defend the indefensible: new jersey

don't know much about joyce kilmer but that rest stop has a starbucks iirc so it isn't bad as far as turnpike service areas go

Molly Pitcher

i tried to read a book about the misfits in the library today while i was waiting for someone and the first two pages was just ragging on new jersey, saying that it was the only place that could produce a band so fucked up and disaffected as the misfits. i think they even said that new jersey was a "misfit" among states. i didn't like this angle.

fuck. new jersey is getting too cool man. i gotta get out of here.

i am in wildwood, new jersey

it is very rainy and grey. i've only just arrived, but it seems like kind of a cool place tbh

googie architecture is fun.

i like turtles

New Jersey seems less defensible every day I live here. And yet I am still defensive of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/nyregion/new-owner-of-meadowlands-xanadu-site-plans-revival-work-soon.html

I heard the WNYC news bit on this today and lol'd at "Xanadu"

xanadu is old lolz in jersey brah get with it

first time i went to wildwood there were so many jellyfish in the water that it was basically un-swimmable

Meadowlands is getting a skating rink?

I'm predicting that before xanadu is completed, there will be another mini real estate and economic crisis and the project will stall again. bookmark the thread

I had that experience at Wildwood too.

First time I went was when I started dating my girlfriend and I hadn't been to the beach in like 10 years. I got so sunburned I missed 2 days of work.

you should take a day trip to Cape May, if you haven't planned to do so already.

STOP FUCKING RAINING ALREADY

^

^

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/business/media/senator-seeks-fcc-review-of-wwor-tvs-license.html?hpw

no news? really?

Portions of the shore, particular towns, and beauty of the nature near my hometown are to always be defended.

i'm in North Jersey near Newark and it's hard finding things to defend. it's like a combination of the worst of the suburbs and the worst of urban environments. there's nothing to do, you have to drive in dense, perpetual traffic on shitty roads just to buy a thing of milk which ends up taking a half an hour, etc. commuting to work takes over an hour to go about 11 miles daily. everything's barely a notch below NYC in affordability.

it's probably OK if you have a family, but woe be to any young single adult living here. the more rural areas can be nice, though. the town i grew up in had some pretty nature and old architecture that gave it a sorta idyllic Northeast American feel in some parts, though you'd get pulled out of that pretty quickly with the redneck bigots who populated the area. honestly, most of the defensible for me comes from being so close to NYC (heresy!!)

Northeast Jersey other than Jersey City and maybe Hoboken is particularly bad -- expensive, dense, mostly pretty uncharming.

And then again

http://gawker.com/passenger-records-nj-bus-driver-jerking-off-on-the-job-754944696

I grew up north-west of the Sopranos-zone where all the shitty jokes about smelly NJ are born. Up there it's all hills, mountains, woods, creeks, railroads... very pretty. Newark is shit and so is Jersey City mostly. I live in Hoboken and the best of culture is almost completely drained yet it is still safe and quaint looking.

Where are you spectrum? That's sounds about the opposite if my experience growing up and of everyone I know still out there or whove moved out there. Queens and Brooklyn transplants to lovely places like Maplewood, South Orange, Montclair etc. All "near Newark".

the town i live in is absolutely beautiful but it sucks

But yeah spectrum. Didn't notice the second part. Why would any young single person live anywhere that isn't a major city i'll never know.

I moved outta "near Newark" (Passaic counts, right?) 21 years ago, don't miss it.

I live in Hoboken and the best of culture is almost completely drained yet it is still safe and quaint looking.

tru dat.

i was born & raised around Princeton ... what countryside is left (i.e. hasn't been turned into miles of McMansions and strip malls) is still pretty nice and bucolic.

Center of town is pretty there!

xp eisebar that is also where i am from, and live currently (cranbury). i am in the princeton public library right now.

Hey Hurting: you up for some fast pro bono advice? Or know someone who does Jersey residential law? My lease has gone month to month for quite some time now and my new landlord (last one died, this is his brother who inherited the space) is evicting me in September. I'm going to go in any case but I'd like to know how much leeway I have over him for negotiating purposes. How much does the law support the renter?

I know a lawyer that specializes in that but he is $$$

Btw Spectrum if you settle somewhere a bit west or north-west of where you are you can find much more defensible environments. Why be so close to Newark?

forks I don't know anything about jersey landlord tenant and I don't want to commit legal malpractice. Anything I told you would just be from the internet anyway.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/dont_vote_for_cory_booker/

yay

lucky me, they're doing polling at a school right outside my apartment. i'm going to vote for rush holt. booker's the wrong kind-of democrat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/realestate/meanwhile-in-jersey-city.html
it's all downhill from here

Or maybe the nytimes means Queens?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/realestate/costly-rents-push-brooklynites-to-queens.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Next week it'll be yonkers.

Can't believe they used that photo! That statue is like the funniest in-joke in Jersey City. I used to take people to see it b/c they didn't believe me.

that statue is in appallingly bad taste.

NYCers, please stay out.

i have mixed feelings about that statue -- glad it exists, but it is bizarre.

p. sure JC's charter expressly forbids ~entertaining nite lyfe~

this article is basically because fulop has connections i think

probably right but couple of things are starting to percolate around here over the past year

yeah but JC's perennial pending resurgence has been noted so many times that its dormant potential has become its defining narrative (the city's been cheap and accessible and unpretentious for so long precisely b/c its residents have insistently declined attempts to establish ~NYC culture~ that would essentially destroy it's raison d'etre even while raising its pulse above torpid). (11,000 new housing units in the pipeline obv suggest cultural upheaval via market forces, but I've also seen a fair amount of these new multi-unit monstrosities almost pitch black at night).

xp

higher prices are inevitable given NYC's real estate trajectory, but I'm not sold on the stale gloss being hustled again.

i'm looking for an apartment out here and a nice, grown up 1bedroom at 1750 is nowhere to be found