defend the indefensible: new jersey

haha when chris saw harold and kumar out in california, an audience member exclaimed "i didn't know new jersey had trees!"

If you see the movie Garden State, which is interesting, not a great film, a bit sentimental/melodramatic but pretty entertaining, it's pretty OTM as far as Jersey is concerned. The giant cavern they visited? There was something like that right near my house. They had started to dig it out for construction but it was too rocky and they had to strand the cranes at the bottom of this pit. I used to play on them.

I was born and raised in West Orange, NJ. Home of Thomas Edison and the House of Music recording studios, where much of Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band and Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell were recorded.

i go to school in new york and i love it here to death, but "indefensible?" any state that contains the godlike and glorious MAGIC GRILL (in garwood, nj) is way more worthy of defense than, say...actually, no, i'm not stooping to the "trash a state i've never been to" level. and yeah, fuck you to the people who judge nj from the vantage point of the turnpike/GS parkway alone (and i love the GS parkway, FWIW).

(this sounded a bit more jingoistic than i'd intended, but really. nj's a fine state.)

this was my l-school in newark experience, only it was for 3 years -- and made bearable by the fact that had i gone to camden instead, i woulda been shot for refusing to give a cigarette to a panhandler.

and where Uncle Floyd started ... don't forget Uncle Floyd!!! (or you lose yer jersey license!)

Adding to the contradictions that is NJ, disregarding the request to not discuss proximity to NYC, yes, while a portion of NJ is a suburb of NYC, another portion is a suburb of Philadelphia, and people who live in south Jersey do not in any way identify with north Jersey or NYC, despite it not being that long a drive. My family was split in two, my cousins were all in Cherry Hill.

also...Ruts Hut to thread, world-famous "ripper" hot dogs.

John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, James Garner, Paul Harvey, Ron Howard, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Moyers, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Tony Randall, Will Rogers, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Bill Blass, James Dean, Theodore Dreiser, Virgil Grissom, David Letterman, Eli Lilly, Carole Lombard, Andrew J. Moywer, Cole Porter, James Whitcomb Riley, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Wilbur Wright, Ralph Abernathy, Tallulah Bankhead, Nat "King" Cole, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Emmylou Harris, Helen Keller, Coretta Scott King, Harper Lee, Jesse Owens, and Rosa Parks in being illiterate and uncultured slobs shocker.

i.e., Hurting, your obscenely narrow-minded world view appalls me. It is my hope that you're just a glorified trollbeing, but it is my fear that you truly believe the unenlightened bullshit you spew.

(This could also apply to the original thread topic challenge, I think.)

Relax. I thought it was pretty clear that I was being somewhat facetious.

(You want someone to "defend the indefensible", region-wise? I'm [mostly] your girl.)

Other reasons to love NJ:

Because of my Joisey accent, my best friend thought I grew up in Marstown until he flew out to NJ with me for a short vacation and we got off 287 at Morristown. He's from Virginia, where they don't skip syllables.

Incredible bakeries.

You had to get on a highway & back off one exit later to reach the closest place to buy milk from my parents old house. However, the store, was really only 1/4 mile away- just on the wrong side of the highway, without which, you could have walked over to it.

DINERS. I can't believe the rest of the country hasn't caught onto how to do these right.

Holy shit, Dan Selzer, are you sure you're not related to me? My brother has not one, but TWO Ruts Hut t-shirts. My dad used to take my mom there for dinner when they were dating. Hot, eh? I love that place, damnit.

I was born in Passaic County and raised in Bergen County, home of the most malls per sq. mile. I love Jersey. It will always be home.

Yes! I went to school in Morris County, and you could walk all over town, and also catch buses or trains to either nearby towns or the city. Now I live in a suburb where you have to drive EVERYWHERE, yuck.

I have never been to the Princeton Record Exchange.

Adding to the contradictions that is NJ, disregarding the request to not discuss proximity to NYC, yes, while a portion of NJ is a suburb of NYC, another portion is a suburb of Philadelphia, and people who live in south Jersey do not in any way identify with north Jersey or NYC, despite it not being that long a drive. My family was split in two, my cousins were all in Cherry Hill.

this was a good summary of my undergrad days, when i met students from north jersey. north jersey might have been the northside of mars!

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

I've had four apartments in the downtown area, but I haven't looked for a rental f/ years. (prices f/ property tho have been stagnant since the RE bubble popped, but I have noticed some of the larger buildings tenaciously clinging to their prices despite numerous empty units). $1750 admittedly seems high f/ a one-bedroom but it obv depends on yr criteria f/ ~nice and grown up~ (also JC's currency is p. cyclical compared to the more rigid arcs of NYC, maybe yr caught in a temporary upswing? idk).

i think that post-sandy everyone wants to rent and no one wants to own. There are about six for sale signs on each block out here. condos near public transit start at 2k+ for a 1br

no yr right, iirc NYC is experiencing the same upward pressure on rental prices. (I'm just curmudgeonly waving away JC's played cultural renaissance pitch, nothing to see here, move along).

i'm not arguing it's played; i heard the same schtick when i moved here a decade ago. but damned if it don't look like it's kinda taking root finally. not that i'm pleased exactly.

i moved to Hoboken in 1998, and talk about JC's resurgence was rife back then too (as well as "evidence" that it wasn't just some will o' the wisp/typical realtor bullshit). so i'll believe when i see it (to wit: when it's too late to jump in and make a mint)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/realestate/24hunt.html
^five years old now.
i'm friends with these guys, their great dane died unfortunately. sweet dog.

oh no i agree like everything feels a bit 'nicer' each year but its so gradual you barely notice. but there are these storefronts that seem to keep trying to get ahead of the curve, and have a succession of things like 8$ organic juices that just are not going to cut it, and eventually either they become another pizza and wings shop or office space. worst 'old jersey is going away' moment for me lately was europa deli having to close up.

