The Shops at Mary's Grave

Remembering New Jersey's U.S. 1 Flea Market

A lone tombstone stands in the middle of the former flea market parking lot on U.S. Route 1 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

It’s a multiplex movie theater now, but that grave’s been out there for as long as I can remember. Its headstone protrudes from the pavement like an ejected cassette and over the years, they’ve erected all sorts of situations to preserve and protect the burial site.

Described as a “fierce feminist”, Mary Ellis was a New Brunswick land owner who died in 1828 and wanted to spend eternity on her property, overlooking the Raritan River. Before the end of the 1800s, two more relatives would be interred, with Mary, on the land that eventually became an amusement park, a department store, a flea market, and now, a multiplex cinema complex.

As a youth, during the land’s tenure as the U.S. 1 Flea Market, I would often go to great lengths to get over to that side of the bridge, over to Mary’s land, with enough cash to enjoy myself for the afternoon or evening.

On occasion, in order to do so, my friends and I would acquire poorly secured boxes of fundraiser candy from our grade school’s storage closet. We’d hit the streets and drum up some money via cross-town hand-to-hand sales.

Starting from my apartment building in Edison, we’d work our way towards New Brunswick, hawking our ill-gotten chocolate wares.

We stepped to pedestrians and pitched people coming out of the pizza parlor and Pathmark. We’d ring buzzers and knock on doors, zig-zagging through the residential blocks along Jefferson Boulevard, into Highland Park, and over the Goodkind Bridge.

We did alright.

People believed us because we weren’t lying.

We really were from the school we said. The fundraiser really was set up to benefit the church youth group or band or whatever. Thing was, we were just gonna go right ahead and keep that money for ourselves.

Seventh grade activists, on some level, we knew that money would serve a greater purpose by serving my friends and I some cultural comforts. We knew that we were the better cause. We knew that money did way more good in this world, going towards buying us records, cassingles, butterfly knives, and malt liquor.

Serves them right for trying to child-labor us into lining their pockets with the profits of off-brand candy sales. Not to mention, all of that money was probably headed into the gargantuan legal funds set up for the defense of prolific, systemic child abusers.

Better we spent it on Ron G. tapes and beef patties, bidis and Tahitian Treat.

To this day, I never get mad at the kids outside, selling candy or what have you.

Everybody’s going through something you could never imagine.

You included.

Upon reaching the south side of the Goodkind Bridge, we’d step through the fence, across the parking lot, and towards the flea market entrance, observing a solemn moment of silence as we passed Mary’s final home.

It was time to spend our day’s earnings inside the legendary Central Jersey souk.

Perched high atop the New Brunswick landing of the Goodkind Bridge, the U.S. 1 Flea Market occupied the former Great Eastern Department Store building and was home to one billion great, adolescent and teenage memories.

The place closed down around 1996, and the building (approximately the size of a Home Depot-and-a-half) was demolished and turned into a multiplex cinema. The beloved New Jersey institution’s landmark exterior, sign, and facade (shown at the top of this article) are immortalized in (Red Bank native) Kevin Smith’s 1995 film, Mallrats. Smith accurately portrayed the place as seedy, exaggerating the fact with a three-nippled Three’s Company alum fortune teller hustler.

Sounds about right.

The Route 1 Flea Market (as it was sometimes known) was a massive, weekend swap meet, antiques mall, farmers market, and Country Western music performance venue. It was a fragrant, chaotic, and steamy melee of merchandising. The place was only open Fridays through Sundays, except for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when, to my delight, they were open all week long.

The flea market was where you could get anything too cool for the corporate malls, like Menlo or Woodbridge.

The flea market was where you went to buy your gold nameplate, your brass knuckles, and your wheels of steel. It’s where you got your first fake I.D. It’s where I got my first DJ equipment, my first club music records, and my favorite, gray market Voltron set.

It had all the best stuff that a kid that age would be into. It had ninja weapons booths with showcases of throwing stars and nunchucks. There were record stores, sneaker spots, gold front jewelers, mix tape stands, comics and sports card dealers, bootleg movie vendors, army navy surplus, and multiple places to purchase new and used home electronics, car audio, and mobile disc jockey equipment.

One of the music stores was called “Notes-talgia”, as in musical note, a play on “Nostalgia”. Due to the poorly designed logo, hanging in front, my friends and I read it as we saw it, in Italian, pronouncing it “Notes Taglia”.

