Gosh, Ike you seem AWFULLY familiar with Donald Westlake . . .
And to risk sounding touchy, there are actually some lovely sections of NJ (not that I live in one of them).
All right, Flora, you caught me. I really AM Donald E. Westlake.
Moderators, please delete “brilliant” and “priceless” from my above posts. <blush>
Yes, there are some very lovely sections of New Jersey. And I do in fact live in one of them. Its a (disgustingly) upper-class suburbs about 45-minutes from NYC. Theres not a landfill for miles around, and its very nice. And yes, there has been a 6-Flags in New Jersey for quite some time. Thats why most people hate New Jersey…6-Flags is right off of the Turnpike, which is one of the ugliest sections of New Jersey. And besides, thats SOUTH Jersey. I live in North Jersey. Theres a big, big difference. South Jersey is really the New Jersey of all the New Jersey jokes. For Christs sake, they have a rodeo there!!! But North Jersey is a different place entirely. Its mostly suburbs of the city, and its very cultured and an altogether pleasant place to live. And Ike–are you really Donald E. Westlake? 
–tabouleh–
Yeah, and there are some lovely sections of Cleveland, too, but you don’t see pldennison or orangecakes getting up on any soapboxes. They want to keep all the goodies for themselves.
[psssssst…tabouleh! No.]
Uke
Julie,
The Turnpike looks worse in North Jersey than in South Jersey. Don’t forget that North Jersey has many more, and much worse, highways (80, 278, 78, 22, etc., etc., etc…).
North Jersey is also where all the smelly oil refineries are, where traffic is most congested, and where New Jerseyans speak like they’re Bugs Bunny from the Bronx (ehhh, what’s da matta?) or like Linda Richmond from Jewish Longuyland (it tastes like butta!).
Plus, no Jersey Shore up there.
And the reason why there’s a rodeo in South Jersey is that there is actually land there that hasn’t been developed into a condo. (Of course, there was a (illegal) rodeo in the Bronx recently…)
Peace.
Well, there’s also “Wild West City” in North Jersey.
But really, once you’re more than 15 or 20 miles from either NYC or Philadelphia, New Jersey is quite nice – more suburbs, perhaps, than is altogether healthful, but we also have real farms, the Great Swamp (not at all what you’re envisioning), and the Pine Barrens; and Cape May was the first entire city in the USA to be designated an official National Landmark.
We also have the New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom (the Babylon 5 of Renaissance faires (www.NJKingdom.com), and although the NJ Shakespeare Festival is at present a stinking pile of shit, back in its glory days, before a rich lawyer stole it, it was the first theater in the USA to present all of the Bard’s plays.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
And, I might add, not all the NJ suburbs are hideous. I live near one–Rutherford–which has beautiful 19th- (and some 18th-) century homes, spreading lawns, trees that meet overhead, forming a canopy. Really, quite delightful–with the property taxes to prove it.
And, “only 45 minutes from Broadway!”
Pretty much everything that’s awful in Jersey is due to it’s proximity to a major city in another state–Camden and Philadelphia, Newark (and most of North Jersey) and New York. Central and Southern Jersey are filled with nature preserves and quiet back roads. While the news always plays up stories when syringes wash up on the beach, you still can’t beat a Jersey Shore town (Cape May, Long Beach Island, Ocean City, etc.).
And no, I don’t live in Jersey. I live in Pennsylvania, but I’m originally from Texas.