07030 Hoboken Magazine | Spring 2023

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Volume 12 • Number 1

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CONTRIBUTERS:

MAXIM RYAZANSKY is a photographer whose work has been exhibited in galleries and published worldwide. A recent transplant to Bayonne, he spends his spare time trying to figure out the best pizza place in town.

TARA RYAZANSKY is a writer who moved from Brooklyn to Bayonne. She works as a blogger for Nameberry.com and spends her spare time fixing up her new (to her) 100-year-old home.

LAYOUT/DESIGN

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Dr. Lillian P. Streit, VMD | Dr. Richard L. Reed, DVM

This mom is demanding action

Story by Tara Ryazansky

Photos by Emily Jabbour

It was when Emily Jabbour was forced into playing the quiet game that she realized it was time for her to speak up.

“My daughters both go to Brandt. It’s an elementary school on 9th Street,” Jabbour says. It was 2016. Jabbour was visiting the school as a parent volunteer. It was years before she took on her current role as president of the Hoboken City Council. “I happened to be in to help out with a class project, and I wasn’t with my daughter. I was with another class at the time when an active shooter drill happened.”

Jabbour was in a pre-k classroom when the drill started.

“It didn’t occur to me that the active shooter drills started at that age. I ended up doing a shelter-in-place exercise with this classroom of little kiddos. They were so little that the teacher kept saying, ‘It’s the quiet game. We play the quiet game.’ We all kind of huddled in the corner together, and the principal had to rattle on the doorknob to stage it as though someone was trying to get into the classroom, and then everybody had to be extra quiet. They framed it as a game. That was the thing that absolutely broke me.”

It wasn’t the first time that Jabbour had considered standing up against gun violence.

“When I was a senior in high school, Columbine happened. I have this very vivid

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memory of the experience of understanding what had happened in Colorado. I grew up in a suburban area of Massachusetts, and I remember thinking that it looked like where I went to high school. Then, fast forward to when Sandy Hook happened, and my first daughter was little. She had just been born, and I was so struck. I think that everybody was devastated to see how that transpired and how little the kids were,” Jabbour says it was around that time that she started following Moms Demand Action. She had contacted the organization and considered volunteering, but life got in the way. “I was dealing with raising little kids, and then the Pulse nightclub shooting happened. That was sort of a different facet of it because it specifically targeted a nightclub frequented by the gay, transgender or queer community, so it was a hate crime. At what point are we going to see these things and not let vulnerable populations continue to be targeted.”

“All of those other things lead up to it, but watching that drill and being a part of it made me say, ‘OK, I’ve had quite enough now.’ We’re at the point where we’re asking 3- and 4-year-olds to huddle

in classrooms for the sake of kowtowing to a culture that allows guns to run rampant. That’s enough,” Jabbour says. That was the day she followed up on an email that was sitting in her inbox for a while. She agreed to start the Hudson County chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

The first meeting took place in the back room of Hudson Tavern. “We had our assemblywoman come out. The chief of police came. I was like, ‘I don’t really know what to do, I don’t really know what this looks like, but I know we have to prevent this from ever happening here,’ ” Jabbour says. Jabbour was shocked when she saw the data about gun ownership in Hoboken. “There was, on average at that time in around 2015, around 200 permits per year. I guess I had this picture in my mind that we live in an urban environment, but we’re in a Democratic area of the state, and guns really proliferate in a more conservative area, in Pennsylvania, maybe, where people are hunting. It didn’t really hit me that this would be the case in this community,” Jabbour says. “I started sharing this information with other people. I started going to community meetings. There was Coffee with a Cop every quarter, and I started going, and I would wear my red Moms Demand Action shirt, and I would say, ‘I’m here to talk about this issue and share what I know and figure out how we can put a focus on this in the community.’ People were very supportive of this topic. Other parents felt similarly to how I felt about it when we talked about active shooter drills.”

Then, Gov. Phil Murphy took office. Jabbour says, “He put a very high level of priority on this topic. All of a sudden, there are all of these bills moving through the New Jersey State Legislature. So we were calling our legislators and advocating for these bills. Over time New Jersey’s gun laws have become stronger and stronger in this landscape because Gov. Murphy has made that a priority, but it also speaks to all of the volunteer support.”

Jabbour, along with Moms Demand Action and her co-leader, Amy Faucher also created change locally.

