After a bizarre couple of weeks, our latest poll (“What’s your favorite restaurant in Rahway”) is complete.
Tag Archives: polls
New poll: What’s your favorite restaurant?
It’s been quite some time since our last blog poll, so here’s one that everyone should enjoy. Next time you’re looking for places to eat in Rahway, just check back here, and feel free to use the comments section below after visits to any of these places.
What’s your favorite restaurant in Rahway?
We’ve done polls on your favorite pizza, favorite burger, favorite bar, but with several “Best of” restaurant stories lately, it occurred to me that while we’ve polled readers about the types of restaurants they’d like to see in Rahway, we’ve never blogged about their favorite existing restaurants.
We’ll have the usuals like Luciano’s, The Waiting Room and Cubanu, and others outside of downtown, like Beana’s but since I hate to leave out any establishments, we’re open to suggestions on what places to list in the poll — either post in the comments below or send me an email [rahwayrising(at)gmail.com].
For this poll, we’ll stick to the larger, sit-down places and leave the smaller eateries and takeout joints for another, separate poll. Either way, it gives us something to do during the slow summer months, like while I’m on vacation.
I’ll give you a few days to come up with some ideas and suggestions and post a new poll by next week.
Pizza and coffee
Some lighter fare today for your weekend reading. We talk about pizza aplenty here; maybe it’s rubbing off on others. At the risk of turning this into a pizza blog, there’s been a couple of pizza-related items in the past month.
Concerts the clear choice for arts center
So judging by the most recent blog poll, y’all want concerts at the Union County Performing Arts Center (UCPAC).
The question becomes what kinds of concerts are you most interested in? Obviously, UCPAC has plenty of concerts throughout the season, but what kinds of concerts would you prefer? There’s also the question of what two voters consider to be “other.” Magic shows?
With now more than 250 readers subscribing by email and the average number of daily visitors creeping toward 200, I thought for sure we’d hit triple digits on the number of votes. After posting it, I realized I could’ve been a little more creative and added more options. I blame myself mostly; I just copied what we used in the last UCPAC poll. We could have added some other offerings, like kids’ shows or dance, for instance.
“What would you like to see at the Union County Performing Arts Center?”
Concerts, 43 percent (22/51 votes)
Comedy, 23 percent (12/51)
Movies, 19 percent (10/51)
Plays/Musicals, 9 percent (5/51)
Other, 4 percent (2/51)
Results weren’t radically different from when we asked this poll question two years ago, but for about twice as many votes and a more decisive margin for concerts.
Green building plan meeting next week
A special joint Planning Board and Environmental Commission meeting will be Wednesday, Jan. 20 at 6:30 p.m. in the second-floor meeting room of the Public Library, 2 City Hall Plaza.
The city aims to adopt a new chapter of its master plan, Green Building and Environmental Sustainability Plan, and seeks questions, feedback and involvement. The city has been promoting “green building practices in addition to conducting an energy audit of all its public buildings.”
***
The Star-Ledger‘s Munchmobile Pizza Patrol took another swing through Union County recently. Brooklyn Pizza on Race Street was among the pizzerias to which they paid a visit, however, they didn’t sound too impressed, according to this report posted last week:
“‘Best pizza in New Jersey,’ proclaims Brooklyn Pizza. Maybe it should start with trying to be the best pizza in Rahway. The crust should return to crust school, and the cheese tasted low-grade. The white pie is instantly forgettable.”
Agree? Disagree? Brooklyn Pizza was a newcomer at the time of our Best Pizza poll almost a year ago, but managed a decent, middle-of-the-pack finish.
Rahway Rising enters the Terrible Twos
Rahway Rising is a lovable toddler today. Two years ago I launched this blog to get some of the information in my head out to the public, hopefully informing our community about what’s going on in their neighborhoods.
For a look at our first year, here’s a blog post from Nov. 1, 2008. We now have about 230 subscribers by email,which fluctuates from 225 to 250 regularly. About 150 visitors come to the site daily, some days breaking 200. We cracked 300 visitors in one day for the first time last month, just after a post about foreclosures beginning at Riverwalk.
Here are some stats from our first two years in existence, according to Google Analytics:
20,408 visitors
73,709 visits (42% direct visits to the site)
127,542 page views
1.73 pages/visit
71.9% bounce rate
1:56 average time on site
27.75% new visits
Some other tidbits from Google Analytics: As far as keyword searches, the top five are all related to Rahway Rising (16%), rahway blog, or rahwayrising.com, although coming in fourth was “rahway new jersey skyview condos for sale”. Also in the top 10 of keywords searches were Brooklyn Pizza, rahway nj skyview, nancy’s townhouse rahway, and cubanu restaurant rahway.
Food/restaurant-related blog posts, regardless of how old, continue to be among the most widely viewed. Here are the top five posts since we began tracking:
1. On Tap for 2008: Park Square, Sky View, 1,747 page views
2. Cubanu: A review, 1,284
3. Luciano’s set to open, 893
4. Pizza pizza, 866
5. Brooklyn Pizza coming to Rahway, 642
Surprisingly, all those posts are from 2008 yet still garnered the most page views. Among the most viewed posts of 2009 are Carriage City violating redevelopment agreement (428 page views), Carriage City declared in default of agreement (353), Return of White Castle in the works (347).
In our second year, we’ve ventured onto Twitter and Facebook, with about 40 followers and 75 fans and friends, respectively. We’ve also started Google AdWords, and as you can imagine, I’m already planning my retirement.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, hard to believe another year of blogging has gone by, and we still haven’t organized an official Rahway Rising happy hour, despite the urging from some readers. Well, let’s change that. Pick a night that’s best for you and vote in the poll. Let’s try to set a date before the holidays get into full swing (We’ll also take suggestions on where to have it). Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to make it to The Taste this year — which is always fun for meeting up with readers — so now we must have a happy hour.
I often write “We” when referring to the blog. Although I’m the only writer, there’s a cadre of people I turn to for their opinions on potential blog posts, coverage and general advice. To them, I say thank you for putting up with me and always being willing to listen to my rambling and brainstorming. When I use the term “We,” I’m also referring in a sense to our readers, who often email their tips and observations or comment on blog posts. Thanks to all who have taken the time to read the posts and comment, whether anonymously or not. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep this up, but hearing from you at least makes it seem a worthwhile endeavor. Thanks everybody.
Pizza Patrol peruses pies in Rahway
Nothing about foreclosures or DEP brownfield sites today, just a quick fun Friday post.
The Star-Ledger Munchmobile’s Pizza Patrol recently visited Rahway, among other Union County sites. Of course, Nancy’s Townehouse got raves for its thin crust, as well as their sausage pie. Meanwhile, across town at Papa Vito, they weren’t thrilled with the plain slice, ranking it among the bottom five, but loved the lasagna slice.
It reminded me of our semi-annual/semi-random pizza poll. Take a look at our results from February and the year before that, when we were just getting started.