swim.

• 150 Bay Street: Where Jenna hung Dutch's stained glass for JCAST in the early days.

• Caven Point: Wildlife and birding spot in Jersey City where Wandering Lights Projects hosted a bird watching field trip tied to an exhibition of wildlife artists.
  

Dutch and Jenna

Deep Space Gallery - She’s Like the Wind Exhibition Space - artists shown Sarah Grace, Shimonna Stokes

Deep Space Gallery- She’s Like the Wind - artists shown Amelia Shields, Jodi Gerbi

Deep Space Gallery- Distort Exhibition in 2020

In the Hive at Deep Space Gallery in 2020

Stained Glass window that Dutch made for us inspired by pattern that were in our fireplaces - 2020

• Tris McCall (NSSP #105, Season 1) — Called Deep Space "extremely 111 First Street" in his episode. That quote is delivered directly to Jenna and Dutch here, and their response is one of the best moments in the episode. Worth going back to #105 if you haven't heard it.

• Distort: Mentioned here as an early founding partner and supporter of Deep Space Gallery, and the inspiration for the gallery's name. Distort is the subject of one of the next episodes.

• Website: natkalbach.com

• Substack: https://natkalbach.substack.com/

• Instagram: @natkalbach

• Email: [email protected]

Music: Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

Support the Show: Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for my Substack to receive additional stories and visuals that complement each conversation.

Share Your Story: What sidewalk stories have you discovered in your neighborhood? Share them with me through email or social media.

Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the intersection of place, community, and storytelling through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers.

Jenna and Dutch: [00:00:00] It's that spirit that I think is in the air in Jersey City or in the vibration of Jersey City, the ley lines , who knows, of this latitude and longitude that makes people aggregate here who feel a little bit, different or outsider-y and are looking for places to congregate and express themselves.

Nat: When I had a podcast a while ago with Tris McCall, who is a writer, critique, and, probably the person in Jersey City who's tracked more of its art scene history than anyone, He told me that Deep Space Gallery has an extremely 111 First Street feel, and he meant this as the highest [00:01:00] compliment.

111 First Street was the legendary warehouse artist community in what we know now as the Powerhouse Arts District It was demolished in 2007, and it is still mourned.

But here's the thing. When I told Jenna and Keith, who goes by Dutch, the co-founders of Deep Space Gallery about this, Dutch said he had never even been inside One Eleven. He didn't inherit that legacy consciously. They just lived it. Deep Space Gallery sits at 77 Cornelison Avenue, and it is built into the side of Bergen Hill.

It's been there for 10 years now. It started as a scrap metal warehouse with Pepto-Bismol pink walls and a cast iron bathtub somebody threw off the roof. Tell me something that's more Jersey City than this. Dutch built the gallery walls himself. He grew up building skateboard ramps and borrowing lumber from [00:02:00] construction sites, so the physics were familiar.

And Jenna, she came from nursing, medical anthropology, a PhD she walked out of, and years as a doula, and she brought all of that into how she thinks about holding space for artists. In this conversation, we talk about what it means to build something beautiful in a city that's changing faster than you can track.

We talk about graffiti and lineage And the question of why any of us make art at all. And we end up somewhere I didn't expect, kind of like in the 1880s at a salon on Pacific Avenue where a woman named Ermini Smith was gathering scientists, poets, and Oscar Wilde.

That house still stands. You just have to know where to look. I'm Nat Kalbach, and this is Nat's Sidewalk Stories.

Dutch: I'm Dutch. This is Jenna, and [00:03:00] we are longtime friends. We're both grew up in New Jersey, but we met in Jersey City. I went to a little art school in Plainfield, New Jersey called Ducre School of Art, and it's a great little place.

It was like a old Victorian house with a school attached to it that we got to live at at the time, and really shaped my art that's where I learned to do stained glass, I would just kinda daydream off into the stained glass, and it was just one of these moments where it was like, "Wow," like I didn't really know people did that, and so that was, like, really cool knowing that I could make something, and then I just really dove into it. What drew me to stained glass, too, was the finality of it, I guess.

I don't know if that's the right way to put it, but, it was kinda like a beginning, a middle, an end. There was a process that gave you the result that you kinda - designed, where painting [00:04:00] was a lot of trial and error and open-endedness, which I've learned to love more now. I moved to Philly for a while, had a little art studio, almost like a pre-Deep Space space there where it was a couple of my buddies were living there. And we would put on little... I guess even at the art school I would go in the hallway of where we lived and hang my friends' artwork and we called it the small gallery. Anywhere there was walls, I would always gather my friends' art and show it.

So that was kind of precursor to Deep Space.

Nat: Jenna's path to Jersey City is not a straight line. She grew up in the New Jersey suburbs, and then she went to Montreal for college. Then she moved to Jersey City in 2006 and started doing JCAST almost immediately. JCAST is, short for Jersey City Arts and Studio Tour, and it happens annually for decades.

Was hanging Dutch s-stained glass in her own apartment for [00:05:00] one of the early shows, and then she also went back to school and got her nursing degree and eventually a master's. Before she decided that being a generalist, someone who wants to understand everything, was not a limitation.

It was the whole point

Jenna and Dutch: My, father, grandfather, great-grandfather were all Jersey City, natives. I still to this day wanna go, to Dickinson High School where my grandfather taught phys ed for 42 years,

so I'm like, somewhere in Dickinson High School there's gotta be, like, archive pictures of Saul Geiger who, taught a lot of kids in Jersey City how to swim. That was, like, a big thing, you know?

Which really hit us one day when we were over here with our buddy who grew up in Jersey City. Biz Nice. Shout out to Biz Nice, who's a- Local DJ.

Yeah , and he was on the phone with his, who was it? His- His godmother ... his godmother. And he said, "Oh, I'm here with my friend Jenna Geiger and Keith [00:06:00] Dutch." She was like, "I-" And she goes, "Geiger? Like Saul Geiger?" Like Mr. Geiger? He taught me how to swim

When I came to Jersey City, I was looking for, a kinda artist, mixed-use loft space with my best friend that I grew up with. And Oh." This feels like I could live here. 'Cause after living in Montreal, no other place felt right. I had already been doing JCAST while this whole adventure of me going to school in Madison. Every year from 2006 till 2015, I was participating in JCAST, putting on exhibitions in my home space. I was, living at 150 Bay, like in the early days that 150 Bay first was habitable, and a whole wall, two walls of windows were just filled with Dutchie's stained glass for JCAST.

And yeah, I guess I've always been friends with artists and creatives. [00:07:00] It's like where I felt most at home. And, I don't know, I guess it was like 2015? Maybe like 2014. W- Jen and I would always be up late hanging out- Fantasizing about like- Fantasizing about-

what could we do with all these talented people that we know, and their talent isn't really being utilized. And like how could we pool that together? And all kinds of ideas came from that era of what to do.

I had a studio in Newark, I just never, never felt at home in the Newark art scene. I wasn't there enough. I already had my people out here, the studio was great, but I just didn't- He has a commute to his studio

didn't get there. You know, not a bad commute. And I was just kind of like, I would love to find a place closer, and it would be cool to get a bigger place and then you could have a smaller space in that bigger place and have your friends around and everyone benefits 'cause the rent's cheaper.

[00:08:00] Found it on Craigslist, it was a warehouse. An old scrap metal warehouse

really not pretty. Someday we gotta show pictures of what this, what Deep

Nat: I would love

Jenna and Dutch: looks like now.

Oh, it is- Yeah, part of our, um, spoiler alert, a part of our 10-year anniversary?

The walls were barely finished. The walls that were were this weird Pepto-Bismol pink. There was a cast iron bathtub. It was like, "Does someone live here?" What was going on in here?

I remember the scrap metal guy came and, he threw this, what must have been 300-pound cast iron tub off the roof into his pickup truck. Yeah. Our age friends that we brought by got it, and they saw the, the diamond in the rough.

But our older people, or Jenna's parents, or whoever we'd bring here- Anyone who was, like- Was like, "What are you- ... civilized was like, "What are you doing?" "What do you see here?" "What are we missing?"

It's like all these little nooks and crannies and- I don't know. It just felt like a fun house

We were, like, going back and forth with the [00:09:00] landlords on a lease, and - I think we asked the landlord- ... "You better go" ... about too many questions, and they were like, "You know what? Like, no deal. You guys you're asking too many questions and want too much." And we were like, "Okay." And then probably a couple months later, "I still see it online."

I'd drive by and the sign was still up. I remember their office was in Secaucus. I just drove out there one day, met with the guy, and I was just like, "Look, I still want the space." And the new lease that got presented was not as favorable as the first lease that was presented.

And I was like- "You know what? Fuck it." "I'm gonna sign the lease. And I remember I drove right to Jenna's place remember that big thing we were looking at?

I just- He's like- I just like- "He's like I signed my name on the dotted line." I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

Nat: Wow.

Jenna and Dutch: And, um, yeah. And at that point no one else was in anymore. That, yeah. "Oh my God," like, "What did I just do?" I gave them a deposit, I signed the lease for five years and, got the keys and- Oh my God, and the space was so raw.

Do you know those hollow bricks, it's like that's what used to be, or it is, still is [00:10:00] downstairs, but- Yeah.

Nat: Oh, wow

Jenna and Dutch: to kind of put walls in front of

Nat: You did all that

Jenna and Dutch: Yeah. So I was doing carpentry before this and I grew up skateboarding, so we were like always building ramps, and I had a, a half pipe in my backyard that we built. My dad had some tools in the basement and we would go steal wood from a construction site at the end of the night in the, in the suburbs and build ramps. I knew how to build some stuff and had some tools and had a bunch of friends that were- Yeah, everyone pitched in on the let's clean this place up.

It was a big community. It was kind of exciting, like everyone was... And I guess at that point this whole, general network of people that we knew were somewhere in their 30s. Somehow it felt like a meaningful thing to do. This was 2016, 2015 into 2016. It was worth it and exciting Yeah. It was like, let's get all this rubble out of here. There was straight [00:11:00] up, like, rubble. Yeah. I forgot about the rubble. Yeah. It was- We had to get rid of just rubble.

