Randal Hunting

January 6, 2004

I and my wife moved to Hoboken from New York City a couple years ago. It is now a lovely, yuppified bedroom community just about to get its first Wolfgang Puck restaurant — miles away from the grimy, poor, but probably much more interesting community you moved to in (was it 1969)?

I once heard you on NPR telling your funny story about moving to an apartment over a bar in Hoboken. I am very curious — where did you live? As the second most famous person to live in Hoboken (and the only one so far to write a book with the word Hoboken in the title) I would like to be able to point out your historic domicile to tourists staying on our yuppie sectional convertible couch.

By the way I have been compiling a stack of other Hoboken trivia if you are interested. For example, did you know that Frederick Douglas used to meet his longtime mistress in Hoboken? Or that Hetty Green, the infamous “witch of Wall Street” used to live on Washington street?

It was 1966. I first lived at Hudson Street near 2nd, now torn down, and later owned 22 Hudson Place. I knew about Hetty Green, but not about Frederick Douglas's mistress. Stephen Foster lived in Hoboken. Gugliermo Marconi lived in Hoboken. Willem deKooning lived in Hoboken. Hans Hoffman lived in Hoboken. The guys who wrote ""Hair"" lived in Hoboken. The leader of the Hari Krishna movement lived in Hoboken. The inventor of the zipper lived in Hoboken. Charles Dickens lived in, or visited, Hoboken. Napoleon the Third lived in Hoboken for a year. Alexander Calder lived in Hoboken when he went to Stevens Tech. And Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr used to visit Hoboken, and went across the town line to Weehawken to have their duel. So, I am not the second most famous.