Readers' eyes rolling at the me generation of columnists

Although The Record and North Jersey Media Group left 150 River St. in Hackensack in 2009, the Borg family have made the property pay by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for parking spaces leased to Bergen County during the construction of a new courthouse and to Hackensack University Medical Center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers of The Record's Sunday edition are puzzling over the restaurant reviewer's rant about customers who wear too much cologne or perfume.

And those in search of local news can only wonder whether Road Warrior John Cichowski's column about drivers in European cities is his clever way of trying to write off his vacation on his income taxes.

I promise. 

I tried to get into the Page 1 feature story about the Paramus woman who spent 25 years searching for her Canadian birth mother, but it is just too long (A-1).

The top of the front page carries yet another story about the kindness of Gander, Newfoundland, to airline passengers diverted on 9/11 (A-1).

Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, who wrote today's story, actually was sent to Gander only days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America to pretty much write the same account that appears today.

So, that makes two stories with Canadian ties on today's front page.

Is anybody reading the other Page 1 stories -- another Charles Stile column on politics and the 2017 election for governor, or the annual end-of-season assessment of the health of the Jersey shore economy (A-1)?

Ung's rant

Few people live as high on the hog as Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who has been eating out morning, noon and night on a Record expense account for more than a decade.

So, excuse me if I don't get the point of her Sunday column, The Corner Table, or the problem of servers and customers wearing too much perfume or cologne (Better Living front).

She claims those scents prevent her from tasting the food she is evaluating, but readers can only hope she focuses more on the basics.

On Friday, she awarded 3 stars (Excellent) to From Scratch, a small cafe and market in Ridgewood, despite shockingly high prices, unprofessional service and cramped seating.

For example, she loved a bronzino fillet served with an eggplant-tomato gratin, even though at $30, you'd pay more than at restaurants serving the whole fish.

Mind on vacation

Staff Writer John Cichowski is back from a vacation with the breathless news that drivers in small European cities are more polite and don't lean on their horns, as we do in New Jersey (Road Warrior on L-1).

Of course, he could make the same observation in downtown San Francisco during the rush hour.

But as an opinion columnist, Cichowski fails to provide any leadership in the impasse over funding the Transportation Trust Fund, and for that reason, he is of absolutely no use to North Jersey commuters.