Nat: So you call it Deep Space. Where's the name come from?

Jenna and Dutch: So the name is a nod to my... I was into graffiti a bit as a youngster,

So my crew was Alone in Deep Space. Well, AIDS Crew- Well ... is what people would know it as From, yeah. And it had many acronyms. Alone in Deep Space, America Is Dying Slowly.

And It Don't Stop. So , when we started the gallery, it was our buddy Distort, who a lot of people around town know. He was our early partner, and one day was just like, "What if we made the upstairs a gallery?" And I was just like, "Okay," "That's cool."

"Yeah, maybe we'll do that." And, kinda figured the downstairs would be paying the bill.

Upstairs would just be this passion project, that the downstairs would subsidize, and the opposite happened, and the gallery took hold right away I've taken calling it the flex space- Yeah ... because it's been so many things, and can still [00:12:00] be so many things, and it has been many diff- yeah, it's like it doesn't really have an identity, but is everything When we were like what if it was Deep Space, and I remember Distort was like, "Yeah, 'cause I wanna have a show there, and it'll be like my solo show, and it'll be like Distort Alone in Deep Space," And it's got a cool ring to it, it's a space for deep thoughts, deep conversations, so many different interpretations. Yeah

And a bunch of, , AIDS crew artists graffiti artists who are formally trained artists and have had been in group shows, solo shows. So our first show ever, was an AIDS crew member, one was another graffiti artist but from another crew in Philly. We've definitely had a lot of street artists in the show.

It's just been like- No, it's more street art, gr- really graffiti artists. It's, whatever, I'm gonna get, uh, nitpicky with the term street art, 'cause I... There is a difference between street art and graffiti. Yes. For sure. And, sometimes the two don't get along, and [00:13:00] they both can coexist, and sometimes it's not always, uh, not always a pretty coexisting.

Nat: You say that you're, a mix of, formally trained artists but also outsider artists has there ever been a show where you put two of these parts together and you created a conversation that was surprising to you 

Jenna and Dutch: I think more natural and norm. We didn't begin the gallery with, a mission statement I think it's something that evolved probably out of beginning with showing street artists, graffiti artists that they're not necessarily formally trained, but incredibly talented. The DIY you can do it, dream something up, figure it out as you go, just take the first step kind of thing is what happened.

I remember early on we were like, "We're gonna give you a proper gallery experience , even if you never imagined that there would be like a gallery wall that your art would go on," we're going to take your art seriously. We have [00:14:00] mid-career artists that have shown in major galleries in Chelsea and whatever showing right alongside a person that this is like the first piece of art they've ever shown publicly.

And that has always been important to us, it's how like the world is. Everyone's in different stages of things, and the idea of being like so polished that you're only seeing people that have been through art finishing school, um, was not i- ever our ethos.

People often say, "This feels so authentic."

There's no pretense maybe. There's quirky, real rawness about the space itself, and I guess I see artists often as being super, quirky, raw people. And, in a sense it's like these things have all magnetized together., 

Nat: One thing that I wanted to mention, I don't know if you heard the podcast, but I did an interview with Tris McCall, and he, talked about you [00:15:00] guys.

He said that, Deep Space has an extremely 111 style feel. So meaning, um, 111 First Street,

Jenna and Dutch: I never made it in there. I know the legend. It's one thing I regret is I don't know. I I was never presented with an opportunity to go there, 

Nat: he says that, he sees the shadow and the imprint of that lost community, living on in what you're doing at Deep Space. When you hear that, did you know that people are seeing you like that,

Jenna and Dutch: So funny. I don't think that's weird. I think it's, there's something about, there was a culture I'm gonna say, early 2000s. Right as we changed millennia Jersey City was a light for all the moths, the weirdo moths to come aggregate at.

And One11 was, one of those central places where people congregated, and it wasn't just visual art. It was, like, makers and music and all [00:16:00] kinds of stuff going on, and I think, that energy still lives on in Pro Arts Pro Arts grew out of the 111 First Street JCAST.

Out of 111 First Street. In a sense, there's a piece of Art House that feels like it's an extension of 111. Christine Goodman began that project, and that project was, the theater people aspect of this scene that felt like, "Oh, I'm gonna start something and I'm gonna call it Art House Productions, and we're gonna figure out how to do it."

So all these things are- are pieces of that. And in a sense, maybe, Deep Space is a next gen kind of iteration, with a different whole crew of people. There's definitely still 111 artist connections that work with us,

and yet we're a whole different cohort of creatives.

It's [00:17:00] that spirit that I think is in the air in Jersey City or in the vibration of Jersey City, the ley lines , who knows, of this latitude and longitude that makes people aggregate here who feel a little bit, different or outsider-y and are looking for places to congregate and express themselves.

When we first found this space, I was doing tons of research, about this whole area, and I found... downstairs in our back, deep, deep, deep space downstairs a bunch of books of stuff around this area, and there was this, woman in the late 1890s who ran a, group called The Aesthetic Society of Jersey City, and had her space on Pacific Avenue, and she would do salons.

And at these salons, there's [00:18:00] like menus in this book that show the lineup. Oscar Wilde read work here. It was like the names of these people, it was like, wow. This was a cultural, intellectual, creative hub, and I loved it. It was a woman who was leading The Aesthetic Society of Jersey City and hosting these gatherings

and that, for me, that was always a fantasy of getting people together to talk about important, deeper things. So, when I found that, I was like, "Ah." It's part of this area. It's built in somehow,

I've heard the kind of, parallels with 58 Gallery. 58 Cole Street. Orlando Reyes ran it. Dancing Tony was a big part of it.

That was my intro to the Jersey City art scene. I [00:19:00] had a solo show ... solo show there. A couple- And the first gigantic miniature show

Yeah, the thing I was doing in Philly, I would love to do it here, and they were on board. But it was a quirky little space on Cole Street where Orlando had his studio space, and they would do live music and DJs , when artists could afford to be downtown, so yeah, that's, you know, another one we get often is, "Wow, you guys are really carrying the torch."

The 58 torch,

Nat: keith, I have a question about you as an artist, doing also gallery work

Are you having problems to carve out that time for you as an artist, or how does that work for you to do both things at the same time?

Jenna and Dutch: Timing is a problem for me in general, as a lot of artists probably do, I'm procrastinating a lot. It'll be the night before the mini show and as I tell Jenna, like, "I'm gonna make some pieces, so leave a little space for me."

And we're hanging the show till 7:00 in the morning, and then I'm here [00:20:00] making pieces till 3:00 in the afternoon, and we're opening the show at 7:00 PM. So you know. As an artist, I often tell people I, I'm not always very creative. I'm pretty good at making art, but I'm not, flowing with ideas.

I'm envious of my friends and fellow artists that are just they have ideas just coming out of them that they can't wait to express, where I'm like, I've been blessed with, some friends, our friend Rebecca, who's a interior designer who tries to work my stained glass into all these projects she does, and it keeps me busy.

It gets my creative juices flowing. I'm working on a mural right now. But inspiration is, is not always there. That's the tough part for me. But when I have a project, I'm pretty good at, okay, I gotta get in there and make this thing.

You need like a prompt ... get stuff done Which I would say most artists do need a [00:21:00] prompt.

I mean, we work with over 200 artists. I feel everyone has a different way. Some artists are like I- I have never used a sketchbook.

And there's other people that, like, s- their sketchbook is what their art becomes. They work from that. And, what it means to be creative is, is, you know, we could have a whole

Nat: Yeah, - I just had two weeks where I just didn't feel it. I used to be really worried about it. Like, am I, weird that I don't have that, urge? No, I'm actually kind of cool with it, you know?

Jenna and Dutch: Yeah. When I was probably 12 years old, my cousin and I were on the boardwalk making friendship bracelets and selling them to passerbys, and I remember my grandmother telling me "Oh, you're gonna be an entrepreneur."

Before I even knew what the word meant. She's like, "Uh," like, "Okay, I see what's going on here."

The gallery's a great happy medium for me where I, I'm, are surrounded by art. I get to work with artists. I'm never trying to crowbar my art [00:22:00] into the gallery, if it's the right fit. It's not just like a, a place where I know I can show my art, so I need a gallery.

That's not,

In the way that I work with artists, I feel like I'm, like, doula role for them in terms of helping them understand what it is that they're doing or they're trying to do, or why they're doing it, and everybody has a different reason that they are doing art. And of course, you're comparing yourself to other artists "Oh, well, what an artist is supposed to do?"

But that's... Doesn't matter. Ultimately, it's like why do you make art or why are you making art now? What is driving you to make art now at this particular juncture in your life? And it might change, and sometimes artists are like, "I want more. I wanna create bodies of work. I wanna be part of the art canon for posterity and the future of human civilization."

And some people are like, "I just need to do it 'cause otherwise I will go insane." Some people are like, "I grew up in a [00:23:00] household of artists, so the idea of continuing to make work is, really important to me and central to, who I am."

What do you feel like motivates your art making?

Life keeps throwing things your way that you're gonna have to work through, and maybe you're just in a period right now where it's, not quite clear, and maybe you can occupy your creative time with something that makes you feel you're moving. Maybe doing color explorations. I'm doing some pencil drawings ' or I'm messing around with watercolor 'cause I haven't done that in 10 years. Just so that you're moving things along when you're not quite sure what it is that you wanna put out there in visual imagery.

Um,

I feel like that- 

Nat: have more understanding of artists and how we feel than many of us a- about ourselves. Which is funny. You're right." You know exactly how we're, how we're ticking.

Jenna and Dutch: I talk to artists about art, for as long as I can remember. It's a very lonely space in your, where am I in this [00:24:00] creative cycle? And just having someone sit down next to you and be like, "Oh, I see what you're trying to do there." "Are you getting stuck here, or is it there?" Or, "Are you feeling like you're not able to break through this place?"

I think there is a, there is an element of that for a gallerist or a curator that, you're working with artists in this way that you're trying to help them, almost consolidate whatever it is that they're doing at this moment in a way that would be presentable then to an audience that doesn't necessarily know any of the background of their experience.

You're there to help them meet audience that doesn't necessarily already have a relationship with what they're expressing.

