Hinchcliffe Stadium

Sitting near the Great Falls Park in Paterson, NJ, is the old and abandoned Hinchcliffe Stadium. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, there is a movement right now to preserve and possibly restore the stadium -built in 1932- to it's rightful condition.

The stadium was first home to a multitude of all-black sports teams since at the time blacks weren't allowed on white teams. Football, baseball, auto-racing, concerts... you name it, and it was here. It's kind of hard to imagine in our society today that... sixty-something years ago, blacks didn't play alongside whites in major and minor league sports.

The stadium hasn't been used much since 1997 and the amount of vandalism is rather embarrassing for a place that has had some much history pass through it. I took only a few pictures since we were strapped for time and we plan on coming back real soon!

To learn more about this place, and the movement to preserve it, please visit the Friends of Hinchcliffe Stadium at: http://www.hinchliffestadium.org/index.php

Take me out to the baaaall game
Take me out to th-
ah shit wrong sport.

Where's the rest of it?

Finding random car parts in these places reminds me of that scene from Jaws where Hooper and Brody are cutting open that shark on the dock late at night:

Hooper: Ah. Just like I thought... He came up with the Gulf Stream - from southern waters.
[he pulls a Louisiana license plate from the shark. Brody examines it]
Brody: He didn't eat a car, did he?
Hooper: Naw, a tiger shark's like a garbage can, it'll eat anything. Someone probably threw that in a river.

-AK

Glen Island Castle

It's better to be happy in a cardboard shack,
Then to be alooooone in a castle...

Or so says Harry Connick Jr.

Last Friday, Nicky and me went out to New Rochelle NY to see the legendary Glen Island Castle, now home to the Columbia University rowing team. Built in 1879 by a businessman named John H. Starin, the castle used to have it's own zoo, museum, and beach. Today, all that's left is the castle, crumbling beer garden, cannon, oddball passageways, and strangely mounted rocks.

The song comes to mind because a few hours after visiting the castle, we participated in my school's Sleepout, which is a competition to build the best cardboard shack to raise awareness of homelessness. AND! I'm proud to say that my team won the competition by building the strongest and most efficient shack out of the 6 teams representing my school's fraterneties and sororities.

The castle sits on the west bank of Glen Island in New Rochelle, NY and if you're in the area, is worth the visit.

South side view

Northern side

Western wall of the Beer Garden

Never figured out what these were for.
Not tombstones as far as we could tell.

Sweeeeetie!

Beer Garden, Eastern Wall

DUCK!

Find anything, Indy?

Whatcha lookin for?

This is the cardboard shack that I designed and we built,
In the rain.
It was a lot of fun, we had some good soup and listened
to a few good bands on the front lawn of my school.

-AK

Sparta Train Station / Mohawk Industries

Me and Nicky visited this place about a month ago, and hearing the rumble of trucks not too far away, I hustled to snap a bunch of shots, rather upset that the place had been recently re-boarded up. I dont know much about the history of this place, and having heard the place called Mohawk Industries in the past, I looked up what I could and the company going by that name is one of the largest carpet and flooring manfacturers in the world. The large pesticide tank outside with the biohazard warning on the outside could be used for industrial purposes, having not gotten inside, there's no way for me to confirm it as such.

The place is plastered with no-entry signs and warnings; but in this case my not entering the building was more a saftey concern rather than a getting-busted concern. Bio-hazzard warnings are something I take more seriously than your typical Beware-of-Dog signs.

It's pretty cool, I wish I had more of a history on the place, but as far as I can tell, it's been empty a while, at least ten years.

BioHazzard

Fire damage, i think.


Right by the tracks

Eh, probably not.

Comfortable.... naaaat.
This is the actual train station, it was sealed up with plywood and oddly enough: locks.

To me, that means that someone still wants to get in there every so often.

Water Tower

-AK

White Manna

Not haunted...

Not scary...

Far from abandoned...

But in every way, delicious...

White Manna, of Hackensack NJ

The small, garage-sized resturant has been around for well over 70 years, and I'm proud to say I'm -to my knowledge- at least the third generation from my family to eat at this legendary establishment, probably the fourth.

The Manna, as it was known to my old high school, was a right of passage for most in my graduating class. I recall getting out of class before lunch, rushing down to Hackensack -ten miles away- for these fantastic burgers, then rushing back to class with onions on my breath.

They make these small slider burgers that fit comfortably in one hand, made with onions -but you can get them without- on a small potato bun. They start off as a golf-ball sized lump of ground beef and over the next ten minutes, make an incredible transformation into something so damn good it defies description.

The photo above isn't mine, and I'll be uploading my own pics of the place soon.

GO THERE! If you're in the area, and if you're not, drop by. It's worth it! They'll tell you about all the famous people who have been there including but not limited to Jerry Seinfeld and James Gandolfini, amongst others.

Me and Sweetie went there for dinner last night, seeing as how she's going on vacation with her mum for almost a week... what better way to leave home, right? :)

White Manna is located at:

358 River St, Hackensack, NJ

And can be reached at: (201) 342-0914

White Manna: heavenly burgers.

-AK