Street names map out more than the mere physical locations. They often represent a shared history; the aspirations and values of the city’s inhabitants. For a small town to name a street after one of its own is akin to lighting a memorial candle that will last as long as the town stands. Recently, the New Jersey city of Bayonne did just that in honor of Herschel “Hersch” Silverman, a Beat poet, and iconic candy store owner who died in 2015.
At the ceremony was Bayonne’s mayor, James M. Davis, and many of Silverman’s family members and friends. His children, Elaine Teitcher and Jack Silverman, had the honor of unveiling “Hersch’s Bee Hive Way,” where the eponymous candy store once stood.
When I first met Silverman in 2012, he described reading Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” in the late 1950s as a pivotal, life-changing event. He wrote to Ginsberg, inviting him to visit the candy store, and though the visit did not happen for many decades, a lively correspondence—and friendship—emerged. At Ginsberg’s encouragement, Silverman published and performed his work, eventually becoming the recipient of the New Jersey Council of Arts Fellowship in Poetry. I, too, was lucky to have corresponded with Hersch following our initial encounter—a correspondence that was sadly interrupted with his passing in September 2015.
The candy store, which faced the Bayonne High School, offered a great deal more than sweets to the students. As Silverman’s fellow poet and publisher Danny Shot wrote in a Facebook message, Hersch “served as mentor, confidant, father figure, [and] chill spot for generations of Bayonne teens from the fifties to the eighties. Having a street named for him (and Laura) is an honor well deserved.”
Silverman’s friend, poet Steve Dalachinsky and his wife, poet and artist Yuko Otomo, traveled to the unveiling from New York. In an email, Dalachinsky reflected on the experience:
It was a beautiful perfect day for the candy store man to have a street sign unveiled in his honor. [He was a] poet, hip, kosher vegetarian [and] mensch who gave Bayonne as well as New York and the world warm love, vibes, and poetry. [He was] a generous loving, kind, and honest human being who gave way more than he took and who deserves to be honored remembered and cherished.
He will now live on in the hearts of all those schoolchildren, young and old, who he has touched and who will forever be touched by him. Each day as they leave school, if they look up, there Hersch will be smiling down from that corner where he fed so many people’s hearts souls and minds.
Previous: The Candy Store Poet
Click here for access to comments
COMMENTING CHARGES
Daily rate: $2
Monthly rate: $18
Yearly rate: $180
WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT?
Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal fee—less a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place.
I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY.
Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at letters@tabletmag.com. Each week, we’ll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll.
We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.