“I met with the police department, and now everyone issued a gun permit in Hoboken will receive materials from the Be Smart Initiative. Be Smart For Kids is all about safe storage of your weapons and making sure that children aren’t exposed to irresponsible behaviors, all in the name of preventing these completely preventable deaths that you hear about where a kid brings a gun to school in a backpack or is playing with it thinking it’s a toy when it’s loaded because there wasn’t proper storage,” Jabbour says. “I’m really proud that Hoboken has been supportive of that. They have the information available on their website. They hand out free gun locks that we fundraised for and donated. Those are small things, but they make a big difference over time.”

Anyone interested in getting involved can find information via the Moms Demand Action app or by texting JOIN to 64433.

“When I went from being in the Moms Demand Action universe to then running for office, I, in some ways, was a little bit ahead of something that came later, which is when Moms created something called Demand A Seat. Basically, if our legislators aren’t supportive of our policies, then we should demand a seat at the table. Now, there’s a vigorous training program for moms who are Moms Demand Action volunteers who want to take that next step and get involved politically,” Jabbour says.

Jabbour was driven to run for office before the Demand A Seat program was there to encourage her because she says she’s always been civic-minded.

“My dad, who is now 86, was there when I was sworn in as council president. He was like, ‘I remember when you were in fifth grade, and you ran as class representative for your student council. This is just another chapter in how you have always been wired, Emily,’ ” Jabbour says with a laugh. It sounds like she’s been using her voice for a long time. — 07030

THE FINEST IN FASHION LINGERIE

Story by Tara Ryazansky

Photos by Maxim Ryazansky

The last time I saw Victoria Alario was when I was touring her Hoboken home for a previous issue of this magazine. At that time, she told me all about her new apartment and her exciting podcasting career. At the end of our chat, she mentioned that a fashion line might be on the horizon.

Now, Vicsen the Label is here. Alario launched the brand this fall. The six-piece collection of lingerie, which can also be worn as clothing or layering pieces, matches well with her interior decor style. Each item has a romantic, Parisian vibe.

“This was all designed with European inspo in mind,” she says, adding that the fabrics are sourced from Europe as well. “I’ve always had a designer type of mind when it comes to my own space, but I had never necessarily designed when it comes to products or pieces. I’m more of a stylist or a decorator. With Vicsen the Label, I already had the vision long before I had a manufacturer. I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I was going to create. It’s what I’m like with everything else. As soon as I found this apartment, I had the vision for how the rooms would be set up before I even signed my lease. It was the same as I was with that. Before I had the manufacturers to create it, I had sketches of everything. It definitely came naturally, but it’s still a long process of getting samples and going back and forth, making tweaks. Everything had to wait until the pieces were perfected.”

Alario shows off her favorite part of the collection. “The corset, I love to wear as a top,” she says. “That would be my favorite piece

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FASHION LINGERIE 07030

from page 10

because it’s very detailed, and it’s very dainty and delicate.”

The corset is beautiful, but wearing it as a stand-alone top would take confidence. For Alario, her own confidence is what helped her build her career, and the topic of confidence is a big part of what her career is centered around.

“For Vicsen the Label, our saying is, ‘Confidence is the new black,’ and we’re in every confident woman’s closet. I have For The Girls, which is my podcast about confidence,” Alario explains. “It’s all under the same umbrella brand where everything is about building confidence for women.”

Other items in the collection include a bra and brief set, a playsuit and a bodysuit that Alario says is her bestseller. “The bodysuit is definitely being worn as a top. It’s very, very form-fitting. It’s full coverage. There’s little bits of mesh, so you see a little bit through. It will suck you in and sculpt. You can enhance your curves in a way because it’s very form-fitting and very flattering. Everyone who wears that loves how they look in it.”

The playsuit can also be worn as a bodysuit, but it’s less form-fitting and more silky and ruffled.

Alario says she has gotten great feedback from her customers.

“They’re always tagging me in their pictures,” she says, adding that she’s also received positive messages on social media. The best compliment of all might just be watching customers come back for more. “I’ve had customers buy all six pieces. It might sound like only six pieces, but that is a lot because if you think about it, that person bought the entire brand, the entire collection, so not many people can say that they have bought every single product from a brand. I do have a small collection, but I would say that my clients who are buying it are very impressed and very surprised by how they feel in it, and they keep shopping the whole thing.”

Alario knows that the underwear as outerwear look isn’t for everyone.

