Why Avalon's Hackensack tenants may be scared shitless

The rubble left after the fast-moving Jan. 21 fire at the Avalon Bay luxury apartment complex in Edgewater, above and below, likely gave pause to tenants of Avalon Bay apartments in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When Avalon Bay announced improved fire protection systems at planned apartments in Princeton and Maplewood, no one at The Record thought to ask why the same wasn't being done for its Hackensack tenants.

On the same day, a burst fire sprinkler line in the Avalon Hackensack at Riverside complex triggered fire alarms and started pouring water into one of the buildings on Hackensack Avenue, The Record reported on Wednesday.

A Hackensack deputy fire chief was quoted as saying that Hackensack building has sprinklers in the attic spaces and other non-occupied areas, "unlike the 408-unit apartment building that burned last month in Edgewater."

But does the 226-unit Hackensack complex have the same kind of masonry firewalls Avalon Bay now says will be included at the Princeton and Maplewood complexes -- walls that can stop fire from spreading outside the apartment where it started?

No such walls exist at the Edgewater complex.

And today, in a "one month later" retrospective on Page 1, The Record reports an Avalon Bay executive refused to say whether they would be included, if the company rebuilds in the Hudson River community (A-1).

If there are no masonry walls in Hackensack, tenants there have good reason to be scared shitless over the possibility of a fire like the one that spread so rapidly in Edgewater.

Avalon Bay is a real estate investment trust that returns a healthy profit to shareholders, and any fire-safety improvements not required by weak state building codes might cut into that return and make the apartment builder less attractive to potential investors.

Avalon Bay apartments when they were under construction in 2013 between two shopping centers in Hackensack.

Christie lackey

In keeping with The Record's all-Christie, all-the-time coverage, Columnist Charles Stile is back on the front page today with a boring report on everything the GOP bully and "likely presidential candidate" said to New Hampshire conservatives (A-1).

In the last couple of years, Stile has been examining Christie's every word, burp and fart for what they might mean for the mean-spirited official in 2016.

You'd think the veteran reporter is angling to become a press secretary in the Christie White House, in the unlikely event New Jersey's in-your-face governor wins the nomination and election.

More corrections

A-2 corrections seem to be growing more numerous and longer, such as the pair repairing Paterson stories today.

A story on A-3 fails to report that a Port Authority police officer assaulted by a mother-daughter team at Newark airport is also a woman (as reported by Cliffview Pilot.com).

Staffer, veteran

Staff Writer Todd South, who is assigned to cover Hackensack, also has been doing a lot of reporting on veterans, including today's commentary on "American Sniper" (BL-1).

South reports he has served with men like Chris Kyle, a U.S. Navy Seal at the center of the film -- "elite soldiers trained for years to complete complex missions and kill people" (BL-4).

He believes reaction to the film "obscures the real problem that has grown for decades ... the civilian disconnect with its military, its purpose and its work.... For many who watch the film, Kyle is an alien."

The reporter says he was a member of a U.S. Marine reconnaissance unit that deployed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Christie has no solutions for problems of his own making

Cedar Lane and River Road in Teaneck, near the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus, would seem to be an ideal place for a Starbucks with a parking lot. Actually, anything would be welcome to replace the eyesore of a shuttered gas station and diner.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A defiant Governor Christie reiterated his inflexible no-tax policy, but "offered no clues about how he would address challenges like transportation funding and growing pension obligation," The Record reports today on Page 1.

"We have to grow this economy, not the government," Christie told New Jersey business leaders gathered in Washington after a drunken train ride from Trenton on Thursday (A-1).

The reporters don't point out the GOP bully still is talking about growing the economy more than five years after he took office.

And, of course, Christie wants to shrink the public sector, but not the shadow government known as the Port Authority, the bistate agency he has used as a patronage mill to retaliate against Democrats who didn't support his reelection.

The Record does quote Patrick Murray, Monmouth University's poll director, who said he was "struck by" all the "angst" he heard in discussions with people on the chartered train:

"I heard about how Trenton isn't going to tackle any of the big problems we have in this state because of the governor's presidential ambitions" (A-8).

Diet and health

Also on the front page today, The Associated Press graphic on a government panel's proposed new dietary recommendations is a model of clarity compared to the lengthy, jargon-filled Better Living cover story that ran on Wednesday (A-1).

And an editorial urges the state Legislature to override the GOP bully's veto of the Port Authority reform bill (A-18).

Crime, court news

One glance at today's Local section makes it clear head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, have frozen out municipal news in favor of Law & Order stories (L-1 to L-6).

Sykes and Sforza are two of the laziest newspaper editors in the Western Hemisphere, and on too many days, seem unable to inspire their staff to gather little more than police, fire, court and accident news.

One story on the Local front -- the ambiguous gender of a bank robber who got away with more than $100,000 -- raises a question that many Woodland Park newsroom staffers have asked repeatedly about a few of their colleagues (L-1).

Black bird?

Staff Writer Elisa Ung doesn't explain how the owners picked the name of the Mexican restaurant in Edgewater she reviews today (BL-14).

Paloma Negra -- black dove or pigeon -- seems an odd choice, and her lukewarm, 2-star review is sure to discourage readers, and perhaps turn their thoughts to bird droppings.

She found "shriveled, dry slices of steak and pork loin" in one of the most expensive dishes, and "dry and shriveled" chicken in both flautas and enchiladas.

Even after a big meal, Ung leaves room for a sugary dessert, but she criticizes a "rigid" flan and a "cloying" cake. 

Poor woman.

