Joe Hathaway Positions Himself as Pro-Israel Candidate

Leave a reply

By Yasmin Abrar

Republican Joe Hathaway, a candidate for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, gave a press conference for student journalists at the Princeton Summer Journal on July 29. As the former mayor of Randolph, New Jersey and a political science major at Yale University, Hathaway highlighted issues of affordability and safety as the core of his policies. 

His opponent, Congresswoman Analilia Mejia, was elected in April during a special election. Her policies mainly consist of increasing the minimum wage, universal healthcare and the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Hathaway, who prides himself on being a moderate Republican, previously blasted Mejia on social media for being a “far-left activist.” One topic where he and Mejia differ the most is on Israel and its actions in Palestine, which the United Nations has determined to be a genocide.

Mejia has been critical of Israel and has stated that it is committing war crimes in Gaza, while Hathaway has continuously supported Israel as an ally of the U.S. and told the Princeton Summer Journal that “Israel’s our lone Western ally in the Middle East.”

When asked about balancing Israel’s security within the Middle East and humanitarian concerns in Gaza, Hathaway said, “We can support our allies, we can make sure that they have the tools they need to protect themselves and defend themselves…. We can ensure that humanitarian aid flows, and we can make sure that Israel is able and has the right to defend itself.”

Hathaway explained that the district he is seeking to represent has a large Jewish population; he connected with them after the Hamas attack in 2023, when he was on the Randolph town council.

“There’s nothing that kind of prepares you for something like that, when you’re at the local level,” he said. “I remember very distinctly going over to one of the local synagogues in town, October 9th or 10th, maybe. And just being with the families there. And a lot of folks had families over in Israel that were missing or they weren’t sure,” Hathaway said.

That experience influenced his support for Israel, he explained.

“It’s my job to be here and to be with this community and to be supportive of them, staying with them.”

Joe Hathaway Promises to Maintain Moderate Stance

Leave a reply

By Trinity Falayi

As the MAGA movement becomes dominant in the Republican party, the status quo is to champion Donald Trump’s policies. In one New Jersey district, there’s a moderate Republican candidate willing to stand against his own party. But how far will he go? Can Joe Hathaway maintain his moderate stance? Or is it just a matter of time before he falls in line? 

Hathaway, a Yale graduate and Mayor of Randolph, New Jersey, is running for office in the state’s 11th Congressional district, with just three months left before voters cast their ballots in November. In his race against Democrat Analilia Mejia, Hathaway’s main campaign promise is to increase affordability for New Jersey residents. 

“You can’t afford to buy a house anymore in New Jersey,” said Hathaway in a press conference with the Princeton Summer Journal. “I believe the government needs to make things work smarter and more practical… I think we have an opportunity to do that in this race.” 

When pressed on his willingness to go against the Republican party, Hathaway pointed out that he’s done it before.

“I have a track record of voting against my all-Republican council at the local level when I believe it’s the wrong thing for our constituents,” he said.

Hathaway also opposed President Donald Trump’s attacks on the Gateway Program, which would increase rail capacity between New Jersey and New York. 

“There’ve been plenty of times where I’ve said, ‘This isn’t right for my district,’ and I oppose it,” Hathaway said. “I think one of the biggest examples was the Gateway Tunnel funding… I was one of the first Republicans in Jersey that really pushed back strongly on that.” 

Addressing concerns about data centers, which CBS News reports could increase electricity bills by up to 20 percent, Hathaway emphasized the affordability of alternative energy sources.

“We have to increase our capability when it comes to nuclear [energy]… That’s going to bring down costs immediately,” he said.

Hathaway says his focus on affordability outweighs his total loyalty to the Republican Party, a position that may appeal to voters in his majority-Democratic district. 

“If I come back to NJ-11 and talk about how I was willing to buck my party and buck the president because it wasn’t good for voters here in NJ-11… [The] district is one that has enough voters on all sides of the aisle, where that message will be rewarded,” he said. 

Candidate Joe Hathaway Promises Affordability, Defends ICE

Leave a reply

By Roxanna Rozehee

Republican congressional candidate Joe Hathaway, running in New Jersey’s 11th District, discussed his campaign promises during a press conference with Princeton Summer Journal student journalists on Wednesday. He promised affordability and a practical ideological approach for the district.

Councilman Hathaway is the former mayor of Randolph, New Jersey. He opened the conference with a reflection on his career of over fifteen years in corporate communications and stressed the importance of individuality.

