Episode #323: Falling Out Of Love with Nirupa Umapathy
Episode #323: Falling Out of Love
Nat Kalbach
NatSSGuestNirupaUmapathy.png [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65f87462398db728f68c7281/1773865931311-S43TBFLW32ZE8GMXCARS/NatSSGuestNirupaUmapathy.png?format=1000w]
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Nirupa Umapathy has lived in Jersey City for over two decades. She fell in love with it the way a lot of us do — one corner at a time, one regular table at a restaurant where the owner knows your order. But she may be leaving. And what's striking is that even as she's falling out of love with Jersey City, she's still thinking about how people could fall in love with it. This conversation is about belonging, about place as sanctuary, and about the gap between sleeping somewhere and actually living there.
[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65f87462398db728f68c7281/57be1523-4f24-467d-bbdf-218695b424a9/Nirupa+2.jpg+copy.jpeg?format=1000w]
MEET NIRUPA UMAPATHY
Nirupa Umapathy is a writer, memoirist, and salon host based in Jersey City. She arrived in Newark in 1998 with a one-way ticket from Madras and a full scholarship to Smith College — not quite knowing what Wall Street was, but figuring it out fast. After 14 years as a Managing Director in finance, she left — what she calls "immigrating from Wall Street to the artist way" — and has since become a connector of creative communities through her living room salon series, inspired by the French Enlightenment salons. She is currently writing a memoir exploring trauma, burnout, and post-traumatic growth.
CONNECT WITH NIRUPA:
* Website: Radical Everything [https://www.radicaleverything.com/]
* Salons for Life [https://www.salonsforlife.com/]
KEY INSIGHTS
* Place as sanctuary. For Nirupa, Jersey City wasn't just a home — it was relief. From the trading floor, from India, from Manhattan. That relationship to place as refuge is something many immigrants and transplants will recognize.
* The bedside community problem. Thousands of new residents arrive in Jersey City and never break past the PATH station. Nirupa was one of them for years. She didn't walk the city in earnest until 2019 — after a Camino de Santiago finally taught her how to slow down.
* Falling out of love with the circumstances, not the place. When Nat asks if she's falling out of love with Jersey City or with living in a city, Nirupa's answer is precise: "I'm falling out of love with the circumstances of what it means to love in Jersey City."
* Language as a third sense of place. Food, people, and language — Nirupa maps home through all three. She tears up the moment she hears Tamil on the street. She shape-shifts her English when she's in India. Home isn't a fixed address; it's what comes out of your mouth without thinking.
* The onboarding gap. There's no consolidated way for newcomers to find Jersey City's arts organizations, neighborhood associations, walking tours, or community spaces. Nirupa and Nat identify this as a real structural gap — not unwelcoming, just fragmented — and wonder who might close it.
* What to do if you just moved here. Nirupa's practical list: start with your neighborhood association, go to Liberty State Park in summer, check the bulletin board at Van Vorst Park, go to Nimbus or Mana Open Studios, and find your local hairstylist. Stop getting your coffee in Manhattan.
PLACES & ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED
* Historic Paulus Hook Association (HPHA) — neighborhood association, runs monthly meetings
* Liberty State Park — "the crown jewel," especially in summer
* Van Vorst Park [https://www.fvvp.org/] — community bulletin board, local meetups
* Little India, Jersey City — Newark Avenue corridor
* Light Horse Tavern [https://www.lighthorsetavern.com/] — corner of Paulus Hook, site of Nirupa's signature question answer
* Nimbus Dance [https://www.nimbusdance.org/] — local performing arts organization
* Mana Contemporary [https://www.manacontemporary.com/] / Mana Open Studios — arts complex and open studio events
* Jersey City Theater Center (JCTC) [https://jctcenter.org/] — performing arts organization
* Museum of Jersey City History [https://www.mjchistory.com/]
* Jersey City Writers / JC Plums [https://www.njpoetryevents.com/calendar/jersey-city-writers-jc-plums-poetry-workshop-3-25] — the poetry group where Nirupa first found her arts community
* The Battle of Paulus Hook (1779) — Light Horse Harry Lee's surprise raid on the British garrison; Nirupa's signature question pick
EXPLORE FURTHER
A Substack piece tied to this episode is in the works — exploring the onboarding gap and what it would take for a new resident to actually fall in love with their city. Find and subscribe here [https://natkalbach.substack.com/]
CONNECT WITH NAT
* Website: natkalbach.com
* Substack: [Substack URL]
* Instagram: [@natkalbach]
* Email: podcast@natkalbach.com [podcast@natkalbach.com]
Music: Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.