We don't like to put our artists in any kind of binding Agreement, for example. We want them moving through things as What feels right for them. And I think some [00:25:00] gallerists are, like, we are trying to professionalize your artistic practice and get your artworks up to a certain price point and get a market for them and...

Yes, those are things, for sure, but not every artist that's their goal, and I wouldn't say that that is our goal of being a gallery selling art is important to us for reasons not just, for revenue to come in, but because it's, again, part of this ethos of it's important that people's expressions then go out and live in the world and people are almost endorsing whatever that expression is by deciding to collect it.

I think there's something, so beautiful about that. So I mean, if an artist is looking for advice about professionalizing themselves, we definitely have 10 years of experience now that we're able to, guide them through that as well. Having seen what the world of art market is.

Nat: I wanna ask you about, Wandering [00:26:00] Lights projects. I think that's like a collaboration, project, and I think you two love to collaborate with other people, which I also think is, a strength of you guys

Jenna and Dutch: Wandering Light specifically is a little side project we started with our friend and artist, Shimonna Stokes, who runs Elevator Studios by Hamilton Park.

And we were approached by Paul Silverman to take over the curation role that was, Kristen DeAngelis, who's now at Mana. She was curating a couple buildings of theirs in the Majestic Theater lobby, and then another, and she was curating, and she needed to step away to go full time at Mana, and she suggested Shimonna really. And Shimonna was like I've never really- She's like, "I can't do that alone.

Help" ... never really done curating. I don't know. Like, do you guys maybe wanna, like, team up on this?" And we were like, "That sounds great."

But we wanted it to feel a little different, and I don't know. I'd say the art we show here [00:27:00] isn't always, but leans towards quirkier at, at Deep Space, where the art that we show There's more of a formality to it. A little more of a formality. Not always, it's in the lobby of a building where there's residents and,

it shouldn't just be Deep Space doing it. It felt like it should be its own little thing, to be Wandering Lights Project. Yeah. Yeah, it felt, yeah. And because we do so many different collaborations, sometimes it feels like this particular collaboration should have its own identity, and Wandering Lights Projects, grew out of that request for curation in a space, but we knew that we'd be doing kind of programming ideas for that.

Like, we did a bird watching session, at Caven Point, that grew out of artists that we were showing that were wildlife artists. They were birding during COVID. The two artists that we showed at The Majestic, and we made a bird watching field trip to Caven Point from the art show.

[00:28:00] Collaborations are essential to us. We feel that it's what connects us to others. I almost feel like the word community is so overused at this point, but it's really, just network relationships. Sometimes people just feel like so siloed in life, and I feel like anytime we w- we work with people, there's something just so life-affirming about it that it's really important to us we collaborate at any, any opportunity. We love it. It's a wonderful way to, better understand a person and their business, and then we end up recommending them for something else.

We're not in a competitive every man for himself kind of vibe. Our vibe is let's grow together, everyone doing better is better for everybody,

Nat: You're not downtown, so actually it, it has to be a destination to [00:29:00] get to your gallery. How do you feel about, like, how people find you,

Jenna and Dutch: I'd say definitely when people come in and we don't recognize them, it's one of our first questions, "Oh, how did you find out about it?" And it's usually their social media or we poster a lot, so we'll put up flyers around town, and a lot of people respond to that. And, you know, it is people in the neighborhood, too.

People walk. It's interesting 'cause while the neighborhood's growing, this block really hasn't changed very much. There's some housing that went up down the street and down the other way and around the corner.

And it's like w- I, I have friends that live downtown they live by Hamilton Park, and if you're talking about something in the Italian Village, they're like, "Oh, it's so far away." And I'm like, it's, it's a couple blocks away. What do you mean it's so far away? It's, this weird thing where, I don't know, people don't get out much,?

But when people do it's amazing. And, we're, [00:30:00] keep weird hours over here, and so it's not often that someone's just walking by and coming in. But- But on a night that we open up the garage- Yeah ... people who are like, "I, I drive by this every day, and I saw it open, so I came in." Yeah, I walk my dog- That happens

down here and People are curious. If they do walk by- Yeah ... or drive by it- They do ... they're like, "What is that place?"

Nat: that's cool

Jenna and Dutch: Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, you know, are you new to Jersey City?" "I moved here two years ago."

"Well, that's impressive that you found us within two years," ' I think it's maybe part of why we are motivated to go- out.

It's just so that there's almost like more lines of pathways that people could come here, but also that we could bring the energy that is this Deep Space thing to other pl- like, we'll come to you. You can't come to us, we'll come to you.

Nat: If you could spend an afternoon with anyone from Jersey City's past, who would it be, which corner would you choose, and what would you ask [00:31:00] them? 

Jenna and Dutch: Erminnie Smith. That's the Aesthetic Society lady. A vibrant cultural milieu of Jersey City in 1882 that she was at the helm of.

This all occurred on Pacific Ave. I feel like we never went to the, the number on Pacific Ave where it is, I would sit on that stoop and talk to Erminie Smith, I would wanna just hear why she, in that era, which was her own turn of the, pre-turn of the century time, why she was in Jersey City, how did she get artists and intellectuals to come to Jersey City to her salons? How did she build, this network of really interesting people that are not just letting life come to them, but are ex- you know, pursuing things that they find interesting, that they're enthusiastic about.

There's something about that word enthusiasm,

that the [00:32:00] word root is, theos, like God. The thing that inspires, godliness in a person, which I think is a really interesting thing. I love when people are enthusiastic about something , call it passion. It's just something that really moves you, something soulful, something inspiring, something that, again, is like, what are we doing here?

What even is life, and exploring those types of questions. I think, yeah, a, a nice stoop talk with Erminie Smith would be really awesome,

the stoop sounds cool, but I'd like to be in the, in the room With like- Oscar Wilde ... at one of those events. Yeah.

That would be so cool

Nat: It was great talking with you.

Jenna and Dutch: Oh, awesome. We'll see you soon.

Nat: After we stopped recording, I kept thinking about Erminie Smith. In 1876, she started gathering people on Pacific Avenue. [00:33:00] Scientists, poets, artists. It's said that about five hundred people came to some of those meetings. That's crazy to think. Thomas Edison brought his phonograph. Oscar Wilde came to read. The house she held those salons in still stands today, if you know where to look. What Jenna and Dutch have built at Deep Space isn't so different.

It's the same experiment. Make a space. Come and be curious here. See who shows up. You can find Deep Space Gallery at 77 Cornelison Avenue in Jersey City. I will link up their website, and by the time this episode airs, their 10-year anniversary show may be still going on.

But in any event, go by and take a look at this amazing gallery. Knowing them, I know something new will already be on the wall, our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach, and performed by Jim [00:34:00] Kalbach, Bryan Benninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

natkalbach.com

shownotes with pictures at natkalbach.com

Some buildings hold a whole city's story inside them — and some people dedicate years to making sure those buildings don't disappear. Chris Perez, president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy and founder of the Bayside Park Neighborhood Association, has been doing exactly that. This conversation moves between the personal and the civic: how an outsider earns his place in a community, why history belongs to the people who bother to learn it, and what it actually takes to save a building — and a neighborhood — from being erased.

Chris Perez grew up in Queens, moved to Jersey City's South Side in 2007, and spent years quietly learning the history of a neighborhood that wasn't originally his. He founded the Bayside Park Neighborhood Association and now serves as president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, leading the Save the Powerhouse campaign to adaptively reuse the 1908 landmark before it's lost. His community work spans historic preservation, zoning advocacy, youth programming, and building connection between new and longtime residents.

Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy

Walking Tours- Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy on Eventbrite

• Earning your place in a community takes patience, curiosity, and listening before you ever try to lead.

• History on the South Side isn't lost — it's sitting in archives, old maps, and the memories of neighbors who are slowly disappearing.

• The Save the Powerhouse campaign has been running since 1999. Preservation takes longer than anyone wants it to.

• Once a historic site goes into fully private hands, the community loses its ability to shape what it becomes.

• New arrivals don't always know what already exists — giving them access to neighborhood history changes how they show up.

• The goal for the Powerhouse isn't just preservation — it's public access, community use, and Jersey City maintaining some ownership stake.

Powerhouse at a recent walking tour with John Gomez - photo Nat Kalbach

At Novado Gallery- talking to the JCLC walking tour participants about the powerhouse painting at Novado Gallery - Photo Chris Perez

• Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy: jclandmarks.org

• John Gomez, founder of the JCLC — one of the best walking tour guides in Jersey City

• Save the Powerhouse campaign — follow updates at jclandmarks.org

• Bergen Arches and the Embankment

Next up: Ivy Huang, founder and director of IMUR Gallery — artist, educator, and connector of creative communities across Jersey City and beyond.

• Website: natkalbach.com

• Substack: https://natkalbach.substack.com/

• Instagram: @natkalbach

• Email: [email protected]

Music: Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

Support the Show: Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for my Substack to receive additional stories and visuals that complement each conversation.

Share Your Story: What sidewalk stories have you discovered in your neighborhood? Share them with me through email or social media.

Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the intersection of place, community, and storytelling through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers.

There's so much opportunity that can come from that place.

Nat Kalbach: Some buildings hold a whole lot of story of a city in them. 

And for me, that's the Jersey City Powerhouse. It was built in 1908 to electrify the path trains, though they weren't called that to back then, [00:01:00] and It is just one of those buildings, it's been sitting downtown for over a century, and it's crumbling a little bit more each year while people argue about what it could become. my guest today has been arguing on its behalf for years, Chris Perez is the president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy and the founder of the Bayside Park Neighborhood Association. He actually grew up in Queens and moved to Jersey City in 2007, and he has spent years quietly persistently learning the history of a neighborhood that wasn't originally his. Trying to earn his place in it, and then he was fighting to make sure that place doesn't disappear. This conversation today is about preservation, but not just of buildings. It's about who gets to tell a neighborhood story.

And how new arrivals and longtime residents find each other and what we lose when we don't pay [00:02:00] attention. I'm Nat Kalbach, and this is Nats sidewalk stories.

