Most New Yorkers, upon hearing the name “Wilson, New Jersey”, would think you were talking about a shopping center. About THE shopping center. The same is true of the city’s numerous tributaries throughout Long Island and even the Garden State itself; ‘Main Street at Wilson’ was where you went back-to-school shopping for clothes, celebrated good-grades with your parents generous wallets, or bought your prom/wedding dress. Not that it’s stores were particularly unique (unless size counts), or that any items found there couldn’t just as easily be found at the mall near you. It was, however, that ‘old town feel’ which the ‘Main Street’ offered to it’s record setting annual visitors, this couldn’t be found anywhere else in the Tri-State area, at-least not anymore. “A place where everyone knows your name” was the slogan printed on it’s sign and signs scattered throughout the New Jersey turnpike. Truth is, though, it was unlikely that the kids working at Baskin Robbins or the twenty-something girls at Victoria’s Secret would ever remember your name, but the Center’s decor was friendly-looking enough to make up for that.
The large Mall (which is really all it is) wasn’t actually Wilson’s Main Street– the town didn’t have one, nor was it actually a street. It was a series of walkways, both indoor and outdoor, containing traditional Mall-stores, but with, again, ‘old town’ looking facades, which for the city-dweller or suburbanite was all that was needed.
The story of the ‘Main Street’ construction must cast the town’s then-Mayor, Anthony Caricopa, as it’s hero. Like most Wilson-ites, Anthony had grown up in Brooklyn. When, with wife and newborn, he had made the white-exodus to this small New Jersey farming town (formerly a farming town, anyway), he had been shocked to find that a place with both Grass and Trees didn’t have the Main Street that decades of television had promised him. But after his children had graduated from the local high-school, and after 40,000 other New Yorkers had joined him, and after years of applying the kind of pressure that only New Yorkers know how to apply, the last farmer finally caved in and put up a ‘for sale’ sign. Anthony–with help from more then one NY developer– finally saw the possibility of having his dream realized. His successful campaign for Mayor, based largely on the intoxicating promises of a communal meeting-place that could finally convince residents they’d really left New York–promises which the shopping center now offers to all– had the largest turnout of any election in Wilson’s short history. And, although no picture exists, it is
said
Mayor Caricopa
shed tears during
the ground breaking.it is said Mayor Caricopa shed tears during the ground breaking.
But Anthony wouldn’t live to see his ‘Main Street’s completion. Dying of cancer a year before it’s ribbon cutting, he went to his grave believing he had left behind something of beauty for his children and grand-children, even spent his final lucid days wandering the construction site late at night, looking in awe at the darkened plastic-wrapped ‘Best Buy’ sign which would soon illuminate his town with peace, friendship, and a sense of belonging.
For a brief time, his widow petitioned the NY firm which truly owned the ‘Main Street’ to have it renamed “The Anthony Caricopa Main Street Shopping Center”. This suggestion, presented in a letter to the company’s board of directors, caused it’s CEO to spit his coffee, in laughter, all over the new expensive table which occupied his Upper West-Side high-rise. Needless to say, the developer’s decided against the name change and we are left with ‘The Main Street at Wilson”.
But whatever it’s name, the warmth and humanity that the shopping center sells has put Wilson on the map and for most of the East Coast’s middle-class has become the day trip of ‘day-trip’s, the outing of ‘outing’s, the one place where the family can come together for the day and be with each-other, free from fear and concern, where they can believe that all human beings are basically good and can smile and wave at people they don’t even know.
And where they can shop.
Have you considered Subscribing to all of this madness?