Support the Show: Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for Nat's Substack [https://natkalbach.substack.com/] to receive additional stories and visuals that complement each conversation.
Share Your Story: What sidewalk stories have you discovered in your neighborhood? Share them with Nat through email or social media.
Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the intersection of place, community, and storytelling through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers. New episodes release on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
NIRUPA UMAPATHY: I'M STILL DRIVING AROUND JERSEY CITY RIGHT NOW IN THE MORNING, EARLY IN THE MORNING, SUDDENLY JUST LIKE BAWLING LOUDLY AND I'M LIKE, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?
You know, it's because I'm grieving. I'm grieving because I'm letting go and I'm grieving things that I don't wanna let go. And there's some deep loss there.
Nat Kalbach: Nirupa Umapathy Moved to Jersey City in 2001. With a one-way ticket from Madras, A soul that wanted to be free and she had a job on Wall Street that she hadn't quite figured out yet. For the better part of two decades. Jersey City was her sanctuary from the trading floor, from the pressure, from everything. She fell in love with it the way a lot of us do. one corner at a time, or that regular table at a restaurant where the owner knows your order, or the one neighbor who sits down on the stoop after you move in and stays for four hours. But Nirupa may be leaving. And what's [00:01:00] interesting, what I couldn't stop thinking about after this conversation Is that even as she's falling out of love with Jersey City, she's still thinking about how people could fall in love with it. how do you onboard someone into a city? They're just sleeping in. How do we bridge that gap between bedside community and belonging? My friend Nirupa is a writer and a salon host, a former managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, And someone who will drive the turnpike at midnight.
Just to feel her thoughts. Slow down. We had a real conversation. I'm Nat Kalbach And this is Nat's Sidewalk. Stories.
Hey, I'm so excited to have my friend Nirupa today. Hey, how are you?
Nirupa Umapathy: I'm great. Oh my God, how are you?
Nat Kalbach: Good. Good to have you. [00:02:00] Nirupa grew up in Madras. She still calls it that, even though the world calls it Chennai now, she applied to college in the US the old fashioned way. paper catalogs, the consulate library, no internet. ,she got into two schools. Smith College offered her a full ride and she took it Landing in Newark, in August, 1998 with a suitcase and a one-way ticket her dad could just barely afford. She didn't know that Smith was a feminist institution. She didn't know what Wall Street was. She just knew she wanted to be free.
Nirupa Umapathy: I came to America to be free. I'm not kidding you. Literally, I got on that plane with a suitcase with a one-way ticket in 1998 August, I landed in Newark. I didn't have, enough money to go back home. That's why the one-way ticket, my dad had enough money to buy me a one-way ticket, and that's about it. I wanted to [00:03:00] pursue an education. Granted, India can provide me a fine education as well, but I think I grew up in the milieu in the 1980s. And I was that kind of a girl that did not necessarily have the space to be herself at that time where I grew up in Madras, which is why I decided to run away from home in a legitimate way.
The love of my life had also left for the US and he had arrived here a year earlier. So I was following both love and I was also following educational opportunity and freedom of voice.
Nat Kalbach: So you went to Smith's College and you originally designed your major around women's empowerment. But you mentioned that pragmatism, won visa fear student loans. So what, what did it feel like to set aside what you actually came for?
Nirupa Umapathy: I fell in love with anthropology and I fell in love with [00:04:00] political science. But my, and I was going to be a government major and possibly an anthropology major, but my, uh, major advisor died my second year.
And when Professor Gasky died, I decided not to do government. I was heartbroken, as you can imagine. I was very close to her. And so I decided to do anthropology and then sophomore year came the panic attack when I realized that there's rules, like things like H one B visas and what am I gonna do when I graduate?
I don't want to go back home to India, even though I love my parents.
And I bumped into very luckily, a woman who was more driven than I was. And I am very driven. And we both were like, we are going to apply to this internship on Wall Street. And at that point in time, I had no fucking idea what Wall Street was.
Nat Kalbach: Whoa.