Chris Perez: I'm originally from Queens. I was born in Jackson Heights and Flushing. My father is from Cuba. I'm first-born American on that side. My mother, I just recently learned this, she passed a long time ago, is of Scottish descent.

It's kind of crazy how we're learning about our ancestry as we're going along, and we think certain things, and then there's some corrections along the way. I moved around a lot as a child, for a lot of different reasons. Pretty chaotic family life, I went off to school in Upstate New York lived in Manhattan. And then I wanted, to find a sense of community, and to be really honest, find a place I could afford, to buy to live in.

And I discovered this place called Jersey City. , I came out here after work one evening at, like, [00:03:00] midnight, just to get an idea of what it was like. I ventured to MLK Drive and Wilkinson Avenue, at midnight in the middle of the summer of, two thousand and seven.

And it was kind of like an awakening. It kinda taps into me always being curious. Within, six months or nine months, I found a home on the south side, and that's how it happened.

I started to just get in- involved in the community. Jersey City, had some of the qualities of New York that I remember when I was younger. A little more sense of neighborhood, a little bit more of, knowing your neighbors, a villagey kinda feeling, a little sense of closeness and intimacy in terms of just knowing who the people are around you.

New York has changed a lot. And Jersey City had something that resonated with me, some feeling of community that was nice.

Nat Kalbach: Was there like a specific moment after you moved where you really felt that this is a place where you're [00:04:00] rooted?

Chris Perez: I feel like I went through a period of having to earn my stripes, in the neighborhood. The neighborhood back then was predominantly Black and brown, and I was a light-skinned Latino guy, and I know, I gave gentrifier vibes. So there was a whole journey about, really being curious and learning about the community and wanting to get involved . when did I feel like I, rooted here? There were a couple of moments when the community had my back. I had this one incident on my block, where this guy came over threatening me and calling me the F word, about being gay, and, my boyfriend at the time was with me I grew up in the city, so I have fangs too. And I had to, represent, and be like, you know, "We're not doing this." And later on that day, um, a bunch of people came to my door. One guy came to my door and he said, "I'm really sorry.

That was my grandpa." [00:05:00] His grandpa looked damn good for his age. And, he apologized. I could feel a little bit of uncomfortability, um, about being gay and some of the environment around me. But overall, I really felt like, okay, we have each other's back. We're looking out for each other.

I take that whole journey, in stride and as a lesson, because it really helps you understand a lot of the long-term fears and wounds and trauma, that particularly are experienced in the Black community, getting some of that and being very patient and understanding that.

It was a, pivotal experience, and it kinda just compelled me to wanna get involved in many different ways to channel resources and bring love to the community,

Nat Kalbach: I feel like when you come somewhere, and you may think there is a need, and you may not be totally wrong, but you don't actually know what's already there and what the history [00:06:00] is. Who are you to come and tell people how to change things or what they need if you haven't really listened to them before?

Chris Perez: The reason why I do what I do, is because I enjoy it.

It feels good. I don't really want anything out of it. A lot of people who get into community work with aspirations of going into certain directions, getting a job, getting into politics.

But bringing something That, brings, uh, ease or happiness or enjoyment to people, makes me happy. I enjoy it. I particularly love working with kids and doing activities in the park.

I love enriching people with information that helps them better represent themselves. Development became something that I got kinda heavily involved in. There was this whole journey for me learning about development and zoning and then articulating that in everyday language so that my community could learn and not be so [00:07:00] intimidated by it.

Helping people understand how to advocate for themselves using language that made them feel confident. As a child, um, I grew up with a lot of limitations sometimes when people grow older from those kind of backgrounds, some of us, have this journey of, wanting to, uh, have stuff or have money or have wealth

For me, it's more about having love and connection and building relationships. That, satiates, heals those wounds and just makes me feel good.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, I had in my upbringing oftentimes people that cared enough, so that they would get involved in maybe something that other people think that they shouldn't, and they were helping making my life as a child much better. And, I think that's something that when you learn that, you are like, " I wanna be that [00:08:00] person too."

What's the organization that really makes you be like, "Yeah, I wanna put my energy into that," and not any other non-for-profit organization that's maybe out there and does also good work, right?

Chris Perez: The places I like to be are the places, where we're interacting with people in real time out and about outdoors. Parks help bring people together. Community meetings, brings people together. History telling, historic preservation. I think history is particularly important, especially on the South Side, because there's a lot of history that we don't know.

It's there. It's sitting in a book or in an archive, or in a neighbor that's been in the community a long time and as time progresses, these neighbors are passing on or relocating, and the stories, if they're not, saved and memorialized [00:09:00] somehow- they could be lost. With so much change going on in Jersey City, I think it's very important that Jersey City has a platform for telling its story so that, when new people arrive, there's a good, resource of ways to learn what exists before we jump to reinventing the wheel when developers are talking about emerging markets, it's like they're trying to suck the blood out of something. But as you mentioned, there's a whole system and environment, a community that exists, the emerging market is basically preying on the demise of that.

That's scary.

Nat Kalbach: Chris and I have watched Jersey City change faster than either of us expected. Imagine what someone who was born here would say about that. The waterfront, the Heights Journal Square . Greenville, has held on longer than most, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't changed [00:10:00] what Chris started to see in his own neighborhood.

Surprised even him.

Greenville is one of the last bastions there's a chance, to not do it the same way, to not do the same mistakes or, not in a way that make people lose their sense of place is that something that goes through your mind as well as being part of that?

Chris Perez: Part of my thinking about the community work, -- in hindsight, I look at what has changed here, it's changed faster and more than I thought it would. We definitely have lost some of the qualities, I really liked. Haven't lost, but they're diminished.

The challenge of how do we build relationships between, people who are arriving into a community and the people who have been the stakeholders and stewards of the community for many years.

I found it quite challenging in [00:11:00] the last five years to seven years, to get the participation that I used to get. I would say at least thirty percent of my community is gone.

It's changed quite dramatically. Ten or twelve years ago, we were challenging a development in our community, this was back in the day when you had to go down to city hall for a zoning hearing, and we had, like, thirty-five or forty residents

Nat Kalbach: Wow.

Chris Perez: And it was kind of shocking to the zoning board. It was a beautiful moment of empowerment for my community.

This day and age, it would be much more of a struggle to get people to come together, and it's something I'm still trying to figure out. We have to figure out a way to, to get people in the same room so that they can learn from each other. And some of these barriers, um, and biases that we don't even realize, like these unconscious [00:12:00] biases, we can kinda strip them away.

A lot of new people coming into communities, they're in a new place, maybe they're a little nervous. It creates this barrier. And if we could work on that I think we could get people kind of more on the same page for what would help everybody.

I'll have people hit me up, "Oh, you run the community association. I just got a place, in the neighborhood, and I, I wanna learn about, um, what's your vision?"

And it kind of scares me a little bit when someone says that because I almost go, "Oh, they want the neighborhood to be reinvented." That hunger is because maybe they don't know what already exists.

By default, we tend to gravitate towards things we're familiar with, people who might look like us or be interested in, the things we're interested in. And so I-I'm still figuring out how we disrupt those [00:13:00] barriers 

The way that I've experimented with creating a little bit of a welcome package is just using a Google Drive that I have for one of the groups and uploading some community information.

Important phone numbers. And then there's a little bit about the neighborhood history and some pictures, and I, I've actually had some people say, "Hey," they, they know stuff. Like, I'll be at a meeting and I'll start going on.

They'll be like, "Oh, I learned that from the link that I got." And I was like, "Holy shit, this works. What would be cool is if people in different neighborhoods in Jersey City got together and, like, we compared notes,

Share different tools that we're using to build connectivity, I call it building the connection between the new residents and the veteran residents. When I moved into the community, I had people be able to, "Oh, Miss Rivers owned your house. Oh yeah, um, she passed away, and then her grandson inherited it." And you get all these stories, um, and it's awesome.[00:14:00] 

Nat Kalbach: I love that. Even though it's a city, there's a lot of caring for each other.

When did historic preservation become important to you personally? Was there a building or a place or a story that made that click for you,

Chris Perez: My interest in history starts with old cars, believe it or not. Cuba is known for having old cars because of the embargo, they basically just keep them going, with-- very creative ways to keep them going.

My dad, was into old car. By the age of seven, I was working on car. And I had this book I would flip through and look at cars from, like, the turn of the century into the '50s.

I just used to imagine what it was and that's where I think my curiosity and interest in history really started.

As I grew older, aesthetically, I just happened to like older architecture better. There's something about a sense of stories and warmth [00:15:00] and knowing that other families and lives have been carried out in different places, . So coming to Jersey City, naturally I started doing two or three years into my arrival here, I actually reached out to Dan Wrieden, um, who's the head of historic preservation for the city.

I called him and I, I started talking about some history of my neighborhood, and, we got into this hour-long conversation. It was the weirdest thing 'cause I'm calling the city, right? I'm not expecting a long conversation, but that kind of fed my curiosity to learn more about when houses were built and what did this look like before it was urbanized, the Black history, the different families that were farm land owners. I discovered the historic original name, for, uh, my community, and people were scratching their head and they're like, "Where did that come from? You made that up." I was like, "No, look at this. These are these old maps."

And funny enough, I reached out to the Landmarks [00:16:00] Conservancy. In two thousand and twelve. I emailed them, never got a response. And then I wound up getting involved five years later, because of something at Bayside Park. Not through the email that I sent them that never got answered.

Nat Kalbach: That's so funny. Things never change, right? Right now you're the president of the, Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, full - disclosure, I'm on the advisory board but let's pretend I don't know anything, right?

Let's talk about the powerhouse and the Save the Powerhouse campaign. So for anyone who doesn't know what is this building and why does it matter?

Chris Perez: The powerhouse is really important to Jersey City for a couple of reasons. Back in the day, the electric grid didn't have the capacity to power big infrastructure projects like subways and trains, right? [00:17:00] So the powerhouse powered the path, which back then was the Hudson and Manhattan tubes.

It's nineteen oh eight. We need to juice the track somehow. And so this structure was created to generate electricity to power the system. And its location was important because it was about midway of the system so that the energy could go out equidistant in both directions, towards the square and into Manhattan.

