Things To Do in Belleville

The kinetic clack of tiny orbs colliding with metal clubs welcomes club-toting clientele into Hoboken Golf's 5,300-square-foot practice facility, where players can hone their games year-round. Using a nine-hole putting course as well as several hitting areas that accommodate swings of varying fullness, the studio's versatile instructors can provide a hands-on assessment of all aspects of their pupils' games.

The Hoboken Historical Museum celebrates the history, culture, architecture, and overall coolness of the Hoboken area, with 2,000 square feet of photos and artifacts located within the former Bethlehem Steel shipyard. Currently, the main gallery exhibit Surveying the World: Keuffel & Esser + Hoboken, 1870–1968, running until December 23, serves up 500 engineering instruments manufactured by the firm Keuffel & Esser from 1870 to 1968. Visitors to the exhibit can interact with a slide rule or telepathically take apart a transit instrument to discover the goblins turning the gears within. The museum also has an upper gallery, which is a venue for local artists to exhibit work about Hoboken and its environs. Previous artists include popular cityscape artist Frank Hanavan, photographer Virginia Parrott, and the fifth-grade class at Wallace Elementary School. Support the Hoboken Historical Museum with a one-year individual or family membership—both membership packages include benefits such as free admission to the museum, discounts on select museum gift-shop items, a subscription to the museum's quarterly newsletter, and free copies of the museum's Oral History Project chapbooks.

Rain delays and snow-outs are never an issue within Hudson Baseball Center, where instructors lead baseball and softball lessons atop the indoor facility's evergreen turf. Working in individual practice lanes or in group clinics, players focus on improving distinct aspects of their game, including hitting, pitching, and fielding. Regardless of the specialty involved, every lesson places particular emphasis on critical thinking and physical discipline, valuable skills for both playing baseball and wrestling other jury members to settle an impasse. Comprised of former high school, collegiate, and professional athletes, the faculty includes the likes of a Class-A pitcher for the Reds, a high-school All-American with 14 years of coaching experience, and a softball player who spent 13 years with the Hoboken Shockers' traveling team.

Offshore Sailing exposes participants to founders Steve and Doris Colgate’s years of water-navigating, knot-tying experience. The couple actively participates in several national boards and committees and competes in numerous races. This year marks the school’s 47th year in business. Budding sailors will participate in a two-hour lesson with up to three other students, ensuring individual attention and personal dolphin-speak translations from knowledgeable instructors on a sleek, award-winning Colgate 26 sailboat. The lesson will provide novice seafarers with the basic skills to sail with confidence, just like it has for more than 115,000 other graduates.

Opened in 1998, Floyd Hall Arena welcomes skaters of all sizes to practice their axels and slap shots on two NHL-sized ice rinks. In addition to youth hockey and Learn to Skate programs with professional instructors, the rink hosts public skating sessions each week so that casual skaters can loop the rink as their leisure and more advanced skaters can test out prototypes of hand skates. Patrons can take a look at upcoming public skating times by checking the monthly event schedule, found here.

For more than 100 years, The Newark Museum has enraptured attendees with exhibitions celebrating artistry and science in a facility that currently encompasses 80 galleries. Curious minds delight in national and international artwork, several enthralling science collections, a planetarium boasting a Zeiss ZKP3 star projector, and an enchanting sculpture garden. The new ongoing exhibit Generation Fit: Steps to a Healthier Lifestyle makes use of interactive media and games, such as animated explanations of appetite circuits, video games combined with exercise challenges, and Pilates sessions led by presidentially pardoned turkeys. Partakers can peruse ornaments fashioned between the early 1700s and today at The Glitter & The Gold: Jewelry From the Newark Museum before voyaging into a plethora of permanent galleries. Patron memberships bestow customers with bountiful yearlong benefits, including numerous free admission passes for friends, four planetarium tickets, discounts for shop and café purchase, and reciprocal admission to more than 150 art museums in the country.

At Van Houten Lanes, bowling balls thunder down the waxed stretches of 16 AMF synthetic lanes—and crash through the neat rows of AMF pins waiting at the end. All the while, an AMF automatic scoring system keeps an up-to-the-minute record of each player's successes and struggles. And yet bowling isn't all that this modern alley has to offer—a large-screen TV, pool table, and an internet-connected jukebox render the cocktail lounge comfortable enough to pass for "the new apartment" when parents come to visit. The bowling facility's café fuels play with cheesy calzones and signature Hoboken-style 32-inch pizzas—all of which can be washed down with craft beer from Flying Dog Brewing. Thanks to these ample amenities, including family-friendly touches such as lane bumpers, Van Houten Lanes frequently hosts events ranging from children's parties to fundraisers.