Nirupa Umapathy: I didn't know what Wall Street was. And so the two of us, like two crazy people, prepared for this interview and this was like this bootcamp of an internship, like sophomores don't get in. But [00:05:00] crazy people get into places that other people don't get in, you know? We got in
and she went to Merrill Lynch and I went to Solomon Smith Barney, and I hated that summer. I hated that summer. I'm writing in memo memoir about this. While my soul probably was breaking a little pieces, but there was another side of me, which is very pragmatic, that was just charging on, and I just let the pragmatist kind of charge ahead of the, the, artist soul that was probably like, what the fuck are you doing here?
Nat Kalbach: right? You're killing me. You're killing me piece by piece, like every day.
Nirupa Umapathy: but I was just like, you know what? Hold, hold, hold. Come home and talk to me about it. Don't get here because there's no point
Nat Kalbach: You were 14 years in finance managing director at a bank it was almost a whole life
Nirupa Umapathy: I lived three lifetimes when I was in the 14 years. I think I saw two economic cycles. I think there was so much stress that lasted me for three lifetimes. I think [00:06:00] I saw enough personalities, colorful, beautiful, toxic, all of it for three lifetimes.
Nat Kalbach: at some point you left that life. How, how did you describe that?
Nirupa Umapathy: I left Wall Street. For me, it felt like I left a country. I immigrated from Wall Street, Nathalie, from Wall Street to the artist way, Nathalie.
Nat Kalbach: So funny. So how did you, did that make Jersey City look to you different? You had been too busy to notice the 15 years before,
So Nirupa had been in Jersey City since 2001. First she rented near Paulus Hook and then she bought an apartment in 2004. she said she didn't even know the neighborhood was called Paulus Hook. she knew the ZIP code and she knew which Path Station got her to work fastest, And for years, Jersey City was simply where she slept, [00:07:00] which a lot of people still do.
Nirupa Umapathy: when you buy a home, it just creates a very different sense of endowment and an investment in the community. And my neighbor came and sat down this stoop after we had just finished moving in. And we talked for like four hours. And I'm like, oh my God. And suddenly I was, I was geocoded into relationships, not just place. It really deepened for me, my love affair for Jersey City. And honestly, it was a love affair. And I will say it was, it's no longer, and I'm sorry to say it like that, but I will. It was a love affair because Jersey City ended up being the sanctuary from India.
Jersey City ended up being the sanctuary from Wall Street. It ended up being the sanctuary for Manhattan. For me, it was a perfect little city for me. I was not a Manhattanite. I didn't want to be a Manhattanite. I had no dreams of [00:08:00] living in Manhattan. I just wanted to do my job and come home and sleep in a place which was quiet at night, and which was not a shoebox and a place where I could park my car.
Right.
And Jersey City was all of that. It was like a little village across the big city.
I would just flee every day from work and I would come home and I would feel this sense of sanctuary in Jersey City. By now, I've obviously mapped out all my local neighborhood like moms, and at that time there were a lot of moms and pop restaurants. Jersey City was not like the way it is now. Like where there's a bunch of places that look like Instagram memes, where I won't go in. I still like to go to the, for my cafe, dominican Place, corner of Grove.
Or like, I still like to go to Little India, as you know. And so besides people like my neighbor, these moms and pops held me together. They were also like my relationships. And that created a sense of place. Food is, big in Indian culture. Me being able to access such low cost food between little India to like [00:09:00] the Dominican place that was there, or getting cheap tacos, like the cheapness was important because it was affordable,
I'd go to the same place over and over and over again. I have my ritual. I'm a regular in these places.
So obviously the owners of these restaurants also knew me, right? And so. The crisis really solidified the great financial crisis, really solidified that I really, if I had nothing else, I had Jersey City.
Nat Kalbach: So you live here now for over two decades, but you also, are from India. How do you hold both places? Do you feel you have multiple homes, or did one replace the other?
Nirupa Umapathy: When I'm in my element, I don't feel homesick. When I'm not in my element, I feel homesick. I would say that I have both the blessings of having homes in many, many places, but also feeling like a nomad, which means someone without [00:10:00] roots.
So I'm both unmoored and extremely like grounded in the same way. It's a very, it's a very complicated thing to hold actually, and. I struggle with it a lot, but I try not to think too much about it everywhere I go, because of the way I am, I make homes, little homes in every place I find a place that I love to eat.
I go back again,
and then I people that I like, it's the, it's a food and the people.
Nat Kalbach: Do you start losing your language? I find it really hard sometimes when I'm in my brain in America and then my friend calls me, writing is okay, but my friend FaceTimes me and I'm like, oh my God. What was the German word again? How the hell can I lose my language?