It was decommissioned in nineteen twenty. It's also a reflection of growth in Jersey City and development in Jersey City. Area that was settled in the mid-sixteen hundreds and how much has changed, um, in terms of urban-- urbanization, right?

Imagine tubes onto the river to go to Manhattan when people were hopping on boats to go back and forth, right? Like that is [00:18:00] crazy. We take it for granted now, but back then, that was probably out of this world.

These different advances in getting around led to the uprise and, and sometimes decline of communities, Jersey City, New York was popular because of ports, and then trains came along, then highways came into play, the rail systems that used to connect outside of downtown to Greenville. There was a whole train system that the light rail is on, uh, that had a former rail system on it that went down in the sixties.

The powerhouse tells a lot of stories directly or indirectly. In that community, it stands out like a sore thumb in a great way. It creates, a reprieve from all of the towers and newness that's coming. You can only take a new building and make it so interesting, right?

Here we have a historic structure, that is [00:19:00] completely different. It's like, the elephant in the room, you couldn't possibly recreate the vibe of the powerhouse, . That's one of the core reasons why it's so important that it's preserved and adaptively reused . It's magical and, and irreplaceable, and creates an opportunity experiences whether they're dining or arts, open space on the roof and on the little bit of land around it.

There's so much opportunity that can come from that place.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, I love that. And It is, from a time when util-utilitarian, buildings, were built with a lot of thought and it was kind of like, doesn't need to be ugly. When you look at some of the transformer buildings you're like, "How do you put that in the middle of a city in a neighborhood?"

Like, do we not deserve

Chris Perez: windows.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah. Like,

Chris Perez: fake windows.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah. It's crazy. The [00:20:00] conservancy launched - this Save the Powerhouse campaign. Can you tell us about the current situation with the building, and what does the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy try to accomplish ?

Chris Perez: The Landmarks Conservancy started this campaign in nineteen ninety-nine, so it's been a long journey. There was a lot of momentum in the early two thousand, and that all had to come to a pause because there's a critical piece that had to happen. There's infrastructure in the building and on the land behind it that still powers the path, and we're currently in a transition stage now where Port Authority is transitioning that into a new building.

At the end of the year, that's supposed to be complete. And so we, advanced the campaign last year in anticipation of this big change that's coming. It's time to get back on it, , and bring the long-term plan to fruition. We have met with several different teams that are [00:21:00] involved in similar projects so that we could learn about the nuances, the ups and downs, the challenges, and, and the opportunities that come, with working on this kind of site because on the outside it can look intimidating.

But the reality is structures like this have been adaptively reused all over the country and have afforded communities really great, experiences, and offering. The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency is currently working on a stabilization plan to stabilize the tower. The structure is pretty stable.

The tower is its weak spot. There will be an interim stabilization plan that will be hopefully implemented in the next couple of months And that will make sure the tower doesn't move anymore. There's been a lot of press about the tower, but the truth is, if you're looking at it every day like we do, we know that not much has changed.

Those cracks have been pretty much like that for twelve to fifteen years. [00:22:00] We have met with a couple of parties that are interested in proposing plans the plan is to hopefully get this project underway by the beginning of next year, support Jersey City with the teams that we're working with, with the resources that we're putting together.

And also we're gonna be reintroducing community engagement sessions to get an update on what the community wants to see. This project's been going on for twenty-seven years, right? And the needs of the community have certainly changed, , we've also, uh, launched walking tour, Save the Powerhouse walking tours, which are led by our founder, John Gomez. We get to walk through the neighborhood, learn about the history of the neighborhood, get into some projects that are ap- adaptive reuse projects, and then we get to arrive at the powerhouse, and that's the icing on the cake.

Our biggest fear and what we don't want, [00:23:00] we don't really want it to be owned by a developer who's going to create a private experience that everyday people aren't gonna be able to enjoy. It's a building that is soon to be transitioned into Jersey City ownership. It's a building of the people, and it should be able to be accessed and enjoyed by everyday people

Nat Kalbach: The walking tours are really amazing. I've painted, not the actual building, but about the building, like on canvas, um, many times, and

Chris Perez: many paintings are we gonna get out of this, Nat?

Nat Kalbach: I don't know. More probably. But it's like just one of those buildings that really grabs you and, , ignites the fantasy of what it could be.

I know you wanna listen to the community. I want the same thing, right? Like that, that's like the priority, what they want. But everyone has a dream could be. I'm f- I'm thinking about actually a building in Hamburg where I,, lived before I moved to Jersey [00:24:00] City, which had an insane building, a World War II bunker in the middle of the city.

It's like massive. With four huge towers, a big opening where people could run in. They couldn't get rid of it because, detonating it would've been impossible.

And so it became this Art studio, music. You can play music in that thing till the dawn, like no one hears you. There are some businesses in there, and then they actually built some apartments on top, so that kind of paid for it.

But it's just a very creative way dealing with something that it's not a great history. It's terrible, right? But it now is a part of the community. It's there, you can't do anything about it, and it offers something that's creative. That would be my dream for it, right? [00:25:00] But what would be yours? 

Chris Perez: Putting me on the spot. My dream answer would be to restore the building the way it is, and recreate the experience of what it felt like. Imagine the light coming in those big windows, um, and hitting down, fifty feet or more onto the s- onto the floor and onto, the mechanicals and the generating plant, which really not much of it is there anymore.

I was in there in twenty twenty-two, and, it was just like this creepy, amazing experience. You had birds flying around in there, and you had the sun poking in in certain places, and you had this, sense of, like, peace and spookiness going on at the same time.

If it could be restored so that it could just be something we could walk in to enjoy, maybe it [00:26:00] could host events, but the space just kind of preserved what it was as a powerhouse, and you could feel that, intimidating massiveness of it, that would be really cool. But dial back to reality where things have to be kind of financially viable, and proposals for the powerhouse from, , ten, fifteen years ago, aren't gonna work the economy is different. So I envision sort of a multi-experiential environment, kind of like what you described, Where we can preserve a lot of the openness, but create spaces in there that can accommodate community needs, whether it's for art or for learning, or outdoor space, , a place to relax, a place to read a book, a place to get a bite to eat.

Maybe there can be areas that are carved into, residences [00:27:00] or hotel rooms. But I think whatever it is, the idea of public access, it's gonna be a delicate balance of preserving some of that openness while also utilizing some of the bulk in there to create offerings to the community. We've seen some presentations where people have proposed putting things on top of the building. I think that's gonna diminish the experience, our dream would be to have the, the smokestacks back on there, right? We have a lot of work to do to figure out what makes sense. Um, but Jersey City has a history of selling its assets to, to bridge gaps.

We are hoping that we can find a way for Jersey City to maintain some skin in the game, some ownership of this site that, makes sure that whatever comes about, it's still community-minded. [00:28:00] Once it goes into private hands, if it goes into exclusive private hands, uh, we'll lose a lot of that control.

Maybe it's a public-private partnership and it would be great if it was also a long-term revenue stream for the city. Instead of just selling things off, different things, affordable housing, recreation, whatever it is, thinking long-minded,

Nat Kalbach: I could also envision, take off the roof, make a freaking park in the space, and put, like, some sculptures in there and some public art, and leave it in the hand of the city and leave it as is. Like stab- stabilize, you know,

Chris Perez: The walls and the...

Nat Kalbach: or something. Like, yeah, I totally get what you're saying.

There're, there's so many i- ideas, And that's the cool thing about what you said about asking the community. We're just two people riffing off right now. Imagine, 100 people that's part of what the Landmarks Conservancy wants to do to what do we want this to be, right? That's [00:29:00] what you wanna find out too.

Chris Perez: The Bergen Arches is a great example. That's gonna be an interesting journey. The embankment's a great expe- you know, case study of how it happens. Sometimes it takes a long time, but it's coming to fruition. 

Nat Kalbach: That's a good reminder too that you just mentioned that, that, uh, people oftentimes forget that a lot of these preservation projects have actually taken an insane amount of time, right? The lows. The embankment. The reservoir.

Even the High Line in New York City, it's been a long journey and a lot of, thinking about how to actually, pay for it.

I wanna ask you my signature question, Chris, if you could spend an afternoon with anyone from Jersey City's past, doesn't have to be a famous person,

who would it be, and which corner would you choose as your meeting spot, and what one question would you ask [00:30:00] them?

Chris Perez: I don't have a name. I'm just curious about the evolution of Jersey City and how someone came up with this idea that we're going to, turn this farmland into a development opportunity And, there are a lot of different players in that.

We're looking at settler families, colonizing families that came here, amassed wealth and land, owned slaves and utilized them to become wealthy. And then this whole shift happened, right? And all of a sudden now we're like, this land isn't valuable for growing things, , now it's valuable for living.

And I'd love to meet some of the earlier, people who started to conceptualize these neighborhoods because if you look at the old maps, there's all these like little areas. There's Danford Place and there's Hudson [00:31:00] and there's Waverly. There's all these like little communities that people started to like invent.

There's Lafayette, which was Communipaw. I live in Sherwood and Claremont, where would I meet them? I would meet them on, at Communipaw when it was still the waterfront. Because a lot of people, and I always imagine, I've seen renderings, but I would love to sit at the pier that was there,

and there was sort of this cove. We're talking probably right around where the Liberty State Park light rail station is, where Communipaw comes down. If you could imagine, it just went right into the water. I would love to meet there on a nice day and ask a lot of questions, "So you really think this is gonna take off as a neighborhood? And you wanna put a church there? And you wanna, y- y- you, you have this idea of creating these little villages."

Which I'm sure some people were scratching their head and going, "What the hell?" And then look at what is, what [00:32:00] it's turned into, it's turned into a dense city, a tight city. And I'm sure there were lots of conversations that happened, on Communipaw

business negotiations, war strategy discussions back, during the revolution where water meets land is very fascinating to me, and how we've altered it is crazy I would wanna meet some of those earlier, land speculator developer, to understand, what they were thinking and see what it was like back then.

It was very different. See how they thought about history, you know? I don't know.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, great one. One that I haven't heard yet. I love that. Thank you so much, Chris. That was such a great conversation, 

Chris Perez: yeah, I learned some things about you too, Nat. Thank you. I'm glad that we finally got to do this.

