A visual exploration of South Paterson, NJ

January, 2012: The pursuit of the middle eastern spice "sumac" for our dinner recipe found us shopping at a middle eastern market today in South Paterson, New Jersey. This was our first visit to this diverse neighborhood, and we learned that it is populated with Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Turks, and Hispanics. Many of the retail shops and restaurants cater to this community, including Halal meat markets and shop signs in Arabic. We wanted to capture the unique feel of this community and have assembled the photo gallery below.

As we walked up to Main Street, we noticed this empty lot with various geometric shapes on the back of the buildings; the sheet of plywood seemed like a visual band-aid applied to hold the 2 buildings together.

geometric shapes found in architectural landscape in Paterson NJ

In the Main Street stores, we noticed a proliferation of 3-D depictions of the Last Supper. While regular paintings of the Last Supper are a common icon, it was the fact that these were all done in 3-D (and available in multiple stores) that caught our attention. 2 examples are shown below, with detail views from each below the full versions.

3D depictions of the Last Supper in Paterson NJ

We're not sure who these three guys are, below left; they were in a restaurant's store window. The "crazy talk" guy, below right, was an ad in the window for a store selling cell phones.

faces seen in store windows in Paterson NJ

Two religious shrines in the street front windows of an apartment on Main Street.

religious shrines seen in apartment windows in Paterson NJ

We made a brief visit to the Paterson Library, where we saw King Tut's sarcophagus, held intact with two strips of clear plastic tape, including one band that covered his eyes. At right, we see an odd bare-bottom figure wearing a horse-and-rider hat, peering into a ceramic vase ... what exactly is this supposed to be?

King Tut and a strange ceramic figure in the Paterson NJ Library

I guess it wouldn't be an American city if it didn't have some examples of American pop culture ... one shuttered up storefront revealed these depictions of Sponge Bob Squarepants and Mickey Mouse from under their pull-down gates.

Sponge Bob and Mickey Mouse in Paterson NJ

Last but not least, a couple of storefront images: at left, an architectural image in the front of a shut-down restaurant, and at right, the front door for one of the many local "hookah" cafés, which are considered a common social gathering place in an Arab community.

storefront windows in Paterson NJ