Nirupa Umapathy: It's a great question because that's the third sense of place for me, language. It takes me a solid like. Three or four days. Of course, as soon as I land in Madras, I'm able to speak some Tamil, which is my native tongue. But it takes me some time to fall into the rhythm of the [00:11:00] language and if I'm there for a week, my addiction changes.
My idiom changes, and the way I speak English changes. Suddenly, I'm mirroring them, right? I'm mirroring the way people speak in India a little bit. I find myself typing in an Indian English when I'm there, which is interesting. I guess shape shift. When I listen to Tamil songs, I get really emotional.
Nat Kalbach: Aw,
Nirupa Umapathy: Like it'll always be a teary-eyed moment for me. Somehow when I listen to the language, I tear up first. If I listen to someone walking on the street and I hear Tamil I tear up first.
Nat Kalbach: That doesn't happen to me for with German songs because most of German songs suck. So just so you know that. Sorry, Germans,
Nirupa Umapathy: In India when, because everywhere I go, I get asked, where are you from?
Nat Kalbach: Hmm.
Nirupa Umapathy: And I'm always like, that's like such a nice soft slap in the face. I know that it's, they're coming from a place of curiosity and not like, go back home. I say immediately when they do that, where are you from? I immediately make my [00:12:00] accent a little bit like t
Tamil English. I'm from Aras.Madras totally avoiding the conversation and I don't even say Chennai, I say I'm from Madras
Nat Kalbach: You are going home and they're asking you where from because they can't put you
Nirupa Umapathy: Place you, they're not able to place the accent. They're not able to place the way I dress.
They're confused and they're just being curious
and you know, that's fine, you know? But there are times even I'm tired,
Nat Kalbach: After leaving Wall Street in 2017, Nirupa had something she hadn't had in years time and without the Wall Street paycheck. Her old relationship to the city built around, eating out. The moms and pops had to change. She started wandering into spaces she'd never entered before.
Nirupa Umapathy: First off, I joined Jersey City Plums, which is a poetry group as part of Jersey City writers. And now suddenly, I was showing up to this little GIA cafe, which is on Newark Avenue, to go and hang out with these artists. And at that time, I wasn't calling myself an artist or a writer or [00:13:00] anything. I was just like a wanderer.
I thought that I was a poet. Now that I look back on myself seven years later, I'm not, I'm not, I'm poetic. I'm not a poet. Okay.
And then I started the salons, 2018. Inspired by the French Enlightenment salons, led by women, that formed the backbone of the Republic of Letters. I wanted create these gathering spaces where adults gathered in the private space of living rooms so they could creatively commune, story, tell and watch performance, or watch some form of the arts.
It was a creative think tank creative storytelling tank, right?
My, oh my God, it was so sublime. I invited people from around New Jersey, whoever could travel, obviously from New York. All kinds of people showed up. So that was in my own living room. And then, the salons also introduced me into a career in the art. I don't call it a career because I wasn't entirely sure that I, I was prototyping, I was experimenting.
I wasn't trying to be a [00:14:00] careerist. Okay. I just wanted to bring people together. I wanted us to be in this cool kind of speakeasy vibe of a living room. Someone's living room. I was trying to stay away from the public eye. I wasn't going to make it all. I wasn't gonna be, it wasn't gonna be a production.
They were beautiful events, but I was very clear in my curation they were going to be unscripted beyond a point. The whole idea was that there was a flow and a prompt and a design. But I wanted people to show up and feel free to be themselves
away from the mask and the spectacle of work and having to pretend to be who we are. And it helped that we mostly were strangers,
Nat Kalbach: I always loved walking my neighborhood. I actually had on my old blog, I had this whole thing from Hamburg.
Like back in Germany and then I brought it to the states and I called it stroll through the hood. I would look at interesting things what can I see that's different now?
Nirupa Umapathy: I wasn't because there was like walks who was walking is for [00:15:00] people that like walks is, walks are for boring people. That was me back then because I was still moving so fast that I couldn't slow down and walk. I'm
serious. I'm not kidding you when I say this. I had to teach myself how to walk. During this time. I would drive to the yoga studio, which 10 minutes, seven minutes away I would drive to the yoga studio. I didn't wanna walk. I
Nat Kalbach: See, that's proof that you're American.