Nat Kalbach: That was Chris, president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy. What stayed with me from this conversation is something , what Chris said early on about having to [00:33:00] earn his stripes, about being patient, being curious, listening before speaking. That's not just how you become part of a neighborhood. It's really how you figure out what's worth fighting for. You can find [email protected] and I will link it up in the show notes. If you want to come to one of the walking tours you can check out the website of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, or follow them on Eventbrite, where they list those walking tours. It's really highly recommended. John Gomez, the founder of the JCLC. Is amazing and I think he's one of the best tour guides I've ever had, and I've taken a lot of walking tours.

You may actually even see me because sometimes they walk into the gallery at Novato Gallery where I have my powerhouse painting right now, and I will talk about the painting and what inspired me. Music in this [00:34:00] episode is How You Amaze Me, composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach. Bryan Benninghove. Charlie Siegler and Pat Van dyke. Find all episodes and show notes at natkalbach.com. I'm Nat Kalbach and this has been Nat's Sidewalk Stories.

shownotes and full transcript at natkalbach.com

natkalbach.com/podcast

Nirupa Umapathy has lived in Jersey City for over two decades. She fell in love with it the way a lot of us do — one corner at a time, one regular table at a restaurant where the owner knows your order. But she may be leaving. And what's striking is that even as she's falling out of love with Jersey City, she's still thinking about how people could fall in love with it. This conversation is about belonging, about place as sanctuary, and about the gap between sleeping somewhere and actually living there.

Nirupa Umapathy is a writer, memoirist, and salon host based in Jersey City. She arrived in Newark in 1998 with a one-way ticket from Madras and a full scholarship to Smith College — not quite knowing what Wall Street was, but figuring it out fast. After 14 years as a Managing Director in finance, she left — what she calls "immigrating from Wall Street to the artist way" — and has since become a connector of creative communities through her living room salon series, inspired by the French Enlightenment salons. She is currently writing a memoir exploring trauma, burnout, and post-traumatic growth.

• Website: Radical Everything

• Salons for Life

• Place as sanctuary. For Nirupa, Jersey City wasn't just a home — it was relief. From the trading floor, from India, from Manhattan. That relationship to place as refuge is something many immigrants and transplants will recognize.

• The bedside community problem. Thousands of new residents arrive in Jersey City and never break past the PATH station. Nirupa was one of them for years. She didn't walk the city in earnest until 2019 — after a Camino de Santiago finally taught her how to slow down.

• Falling out of love with the circumstances, not the place. When Nat asks if she's falling out of love with Jersey City or with living in a city, Nirupa's answer is precise: "I'm falling out of love with the circumstances of what it means to love in Jersey City."

• Language as a third sense of place. Food, people, and language — Nirupa maps home through all three. She tears up the moment she hears Tamil on the street. She shape-shifts her English when she's in India. Home isn't a fixed address; it's what comes out of your mouth without thinking.

• The onboarding gap. There's no consolidated way for newcomers to find Jersey City's arts organizations, neighborhood associations, walking tours, or community spaces. Nirupa and Nat identify this as a real structural gap — not unwelcoming, just fragmented — and wonder who might close it.

• What to do if you just moved here. Nirupa's practical list: start with your neighborhood association, go to Liberty State Park in summer, check the bulletin board at Van Vorst Park, go to Nimbus or Mana Open Studios, and find your local hairstylist. Stop getting your coffee in Manhattan.

• Historic Paulus Hook Association (HPHA) — neighborhood association, runs monthly meetings

• Liberty State Park — "the crown jewel," especially in summer

• Van Vorst Park — community bulletin board, local meetups

• Little India, Jersey City — Newark Avenue corridor

• Light Horse Tavern — corner of Paulus Hook, site of Nirupa's signature question answer

• Nimbus Dance — local performing arts organization

• Mana Contemporary / Mana Open Studios — arts complex and open studio events

• Jersey City Theater Center (JCTC) — performing arts organization

• Museum of Jersey City History

• Jersey City Writers / JC Plums — the poetry group where Nirupa first found her arts community

• The Battle of Paulus Hook (1779) — Light Horse Harry Lee's surprise raid on the British garrison; Nirupa's signature question pick

A Substack piece tied to this episode is in the works — exploring the onboarding gap and what it would take for a new resident to actually fall in love with their city. Find and subscribe here

• Website: natkalbach.com

• Substack: [Substack URL]

• Instagram: [@natkalbach]

• Email: [email protected]

Music: Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

Support the Show: Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for Nat's Substack to receive additional stories and visuals that complement each conversation.

Share Your Story: What sidewalk stories have you discovered in your neighborhood? Share them with Nat through email or social media.

Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the intersection of place, community, and storytelling through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers. New episodes release on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month.

You know, it's because I'm grieving. I'm grieving because I'm letting go and I'm grieving things that I don't wanna let go. And there's some deep loss there.

Nat Kalbach: Nirupa Umapathy Moved to Jersey City in 2001. With a one-way ticket from Madras, A soul that wanted to be free and she had a job on Wall Street that she hadn't quite figured out yet. For the better part of two decades. Jersey City was her sanctuary from the trading floor, from the pressure, from everything. She fell in love with it the way a lot of us do. one corner at a time, or that regular table at a restaurant where the owner knows your order, or the one neighbor who sits down on the stoop after you move in and stays for four hours. But Nirupa may be leaving. And what's [00:01:00] interesting, what I couldn't stop thinking about after this conversation Is that even as she's falling out of love with Jersey City, she's still thinking about how people could fall in love with it. how do you onboard someone into a city? They're just sleeping in. How do we bridge that gap between bedside community and belonging? My friend Nirupa is a writer and a salon host, a former managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, And someone who will drive the turnpike at midnight.

Just to feel her thoughts. Slow down. We had a real conversation. I'm Nat Kalbach And this is Nat's Sidewalk. Stories.

Hey, I'm so excited to have my friend Nirupa today. Hey, how are you?

Nirupa Umapathy: I'm great. Oh my God, how are you?

Nat Kalbach: Good. Good to have you. [00:02:00] Nirupa grew up in Madras. She still calls it that, even though the world calls it Chennai now, she applied to college in the US the old fashioned way. paper catalogs, the consulate library, no internet. ,she got into two schools. Smith College offered her a full ride and she took it Landing in Newark, in August, 1998 with a suitcase and a one-way ticket her dad could just barely afford. She didn't know that Smith was a feminist institution. She didn't know what Wall Street was. She just knew she wanted to be free.

Nirupa Umapathy: I came to America to be free. I'm not kidding you. Literally, I got on that plane with a suitcase with a one-way ticket in 1998 August, I landed in Newark. I didn't have, enough money to go back home. That's why the one-way ticket, my dad had enough money to buy me a one-way ticket, and that's about it. I wanted to [00:03:00] pursue an education. Granted, India can provide me a fine education as well, but I think I grew up in the milieu in the 1980s. And I was that kind of a girl that did not necessarily have the space to be herself at that time where I grew up in Madras, which is why I decided to run away from home in a legitimate way.

The love of my life had also left for the US and he had arrived here a year earlier. So I was following both love and I was also following educational opportunity and freedom of voice.

Nat Kalbach: So you went to Smith's College and you originally designed your major around women's empowerment. But you mentioned that pragmatism, won visa fear student loans. So what, what did it feel like to set aside what you actually came for?

Nirupa Umapathy: I fell in love with anthropology and I fell in love with [00:04:00] political science. But my, and I was going to be a government major and possibly an anthropology major, but my, uh, major advisor died my second year.

And when Professor Gasky died, I decided not to do government. I was heartbroken, as you can imagine. I was very close to her. And so I decided to do anthropology and then sophomore year came the panic attack when I realized that there's rules, like things like H one B visas and what am I gonna do when I graduate?

I don't want to go back home to India, even though I love my parents.

And I bumped into very luckily, a woman who was more driven than I was. And I am very driven. And we both were like, we are going to apply to this internship on Wall Street. And at that point in time, I had no fucking idea what Wall Street was.

Nat Kalbach: Whoa.

Nirupa Umapathy: I didn't know what Wall Street was. And so the two of us, like two crazy people, prepared for this interview and this was like this bootcamp of an internship, like sophomores don't get in. But [00:05:00] crazy people get into places that other people don't get in, you know? We got in

and she went to Merrill Lynch and I went to Solomon Smith Barney, and I hated that summer. I hated that summer. I'm writing in memo memoir about this. While my soul probably was breaking a little pieces, but there was another side of me, which is very pragmatic, that was just charging on, and I just let the pragmatist kind of charge ahead of the, the, artist soul that was probably like, what the fuck are you doing here?

Nat Kalbach: right? You're killing me. You're killing me piece by piece, like every day.

Nirupa Umapathy: but I was just like, you know what? Hold, hold, hold. Come home and talk to me about it. Don't get here because there's no point

Nat Kalbach: You were 14 years in finance managing director at a bank it was almost a whole life

Nirupa Umapathy: I lived three lifetimes when I was in the 14 years. I think I saw two economic cycles. I think there was so much stress that lasted me for three lifetimes. I think [00:06:00] I saw enough personalities, colorful, beautiful, toxic, all of it for three lifetimes.

Nat Kalbach: at some point you left that life. How, how did you describe that?

Nirupa Umapathy: I left Wall Street. For me, it felt like I left a country. I immigrated from Wall Street, Nathalie, from Wall Street to the artist way, Nathalie.

Nat Kalbach: So funny. So how did you, did that make Jersey City look to you different? You had been too busy to notice the 15 years before,

 So Nirupa had been in Jersey City since 2001. First she rented near Paulus Hook and then she bought an apartment in 2004. she said she didn't even know the neighborhood was called Paulus Hook. she knew the ZIP code and she knew which Path Station got her to work fastest, And for years, Jersey City was simply where she slept, [00:07:00] which a lot of people still do.

