Jersey Summer 5

Jersey Summer 1-6

I grew up in Jersey, 17 miles from NYC.

The town I grew up in was Clifton, but I never felt at home there. I was born in Passaic, which was only a few streets away from our house.

Passaic was where my family was from, where my grandfather founded a synagogue with his friends and my other grandfather had a brick oven bakery that he built with his brother that serviced most of the Italian restaurants in the area, and also most the people.

Passaic was a residential town that also had a lot of factories where everybody used to work.

Downtown Passaic had a train running through it and housed the Capitol Theater, where my parents used to go to see movies when they were kids. In my day, the Capitol was run by John Scher who also booked bands at Madison Square Garden. A lot of bands would do warm-up shows at the Capitol before playing the Garden. Bands like The Who, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, the Ramones, the Clash, Patti Smith, Warren Zevon, and Bruce Springsteen, who played there nearly regularly. Frankie, an older kid friend of mine worked the door and used to help us sneak into shows all the time.

One day, a woman gave my mother two tickets to a show at the Capitol, she said her daughter didn't want them. It turned out the tickets were for Etta James opening for the Rolling Stones, who were kicking off their "Miss You" Tour, and I had 9th row, center. Changed my fkin life.

That's Passaic.

So, when people ask me where I'm from, I tell them, Passaic.

Passaic also had a train station leading to NYC, via Newark, and a restaurant called Rutt's Hut that's still there, specializing in hot dogs called Rippers, cooked in hot oil until they explode. They make a translucent yellow green relish to put on the Rippers, I used to eat it with a spoon. The wait staff at Rutt's still wear uniforms and call you Honey. The place hasn't changed since 1928, there's still an old school telephone booth in the back of the bar by the restrooms, next to the cigarette machine.

On Friday nights in summer, Rutt's parking lot was filled with local car racers, showing off their engines. There's a part of the restaurant where you can eat standing up with full view of the parking lot. There is a lonely stretch of roadway that runs underneath Rutt's parking lot called Route 21. That stretch of 21 under Rutt's was never patrolled on Friday nights, on account of the car racers drag racing each other, you can hear the engines clear inside Rutt's dining room.

There were fights in Rutt's parking lot all the time, but they always ended friendly over a beer in the bar. People would come from all over Jersey, New York State, and Philadelphia to meet friends, eat Rippers, beat the hell out of each other, and race cars that they bought in shambles and put back together with their bare hands.

These Jersey Summer paintings come from images of those days. Faces I remember from Summer nights when I was a kid, from concerts at the Capitol, to me and my friends running down the railroad tracks behind the bowling alley, sleigh riding through the cemetery during snowstorms, and having a blast.

These memories are seen, as if, through frosted glass, fleeting wisps of the town I grew up in that I loved so much. They're done on recyclable synthetics with gouache, aerosol, water, ink, and oil crayon.

"Jersey Summer 2" is recreated on the painting "Onwards".