He shared a personal anecdote of experiencing imposter syndrome while attending Yale University, reassuring students not to contrast themselves with others. “Don’t compare yourself to the people around you,” he said. “Compare yourself to yourself, to the best version of yourself.”

Shifting the conversation to the campaign, Hathaway noted that the race has entered a pivotal stage, remarking that Election day is now 100 days away. He argued that voters had sufficient time to evaluate the record of current Democratic Representative Analilia Mejia and contrasted his platform with her initiatives.

Hathaway described himself as a “common sense, practical, independent-minded Republican, someone who served at the local level, knows how government works, [and] also knows how it could work a whole lot better for New Jersey especially.” 

He focused on decreasing the cost of living and throughout the press conference, he repeatedly remarked that affordability is the defining issue facing New Jersey residents, pointing to rising housing prices, education costs and energy bills.

Among his economic proposals, Hathaway stressed decreasing taxes, increasing vocational education, and strengthening domestic manufacturing. Rather than relying on increasing the minimum wage, he believes the government should foster opportunities that allow workers to earn higher-paying careers through increased skills and workforce development.

Hathaway elaborated on his energy policy. He argued that increasing nuclear energy should be central to meeting future electricity demands, specifically as artificial intelligence increases the need for data centers. While acknowledging public concerns regarding new facilities, he stated that properly planned data centers are necessary for maintaining American leadership in AI and that increased energy production would lead to decreased utility costs for New Jersey residents.

Hathaway defended U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while simultaneously advocating for increased oversight through body cameras and improved equipment. He criticized New Jersey’s sanctuary policies, however he supported immigration reform that would provide long-term undocumented immigrants with a pathway to permanent legal status.

Addressing the district’s Democratic majority, Hathaway said his campaign aims to attract moderate voters exasperated with political extremism. “People are tired of extremism across the board. You look to the left, you look to the right, there’s too much extremism. There is only one candidate in this race who’s willing to come to the middle. It’s me, and that’s a message we’re getting down, and I think what we do will be successful.”

Candidate Joe Hathaway Characterizes Opponent As Extremist

Leave a reply

By Greyson McMillian

Joe Hathaway is a self-proclaimed community-focused Republican candidate who is running for Congress in the November midterms after his loss during a special election just over three months ago to Democrat Analilia Mejia — who assumed office in April.

Speaking about his campaign to high school journalists for the Princeton Summer Journal, Hathaway stated that while he and Mejia ran on similar campaign issues — lowering high costs and raising low opportunities — his opponent’s candidacy has focused instead on “ideology, hyperpartisanship, extremism and more of what we’ve come to see as the furthest extremes of her side of the aisle.” 

Further characterizing his opponent as an extremist and someone who does not deliver on her campaign promises, Hathaway criticized Mejia’s vote against the Stop Insider Trading Act and the absence of a vote on the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act. “And that’s just what she’s done in Washington,” he said, followed by the claim that Mejia was “sparking more riots and chaos” during protests this spring at Delaney Hall, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark.

Mejia was invited but unable to attend the Princeton Summer Journal press conference.

Not only did Hathaway heavily criticize Mejia, but he also used these characterizations as a foil for his own campaign, which he claimed was “a path of a new generation of common sense, of practicality, of track record and of government that works well for people at the local level.”

When asked about how he’d sway a majorly Democratic district to vote for him, he said that “people are tired of just extremism across the board. If you look to the left, you look to the right, there’s too much extremism.” 

Hathaway said that he — and not his opponent — was the counter to such extremism. “There is only one candidate in this race who’s willing to come to the middle. It’s me,” he said.

Hathaway also highlighted what he said was a lack of experience on Mejia’s part by contrasting his own surplus of expertise: “I think what our district sees is a choice between someone who’s running on ideology and someone running on practicality, right? Who served as a mayor, who served as a councilman, who has ideas that actually get to the heart of what the main challenges are for us in New Jersey.”

Republican Candidate Joe Hathaway on ICE

Leave a reply

By Aryana Berhane

During a press conference on July 29, Republican Congressional candidate Joe Hathaway addressed his stance on issues including foreign affairs, socialism and his relationship with president Donald Trump. He also explained his position on ICE and law enforcement. 

