Why I Love Nutley

My favorite event in Nutley is the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade that is held on Franklin Avenue each year. I love that the whole town is just packed down onto the main drag to have some fun. There are kids, grown ups, street drinking, but none of the knuckleheads that come to ruin Hoboken or Belmar. It’s great to see a bunch of people having fun without becoming jerks.

I’m only a little Irish on my mother’s side, but I still love me some Saint Patrick’s Day. The bag pipes, the food, the beer, and the general festive feeling. It’s definitely a hugging day. The amount that I give and get seems to go up ten-fold.

This year was great. The weather was perfect and the parade was a lot of fun. Yet another great reason to live in Nutley.

Here are some pictures that I took at the Parade:

Mayor Cocchiola and the Board of Commissioners announced the annual Holiday Lighting. Festivities will take place on Sunday, December 6th from 5pm to 7pm. Nutley’s whole downtown will be ablaze with holiday spirit, with activities inside John H. Walker Middle School and areas in and around the Nutley Park Oval. In order to allow everyone to enjoy everything, Franklin Avenue will be closed between Chestnut and New Streets and Chestnut Street will be closed between Franklin Avenue and Vincent Place.

The celebration will be chock full of Live Entertainment, Fun Holiday Activities, and Delicious Food.

Live Music and Entertainment

There will be a variety of live music from several local musical groups.

• The Elementary School Chorus
• The John H. Walker Middle School Debonaires
• The Nutley High School Chamber Singers
• The Nutley High School Brass Ensemble

Holiday Activities for the Whole Family

You can get your holiday spirits jumping at some of the fun activities that will be going on.

• Mini-train ride
• Horse & carriage rides
• Santa’s reindeer
• Photographs with Santa Claus (available for purchase)
• Fire truck parade down Franklin Avenue

Food and Beverages

Don’t forget to let your tummy in on the fun. There will be lots of great treats to get that holiday spare tire inflating.

• Roasted chestnuts (my personal favorite)
• Hot apple cider & coffee
• Several other traditional holiday treats

As if that’s not enough, the highlight (literally) of the entire night, the Christmas Tree Lighting.

Kids, don’t forget to bring your Letter to Santa. Starting Friday, November 27th through Sunday, December 20th the Santa Express Mailbox will be located at the Oval gate entrance on Chestnut Street.

Get Your Holiday Spirits Going

I know it just seems too early to get up for Christmas season, so here is a little video to get in more of a Christmas in Nutley mood. I made this video during the Christmas Decorating Contest from 2007. I love how over-the-top the lights and decorations in Nutley are every year.

Go to the Nutley Town site for complete details.

Up next in my series on Useful and Interesting Nutley web sites is NJHometown. This site has more interesting news about what is going on in Nutley, NJ than you can shake a stick at.

General Information

Site: NJHometown.com

URL: http://NJHometown.com

Author: NJ Hometown LLC

Contact: news@njhometown.com

Category / Topic: Local News

Nutley will be holding a "Spooktacular Parade" on Friday October 30th at 6:00 pm in DeMuro Park on Margaret Avenue. The parade will be sponsored by the Nutley Department of Parks and Recreation and feature a haunted hayride, pumpkin patch, blow up slides and many more rides and attractions. This should be a really fun night for kids and grown ups alike.

Here is a quote from the town’s site:

Halloween is a great family holiday. There are plenty of activities that the kids of all ages in your family can participate in, so why not get out of the house and join in the fun? “Our goal is to create a family environment for residents to come together and spend quality time with one another” stated Commissioner Mauro G. Tucci. Our youngsters learn about family values from the time they spend with their own. Our families are the single most important aspects of our lives but with the growing number of challenges we face when it comes to family time, whether it be our busy work schedules, increasing responsibilities or our children’s sport schedules, it is important we don’t forget to take time out to enjoy today. As recreation professionals we play an important role in molding some of the values that can gradually deteriorate within busy family schedules. By implementing and centering our efforts on special events emphasizing family recreation, we can be a tremendous positive force in our community.

Time and Location Information

Date: Friday October 30th, 2009

Time: 6:00 PM

Location: DeMuro Park on Margaret Avenue in Nutley, NJ.

View Larger Map

If you have any questions or you would like further information, please contact the Nutley Parks and Recreation Department at (973)284-4966, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Here is the link to the Halloween Spooktacular announcement.

Sounds like a fun night, hope I see you there!

PS. If you take any pictures and post them to Flickr.com, tag them with "NutleyTown" and I’ll post them after the event.

I take a lot of pictures of just about everything I do. Here are a bunch of pictures I took around town that I posted on Flickr.com.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you would like to see some of your photos of Nutley on NutleyTown.com, friend me up on Flickr.com and tag your photos with the tag "Nutleytown". Then, I’ll periodically put any interesting, funny, beautiful, or just plain weird pictures up.

I’m going to work on a YouTube feed next.