Nirupa Umapathy: when you buy a home, it just creates a very different sense of endowment and an investment in the community. And my neighbor came and sat down this stoop after we had just finished moving in. And we talked for like four hours. And I'm like, oh my God. And suddenly I was, I was geocoded into relationships, not just place. It really deepened for me, my love affair for Jersey City. And honestly, it was a love affair. And I will say it was, it's no longer, and I'm sorry to say it like that, but I will. It was a love affair because Jersey City ended up being the sanctuary from India.

Jersey City ended up being the sanctuary from Wall Street. It ended up being the sanctuary for Manhattan. For me, it was a perfect little city for me. I was not a Manhattanite. I didn't want to be a Manhattanite. I had no dreams of [00:08:00] living in Manhattan. I just wanted to do my job and come home and sleep in a place which was quiet at night, and which was not a shoebox and a place where I could park my car.

Right.

And Jersey City was all of that. It was like a little village across the big city.

I would just flee every day from work and I would come home and I would feel this sense of sanctuary in Jersey City. By now, I've obviously mapped out all my local neighborhood like moms, and at that time there were a lot of moms and pop restaurants. Jersey City was not like the way it is now. Like where there's a bunch of places that look like Instagram memes, where I won't go in. I still like to go to the, for my cafe, dominican Place, corner of Grove.

Or like, I still like to go to Little India, as you know. And so besides people like my neighbor, these moms and pops held me together. They were also like my relationships. And that created a sense of place. Food is, big in Indian culture. Me being able to access such low cost food between little India to like [00:09:00] the Dominican place that was there, or getting cheap tacos, like the cheapness was important because it was affordable,

I'd go to the same place over and over and over again. I have my ritual. I'm a regular in these places.

So obviously the owners of these restaurants also knew me, right? And so. The crisis really solidified the great financial crisis, really solidified that I really, if I had nothing else, I had Jersey City.

Nat Kalbach: So you live here now for over two decades, but you also, are from India. How do you hold both places? Do you feel you have multiple homes, or did one replace the other?

Nirupa Umapathy: When I'm in my element, I don't feel homesick. When I'm not in my element, I feel homesick. I would say that I have both the blessings of having homes in many, many places, but also feeling like a nomad, which means someone without [00:10:00] roots.

So I'm both unmoored and extremely like grounded in the same way. It's a very, it's a very complicated thing to hold actually, and. I struggle with it a lot, but I try not to think too much about it everywhere I go, because of the way I am, I make homes, little homes in every place I find a place that I love to eat.

I go back again,

and then I people that I like, it's the, it's a food and the people.

Nat Kalbach: Do you start losing your language? I find it really hard sometimes when I'm in my brain in America and then my friend calls me, writing is okay, but my friend FaceTimes me and I'm like, oh my God. What was the German word again? How the hell can I lose my language? 

Nirupa Umapathy: It's a great question because that's the third sense of place for me, language. It takes me a solid like. Three or four days. Of course, as soon as I land in Madras, I'm able to speak some Tamil, which is my native tongue. But it takes me some time to fall into the rhythm of the [00:11:00] language and if I'm there for a week, my addiction changes.

My idiom changes, and the way I speak English changes. Suddenly, I'm mirroring them, right? I'm mirroring the way people speak in India a little bit. I find myself typing in an Indian English when I'm there, which is interesting. I guess shape shift. When I listen to Tamil songs, I get really emotional.

Nat Kalbach: Aw,

Nirupa Umapathy: Like it'll always be a teary-eyed moment for me. Somehow when I listen to the language, I tear up first. If I listen to someone walking on the street and I hear Tamil I tear up first.

Nat Kalbach: That doesn't happen to me for with German songs because most of German songs suck. So just so you know that. Sorry, Germans,

Nirupa Umapathy: In India when, because everywhere I go, I get asked, where are you from?

Nat Kalbach: Hmm.

Nirupa Umapathy: And I'm always like, that's like such a nice soft slap in the face. I know that it's, they're coming from a place of curiosity and not like, go back home. I say immediately when they do that, where are you from? I immediately make my [00:12:00] accent a little bit like t

Tamil English. I'm from Aras.Madras totally avoiding the conversation and I don't even say Chennai, I say I'm from Madras

Nat Kalbach: You are going home and they're asking you where from because they can't put you 

Nirupa Umapathy: Place you, they're not able to place the accent. They're not able to place the way I dress.

They're confused and they're just being curious

and you know, that's fine, you know? But there are times even I'm tired,

Nat Kalbach: After leaving Wall Street in 2017, Nirupa had something she hadn't had in years time and without the Wall Street paycheck. Her old relationship to the city built around, eating out. The moms and pops had to change. She started wandering into spaces she'd never entered before.

Nirupa Umapathy: First off, I joined Jersey City Plums, which is a poetry group as part of Jersey City writers. And now suddenly, I was showing up to this little GIA cafe, which is on Newark Avenue, to go and hang out with these artists. And at that time, I wasn't calling myself an artist or a writer or [00:13:00] anything. I was just like a wanderer.

I thought that I was a poet. Now that I look back on myself seven years later, I'm not, I'm not, I'm poetic. I'm not a poet. Okay.

And then I started the salons, 2018. Inspired by the French Enlightenment salons, led by women, that formed the backbone of the Republic of Letters. I wanted create these gathering spaces where adults gathered in the private space of living rooms so they could creatively commune, story, tell and watch performance, or watch some form of the arts.

It was a creative think tank creative storytelling tank, right?

My, oh my God, it was so sublime. I invited people from around New Jersey, whoever could travel, obviously from New York. All kinds of people showed up. So that was in my own living room. And then, the salons also introduced me into a career in the art. I don't call it a career because I wasn't entirely sure that I, I was prototyping, I was experimenting.

I wasn't trying to be a [00:14:00] careerist. Okay. I just wanted to bring people together. I wanted us to be in this cool kind of speakeasy vibe of a living room. Someone's living room. I was trying to stay away from the public eye. I wasn't going to make it all. I wasn't gonna be, it wasn't gonna be a production.

They were beautiful events, but I was very clear in my curation they were going to be unscripted beyond a point. The whole idea was that there was a flow and a prompt and a design. But I wanted people to show up and feel free to be themselves

away from the mask and the spectacle of work and having to pretend to be who we are. And it helped that we mostly were strangers,

Nat Kalbach: I always loved walking my neighborhood. I actually had on my old blog, I had this whole thing from Hamburg.

Like back in Germany and then I brought it to the states and I called it stroll through the hood. I would look at interesting things what can I see that's different now?

Nirupa Umapathy: I wasn't because there was like walks who was walking is for [00:15:00] people that like walks is, walks are for boring people. That was me back then because I was still moving so fast that I couldn't slow down and walk. I'm

serious. I'm not kidding you when I say this. I had to teach myself how to walk. During this time. I would drive to the yoga studio, which 10 minutes, seven minutes away I would drive to the yoga studio. I didn't wanna walk. I

Nat Kalbach: See, that's proof that you're American.

Nirupa Umapathy: No, don't do that to me. Don't, don't American me on this one, man. Now I walk every, come on. No, I walk everywhere now. Like, so now I mapped Jersey City with my feet,

that changed. It took me some time to slow down and walk. I didn't walk through Jersey City, get this in earnest.

I've lived there since 2002. I didn't walk through Jersey City in earnest until 2019.

Nat Kalbach: What?

Nirupa Umapathy: I would walk, I mean, I would walk to the Path Station.

I did my first Camino de Santiago in 2019, and I literally did it because I [00:16:00] hated walking, and I said, I'm gonna learn to love walking. And ever since I did the Camino, I've been walking everywhere. But my natural preference, when I wanna think and when I wanna relax, I drive, literally, I drive on the turnpike in the middle of the night to relax because that brings out something in me that walking doesn't. When I'm walking with, my friend, I have a friend who we do office hours. When Mark and I are doing office hours, I love it because I love the conversation, I love everything about it. But you know what it is that I don't like about walking? I think I'm, my brain is like moving at a speed where only driving helps me. If I were a runner, I think I would be running all around Jersey City, but I'm not a runner.

Does that make sense to you? I'm a fa fast walker, but my, walking body is not able to keep up with my brain.

Nat Kalbach: I actually think it's the opposite for me that it, the walking slows my fast brain down and that's awesome.

So you write [00:17:00] nonfiction and you mentioned that you also write your memoir right now and has a focus on. Trauma, burnout and post-traumatic growth. Does Jersey City show up in your writing at all? 

Nirupa Umapathy: Oh, I mean like, oh God, I don't know the way at which I'm writing this memoir, I need to be reborn again, right? In my next lifetime. It may never get done this lifetime, but, um, I'm, I

Nat Kalbach: well, it's a memoir. You're still alive too.

Nirupa Umapathy: I'm writing,

Nat Kalbach: Bad joke. Sorry.

Nirupa Umapathy: fine, uh,

Nat Kalbach: better in German.

Nirupa Umapathy: and it's funny, right? The mental accounting is, the first memoir is on girlhood solidly set in India, in the, in Madras. Mostly it's framed between year five to year 18. Right. So it's the geography of girlhood. It's around India

and it's around South India. The second memoir is the Wall Street Memoir, and that is framed between 22 to [00:18:00] 33 and it's only Wall Street, like

meaning when I say Wall Street, it's not Wall Street. Wall Street is like downtown Manhattan. When we talk Wall Street and Finance, we are talking the collection of investment banks that the major wall bracket investment banks. So I suppose mine will be based around, um, three United Granite Street, one Bryant Park and perhaps Austin and two 80 Park Avenue. 

Nat Kalbach: Well, it's a different country, as 

Nirupa Umapathy: it is a country, so the passport, I no longer have the passport to visit. Right. So, and Jersey City, I actually honestly think will be like a closing

chapter for me there because as I said during Wall Street days, Jersey City was not, is invisible. It was very significant. But I didn't spend finite time

Nat Kalbach: Mm-hmm. 

Nirupa Umapathy: But if I wrote a third memoir, which captures 2017 to now, it'll be Jersey City and the world, but I'm not writing [00:19:00] that.

Nat Kalbach: Earlier you mentioned that you, , have fallen out of love with Jersey City what are some things that make you, fall out of love with Jersey City and do you think there is a possibility that you would fall in love with Jersey City again?