Nirupa Umapathy: No, don't do that to me. Don't, don't American me on this one, man. Now I walk every, come on. No, I walk everywhere now. Like, so now I mapped Jersey City with my feet,
that changed. It took me some time to slow down and walk. I didn't walk through Jersey City, get this in earnest.
I've lived there since 2002. I didn't walk through Jersey City in earnest until 2019.
Nat Kalbach: What?
Nirupa Umapathy: I would walk, I mean, I would walk to the Path Station.
I did my first Camino de Santiago in 2019, and I literally did it because I [00:16:00] hated walking, and I said, I'm gonna learn to love walking. And ever since I did the Camino, I've been walking everywhere. But my natural preference, when I wanna think and when I wanna relax, I drive, literally, I drive on the turnpike in the middle of the night to relax because that brings out something in me that walking doesn't. When I'm walking with, my friend, I have a friend who we do office hours. When Mark and I are doing office hours, I love it because I love the conversation, I love everything about it. But you know what it is that I don't like about walking? I think I'm, my brain is like moving at a speed where only driving helps me. If I were a runner, I think I would be running all around Jersey City, but I'm not a runner.
Does that make sense to you? I'm a fa fast walker, but my, walking body is not able to keep up with my brain.
Nat Kalbach: I actually think it's the opposite for me that it, the walking slows my fast brain down and that's awesome.
So you write [00:17:00] nonfiction and you mentioned that you also write your memoir right now and has a focus on. Trauma, burnout and post-traumatic growth. Does Jersey City show up in your writing at all?
Nirupa Umapathy: Oh, I mean like, oh God, I don't know the way at which I'm writing this memoir, I need to be reborn again, right? In my next lifetime. It may never get done this lifetime, but, um, I'm, I
Nat Kalbach: well, it's a memoir. You're still alive too.
Nirupa Umapathy: I'm writing,
Nat Kalbach: Bad joke. Sorry.
Nirupa Umapathy: fine, uh,
Nat Kalbach: better in German.
Nirupa Umapathy: and it's funny, right? The mental accounting is, the first memoir is on girlhood solidly set in India, in the, in Madras. Mostly it's framed between year five to year 18. Right. So it's the geography of girlhood. It's around India
and it's around South India. The second memoir is the Wall Street Memoir, and that is framed between 22 to [00:18:00] 33 and it's only Wall Street, like
meaning when I say Wall Street, it's not Wall Street. Wall Street is like downtown Manhattan. When we talk Wall Street and Finance, we are talking the collection of investment banks that the major wall bracket investment banks. So I suppose mine will be based around, um, three United Granite Street, one Bryant Park and perhaps Austin and two 80 Park Avenue.
Nat Kalbach: Well, it's a different country, as
Nirupa Umapathy: it is a country, so the passport, I no longer have the passport to visit. Right. So, and Jersey City, I actually honestly think will be like a closing
chapter for me there because as I said during Wall Street days, Jersey City was not, is invisible. It was very significant. But I didn't spend finite time
Nat Kalbach: Mm-hmm.
Nirupa Umapathy: But if I wrote a third memoir, which captures 2017 to now, it'll be Jersey City and the world, but I'm not writing [00:19:00] that.
Nat Kalbach: Earlier you mentioned that you, , have fallen out of love with Jersey City what are some things that make you, fall out of love with Jersey City and do you think there is a possibility that you would fall in love with Jersey City again?
Nirupa Umapathy: First off, there'll always be an aspect of Jersey City that I'll never fall out love with, which is my people. There are like hundreds of people here that I absolutely love and I mean love. That's my community, right? I'll never fall out of love with my friends, my neighbors. My yoga studio, which no longer is a CL urban side that closed last weekend and I went from my grieving ritual and wept. Uh, see an institution like that shut down
after 13 or 15 years. , Pilates house, little India these things will always hold me close to Jersey City. I'm not going to miss leaving Jersey City as a homeowner. My property taxes are close to $16,000. Nathalie, I live in a two bedroom. It's, I don't think [00:20:00] that affordability is a core value anymore. I have to think twice before I go out and eat a sandwich in Jersey City.
I can go to New York and get, still, get an $8 sandwich, right? Because New York, even within that short, small confines of that space, that island has such a diversity that we don't have, we never were meant to be Manhattan, right? So you don't have the diversity of the $9 sandwich anymore. . I've concluded that I have to give up my love affair, but not just Jersey City.