“If you are not confident, whether it’s external or internal, you just don’t really dress how you truly want to dress. You might be the type of person who throws on a t-shirt and jeans because you would rather hide than stand out. Then the collection might be something that

you only wear at home, which is perfectly fine because you can wear these pieces however you choose,” she says. “If you’re not someone who wants to be complimented on your outfits or really stand out in the way that you’re dressed, then you’re not going to be walking around in a corset by Vicsen the Label, I’m sure. That’s perfectly fine because not everything is for everyone. It’s an acquired style in a sense. Not everyone is going to rock it.”

If you’re trying to build your confidence, Alario can help with that, too.

“I’m about to launch a group confidence coaching program. Right now, I exclusively do one-on-one coaching, but in the next month, I’ll be launching a group coaching program,” Alario says, adding that she recently hosted a boxing meetup for her For The Girls listeners at Project Sculpt in Jersey City. “I’ve been really into group things and building community.”

Vicsen the Label is mostly a one-woman show. “It’s as small of a small business as

you can imagine,” Alario says, adding that her cousin, Camille Galiano, is the brand developer for the line and provides crucial help. “I’m at the post office on 14th Street every day. I couldn’t be more hands-on.”

As items from Vicsen the Label sell out, Alario is deciding on her next move. “When this collection sells, there’s not necessarily going to be a restock of this collection. It’s probably going to be multiple small collections,” she says. “I think of it as specialty collections, so rather than having tons of inventory that lasts forever and selling the same few products over and over, it’s going to be very special collections with a certain specific inspiration behind it. I definitely have some ideas brewing.”

We’re confident that the next collection will be amazing. — 07030

vicsenthelabel.com

@vicsenthelabel on Instagram

@victoria.alario on Instagram and TikTok

A unique way toCreate art

Story by Tara Ryazansky Contributed Photos Jamie Pomeranz

Artist Jamie Pomeranz creates beautiful abstract roses. At first glance, I thought that they were watercolors, but on her Instagram (@devilsmaycare), I see that they are created in a unique way. Pomeranz pours colors on her canvas and makes her flowers with a medium called alcohol ink.

“People often think they are watercolor when they see them,” Pomeranz explains. “But alcohol inks behave very differently. Alcohol inks are the ink refills for professional illustrator markers. I’m basically pouring with Sharpie ink. The inks are alcohol-based where many markers that aren’t permanent would be a water base.”

She says that she uses a type of paper that’s nonporous so that the ink doesn’t absorb into the paper.

“You move the ink around and create the designs, but the alcohol ink dries very quickly. It will dry if you don’t move it, so you have to maintain that fluidity. I can use it on tile, I can use it on glass, anything that’s non-porous,” Pomeranz adds.

Watching the ink colors move around the canvas is mesmerizing. She uses her own breath, sometimes with a straw, or even a hairdryer, to

manipulate the ink into the shapes she wants.

Pomeranz has been a full-time artist for all of her adult life. “For about 10 years I owned a T-shirt brand where I took my photography and silkscreened it onto T-shirts. I would take my photographs and change them in photoshop to be more graphic and I then printed them. I did that as my full-time job and that was like a job and a half.”

She ended her T-shirt line, which was also called Devils May Care, in 2013. “I had my kids, and I put my T-shirt business aside,” Pomeranz says. “In all honesty, I was really burnt out from it and I didn’t want to go back to it.”

After she stopped designing T-shirts, Pomeranz says she didn’t make art for a few years. One night, a friend of hers suggested that they have a “wine and whine” night.

“We were going to drink a bunch of wine and complain to each other,” Pomeranz explains. Her friend brought over some art supplies as well.

“She brought these inks over, and I had never used anything like them before. I was just completely addicted immediately. I went out and bought some the next day,” Pomeranz says. “You can actually see the first piece of this entire journey on Instagram because I just thought that it would be funny and nice for my own record to put it up there to see my own progression. It’s there if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of my Instagram.”

Pomeranz continued to post her art on Instagram. “I thought, ‘You never know what might happen.’ Maybe I would get some free art supplies or something. That was around four years ago now.”

Since then, Pomeranz has grown her artwork into a business. “I have been really fortunate to make friends all over the world through Instagram. It’s created a lot of opportunities for me. I was paid to create content for Michael’s. I recently got to work with Legion Paper, which has been my preferred paper brand for 20 years. I got to teach at Princeton University,” her art has also been licensed. “I’m in Target, that’s pretty cool. I’m in some major retailers like Wayfair and Nordstrom Rack.”

But perhaps the biggest success that Pomeranz has had with alcohol inks has been finding her way back to art on that wine and whine night.