Nirupa Umapathy: First off, there'll always be an aspect of Jersey City that I'll never fall out love with, which is my people. There are like hundreds of people here that I absolutely love and I mean love. That's my community, right? I'll never fall out of love with my friends, my neighbors. My yoga studio, which no longer is a CL urban side that closed last weekend and I went from my grieving ritual and wept. Uh, see an institution like that shut down

after 13 or 15 years. , Pilates house, little India these things will always hold me close to Jersey City. I'm not going to miss leaving Jersey City as a homeowner. My property taxes are close to $16,000. Nathalie, I live in a two bedroom. It's, I don't think [00:20:00] that affordability is a core value anymore. I have to think twice before I go out and eat a sandwich in Jersey City.

I can go to New York and get, still, get an $8 sandwich, right? Because New York, even within that short, small confines of that space, that island has such a diversity that we don't have, we never were meant to be Manhattan, right? So you don't have the diversity of the $9 sandwich anymore. . I've concluded that I have to give up my love affair, but not just Jersey City.

My apartment now, I have lived in since 2002. If I was in love with Jersey City, my apartment is, it is higher up in the stack of love. Like it is, like number one. It is the thing that has held me through a divorce. The thing that has held me through job loss or like a recession. It is the thing that has held me through debts in the family in India.

Like it's my first sanctuary actually inside Jersey City. And I've had to like grieve for five years. I've been thinking about leaving Jersey for five years and I've finally, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go. I'm [00:21:00] still grieving, I'm still driving around Jersey City right now in the morning, early in the morning , suddenly just like bawling loudly and I'm like, what the fuck is going on?

You know, it's because I'm grieving. I'm grieving because I'm letting go and I'm grieving things that I don't wanna let go. And there's some deep loss there. It is what it is. You know, I'm not gonna be able to make this work financially

and I can afford to make it work if I want to. Okay. I can't, but it just doesn't make sense.

Nat Kalbach: So would you reframe it? You're not falling out of love with Jersey City. You fall out of love with living in a city or with New Jersey.

Nirupa Umapathy: I would say that I'm falling out of love with the circumstances of what it means to love in Jersey City.

Nat Kalbach: There's something interesting about the way, how. You were for many years, you were just part of the bedside community. And I do actually think that that is another new problem that we have, especially downtown around [00:22:00] Newport on Marin Boulevard and whatever, there are these new high risers and I think around the powerhouse district, there's like 10,000 new people, and I talked with some of them. I met some of them. When I said, do you walk the neighborhood? They were saying yes, but they were like you. They walk from their home to the Path station. Yes. So my question is, you started to fall in love with the place, and it might not be possible anymore because you say things that made you fall in love are, not there anymore.

But what would you tell a person who just moved to Jersey City, how they should go about to fall in love with Jersey City and learn more about let's put the financial parts aside. What do we do with those 10,000 people that basically, maybe right now don't give a shit because they just [00:23:00] sleep here.

Nirupa Umapathy: Yeah. I was one of them, right? I was so detached. I didn't go to a local neighborhood association meeting, the Historic Paulus Hook Association meeting until a few years ago. Can you believe that? And my neighbor was the president of the HPHA at one point. Like I just was so disconnected.

So like, to answer your question, you came for the community history project that Stephanie Daniels and I did. So there were lots of people that were new to the neighborhood when we did that walking tour for kids. And when you had that booth set up, uh, at the corner of the Paulus Hook Park, there were so many new people that had moved in that were walking around with their kids.

And there were even like people without kids that stopped by and said. How can we do, where are these walking tours? Can we do more of these? Right. And John Gomez was there and I'm sure he heard all of this and Stephanie was there and I was there. It was music to our years. So to answer your question, I think some of these people actually already are [00:24:00] looking for this.

They are hungry for this. But there seems to be no sort of consolidated way in which it can just be like Jersey City. This is what's happening in Jersey. Like, you know what I mean? Like a giant digital bulletin board for Jersey City, let's say, where I can just do control f walking tours and then suddenly, boom, John

Gomez walking power perhaps last weekend comes up.

Or artists that meeting at GI gelato is coming up like, meaning like a very consolidated internet, tech enabled way of just looking. I think this is a very intimidating place for newcomers. I'm not saying that we are trying to be in intimidating and unwelcoming. I just think it's very fragmented. Which is fine, right? Like I'm not, again, Jersey City has never been so big that it, like if you look at NYC meetups, there's like a hundred thousand meetups . How many Jersey City meetups do we have on Meetup as an example, right? You have the

Jersey, you have like a few. So like how would you as a newcomer come in and be like, I want, if I just like type in a chat GPT and now maybe the [00:25:00] query is how do I get to know Jersey City?

I'm new. Maybe there will be like a menu of of items that comes up. But if they wanted a human version of how do you get to know Jersey City, this is where I would start. Let's pretend that you are new to Jersey City. I would say start with your local neighborhood association first. And start attending their meetings and meet your neighbors.

That's one.

That's a simple one. Most neighborhood associations are probably running like monthly meetings because the HPHA runs a monthly meeting. The second I would say if you're a religious, obviously you're already going to your local church. I

get that. So you're doing the local church or the local mosque or the local temple. But I would say, uh, the third thing is I would say Liberty State Park. Obviously. Like it's the crown jewel. Right. And especially during summer when you go to Liberty State Park, you see the wealth of Jersey City Diversity come together, families barbecuing. Then you have families like walking. So like go and see Jersey City as it's flowering, Liberty State Park as this giant open space. And I'm [00:26:00] sure Lincoln Park is the same. Okay. I don't hang out in Lincoln Park. I'm sure Van, I mean Van Vorst Park, one of my favorite parks in Jersey

Nat Kalbach: Yeah.

Nirupa Umapathy: Go to the bulletin board. Go and look there for like group meetup events or like things that are happening that are interesting.

So that is number three. Support your local arts organization. Go for a play at Nimbus. Go for Mana Open Studios,

right? Like, so that will be number four. This is what I normally do when I go to a new place. I look for my haircut, right? Obviously I look for my studio, yoga studio, Pilates studio, whatever you want to call it. So whatever it is for you, if you were getting your haircuts in Manhattan, make an attempt to support a local

business and find your local hairstylist. Eventually go on next door and ask people for recommendations, you know, for things like that. Because I can imagine that it must be so intimidating to move to this city that looks like so small, but it's still, it's like it's [00:27:00] got its thing, but it's not, its clicks, but it's got, its like pockets, right?

How do you break into it? And the other thing is obviously like how do people find out about. Uh, landmarks. How do you find out about the Museum of Jersey City History? How do you find out about JCTC? Unless you're walking around and you like come into the brick and mortar, how do you find these spaces? I don't know.

Is there like a collated list of all the arts establishments now? Maybe that's an idea for the mayor

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, it is a, it is a real problem. That's where we're touching on something that, I've talked with other people about it, like where people just don't know. They move in they don't know that there is a neighborhood association. They don't know that there are galleries.

They don't know that there, artist studios we also don't have a paper anymore. But there's definitely something that could be done we don't need to compete with Manhattan because Manhattan's, Manhattan. We have our own thing. And how do we get people to just realize that there's a [00:28:00] community that they can participate in and that will make them fall in love with their city.

So, Nirupa. Here's my question. My last one, my signature question. If you could spend an afternoon with anyone from Jersey City's past or from Paulus Hook's past, which corner would you choose as your meeting spot and which one question would you ask them?

Nirupa Umapathy: I would wanna meet Light Horse Harry.

Nat Kalbach: Oh.

Nirupa Umapathy: I would obviously meet at the corner of Light Horse Tavern. Where else would I meet him? And asked him how he with a ragtag band of troops, managed to overturn the Brits. Was that part of deliberate strategy? Because myth has it that you guys got lost and wandered and then like somehow accidentally won this battle of Paulus hook. So I'd wanna know blow by blow what happened that day.

Nat Kalbach: So [00:29:00] basically like was that like just luck or did you guys plan that out?

Nirupa Umapathy: Actually plan it. Like, yeah, tell me the real scoop. I want the

real scoop. And if for your real scoop, I'll buy you a beer. We can sit the bar of the Light Horse Tavern. Let's travel back in time.

Nat Kalbach: I love that. That's a great one. That's 

fun. I wanna be there too. I'm, I'm gonna buy one too. A pint.

Nirupa Umapathy: yeah. You can buy one and just, you know what? Hit record on your phone so we can actually play it back in a future podcast.

Nat Kalbach: I love that. That's a great idea. This was such a great conversation. Thank you so much, Nirupa 

Nirupa Umapathy: This was wonderful. Talking to you always makes me feel like I've gone around the world and back. But thank you for bringing me back to my first second Love. My first love is my apartment. Second love jersey City

Nat Kalbach: Nirupa Umapathy may be leaving Jersey City. I still hope she doesn't, but she knows it. She's grieving it. She's driving around in the early mornings, [00:30:00] crying, a little letting go. But even in the leaving, she's thinking about the people who are arriving. The 10,000 new neighbors who don't know yet that Van Vorst Park has a bulletin board. Or that there is a place called Little India Or that you can walk every street in the heights if you give yourself a whole winter. that gap between sleeping somewhere and loving it Is something that NI Rupa figured out slowly Over years . through a stoop conversation and a poetry group, And a Saturday morning at Liberty State Park. and she. Alongside me wants to know if we can help the next person find it faster. Find out more about Nirupa In the show notes, and you can find this conversation along with every episode of Nat's sidewalk [00:31:00] stories at natkalbach.com our theme music is How You Amaze Me, composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach. Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler and Pat Van Dyke. I am Nat Kalbach. Thanks for walking with me.

Lucy Rovetto is a Jersey City-based painter, printmaker, and curator whose work asks hard questions about power, fear, and the structures we don't let ourselves question. Raised in Greenville, she spent years traveling and working internationally before returning to Jersey City, where she won a city artist live/workspace lottery and never looked back. She's curated exhibitions at JCTCI and the Museum of Jersey City History, and her studio is open by appointment. Shownotes at natkalbach.com/podcast