defend the indefensible: new jersey

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!

this book is kinda cool, one of my local libraries has it

That's about it...

isn't that enough?

YES

i'm not even from new jersey and i love it.

First: All the italians who made NY pizza what it was when it became an institution and all the jews who made NY bagels what they were when they became an institution almost all live in Jersey and Conneticut now, which is why you have to go to Livingston to get REAL bagels.

Second: Also in Livingston, there were these weird fenced off areas of the woods with empty fields on them heavily guarded for most of the 60s/70s/80s etc. Only later did I realize what they were...missile silos! To protect NYC...

they have crazy sandwiches called 'fat moons' that have chips, burgers and mozzarella stix fillings.

I like old dead creepy seaside places. I guess thats why I like St Kilda too (or well - St Kilda how it was before the damn yuppies moved in and tarted up all the old dirty charm).

there are many!

ihttp://plainparade.org/thesis/NJ-01.jpg

Really, I do.

"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen -- who really enjoys this overproduced crappy glop?

yeah the sopranos accent exists, but what i hear most of is a slightly jewishy northeasty variant on a standard american accent -- the way jon stewart speaks is exactly like most of my jersey friends speak.

More recently: it turns out to have surprisingly great places to go salsa dancing.

A lot of what Dan says is on the money.

I would seriously consider moving there.

x-post: Is there a Philly-Suburban accent? I wonder if I have it. I've moved around enough that I have a mixed accent, though it's clearly Philadelphia-centric, without necessarily being Philadelphian. I guess. I slip in and out of a real Philadelphia accent though.

i think they're pretty nice! but then i'm used to brooklyn beaches.

"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