Hathaway is running in New Jersey’s 11th congressional district. Earlier in the year, during a special election, Hathaway lost to his challenger Analilia Mejia, who has called for ICE to be abolished and replaced. They are now meeting again for another face-off in the midterm election in November.

Under Trump, there has been a significant increase in deportations of immigrants in communities across the country. In January, meanwhile, citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge. Protests have broken out all over the country in response to the deportations and arrests of people. 

Hathaway expressed his support for ICE. “ICE has an important job to do. The vast majority of people in our country and in our state want safe communities. They want people who are committing crimes, to not commit crimes. They want them to be held accountable, and if they’re here illegally, they want them to be removed.” 

Hathaway added, though, that he believes there should be reforms to ICE. “Things like better training, or better equipment, better technology, body-worn cameras, things like that. We should absolutely be bringing those things to the table, so they can do the job of keeping our community safe,” he said. 

When asked about protections for protestors who are being injured at demonstrations, Hathaway stated that New Jersey sanctuary policies — which allow immigrants to report crimes without fearing their immigration status — prohibit local law enforcement from having contact with federal law enforcement. 

“Those laws do more to keep people less safe than they do to keep anybody safe… if we had federal officers able to communicate with local officers, [so] some local officers could know when, where, and how they were going about… making arrests or being in the community, they could do their job and help keep the community safe.”  

The Princeton Lab That Can Read Your Mind

Leave a reply

By Kaden Paz Leyva

The Princeton Social Neuroscience lab is tucked into the basement of the Peretsman Scully Hall.

Inside, the lab has enough space for two people to be scanned at the same time as they talk, argue and laugh about their moments together. On the other side of the room with a computer system, a researcher charts their brain activity over time, searching for the moments when the two minds move together and the moments when they become disconnected.

The intensity of this work is deserving of the lab’s unofficial motto: “Your brain is on my mind.”

The lab studies and specializes in how people understand their own minds and that of others. Their research includes guessing what a friend is thinking and the tension one feels with a stranger. But the researchers themselves say that the lab is not only trying to answer the neurosociological questions of the mind. It’s also trying to make their research reach beyond academia, in language and in papers that people beyond the field may be interested to read. This makes the lab one-of-a-kind. 

The goal of their distinctive work, hyperscanning, lies at the center of the lab. It works by placing two people in the MRI machine simultaneously. There, these two people have a conversation and talk about issues in their relationship. Meanwhile, their brains are being measured mid-conversation. Princeton’s building layout allows researchers to run both MRIs simultaneously.

Graduate student Yeaju Kim said the hyperscanning is what drew her to work on the lab in the first place. “I was interested in human social interaction because I thought that the most human thing we could do was talk to each other,” said Kim. “We have our own language and I think that’s a really unique characteristic of our lives.” Watching two people’s brain’s activity align, she said, reveals things much deeper than physical mimicry. It is the moment of synchronization that goes beyond simply moving or speaking the same way. According to Kim, the lab examines “the way to understand the way you think and how others think.”

The research divides the brain scans into roughly 8,000 tiny 3D units called voxels and compares them across two people to see where brain activity overlaps. When researchers overlap the two scans on a 3D scan, it creates zones using different shades of red. Areas of the brain that appear darker means that the two people share similar patterns in their brains. That’s usually seen more between friends than between strangers. 

The process is slow and exacting. Researchers need around 100 hours of running code with the data before beginning to analyze it. Since the lab’s coding platform is prone to breaking down, those in the lab have to learn code from scratch to be able to continue with analysis. 

Through having to monitor simultaneous MRIs, keeping participants still through the scan and making participants comfortable even though they can not see each other’s faces, it’s an intricate process. Kim still said watching the data come together makes the work rewarding. This gives her a rare and thorough window into how people connect. 

Lab manager Amy Nguyen came to the lab with experience largely in developmental and clinical psychology. Nguyen’s outside perspective has shaped how she will communicate and publish the lab’s findings in a language that will be understandable both to people who aren’t already a genius in the field and to those who are an expert.

Researchers in the lab are careful to note that basic science like this isn’t exactly designed to produce immediate applications in the real world. But Nguyen said the couple’s research could eventually help bring different approaches to relationships.

The willingness to explain and look into a more iterative side of research alongside the big findings of a lab is part of what researchers say sets the lab apart. As Nguyen put it, most people seem to picture a wet lab for dissection when they think of neuroscience, not realizing how much of the work is coding, math and careful design.

