Circus clowns, magicians, jugglers, acrobats, face painters and balloon artists will convert Newark Museum into a festive “big top” from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 27 and 28.

For the seventh consecutive year, Newark Museum and its Science Department will collaborate with Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey Circus® – The Greatest Show on Earth® in presenting Circus Science, a weekend jammed with activities such as circus performances where families learn the theories of balance, centrifugal force, motion and gravity – the physics behind the fun.

Looks like a lot of fun.

NJ Devils’ Organist, Paul Cannarozzi, Surveys the Ice at the Pru Center (NY Times)

Cory Booker, to PolitickerNJ, in response to criticism that he’s globetrotting with the city on autopilot

Newark police are investigating a fatal shooting involving an off-duty Essex County Sheriff’s Officer at a local night club, authorities said. Shortly before 11 p.m. last night at the 600 block of Sanford Avenue, the Essex sheriff’s officer and another man got into an argument, Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura said.

The other man, left the club briefly, but returned inside and shot the officer, Fontoura said. The sheriff’s officer returned fire. Both the Essex officer and the man were rushed to University Hospital, where the man was pronounced dead, Fontoura said.

Barely two-years old, it does not have access to a soccer field, using a church basement in Newark for practice. Many of its athletes, mostly immigrants from Latin America and Africa, cannot afford to pay any member fees, making the club reliant on donations to stay afloat.

But these three dozen young men from North Jersey are turning heads. Last year, the club took home the under-20 and under-23 titles of the New Jersey Soccer Association state cup. In two months, the team will take on the nation’s best clubs at the Dallas Cup, a premier, invitation-only youth soccer tournament.

“We don’t have many resources, but when we play, we beat,” said one of its players, Johan Romero, 18.

Brick City has heart.

A 150-room Courtyard by Marriott will begin rising later this year next to The Prudential Center marking the first new hotel in Newark’s downtown in nearly 40 years and signaling the strength of the 18,000-seat arena’s economic pull, officials said yesterday.

I work in NYC during the day with a view of Jersey City across the river. One thing these two cities have that I rarely see in Newark: cranes in the air. Where the NJPAC complex and Shaq buildings have been — what we in the technology refer to as — “vaporware”, it’s exciting to see another project in the works downtown.

“Every ethnic group needs such a person,” Price said, noting that other ethnic groups also sought to have their leaders’ memories immortalized in brick in some fashion. It’s no coincidence that Newark named its 1955 public housing project placed in the First Ward — then the nation’s fourth largest Italian-American enclave — Christopher Columbus Homes.

Now the tradition of honoring local ethnic groups is frowned upon in some circles, Alderman said. Some school boards around the nation have even written formal policies discouraging naming a school after a person. In many cases, he said, the powers that be are simply trying to avoid controversy.

Great long-form piece on how Baxter Terrace came to get its name, and the history of naming locales as a way to honor great achievements and how that process has evolved. With the stereotypes of drugs and crime associated with the housing complex, will the planned city park maintain the Baxter name?

No, he can’t.

Soho? West End? Left Bank? Nope: Ironbound. Glocally checks out the new Button Factory building in the Ironbound. Just lovely.