Photographing 3 “No Kings” Bergen County, NJ, rallies in 2.5 hours 10-18-25
And it only took me a week to put this together…….
These events occurred in River Edge, Paramus and Teaneck on October 18, 2025. Their start times were 11am, 12pm and 12pm, respectively.
RIVER EDGE
First up: River Edge (about 2 miles from home). The given location was 135 Kinderkamack Rd (corner of Main St), where a CVS Pharmacy is located. It’s a block away from a McDonald’s I worked in last century.
The intersection is a very busy one, as it feeds traffic from north, south and east onto Route 4 West, going to VERY busy Paramus (where my second stop was).
The CVS was at the eastern end of a 2-3 block-long strip of stores. Strategically, I parked my car at the western end, so – when I left – I could avoid the busy Kinderkamack/Main intersection and the couple hundred protesters and hop right onto Rt. 4 (the Paramus event was right ON Rt. 4, at a pedestrian overpass).
As I was walking the 2-3 blocks to the intersection, I suddenly noticed someone in one of the parked cars, but it was not just anyone…………..it was:
………..a rather jovial former person, who was singing an Iggy Pop song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fWw7FE9tTo&list=RD-fWw7FE9tTo&start_radio=1
Well, that’s a rather obvious selection…………except he changed the words a bit to suit his situation better:
I am the passenger
I keep my foot on the dash
I hope and pray that I won’t die again
In another car crash…………
Well, he looks pretty happy singing it……..and it’s a great shot to start my day with, but I’ve got an event to shoot.
There’s just one problem……………nobody’s here.
Yeah, it’s 10:30am, but there are ALWAYS people who come early to get the best spot.
I decided to take a walk up Kinderkamack Rd. I got about a half-block when I met a guy carrying a sign. We got to talking and it turns out he’s a local organizer, who takes me to task for parking in a store lot and for not wearing yellow – a pre-rally suggestion that signifies unity (uh……….I don’t own any yellow clothes).
But he was a nice guy and we had some things in common………….and all of a sudden, people started showing up.
“Our” corner became the place to be – maybe because the cars from north, south and east heading for Rt. 4 all had to pass us as they turned. The other corners started filling up, but ours generated all the car horn honks as they passed us.
I became the corner photographer, shooting some of the interesting signs, making sure to ask everyone if they wanted their faces in the shot (most didn’t care):
-7
Time for a video walk in the street (becoming a bit dangerous with all the honking cars speeding by to Rt. 4) past all the people on our corner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-hnYEHZSHU
It was getting near noon and I had another rally to get to (Paramus), so I concentrated on shooting ALL of the interesting signs.
Can you stand 30 more sign pictures?
PARAMUS
As mentioned before, I went back to my car, hopped on Rt. 4 and drove about 2 miles to that pedestrian overpass. Not many people were on the overpass or on the ground at 11:50am. Here’s what all the westbound drivers saw and heard:
I said hello to the person in charge, whom I met on the previous “No Kings” rally here this past June 14 and walked around, crossed the highway on the overpass, went down a series of ramps on the other side and then reversed the route back to my car, taking pictures all along the way.
As you can see, I’ve got moving vehicles on both sides of me as I frame the main message:
This one of the whole overpass included a certain friend on mine on the sidewalk:
If you follow politics, you know that the frog has become a sign of peaceful anti-authoritarian protest:
“CONS”? Hard to tell from down below………..and even harder to see point-blank (click to enlarge):
The message that’s shown to eastbound traffic:
My first costumed encounter on the ramp – posed and not:
Encounter #2 on the ramp:
Looking back across Rt. 4:
Encounter #3 on ramp:
I could have just stayed on the ramp and had a good shoot.
Well, I take that back. The overpass was pretty interesting (I didn’t expect to meet Tweety Bird). Click to enlarge:
………..or a panda eyeballing this rotten taco (another political reference – look it up………….and click to enlarge):
The view from the overpass of protesters by the highway:
The view of some protesters directly under the overpass:
Two views at ground level:
Last pix at the site – mostly non-human (click to enlarge):
The last Paramus pic was taken on Rt. 4 eastbound at 12:22pm on my way to the Teaneck rally:
TEANECK
I got off Rt. 4 at Teaneck Rd and headed south to the Municipal Green at about 12:30pm (I had been told that Teaneck had a 12pm start – just like Paramus, so things should be poppin’ by now.
As I approached the Green, we were narrowed down to one lane by a long line of traffic cones, which you can see in the below picture’s rear view mirror. I was trying to get a decent crowd shot as I passed by, heading for the rear parking lot entrance:
My first impression was that the crowd looked a bit sparse. I parked in back and came in from behind to include the flagpole and the weirdly-streaky sky:
So far, there’s no truth to the rumor that one of those streaky jets was piloted by a guy wearing a crown and dumping a self-supplied shirtload of over ten billion former Big Macs on crowds attending various towns’ rallies.
If there was such a pilot, he missed my hometown (the whole Municipal area is located on the northwest corner of Teaneck Rd and Cedar Lane. On the other side of Cedar Lane on Teaneck Rd is Holy Name Hospital, where I (and Ricky Nelson) were born, so………smart move staying away, King Brownjeans.
Back to our show: At the base of the flagpole, it appeared that somebody took a page out of the Visibility Brigade’s playbook (VB was in charge of the same kind of lettering on the Paramus Rt. 4 pedestrian overpass) to spell out the theme of the event:
By now, the crowd had thickened a bit, so I went across the street to get a shot of this sign-happy group:
After that, it was all “Shoot the signs” time.
Ready?
Two-Sided Sign Guy is actually wearing a third sign – his t-shirt – that King BrownJeans won’t like:
Can’t argue with these protesters:
Eggzactly!
Good question:
A popular theme:
Another two-sided winner (click to enlarge):
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of these:
A cop wasn’t happy that I went out into the street (just a bit!) – where all the cars were trying to get through – to get this shot:
So I finished up my shooting day by going across the street to get the width of this group. It was too wide for my regular lens, so I tried something I haven’t done in a long time: a photo stitch!
I took 4 side-by-side shots, hoping they would line up in a photo-stitching program. Everything cooperated except for the closest-to-me street stripes (click to enlarge):
Time to hop on Cedar Lane and go home for lunch (and an afternoon of photo-editing). I got home at 1:05pm, so it was a well-spent 2½ hours shooting three No Kings rallies.
By the way – on my way up Cedar Lane, I saw a lot of people walking toward Teaneck Rd…………a little late, I thought.
But then later in the week, I was told that the Teaneck rally was supposed to start at 1pm, which I then confirmed online with Google’s AI.
I was given bad information, but I don’t feel bad. I shot all the good signs and none of the people I later saw walking toward Teaneck Rd were carrying any signs, so I got what I wanted.
Now if only I could figure out a way to send this to the rest of the 7million+ attendees across the country………………..
Just kidding…………they’ve probably all seen similar (or better) signs.
Maybe there should be a national No Kings sign repository of EVERONE’S photos for all to enjoy.
This IS history, after all.
Great job Bob! I love all the creative posters! You r4eally captured everything! Thanks so much for sharing. Joe and I protested while visiting in SC and had a wonderful and similar experience. Such fun and unity! All we need is 12 million people (0r 3.5%) of or people protesting and REAL change will happen according to researchers