As the lab continues to study how two minds can be studied at once, the researchers say the bigger goal hasn’t changed: understanding not just how people think but how they think about each other, and making sure that understanding doesn’t stay locked inside a lab.

Small Businesses Hold Princeton’s Hearts

Leave a reply

By Ximena Garcia

A temple-like wooden structure decorated with fairy lights hangs over neatly placed, color-coded goods: candles, books, bowls and plates. A white cat sits in the center, greeting each customer with a cheeky smile beneath a sign that reads: MIYA TABLE & HOME.

“It’s so pretty,” said Heidi Moon, the owner of Miya Table & Home, pointing out the structure. “We thought that it looked very much like a temple, and the Chinese character for Miya actually means shrine or temple.”

Miya Table & Home is a local business in Princeton, New Jersey, selling Japanese tableware and gifts. After introducing their goods to Princeton with a pop-up shop, Miya Table & Home opened a permanent store in April 2018. Through their struggles, the store remained consistent with what made Princeton fall in love with them in the first place: their authenticity. 

95% of Miya Table & Home’s products are imported from Japan. With the help of an agent, they select the items best catered to their tastes. It is crucial for them to select products based on what they genuinely enjoy instead of what is popular in Japan.   

“I think over the years we’ve kind of developed a certain eye for it and we have a certain aesthetic and we never get anything we don’t like,” Moon said. “We don’t get pressured into getting something that we don’t like just because somebody says it does well.” 

This philosophy extends to other businesses in Princeton. French restaurant Kristine’s prioritizes granting their clients a true taste of French dining. Founding chef Nicolas Démurgé upholds this mission by ensuring that every aspect of the restaurant, especially the menu, adds to the culinary experience. 

“When you open a French restaurant abroad, you know if you have a burger on your menu, you are going to sell more burgers than classic Frenchies. You don’t want to go too much into this direction because at one point you are going to lose your identity,” he said. “At one point, I took off, for example, the burger on the menu because I was selling it way too much. That’s not the experience we want. You can get a burger everywhere.” 

Named after Démurgé’s daughter and mother, Kristine’s opened in November 2019, offering an assortment of French-influenced dishes such as jambalaya. At Kristine’s, prepping these dishes requires the chefs to look beyond the seasonings and craft an impactful moment for the client. 

“Food, it’s about culture more than about skills. It’s about memories. You have awesome dishes from your grandmother, your mom, and your friends. It’s a part of yourself because it’s some strong memories of flavors. And you can remember some flavor forever. It’s so impressive,” said Démurgé. 

JaZams, a toy and book store in Princeton, values nostalgia, too. Customers are greeted by a wall of endless LEGO sets, the fluffy stuffed animals and vibrant assortment of toys. Co-owner Joanne Farrugia smiles wide as she explains the process that goes into choosing the toys they sell. Analogous to Miya Table & Home, Farrugia states that they are intentional with each toy and book they place on their shelves. Their care has continuously rewarded them by placing them ahead of consumer trends, allowing them to serve Princeton with a reliable stock for in-demand products. 

For example, when Sonny Angels gained popularity, other retailers struggled to carry them. This wasn’t the case for JaZams. 

“When it became really, really hot, we had all these great connections with our manufacturers, so that we were able to still carry it,” Farrugia said. “When a new store would come in and say ‘We want that because it’s hot and it’s selling,’ they would be like, ‘No, we don’t have enough.’ So in these cases, that really served us well.” 

Each of these businesses’ efforts to deliver quality goods and experiences to Princeton has undoubtedly won them many fans. The love is reciprocated through community collaboration and engagement. 

Miya Table & Home has hosted events with the Arts Council of Princeton, including a New Year’s social in which the community painted figures that held cultural significance. 

Kristine’s partners with non-profits. They currently have an upcoming event with The Blue Bears Special Meals, a non-profit for individuals with special needs. Supporting local organizations he aligns with is one of Démurgé’s favorite parts of the job.

JaZams has also given back to the community in various ways. Most recently, they celebrated their thirty-year anniversary with the Princeton community by providing a carousel and free carnival games. 

“Our mission is always to make everything accessible, for all families, no matter their economic status,” said Farrugia. “That way, they can come with a whole bunch of kids and they can play.” 

