Newark, once the bicycle capitol of the world, is a breeding ground for new talent and innovation. Folk Engineered helps to bring the cycling tradition back by resurrecting an ancient trade. Custom framebuilders offer something different than bike shops and department stores. Each bike is built for a specific rider and with extreme attention to detail. “Building custom handmade bicycles is a scientific art form,” Pasquariello says. “It is geometry, physics, chemistry, visual thinking, and sculpture.”

From the same people who brought Newark the Brick City Bike Collective, Folk Engineered builds handmade bicycles right here in Newark, USA. Bonus: they also have some great photos from their shop on their website:

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I recently sat through a jarring press conference at which officials abruptly announced that the city has run out of Section 8 vouchers. Other tax incentive programs have reached limits that may or may not be curable in the near future. And locating and implementing subsidy programs will be harder now because of unresolved animosity between Ratner and anti-project leaders.

Much of it is petty. City Councilwoman Letitia James (D, WFP-Brooklyn), who represents the people who argued for killing the project long after its inevitability was clear, says she wasn’t invited to today’s groundbreaking. That is an unnecessary slap in the face. (James told me she will remain at City Hall working on budget issues during the ceremony.)

Should they decide to continue on to the Atlantic Yards after two or three years in Newark, the New Jersey Nets get to make their new home in the midst of this kind of drama. Should they stay here, they would have an amped-up fan base, a neighborhood that would welcome their arrival, and the benefit of the Cory Booker Twitter marketing machine.

Just sayin’.

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Carl Dranoff, the Philadelphia developer who unveiled plans in January 2008 for a 28-story luxury apartment high-rise across from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, now pegs his new Two Center Street at 44 stories — still far short of the state mantle but enough to overtake the circa 1931 National Newark Building at 744 Broad St. as Newark’s tallest building.

“It will become a transformational project,” Dranoff said of the $190 million project. “We expect it will have an enormous impact. We’ve seen this in other cities where we build a big anchor project. Usually, others follow. We sort of have the play-books to make it happen.”

Site plans for the milestone project note that Two Center Street’s 44 floors, topping off at 482 feet, 2 inches beats National Newark Building’s 465 feet by 17 feet, 2 inches.

“Redefining Newark’s Skyline” reads the plug on the company’s online portal, where the developer touts its location across from NJPAC and near historic Military Park and the new light-rail line.

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Indeed past governors and lawmakers have treated the authority as their toy box. Political interference has including a bloated staff of political appointees, free tickets and catered meals to favored politicians, poorly negotiated contracts with football, basketball, and hockey franchises, bad decisions regarding Xanadu, and insistence on perpetuating the money-losing race track business.

Blue Jersey levels some biting criticism about the NJ sporting organization that, of late, seems to have turned everything it’s touched into lead.

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“At that moment, I’m very excited with my girlfriend, and I didn’t think too much,” Mr. Jiang, 28, said Tuesday in his first interview since causing the six-hour shutdown at the airport and the five-day manhunt that followed. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble at the airport.”

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty in Newark Municipal Court to the charge of defiant trespass, and besides the community service, he must pay a $500 fine and $158 in costs and fees.

I may have felt differently if I was stuck at that airport, but I’m glad this guy wasn’t given jail time or worse — he was hardly a national security threat.

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“We are not rock stars,” he says. “We are Newarkers. We stayed, we stayed, and we always survived. And we’ll keep surviving. Mr. Booker – I’m going to call him an alien – he needs to go back on his spaceship, wherever he came from. He doesn’t know how to interact with us.”

That’s just the type of practical, fact-based sloganeering that adds real credibility to a campaign.

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More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.

For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or even reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year.

Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept that arrangement, forgiving the difference between the market price of the property and what they are owed.

The Times examined the impact of subprime lending in Newark back in 2007, revealing the heartbreaking impact of this long-running crisis. While the prospect of short sales were originally shunned by banks, the Obama plan introduces some hope of stemming foreclosures and preventing a slide back into economic decline.

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In which your humble narrator promotes, then explains, then defends the raison d’être for the Daily Newarker:

LOL, trust me: I’m not making $$ on the Daily Newarker, from the Booker Campaign or anyone else. We’ve had fits and starts with advertising programs, and haven’t been able to generate a sustainable income from the site. I have a day job that feeds my family.

As to wishing the site shut down: I think a rising tide raises all boats. The more online discussion about our city, the better. And, whether it’s parents trying to find a space for advocacy to networking non-profits, I’d like TDN to be a resource for Newarkers, new and life-long.

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After Hal Laessig and his wife lost their downtown Newark art gallery and living space in an eminent-domain fight with the Newark Housing Authority over the Prudential Center, they were determined to save an old building.

Three years and $3 million later, an 1879 former button factory in the Ironbound District houses their gallery, the Sumei Multidisciplinary Art Center, and serves as their home. They developed Button Factory Lofts into 14 condo units, nine of which have sold since the building opened in October.

The couple are among a wave of preservation-minded developers turning industrial buildings into loft spaces to accommodate Newark’s growing population of artists and professionals.

“When things were booming, developers were clearing multiple blocks, so a lot of the old industrial buildings got demolished,” says Laessig, 54. “Now, with the few that are left, people are thinking, let’s save them and convert them for living, because otherwise they’ll all be gone.”

Good overview of some recent condo conversions happening in the city and the personalities behind them.

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The modern Prudential Center, in most ways the antithesis of Izod, is a better bridge to Brooklyn, Yormark said. He said that railroad access to Newark would let Brooklynites sample the Nets for a while (although the tasting might be better if LeBron James or Dwyane Wade were playing there), and that a modern facility would help Rod Thorn, the Nets’ president, recruit players.

“We’re excited about the move,” said Kris Humphries, a reserve forward whom the Nets acquired from Dallas in January. “How can we not be?”

Booker tied his city’s comeback fortunes to those of the Nets, and spoke at times as if the benefits of the Nets’ pit stop would never end. Reminded of the team’s short-term lease, he said: “You can’t discount the revenue they will bring to the city. It’ll move our city forward.”

It’s official. This isn’t so much a sports story as it is an urban renewal story: the move is temporary, and the Nets are one of the worst-performing franchises in the NBA right now. Bringing the Nets to Newark won’t solve all of their problems, but they will see an established fan base come out to see them play. The more exciting thing for this city might be that Newark will be a destination for watching some of basketball’s greats to come play (and beat the Nets).

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