I miss writing! I miss this website! For those unaware, I’ve been interning with the Jersey City Times for about two months now, so while it’s been a productive summer, most of my creative energy has been diverted towards my journalistic writing and the occasional analog shoot. I’ve also been working at a frozen yogurt shop, so while it’s nice to be busy, the freedom of unemployment has been stripped from me and my blog has suffered for it. No longer! I’ve been reading lots of novels and am bursting with energy for creative writing. To distract myself from the stress of not having a real project to show from my rapidly dwindling time at my internship, here are some stream-of-consciousness takeaways from the stories I’ve shot over the past weeks and months.
Pokemon GO…
In early June, Jersey City joined the likes of New York, Chicago and Seattle when it became the latest American city to host Pokemon GO Fest. Tens of thousands of people descended upon Liberty State Park, where I grew up sledding and walking my dog, to play Pokemon Go, and hundreds of thousands more participated in the event in the surrounding cities. The location is admittedly fitting. LSP is mostly sprawling lawn, mainly known for epic views of Jersey City and New York, so when you plonk a few Pokestops down and start blasting Pokemon Go’s main theme, it feels as if you’re inside the game.
I came for two visits, and on my second coming, I was treated to a media pass that granted me access to the press lounge in the park’s party venue. It was my first time enjoying such privileges since I covered HSFestival for AWOL with Kate Kessler (shoutout Kate), and it felt pretty sweet, even if the food was not as good as it was at Nationals Park. I had a lot of fun! I did some man-on-the-street interviews, enjoyed the nice weather, randomly met and interviewed one of the city’s leading environmental activists and got put onto the local pigeon breeding scene by a man best described as a real-life Pokemon trainer.
I would love to come back next summer if LSP wasn’t hosting the World Cup Fan Festival next summer. That would actually be much cooler.
…to the Polls
I covered a live election for the first time! I went to meet Will Sytsma, my co-intern (shoutout Will), at a polling place on the tail of Mayor Steven Fulop who was making an appearance there. I missed the mayor, probably because biking in Jersey City is a Kafkaesque nightmare even though the city is throwing bike lanes everywhere. After that, I went to the mayor’s election watch party because he was also running for governor. I wasn’t there for long before confirmation came in: he came in third for the Democratic nomination, and underperformed in Jersey City.
After that, I rejoined Will at a watch party for Katie Brennan and Ravi Bhalla, the independent Democrats running for state assembly. When they came inside to claim electoral victory, I was seated right in front of them with my speedlight, the only photographer in the room. Unable to maneuver in the sardine can of a venue, I kept clicking away and the photos came out pretty alright. The campaign reposted them the next day.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky at Fulop’s watch party; I was interviewing a mayoral candidate when he took the stage to concede, and I missed out on a good shot of the evening’s biggest political news so far because I can’t be two places at once. It would have been nice if there were other journalists there with me, but I was the sole representative of the Jersey City Times, which is strange because I’m supposed to be an intern. Still, it’s not surprising, considering how small our staff is.
Sitting next to the other journalists and seeing their far superior photos rubbed some salt in the wound. It could have been a good networking opportunity, but nobody was in the mood to chat, except for the independent journalist who was intent on getting my Instagram while I was very obviously busy emailing a live update to my coworker. Other notable figures included the photographer from the New York Times whose name I forgot and an editor at the New Jersey Monitor who later reprinted a photo I took of Katie Brennan.
Average protest in Jersey City
Most of my audience are college students in Washington D.C., where I think it’s easy to forget what a typical protest is like in most of the country. At school, I became accustomed to fervid pro-Palestine demonstrations made primarily of angry young people, faces wrapped in keffiyehs to guard against university discipline and conservative doxxing websites. But we don’t have protests in Jersey City; we have rallies. At your usual political pop-out here, there’s hardly a keffiyeh in sight, but there will be more council and mayoral candidates in attendance than you can count.
However, while Jersey City rallies are structured, stationary and usually follow a timetable, they’re usually just as angry as your average political protest. This is probably because the only thing that gets Jersey Cityans outside like that is the wellbeing of their children. This was the case at the “Enough is enough” rally outside City Hall in 97 degree heat, where the community came out to demand lower speed limits and better traffic enforcement after a six-year-old child lost his life to a UPS truck days earlier.
After a series of assignments where I had to juggle shooting and writing, it felt good to cut loose and solely focus on photographing people’s emotions.
The Big One
https://jcitytimes.com/living-in-fear-jersey-citys-undocumented-residents-lay-low/
This is the cover photo for “Living in Fear, Jersey City’s Undocumented Residents Lay Low,” co-written with Will and probably the most important story I will report this summer. It was humbling to work on this story, and like being alone at Mayor Fulop’s watch party, it was strange to be covering such an adult topic when I’m supposed to be an intern. I just hope the story made somebody feel something.
That’s all I got for now. I hope to have more for the blog soon. Possibly about that frozen yogurt job I mentioned. Thanks for reading. ◼
Ben Ackman's Photography Website 