Pank-a-Squith Shows the Never-ending Nature of Suffrage

Leave a reply

By Yaretzi Cobian

Rolling dice and moving pawns as a medium of learning about suffrage may sound unusual, especially if the game has origins from an entirely different country. Yet one such game has found its place in the archives of Princeton University. 

Pank-a-Squith, a table-top board game created in 1909 by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), was named after Emmilene Pankhurst and Herbert Asquith, prominent figures in the suffragist movement in England during the early 1900s. The premise of the game: You do not win until you reach the last square, granting you the right to vote. To achieve this is nearly impossible. Only setbacks are guaranteed.

The WSPU was formed in the early 1900s in England and primarily focused on helping women win the right to vote. The union, solely run by women, created the board game as a fundraiser for their foundation, as well as a means of illustrating the common obstacles suffragists encountered in their fight for voting rights.

The combination of the names Pankhurst and Asquith represent a dichotomy between suffragists and opposing government bodies. Emmilene Pankhurst founded the WSPU in 1903 and played an element in the union and in the British suffrage movement. For his part, Herbert Asquith, England’s Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, was a leader in the anti-suffrage movement. The two were such polar opposites that in 1910, a group of suffragettes attacked Herbert outside the House of Commons. 

The rules of Pank-a-Squith are similar to those of Candyland or Snakes and Ladders: Roll the dice and move across the board accordingly. Pank-a-Squith comes with unique consequences, depicting prejudice in game board illustrations. Each square on Pank-a-Squith has a distinctive image of a barrier faced by suffragettes. Square 36, for example, depicts the government’s actions using an icon of a policeman in addition to jail bars and handcuffs, reminds players that the British government used incarceration as a tactic to silence women.

Out of the 50 total squares that compose Pank-a-Squith, 16 have an added consequence when a player lands on them, including missing a multitude of turns or having to return to a previous square. The final square makes you roll the dice again to cast the exact number needed. If not, you count back by what you are over by, adding another obstacle to winning. These repercussions make Pank-a-Squith a never-ending game.

Although some groups of women gained suffrage over a century ago, the Brennan Center for Justice suggests threats to women’s voting rights have not gone away. Just like Pank-a-Squith, the fight for women’s suffrage may never end. 

At Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab, Your Brain is on Their Mind

Leave a reply

By Angie Sepulveda

As you enter the dimly-lit and scary room, you prepare mentally for the dissection of your brain. You are dressed in white hospital clothes with medical patches attached to various sorts of wires all over your head. The needle slowly approaches your brain to initiate your lobotomy. You are an incoming neuroscience subject for research at Princeton, but are you really?

That’s how many people, including seven out of ten Princeton Summer Journal reporters, imagine neuroscience research: like a lobotomy. But the Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab dispels false notions about their profession, showing that neuroscience is simply the study of the brain and nervous system. The social neuroscientists ensure security, confidentiality and accessibility for all who participate in the research they do to further comprehend human interaction and behavioral patterns. According to Yeaju Kim, a rising second-year Ph.D. student at Princeton, this research is a tool to study how others “express thoughts and how broadly we understand others’ thoughts.”

Presently, a select number of Princeton neuroscientists are researching the potential brain scan patterns between a couple’s conversations of conflict. As the consent forms, provided by lab manager Amy Nguyen, describe, the purpose of this research “is to explore how minds synchronize as romantic couples interact with each other.” The methodology that will be utilized to gain understanding in this study will recruit several couples, place them in MRI machines and record the brain patterns shown through two structured conversations. 

Although the term “neuroscience” might inspire wild, hazardous thoughts, the actual research involves a meticulous process that ensures the safety of subjects in various ways. Every step from start to finish is intentional and serves a strong purpose for the study. 

After ensuring the eligibility of potential participants, such as checking for no new piercings, metal parts inside the body or tattoos above the neck, the couple in the study will embark on warm-up tasks before these structured conversations. Some of these warm-up tasks include “answering a brief relationship questionnaire, recording a few baseline opinions and completing simple rating tasks.” 

This neuroscientific approach strives to have “the risks be minimal and the benefits as proximal as it could get.” Potential risks that come to mind include issues regarding the MRI that are, in actuality, completely untrue. While the subject might be questioning if they have any metal on them, the neuroscientists initiate the safety steps of checking various times with metal detector doors and past medical records. MRI machines often create loud, thudding noises. Instead of enduring this irritating noise, the research subjects in the MRI have specialized headphones with microphones. 