My apartment now, I have lived in since 2002. If I was in love with Jersey City, my apartment is, it is higher up in the stack of love. Like it is, like number one. It is the thing that has held me through a divorce. The thing that has held me through job loss or like a recession. It is the thing that has held me through debts in the family in India.
Like it's my first sanctuary actually inside Jersey City. And I've had to like grieve for five years. I've been thinking about leaving Jersey for five years and I've finally, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go. I'm [00:21:00] still grieving, I'm still driving around Jersey City right now in the morning, early in the morning , suddenly just like bawling loudly and I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
You know, it's because I'm grieving. I'm grieving because I'm letting go and I'm grieving things that I don't wanna let go. And there's some deep loss there. It is what it is. You know, I'm not gonna be able to make this work financially
and I can afford to make it work if I want to. Okay. I can't, but it just doesn't make sense.
Nat Kalbach: So would you reframe it? You're not falling out of love with Jersey City. You fall out of love with living in a city or with New Jersey.
Nirupa Umapathy: I would say that I'm falling out of love with the circumstances of what it means to love in Jersey City.
Nat Kalbach: There's something interesting about the way, how. You were for many years, you were just part of the bedside community. And I do actually think that that is another new problem that we have, especially downtown around [00:22:00] Newport on Marin Boulevard and whatever, there are these new high risers and I think around the powerhouse district, there's like 10,000 new people, and I talked with some of them. I met some of them. When I said, do you walk the neighborhood? They were saying yes, but they were like you. They walk from their home to the Path station. Yes. So my question is, you started to fall in love with the place, and it might not be possible anymore because you say things that made you fall in love are, not there anymore.
But what would you tell a person who just moved to Jersey City, how they should go about to fall in love with Jersey City and learn more about let's put the financial parts aside. What do we do with those 10,000 people that basically, maybe right now don't give a shit because they just [00:23:00] sleep here.
Nirupa Umapathy: Yeah. I was one of them, right? I was so detached. I didn't go to a local neighborhood association meeting, the Historic Paulus Hook Association meeting until a few years ago. Can you believe that? And my neighbor was the president of the HPHA at one point. Like I just was so disconnected.
So like, to answer your question, you came for the community history project that Stephanie Daniels and I did. So there were lots of people that were new to the neighborhood when we did that walking tour for kids. And when you had that booth set up, uh, at the corner of the Paulus Hook Park, there were so many new people that had moved in that were walking around with their kids.
And there were even like people without kids that stopped by and said. How can we do, where are these walking tours? Can we do more of these? Right. And John Gomez was there and I'm sure he heard all of this and Stephanie was there and I was there. It was music to our years. So to answer your question, I think some of these people actually already are [00:24:00] looking for this.
They are hungry for this. But there seems to be no sort of consolidated way in which it can just be like Jersey City. This is what's happening in Jersey. Like, you know what I mean? Like a giant digital bulletin board for Jersey City, let's say, where I can just do control f walking tours and then suddenly, boom, John
Gomez walking power perhaps last weekend comes up.
Or artists that meeting at GI gelato is coming up like, meaning like a very consolidated internet, tech enabled way of just looking. I think this is a very intimidating place for newcomers. I'm not saying that we are trying to be in intimidating and unwelcoming. I just think it's very fragmented. Which is fine, right? Like I'm not, again, Jersey City has never been so big that it, like if you look at NYC meetups, there's like a hundred thousand meetups . How many Jersey City meetups do we have on Meetup as an example, right? You have the
Jersey, you have like a few. So like how would you as a newcomer come in and be like, I want, if I just like type in a chat GPT and now maybe the [00:25:00] query is how do I get to know Jersey City?
I'm new. Maybe there will be like a menu of of items that comes up. But if they wanted a human version of how do you get to know Jersey City, this is where I would start. Let's pretend that you are new to Jersey City. I would say start with your local neighborhood association first. And start attending their meetings and meet your neighbors.
That's one.
That's a simple one. Most neighborhood associations are probably running like monthly meetings because the HPHA runs a monthly meeting. The second I would say if you're a religious, obviously you're already going to your local church. I
get that. So you're doing the local church or the local mosque or the local temple. But I would say, uh, the third thing is I would say Liberty State Park. Obviously. Like it's the crown jewel. Right. And especially during summer when you go to Liberty State Park, you see the wealth of Jersey City Diversity come together, families barbecuing. Then you have families like walking. So like go and see Jersey City as it's flowering, Liberty State Park as this giant open space. And I'm [00:26:00] sure Lincoln Park is the same. Okay. I don't hang out in Lincoln Park. I'm sure Van, I mean Van Vorst Park, one of my favorite parks in Jersey
Nat Kalbach: Yeah.
