By Lawrence Krayn

I had one foot in University Heights at age twenty-three, hustling in and out of Hill Hall en route to a Rutgers B.A. in Poli Sci, but it wasn’t until 27 that my life fully moved to Newark.

I witnessed the S. Klein building being torn down and saw the sword in Military Park transform into a garden, all from a ninth story window at 1180 Raymond Boulevard. I imagined I was keenly aware of a fading generation being physically retired as the skyline shifted. Halsey Street, in those years, lived in the shadows of deceased department stores. There weren’t functioning streetlights when I’d step down into a musty print shop for my college texts. That’s how someone had attempted to rob me, the one and only time it’s happened. (He didn’t succeed.)

Mix, with its step-down patio, fancy bites, good music, and that perfect balance of an arts and professional crowd, was the HQ of a blossoming community. Those were the years we’d amble from Kil’s to 27; from University Ave to some late century apartment carved from the pieces of an early century brownstone, stumbling over roommates, cops and law students, aspiring doctors grabbing cigarette breaks on cold front steps. We drank under the skyline in the parking lot at Gov’s, amazed and feeling a touch of metropolitan ascension when Corey opened Skylab on the roof at Hotel Indigo.

I was a failed musician, an aspiring lawyer, always a nocturnal drifter. Spending days with my car parked in the Mulberry weeds, running case files up and down Green Street staircases and wandering into deserted marble foyers, my nights were social expanses: romantic forays and conversations with old-heads about what Newark was in the mid-twentieth century. I came to learn that there once existed a different world here, forever wiped away by the highway system and failed urban renewal. At times I felt I existed simultaneously in the past and present exploring ruins worn to nubs over the decades.

My studio on Hill Street possessed a decor of panoramic envy: unencumbered views of swanky apartments on Central Park West, sprawling fields of grass and concrete, a checkerboard on downtown’s lost density. Time in a place can fool you into believing it’s static. That’s because increments stretch too long to perceive, waking you up to a sum at the speed of light. Somewhere amidst the reels: Center Stage (fresh) Cuts, Clinton Street jazz, I grew into my aspiration, and the city did too.

I remarked to a friend recently that Halsey Street was cool, that it had kind of a Gen Z thing going on. Only after I’d made the statement did I realize what I’d actually made note of: the neighborhood was doing what it always had, thriving as a haven for our creative youth. It was just that we weren’t the youth anymore.

I turned forty. The weeds near Green Street became a proper parking lot. My view of the El Dorado was obscured by a rising Iconiq. My DeVille became a DTS, and Newark continues to develop at the exponential pace I’d imagined. But I miss the twenty-four-hour stale-scented corridors of Gateway, and sangria-saturated evenings at Iberia; I miss our youthful dinner parties at 27 Mix.

Once a transplant moving through a new era, it appears now that I might actually have stumbled into the very last iteration of the previous one. Long convinced I was an infant of a new Newark, I must now grapple with the possibility that I may be in fact, an elder of an old one.

Lawrence Krayn Jr. is a Newark resident and lifelong New Jerseyian. He graduated from Rutgers University-Newark with a B.A. degree in Political Science, and received his J.D. at Rutgers Law School-Newark. A practicing attorney by day, Larry spends his spare time being creative. A photographer who has been featured in various galleries and founded “Xquisite Grit,” he has been a musician for many years under the moniker “IL Lusciato,” and hosts a weekly podcast on current events.

all photos by Lawrence Krayn, vintage