If a participant is still feeling anxious after going through the safety protocols, check-ups and potential opt-out are always available. Even during the process of the structured conversations, participants can call out to researchers at any time they might feel uncomfortable. In case of any potential harm, the neuroscientists show through their consent form they provide well-being resources so participants can “feel okay mentally and emotionally.” 

When it comes to confidentiality, the neuroscientists ensure that all data published cannot be traced back to the participant, meaning no identifying factors will be revealed. While visiting the research lab, all participants’ information was covered to protect their privacy. In fact, after the research is published, the participant is able to request, via email, a three-dimensional scan of their brain. 

Princeton neuroscientists ensure confidentiality and security, both mentally and physically, to obtain findings that aid the comprehension of human interaction and behavioral patterns. In addition to appealing to other researchers, they plan to publish their findings in a way accessible to the public. Even in the initial process of signing the consent forms, all information is made accessible to participants and broken down in simpler terms. Accessibility is a big priority throughout the entirety of the research project.

Neuroscience is not the dissection or grilling of the brain. Being part of neuroscience research does not place the participant in any unsafe position. Better yet, it can provide benefits they would not be able to find elsewhere. The misconceptions that easily paint vivid, horrifying pictures often disregard actual neuroscience research, which, as mentioned by Kim, is needed because studying human interaction is “the most human thing that we can do.” 

The next time you hear the term “neuroscience,” remember that no lobotomy is taking place. Rather, progress is being made towards further comprehension of our own selves.

Small World, Big Heart

Leave a reply

By Hazel Foster

In a world of Amazon ads, Target consumerism and cycles of planned obsolescence, small businesses may seem few and far between. A quick stroll through Princeton, New Jersey shows the opposite. 

In Miya Table & Home, located on Palmer Square W, a wooden, temple-shaped structure in the center of the store holds delicate glassware in shades of navy and cream. The small shop is the single brick and mortar location of Miya Inc., a family-owned wholesale business founded in 1947. The store tested the waters with a holiday pop-up in 2017 before opening their doors in a permanent location in Princeton the following April. It didn’t take much to draw people in. “It was a lot of word of mouth,” said Heidi Moon, the store’s director of sales, marketing and retail. From matcha bowls and tableware painted with cats to sleek notebooks, each item has been carefully selected and displayed by Moon herself. “We make buying trips to Japan twice a year and we go visit factories or we go to different ceramic shows and we curate,” she said. “We select the items that we think would be able to sell well in the U.S.” The result is a retail experience that perfectly encapsulates the intentionality of Japanese design. 

Just a couple blocks over on Witherspoon Street, another establishment seeks to transport its visitors (or at least their taste buds) abroad. At Kristine’s, founding and executive chef Nicholas Démurgé has curated a menu that brings French cuisine to New Jersey. Démurgé earned a degree in engineering and went to business school before becoming a chef. When it came to Kristine’s, he was in the right place at the right time. “The owner wanted to open a French restaurant for years and years and years. It’s hard to build a restaurant without a chef,” he said. “I was hired one year before we opened.” Thankfully, the construction took so long that he had time to work on the menu. Démurgé’s menu is diverse, but he stays true to his roots. If a non-French dish is selling too much, they remove it from the menu. You can get a burger anywhere, but an authentic croque-ratatouille is a little harder to find. 

Travel back to Palmer Square and take a trip down memory lane to a world of words and fun from the bygone days of Toys R Us. But unlike Toys R Us, jaZams is still here. Founder and co-owner Joanne Farrugia is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the eclectic toy store, which sells trendy toys at a fair price. Farrugia initially intended to become a teacher before changing course. A trip to a friend’s aunt’s toy and bookstore in 1990 inspired her to open a store of her own in 1996. Like the home goods at Miya Table & Home and the menu at Kristine’s, jaZams has been thoughtfully curated. “Every picture book we carry, we read,” she said. They read advance copies, galleys, and e-books, and visit trade shows. For Farrugia, there’s no real sense of competition between businesses in Princeton. “Most of us who are in business together are very, very close,” she said. 

Whether it’s a Japanese zodiac dragon figurine, a French affogato, or a whimsical lava lamp disco ball on the shelf or the table, community is what drives business and brings Princeton together. 

Whether or not you’re interested in revisiting your childhood memories of colorful toy stores, expanding your heart and home to the Japanese culture or giving yourself a taste of France, community is what drives business and brings Princeton together.