Nirupa Umapathy: Go to the bulletin board. Go and look there for like group meetup events or like things that are happening that are interesting.
So that is number three. Support your local arts organization. Go for a play at Nimbus. Go for Mana Open Studios,
right? Like, so that will be number four. This is what I normally do when I go to a new place. I look for my haircut, right? Obviously I look for my studio, yoga studio, Pilates studio, whatever you want to call it. So whatever it is for you, if you were getting your haircuts in Manhattan, make an attempt to support a local
business and find your local hairstylist. Eventually go on next door and ask people for recommendations, you know, for things like that. Because I can imagine that it must be so intimidating to move to this city that looks like so small, but it's still, it's like it's [00:27:00] got its thing, but it's not, its clicks, but it's got, its like pockets, right?
How do you break into it? And the other thing is obviously like how do people find out about. Uh, landmarks. How do you find out about the Museum of Jersey City History? How do you find out about JCTC? Unless you're walking around and you like come into the brick and mortar, how do you find these spaces? I don't know.
Is there like a collated list of all the arts establishments now? Maybe that's an idea for the mayor
Nat Kalbach: Yeah, it is a, it is a real problem. That's where we're touching on something that, I've talked with other people about it, like where people just don't know. They move in they don't know that there is a neighborhood association. They don't know that there are galleries.
They don't know that there, artist studios we also don't have a paper anymore. But there's definitely something that could be done we don't need to compete with Manhattan because Manhattan's, Manhattan. We have our own thing. And how do we get people to just realize that there's a [00:28:00] community that they can participate in and that will make them fall in love with their city.
So, Nirupa. Here's my question. My last one, my signature question. If you could spend an afternoon with anyone from Jersey City's past or from Paulus Hook's past, which corner would you choose as your meeting spot and which one question would you ask them?
Nirupa Umapathy: I would wanna meet Light Horse Harry.
Nat Kalbach: Oh.
Nirupa Umapathy: I would obviously meet at the corner of Light Horse Tavern. Where else would I meet him? And asked him how he with a ragtag band of troops, managed to overturn the Brits. Was that part of deliberate strategy? Because myth has it that you guys got lost and wandered and then like somehow accidentally won this battle of Paulus hook. So I'd wanna know blow by blow what happened that day.
Nat Kalbach: So [00:29:00] basically like was that like just luck or did you guys plan that out?
Nirupa Umapathy: Actually plan it. Like, yeah, tell me the real scoop. I want the
real scoop. And if for your real scoop, I'll buy you a beer. We can sit the bar of the Light Horse Tavern. Let's travel back in time.
Nat Kalbach: I love that. That's a great one. That's
fun. I wanna be there too. I'm, I'm gonna buy one too. A pint.
Nirupa Umapathy: yeah. You can buy one and just, you know what? Hit record on your phone so we can actually play it back in a future podcast.
Nat Kalbach: I love that. That's a great idea. This was such a great conversation. Thank you so much, Nirupa
Nirupa Umapathy: This was wonderful. Talking to you always makes me feel like I've gone around the world and back. But thank you for bringing me back to my first second Love. My first love is my apartment. Second love jersey City
Nat Kalbach: Nirupa Umapathy may be leaving Jersey City. I still hope she doesn't, but she knows it. She's grieving it. She's driving around in the early mornings, [00:30:00] crying, a little letting go. But even in the leaving, she's thinking about the people who are arriving. The 10,000 new neighbors who don't know yet that Van Vorst Park has a bulletin board. Or that there is a place called Little India Or that you can walk every street in the heights if you give yourself a whole winter. that gap between sleeping somewhere and loving it Is something that NI Rupa figured out slowly Over years . through a stoop conversation and a poetry group, And a Saturday morning at Liberty State Park. and she. Alongside me wants to know if we can help the next person find it faster. Find out more about Nirupa In the show notes, and you can find this conversation along with every episode of Nat's sidewalk [00:31:00] stories at natkalbach.com [http://natkalbach.com] our theme music is How You Amaze Me, composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach. Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler and Pat Van Dyke. I am Nat Kalbach. Thanks for walking with me.