There are a lot of really useful, interesting, and cool websites that contain information about Nutley or are written by people in Nutley. I am going to pointing out websites from Nutley that I think people should know about. I’m going to start of the series with the Town’s official website, NutleyNJ.org

General Information

Site:  Official Website of Nutley Township

URL: www.NutleyNJ.org

Author: The site is owned and operated by the Township of Nutley.

Contact: You can contact the Commissioner’s Board and many other township departments from the Contact Nutley, NJ page.

Creation Date: 2006

Category / Topic: Government Services, News

Description: NutleyNJ.org is the Township’s official website.

What Type of Information is on the Site?

NutleyNJ.org contains information on the town’s Departments, Boards, and Agencies. There is also a great deal of interesting and useful information on News, Events, and Activities going on in town.

The site is cleanly laid out and provides clear ways to get to all of its information. You can see the main pages across the site’s header. (below)

There are also links to events and other information on the page.

Target Audience

Citizens of Nutley, NJ who need information about the numerous government agencies delivering services to the town.

Best Features

There are two great features that make the site so useful:

1. Service Request submissions
2. The Emergency Notification system

Service Requests allow you to send request directly to the appropriate department in town for things like Street Repairs, Recycling Pickup, and many other issues. You know how hard it is to figure out who you’re supposed to call for these things. Now, just fill out a simple form and your done. (Except for the waiting around for someone to show up.)

The Emergency Notification System allows the town to deliver notifications on emergencies and other important events to every resident, employee, student, and parent. This is done through a system that is powered by the Citizen Communication Center, which provides these services to other governments and organizations. You can create an ID and set your preferences for the manner and types of information that you and your family receive. (RSS, email, phone, instant message, etc.)

Wrapping Up

I’m very impressed with the job that the town has done setting up a clean, simple, informative website. Now, when I need to find out something about the Police, Schools, Garbage, or Commissioners Board, I know just where to go. If you live in Nutley, I highly recommend adding NutleyNJ.org to your bookmarks.

What: Nutley’s first ever Greenutley Eco-Fest is the first event in its effort to "go green" and become a certified community under the Sustainable Jersey program.

When: Sunday, September 13, 2009 | 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Where: Memorial Park (Mud Hole) | Vreeland Ave and Passaic Avenue | Nutley, NJ 07110

Go to NutleyNJ.org site for full details.

What’s it all about?

Nutley will hold its first ever Greenutely Eco-Fest on September 13th throughout Memorial Park/Mud Hole (between Chestnut Street and Brookfield Avenue) from 10am-5pm. We will be featuring exhibitions with green products, educational clinics and demonstrations, a farmers market, and hands-on activities for the whole family! We are trying to convert our community into a "greener" place to reside by educating our citizens on sustainable energy, the importance of conserving products, clean-air/water/land, and many more ways to protect the environment. "Going green" can impact the future for our children and keep them living healthy, safe lives for a long time to come.

Inclement Weather Location

In the event of inclement weather, the Fest will be held at its alternate location – Nutley High School, 300 Franklin Avenue, Nutley.

If you or your company would like to get involved with the Eco-Fest through a sponsorship or exhibit, please e-mail Loren McCreesh at the Department of Public Affairs – lmccreesh@nutleynj.org.

Least year my wife and I stumbled onto Swing Night in down town Nutley and loved it. We were very excited to go this year. We invited our friends from Bloomfield to come down for some music, drinks, and junk food.

We got down there (Franklin Avenue, between Vreeland Ave. and High Street) at about 8:00. There was already a huge crowd and the festivities were in full "swing". What a great time! There was live music at both ends of the street (none of it was swing music) and all the food and drinks that you could stand in between.

My friend and I had a few draft beers, while the girls had water. We all had some combination of pizza (Ralph’s), sausage sandwiches (Mudhole), and waffles and ice cream (Pancake Palace). The ice cream was definitely the high point. I have been on a diet lately, so I used all of my willpower to resist the zepoles.

High Point: Eating and drinking in the middle of Franklin Ave. Seeing every single citizen in town packed into a single block.

Low Point: At the stroke of 10:01, the Nutley Police, who were wonderful all night, turned into jack-booted thugs, chasing everybody off the streets on those ridiculous Segways.

Summing it up

I have only lived in Nutley for a few years, but it is events like this, the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and the July 4th celebration that make me feel like I’m at home. Another great job of making Nutley a fabulous place to live.

Hi, my name is Chris Masiello. I moved to Nutley just a few short years ago, but I already feel like this is my hometown.

Welcome to NutelyTown.com. This website is about “All Things Nutley”. I want this site to become a resource for people to discover and talk about the things going on in and around Nutley that make it such a great place. And when I say “talk about”, I really mean it. All of the articles on the site will have a  comments section where you can join right in on the conversation. I will constantly strive to build a “community” feel around the site that welcomes participation from everyone with something to contribute to the conversation.

NutleyTown.com will feature news and reviews of things like:

• Town Events
• Restaurants
• Parks
• Civic  Policies
• Sights and Sounds of Town

So if you have anything to ask or say, let me know in the Comments section or email me at cm@vitamincm.com. And if you see me around town, say hi.