Related, the front entrance food stalls were the perfect place to order a delicious “Italian Hot Dog”, a “Jersey thing” consisting of two or three grilled hot dogs stuffed into a top-split “pizza bread” roll with smashed steak fries and fried, sweet peppers and onions. The innards get doused with brown mustard and ketchup and it all works perfectly together. It’s an amazing, must-try sandwich, best acquired at one the few, remaining, tried-and-true local destinations that are still doing them properly. The flea market’s always-rammed, entryway food vendors served up pizza, parms, Caribbean fare, comidas criollos, and other “local” delicacies to each weekend’s hordes of hungry shoppers and workers.

Sometime around the release of De La Soul’s second album, their “Empire Strikes Back", De La Soul is Dead, a most mythical culinary offering briefly appeared down one of the hallowed marketplace’s endless aisles.

De La’s classic, sophomore offering was fresh on my mind, and in heavy rotation, at the time. Continuing with producer Prince Paul’s theme of comedic, between-song skits, De La Soul is Dead contained multiple, mysterious mentions of an impending De La-affiliated donut shop. Separately, through gossip and a t-shirt appearance in a fashion spread or two, word had circulated that our favorite Long Island trio might be launching their own clothing line to be named, “Blind Giraffe”.

Let me tell you, I saw it with my own eyes.

I saw the Blind Giraffe.

One weekend at the U.S. 1 Flea Market, to my shock and joy, I stumbled upon the sparsely stocked Blind Giraffe flagship booth-tique. I was speechless. The set-up featured tastefully branded apparel and an earthy, Blue Note sort of feel. There may have been a few items from other brands, like 555 Soul.

It had to have been a weekend where I was broke-ass or hadn’t sold any stolen candy, because there’s no way I wouldn’t have bought every single thing I could, if I had the money. But I missed it. I browsed for a sec but, for circumstances that I cannot recall, had to keep it moving that day. After that one visit, that one weekend, I never saw the booth again.

Now, here’s the part where we’re gonna create some urban folklore.

I have absolutely no idea if they were related, but on that same day, the day I first saw the Blind Giraffe store, a few doors down, a donut shop also appeared (to me) for the first time.

It was one of those mini-donut spots, the ones with the little conveyer belt that drop the dough into the grease, then plop out the cooked dough on the other end for sugaring and bagging. These kinds of mini-donut spots are common in craft fairs and swap meets. Its presence could have been mere coincidence, completely unrelated to De La Soul’s booth, just a few feet away.

But… I tell myself that the donut store had something to do with De La and the Blind Giraffe. I like to daydream / believe that it’s the donut shop we heard advertised on WRMS, the fictional, KISS FM-inspired radio station featured on the skits of De La Soul Is Dead.

Full disclosure, my memory of the day is fuzzy, and it’s not like I went to the U.S. 1 consecutively, every single weekend, but neither booth could have been there long. By my next trip to the flea market, both booths were gone.

Disappeared with the hocus pocus.

In 2020, a rap discussion twitter post had me reflecting on the topic and texting my friend, photographer T. Eric Monroe, who I knew would know more. A New Jersey native and veteran of the hip-hop business, I was positive Eric would be able to shed some additional light on the matter.

I asked him if I was hallucinating.

Monroe confirmed that there was indeed a Blind Giraffe booth at the flea market and that it was managed by De La’s then road manager, Troy McNair. He went on to point out that although every site has the lyrics transcribed incorrectly, McNair is mentioned, a few years later, on Buhloone Mindstate’s “Ego Trippin’ (Part Two)”.

“I got the McNair connection so my import’s [unintelligible]…”

As much as we would have welcomed the enlightened designs of our favorite former hippies from Horror City, Long Island, the flea market was always a Hood Fashion mecca. There were several, custom, airbrush artists and aisles and aisles of apparel boutiques featuring all of the 8 Ball, “Gucci”, and Troop jackets you could ever imagine. We lusted after countless displays of prophylactically cellophaned, Adidas, Nikes, Lottos, Filas, and British Knights. I loved how the place smelled, like sneakers in Saran Wrap and fresh roasted peanuts, fried maduros and pickle barrels and God knows what else.

Of particular interest to my friends and I, was the fact (rumor) that there was a tattoo shop in the way-back, of the building, said to be extremely “relaxed" with their ID-checking practices. With basically zero measures in place to make sure ink recipients were of legal age to receive permanent body modification, many of the young punks would frequent the (alleged) biker gang ink slingers for their work. One local skinhead went there for a tattoo of the comic strip characters, Calvin and Hobbs, wielding baseball bats. He wanted it to say “It’s Clobberin’ Time” above the characters’ heads, an homage to the Sick of it All song of the same name. When the ruffian resurfaced from behind the curtain, he had a crude Calvin and shaky lettering that read, “IT’S CLOBERN TIME”, to this day, one of the hardest tattoos you could ever get. He knew it and was appropriately proud.

I could be making this story up, but I’m pretty sure I’m not.