Waxing Nostalgic

A friend of mine who is also a fellow New Jersey-to-New Mexico transplantee sent me a link to this article, mainly, I think because his dad was rather heavily quoted in it. Which is cool, but, I have to admit, I'm much more affected by the content of the piece.

It seems a beloved fixture of my childhood is about to be torn down.

I'm not sure I can convey in words exactly what this place was like... The Pennsauken Mart was -- and, for the moment, I guess, still is -- a sort of indoor bazaar. The article describes it as an "anti-mall," which sounds just about right to me. It was a dirty, seedy, skanky place, frequented by people with interesting tattoos and bodily piercings and filled with a wide variety of tacky and questionable merchandise. It was wonderful. You could spend hours there just people-watching. You could find the most amazing junk. And there was great food, dirt cheap, including the Mart's famous soft pretzels, which I have to this day never entirely ceased to crave. I used to go with my family all the time as a kid, often just to stroll around for a while and buy pretzels. I loved it.

Man, I really hope they don't bulldoze the place. I don't get back to NJ much, but I'd hate the thought that it wouldn't be there for me to come back to when I do.