As a gold hearse with a casket containing Whitney Houston's body pulled away from a Newark funeral home and headed towards New Hope Baptist Church, where the service was held Satuday, a woman behind the wheel wiped her wet eyes as fans gathered outside to pay tribute to the pop songstress. Police vehicles and motorcycles led the way from Whigham Funeral Home with a line of gold limousines and the hearse, which had a picture of Houston taped to one of its windows.

City's religious musical tradition nurtured a crossover superstar. On a slew of chart-topping songs, from dance tunes to romance ballads, Whitney Houston showcased her beautiful voice with its clarity and impressive range that effortlessly jumped from one note to another. But though she made her name as a pop songstress before her untimely death, Houston was reared in the traditions of gospel music.

Folk Engineered's custom rides range from touring to city bikes. In a bright cloud of sparks and the burning smell of welded metal, a warehouse near downtown Newark is the birthplace for special, elegantly constructed bicycles that wear their roots proudly. On the welded steel tubes of some of the bikes is a painted silhouette of New Jersey and underneath it are the words, "Made in Newark, NJ."

Three hundred years ago, before the days of pistols and hi-tech riot gear, officers of the peace in Newark used wooden noise makers carved out of oak or hickory to disperse crowds. The constable would take the handle of the rectangular-shaped noise maker and spin the top, making a loud, rattling sound of wood rapidly clacking on wood.

A Newark police officer is typically armed with a badge, a service revolver and a uniform, but a special unit within the department also counts the Bible and the Koran as part of their tools. They are also teamed up with several religious leaders in the city who make up the police's civilian clergy alliance.

For Fateen Ziyad, Newark fire director, the 9/11 attacks cut both ways. in the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center 10 years ago. And as a Muslim, Ziyad felt he was under attack by people who conflated his religion with the horrific acts done by extremists. He said he didn't feel like he got the cold shoulder from firefighters within the department who know and respect him.

Jose Robles didn't have a lot of role models growing up in his tough Newark neighborhood in the North Ward, where many childhood friends have either ended up dead or in jail. But whenever he cracked open a comic book, a young Robles found heroes to look up to and compelling stories that kept him out of trouble.

Holy month of Ramadan began Aug. 1; Outdoor prayer scheduled throughout city. On a tough-looking stretch of Chancellor Avenue in Newark's South Ward, a stream of people go inside a modest mosque, doffing off shoes and sandals while they greet friends and strangers with smiles and multiple kisses on cheeks.

When 15-year-old Al-Aziz Stewartin Newark's South Ward, Monica Boyd, a 51-year-old city resident and peace activist, lent comfort to the victim's mother and the rest of the family at an anti-violence rally. Boyd knows keenly what they have been through; her own 15-year-old son, Shafe Idres Boyd Cruz, was killed in 2006.

Inside an unassuming green warehouse off Newark's Orange Street, the enduring relationship between the Newark Police Department and the horses they have ridden for 120 years are displayed. Old black and white photos show police officers proudly astride horses during parades. And inside the rest of the green warehouse are neatly kept stables that smell faintly of cedar shavings and storage rooms full of cared for saddles, stirrups and bridles ready for city patrol.

For more than 300 years, Newarkers have looked to the Passaic River for their needs. In the river's early days before European colonization, Native Americans fished and caught crabs in its estuary. Connecticut Puritans founded the city in 1666 along the river's banks. Industry used the river to transport cargo and flush out harmful waste.

Tucked inside a modest building behind the Newark Public Library are some of the nation's most priceless treasures. A leaf from the Gutenberg Bible. A box of 6,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablets. Fragments from an Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead dating from 1,500 BCE. A slim volume of prayers written in Medieval French and illustrated with brilliantly colored illuminations.