Second look

Last Sunday's Road Warrior column on the death of CBS newsman Bob Simon was one of Staff Writer John Cichowski's most misleading efforts.

Simon, who wasn't wearing a seat belt, was thrown forward and suffered fatal injuries when his speeding Lincoln Town Car limo crashed on 12th Avenue in Manhattan.

Cichowski asserted side curtain air bags might have saved Simon, but they are intended to protect the head and chest of an occupant "in the event of a serious crash" involving the side of the vehicle, according to safecar.gov, not in the case of a major frontal impact.

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Road Warrior windbag is wrong on air bags

From gorging on sweets to advice on cholesterol levels

A Shell station on Summit Avenue and Essex Street in Hackensack is selling a gallon of regular for $2.13.9, if you use a credit card, or 12 cents less than the same gasoline at another Shell station on Cedar Lane in Teaneck. Prices have stopped falling and even cheap, off-brand stations are selling regular for $1.99.9, if you pay cash.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

There were too many "mays," "mights" and "maybes" in The Record's major story on cholesterol and heart disease on Wednesday.

The Better Living cover story, promoted on the front page, is typical of the media's flawed focus on health and nutrition, and their tendency to jump all over draft reports (BL-1).

The Woodland Park daily did a disservice to those who read only the Page 1 promotion or headlines, and didn't slog through all of the quotes from doctors.

In the penultimate paragraph, the reporter finally acknowledges "the best advice is the same advice that doctors and nutritionists have been repeating for generations."

"Eat a well-balanced diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and ... fats found in ... fish, nuts and olive oil, while limiting red meat, fried foods and sugary desserts" (Wednesday's BL-3). 

So, you don't have to limit your intake of the saturated fat in butter and heavy cream, two ingredients that show up often in recipes recommended by The Record's freelancers?

It doesn't help that The Record's food pages are filled with endless copy promoting pastries, cake and chocolate or that the chief restaurant critic rarely eats a salad, but always leaves room for a huge hunk of meat and dessert.

Christie obsession

Today's front page carries another so-called analysis of Governor Christie's campaign style "while he considers a presidential future for himself" (A-1). 

There is no mention of a new Rutgers-Eagleton poll that 68 percent of New Jersey voters say the GOP bully is putting his personal presidential aspirations ahead of his public state duties (Wednesday's A-3).

This is the second dose of major bad poll news for Christie, and both times the editors kept it off of the front page.

Tuesday's A-3 carried another breathless Melissa Hayes story about Christie, who, on a visit to New Hampshire, discussed what he'd do, "if he were to run and win the presidency."

An "Analysis" of Christie's proposed state budget appeared on Saturday's front page, and Christie columns ran on Sunday's and Monday's A-1.

The media obsession with Christie often is justified by reporting he won a second term in a landslide, but editors never mention the turnout was the lowest of any gubernatorial election in state history.

Voters are apathetic, and sick of all of the Christie-White House coverage, which is turning off more and more of them.

Laughable headline

Today's Better Living cover carries a headline that has readers howling (BL-1):

Versatile chickpea

gains popularity

Chickpeas have been a staple of diets in India, Armenia, Turkey and the Middle East for, what, a hundred years?

But then a food editor scrambling for a story idea discovers them and treats her readers liked imbeciles.

Editors claim evil Paterson is killing white suburbanites

The Great Falls of the Passaic River in Paterson are a symbol of a glorious industrial past. Today, if you believe The Record's biased three-part series on heroin, the evil, largely minority city is luring young white men and women from the suburbs to their untimely deaths.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"IN HEROIN'S GRIP" -- a three-part series in The Record that ends today -- is one of the most biased pieces of journalism I have ever seen.

Timothy Linnartz, 29, of Waldwick and all of the other dead and dying white drug addicts who are the central characters in this drama; their parents and the police, who don't arrest them, remain blameless.

On Sunday's front page, Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien reported  a new phenomena -- "heroin so pure and inexpensive that it is not only hastening the fall of this once vibrant city, but feeding on the wealth of nearby suburbs, towns like Glen Rock and Clifton, Mahwah and Waldwick."

Eye on prize

Lusting for a Pulitzer Prize, Editor Marty Gottlieb and the other white editors who worked on this opus are so eager to demonize Paterson they claim Silk City's "legacy as the first planned industrial city could also be, in part, what contributes to the problem."

Then -- in one of the most ridiculous of the many assertions in the series -- they blame the city's easy access, "more than 30 points of entry, connecting some of the region's wealthiest communities to the poorest" (A-8 on Sunday). 

The only suggestion that Bergen County isn't blameless for the behavior of the addicts flocking to Paterson comes from Capt. Timothy Condon of the Prosecutor's Office:

"Bergen County is coming in and sustaining this violent narcotics trade with their money," Condon says.

The rest of his quote on Sunday's A-8 is incomprehensible.

In the final part on Page 1 today, O'Brien revisits the layoff of one-quarter of Paterson's 500-member police force and once again doesn't mention Governor Christie's cuts in state aid as a factor.

Another error?

One of The Record's readers thinks the photo caption on the Local front today is incorrect in describing a rabbi "chanting Lincoln's words in the form of a 'haftarah'" (L-1).

"First, there are four people and the rabbi on the bimah [a raised platform]. When one reads a haftorah, only the reader is on the bimah. It is clear that the Rabbi is reading from the Torah.  The people are in the position for a torah reading and, most significantly, if one looks at the picture you can see the ends of the torah scrolls.  Gottlieb should have spotted this."