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Main Street-East Orange, NJ

By Ann Heppermann
Kara Oehler as the roadtrip begins.

Kara Oehler as the roadtrip begins.

We’re actually doing it!  The Main Street adventure begins.  It’s a sunny warm day in New York City, most people are leaving town for Memorial Day weekend right at this moment.  We’re leaving, too.  Two and a half months of driving across the United States, visiting Main Streets across the United States.  The car is overstuffed—camping gear, computers, cameras, food, tents, a guitar, us—Kara and Jesse are actually homeless. There are 10,466 Main Streets across the United States (give or take a few).  Right now, the first mission is to cross Manhattan through the holiday traffic to see one of them. We’re excited to get to Main Street in East Orange, New Jersey, about 30 minutes outside of New York.  Orange County has a large African American Caribbean population.

Our destination is the “City Metro Diner” on Main Street.  We’re winding our way to Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where we’ll be staying for the night, and stopping at Main Streets along the way.  We’ll be taking back roads to see all kinds of Main Streets—documenting places that haven’t been documented.  I’m pretty curious to see what we’ll find on this trip. What will this snapshot look like, what will it sound like?  We’re going over the Pulaski skyway, entering New Jersey.

Is this Main Street? Not yet…

Are we there yet?

Not yet.

Are we there yet?

Not yet.

We’re really, really close, Main Street should be coming up.  We get off 280—pass Valley Road and take a right.  Here we are.

Main Street in East Orange, New Jersey

Main Street in East Orange, New Jersey

Our first Main Street.

First stop is the Metro City Diner in East Orange, New Jersey.  Lots of fries and fried foods, grits, tuna melts, fried chicken, and fried, fried, fried.  It’s a small café, not a lot of patrons.  A few couples, and a table of older women who had just finished up a meeting at their Baptist Church.

We speak with the owner Berly Zapata. She’s owned the City Metro Diner with her husband for two years, now. She talks about how this stretch of Main Street is rough.  She won’t raise her daughter here, it’s not safe and the schools are bad.

We introduce ourselves to the waitress.

Natalia Alvez - a server at the City Metro Diner in East Orange, NJ

Natalia Alvez - a server at the City Metro Diner in East Orange, NJ

She doesn’t want to talk at first.   “No, no, no…”

Natalia is originally from Brazil and then moved to Uruguay when she was 8.  When Natalia was thirteen her parents brought the family to East Orange, New Jersey – to the place she lives right now, three blocks from the diner.

“It’s kinda rough here.”

One day Natalia was walking on Main Street to work at 6 in the morning. A man tried to grab her and she took off running. He chased her for a few blocks but she outran him and hid in a Dunkin’ Doughnuts right down the block.  Now she’s too scared to walk to work in the morning. Instead, she spends six dollars on a cab everyday that drives her through the four blocks between her house and the diner.

Valerie Kee and John Heyman were eating in a corner booth of the diner.  Valerie grew up in East Orange.

“Lotta changes” she says,  “I’ve lived here for more than forty years.  It used to be just African Americans, now there are people from all over, the Caribbean, Haiti, Mexico.  I like it with different kinds of people. You learn things with new people.”

A woman crosses Main Street in East Orange, New Jersey.

A woman crosses Main Street in East Orange, New Jersey.

Over on Main Street in Orange ‘Hip Hop Shoes’ has opened shop just hours ago.  The owner, who also owns a frozen yogurt join further down on Main Street, suggests that hid business success relies on offering something unique.  Nonetheless, Main Street in Orange is well populated with shoe stores.

This Main Street is looonnnnnggggg, it runs from Newark, New Jersey, goes through East Orange, Orange and West Orange. Turns out we could spend a lot of time on Main Street, U.S.A. too much time.

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