Didn't they reopen? I thought they just renovated? Totally agree on the dipshittery of eight buck juice places. Plus they are generally poorly managed! My ex calls jersy city "the and of the half assed idea".

they renovated and reopened and then one day there was an eviction notice up and now they're gone entirely. at one point before they folded, they started smoking their own salmon on occasion. it was the freshest smoked salmon i've had.

yeah forks I don't think you're ~rong~ or w/e, I mean, sure, there's Barcade and the bike shop and a handful of new restaurants and the goddamn family circus obstacle course at the Grove Street PATH entrance and how can I forget Lucky 7 next door which proudly hosts the worst garage rock in the Tri-State, but it's just a hodgepodge of misc. venues w/o any real traction. (waiting to see if JC will do anything interesting with the ~Powerhouse Arts District~ or will look to emulate WALDO's heroic transformation from thriving art community to noxious condo cluster).

that sucks about europa, i rarely pass by there but i was happy they were there.
we need a music venue very badly. one appears to be coming soon.

RIP Uncle Joe's

Didn't Uncle Joe's close years ago?

Anyway, came to post this, which my friends make:

http://www.drivingjersey.com/drivingjersey.com/Home.html

It seems the real Bridgegate story may be in Hoboken

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mayor-christie-camp-held-sandy-money-hostage

i'm starting to smell prison

Governor Chris Christie today announced that New Jersey Department of Transportation Commissioner Jamie Fox will transition back to the private sector by the end of the month, when NJDOT Deputy Commissioner Joseph Bertoni will take over as Acting Commissioner.

A prominent Democrat who worked for both former Governor James McGreevey and former Senator Bob Torricelli, Fox worked as a lobbyist for United Airlines prior to going to the Christie Administration, and prior to the resignation of a United Airlines CEO amid a federal probe of the Bridgegate scandal.

WNYC’s Matt Katz reported earlier this week that while a lobbyist, “Fox tried to influence Democrats in the Legislature to back off from its investigation of the mysterious lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in the fall of 2013, according to three sources from the Legislature and Port Authority close to the investigation.”

http://politickernj.com/2015/10/christie-fox-done-as-dot-commissioner/

Cory Booker's cutesy pandering to HRC crowd at today's rally makes me want to fwow up on him weal bad

@KattyKayBBC
Cory Booker - Teddy Roosevelt was wrong it's not a man we need in the arena, it's a woman.

@dick_nixon
The Navy has a name for this sort of thing.

Jennifer Epstein‏@jeneps
Cory Booker: "I hate to contradict Bon Jovi but, dear God, Hillary Clinton you give love a good name"

@pareene
Ppl shouldn't get rich as the country falls into crisis, I agree with the failed Newark mayor who became a millionaire thru a sham startup

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/07/christie_pictured_at_island_beach_state_park_durin.html#incart_river_home

People hoping to visit Island Beach State Park this holiday weekend were not allowed in because of the state government shutdown Gov. Chris Christie ordered amid the state budget standoff in Trenton.

But there was one family there: Christie's. They are using the summer beach house provided by the state for a weekend down the Shore.

And here are exclusive aerial photos by NJ Advance Media showing Christie surrounded by wife Mary Pat and others.

It was taken early Sunday afternoon before the governor headed to Trenton to hold another news conference about the shutdown.

it's not often that you get a shot of the governor looking up at the helicopter camera

Christie's money quote this weekend was "You're lookin' at Mr. Reasonable."

He must be trying to sink his approval ratings as low as possible. #embracethedisgrace

"as saltwater taffy shortages continue across the state a life-sized taffy sculpture of the governor's wife was wheeled into his mansion"

— slackbot (@pareene) July 2, 2017

Chris Christie: From Here to Eternity pic.twitter.com/Rxf6uZhjLW

— Nell Scovell (@NellSco) July 3, 2017

Normandy Beach #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/dRx4HJoRpk

— Edel Rodriguez (@edelstudio) July 3, 2017

And here I was thinking that purposefully creating traffic on the GWB was the height of douchebaggery...

ICYMI

In bombshell testimony that’s likely to dog the Christie administration in its final months, NJ Transit’s fired chief compliance officer said Friday he was forced out with little explanation after his repeated attempts to raise questions about systemic issues at the troubled agency, which he called a “runaway train.”...

Particularly troublesome to lawmakers were the issues of patronage hiring, which they have been looking at closely since last year. NJ Transit has been unable to provide resumes for numerous top staffers and officials could not explain why it had been unable to locate any such records.

http://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2017/08/25/fired-nj-transit-executive-says-agency-is-runaway-train-114153

https://explorepartsunknown.com/new-jersey/bourdains-field-notes-new-jersey/

thanks,going to watch that one again tonight!

:(

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/trenton-arts-festival-mass-shooting-leaves-20-injured.html

Today, I signed historic legislation to protect reproductive freedom in New Jersey – codifying the right to choose into state law and expanding contraception coverage.

In New Jersey, we trust each individual person to make their reproductive choices for themselves. pic.twitter.com/5fOb6azXIa

— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) January 13, 2022