“I think it’s really important that parents realize that they’re still people. They still need to have their own things going on. Our lives rotate around our children, but I like the metaphor that you need to put your own oxygen mask on for yourself before you can take care of other people. I think that as mothers we tend to forget that we need things for ourselves. We need to prioritize ourselves and step out of that space so that when we return, we can be better parents,” she says. “I decided I really needed to take some time back for myself, so I just started doing a little bit every day. I really fell in love with it, and it gave me so much of my sanity back. The thing about fluid art is that you only have so much control over it, so you have to kind of just give yourself over to it. You can get better and learn how to manipulate it, but it won’t necessarily go the way that you planned it because it is a liquid. You can really get into a meditative state watching these colors float around and letting your control go a little bit. I needed that. It’s like a really excellent therapy. I highly recommend it to people.”

Learn more at devilsmaycare.com or @ devilsmaycare on IG — 07030

Hidden away, just past the lobby of the W Hoboken, is a new sushi spot. It has the vibe of a speakeasy, but instead of jazz, they bump ‘90s hip hop and encourage guests to tag a section of the wall. A mural of New Jersey’s own Lauryn Hill and other hip-hop legends decorate the walls of the cozy space.

Sushi by Bou offers an omakase experience, where its sushi chefs guide visitors through a timed, multi-course meal. It’s $60 for a 30-minute, 12-course experience, and $100 for a 60-minute, 17-course omakase.

Sushi by Bou

Story by Tara Ryazansky

Photos by Max Ryazansky

Courtesy of Sushi by Bou

We opted to try the 30-minute reservation.

Before we even got started on our sushi, we settled in with a cocktail. I enjoyed the Yuzu Honey Bee, which was tasty and pretty with pink peppercorns garnishing the top. Chef and owner David Bouhadana says, “We actually partnered with Maker’s Mark to create a Sushi By Bou signature blend to use for this cocktail. We call that blend ‘The Bouprint.’ We created our bourbon to have a short finish so that it doesn’t linger on the palate too long. Sushi has such delicate flavors, and we never want the cocktails we serve with them to be a disservice to the fish; only enhance the individual flavors.”

I make my way to the sushi counter, where our chef begins to prepare our first piece. While doing so, he gives us a little tutorial about the omakase experience. We’re instructed to eat with our hands, though chopsticks are provided. Between each course, we have pickled ginger for a palate cleanser. We also are given a little moistened hand towel called an oshibori so we can wipe off our fingers between each piece of sushi so that the flavors stay as fresh as they can.

“Omakase is a traditional Japanese sushi experience, which translates to, ‘I’ll leave it up to you.’ Our chefs select the finest ingredients and guide you through a timed tasting of some of the highest-quality sushi in the world. Our menu is sustainable and flown in and sourced from all over the world with the majority coming in straight from Japan,” Bouhadana explains. “Our menu is curated by our chefs to be friendly to first-time omakase diners and still complex enough to impress seasoned omakase lovers.”

Our chef keeps the pieces coming. We enjoy yellow tail, lean tuna, spotted prawn and albacore. The chef puts on a real show when he torches a piece of fish. It’s a rich and buttery slice of miso cod with tofu sauce.

Michael Sinensky, the founder of the hospitality group simplevenue, helps explain the appeal. “I love this piece because it’s one that falls towards the middle of the menu. The cod is blowtorched, and the temperature change that the palate feels after having a raw chopped tuna course followed by a raw scallop course is so welcome and balanced,” Simensky says.

Hospitality group simplevenue has Sushi by Bou locations in New York, Chicago and Miami. There is another New Jersey location in Jersey City in Ani Ramen House.

“We love Hoboken and have always had plans to expand the Sushi By Bou brand in New Jersey. Hoboken is a great city and the W’s waterfront location is unparalleled,” says Erika London, the simplevenue CEO and co-founder. “The sophisticated aesthetic of W Hotels truly complements the vibrant energy of Sushi by Bou.”

The sake keeps flowing, and the hip-hop music keeps playing while we finish up our meal. One standout is the Salmon Roe, which I could have happily eaten an entire plate full of. I would say that the only flaw of the omakase experience is that when I would try a really delicious piece, I wanted an entire roll!

Another favorite was the Wagyuni Surf & Turf. “This is a fan favorite,” Simensky says. “The creaminess of the uni acts as a butter over freshly seared wagyu. We call this our Millennial Surf-n-Turf.”

The finale of the meal was delicious as well. It was a sweet and smoky Usagi barbecue eel. I realize that while this is another piece that I wanted a bowl of that would be a one-note meal, and omakase is more like an entire orchestra. Or in this case, a hip-hop song. — 07030

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