New Jersey bids good riddance to black sheep Nets

A good friend lives on Dean Street and has watched with dread as this stadium has gradually risen almost literally on her doorstep.

“The nineteenth-century factories that churned up people and churned out goods and now were unpierceable, airtight tombs. It was Newark that was entombed there, a city that was not going to stir again. The pyramids of Newark: as huge and dark and hideously impermeable as a great dynasty’s burial edifice has every historical right to be.”

Philip Roth’s great novel American Pastoral doesn’t lie. Nor do those episodes of The Sopranos where Tony mourns for the city of his youth. Newark, New Jersey has been struggling for a while now and after this week, it’ll be even more desolate.