IOW, the opening credits sequence of The Sopranos.
ZING!
Or if you prefer, which mall are you near?
It looks like njguido.com changed their web site.
nj-guido.com, however has posted the rules for being a guido from NJ.
I’m From New Jersey by John Gorka.
Jersey Devil
Kallikaks (Sorry for the earlier misspelling)
sigh In reluctant defense of my childhood home…yes, Camden is a nearly-worthless hellhole. However, the towns around it which aren’t Camden are actually quite nice. Cherry Hill is a bit sprawling and modern-suburbia for my tastes, but it’s got terrific schools and is nice enough. A few years ago Moorestown was picked by some magazine as the nicest towns in the country. Little tiny Merchantville can be downright charming, and Haddonfield and Collingswood both are also quite nice (and also Haddonfield gave us the first full dinosaur skeleton uncovered in the US). Obviously, Camden has Big Problems, but the rest of the region is really not too bad.
The Kallikak family, which was a very unsound study. However, thanks in large to the kind counselors at Girl Scout Camp and some of the older girls, I did grow up legitimately believing that the Jersey Devil was going to come eat me whenever I was outside at night in the Pine Barrens.
About 10 years ago we drove through New Jersey on the way to upstate New York. I’m from CA and had only ever heard vague jokes about the awfulness of NJ, so was stunned to find that most of it was utterly beautiful–it was October, everything was green, there were trees turning colors everywhere. Maybe some of the cities aren’t all that great, but gosh, it was just really pretty.
It’s Joe Piscipo’s fault.
New Jersey–where the restaurants offer the choice of spitting and non-spitting areas.
The only parts of the state I have seen are along the Turnpike and it looks like hell on earth to me. Having said that, I’m sure there is plenty I never that is nice.
That’s right… I read about them in Weird New Jersey. Awesome book- NJ is not boring.
Out by I-287 and I-78 as you get towards PA, it’s really nice and woodsy out there.
NJ is a lot like CT where I grew up. If you drive down I-95 it’s an industrial shithole through Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport and New Haven. The Merrit Parkway, however, is once of the most scenic highways in the country.
When I was in my early 20s, I used to do a summer house down on the Jersey Shore with my friends. It was fun but we always used to get into arguments with the girls in our house because they always wanted to go to the snooty preppy bars where you had to wear a Polo shirt and we always wanted to go to the cheesy guido clubs with the slutty girls.
I spent my entire life in suburban Philadelphia (in PA), then in Brooklyn, and the last 11 in New Jersey. My wife was born in NJ and has lived here all her life. Neither of us has ever heard of the Kallikaks.
Not that I’m objecting to their existance, just to their importance or association with New Jersey. They are a minor footnote to the state, if that.
The gun laws are pretty atrocious, you can’t pump your own gas or make left hand turns. Plus at least in Parsippany, you couldn’t buy beer in convenience stores. Plus property taxes are high and people talk funny…
Well, that’s a really big word and hard to remember.
Q: Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste dumps and California all the lawyers?
A: New Jersey got first choice.
(I was born in Joisey, so I can tell jokes like that!)
I’m also from CA, but my father grew up in a log cabin in rural, western New Jersey. We went to visit my grandparents there, and it’s not anything like the industrial part that you see driving down the turnpike. It’s a forest area, and we would go out and pick fresh asparagus.
If you want to make jokes, you might want to think of Orange County in southern CA. It’s a suburban wasteland and industrial pit surrounded by snobby beach communities on one side and snobby hills on the other–a cultural black hole.
Don’t feel bad about that, most people in Wisconsin feel the same way. 
So is it true what they say about NJ girls?
Actually, what do they say about NJ girls…?
Why would you want to? We have the convenience of staying in our cars on hot or cold days and not having to get our hands smelly, with the cheapest gas in the country. I could never understand this complaint. Do you also prefer to dump your own garbage at the landfill?
As someone (on this Board, I think) once said, New Jersey erected a giant scarecrow ij the form of the Elizabeth/Linden oil refineries to scare away the out-of-staters, and keep them from finding out about the rest of the state and moving in.
I’m from Jersey, myself, and agree that it’s much maligned. What I find surprising is the way people single out those refineries in New Jersey as if they’re somehow unique. They’re not. They’ve got similar regions in the LA area, in Utah north of Salt Lake, and along big stretches of the Texas Guld Coast. Yet nobody says you shouldn’t live in LA or Utah because of their refineries. Theyt do make fun of the Texas areas, I understand, but they don’t shun the entire state (or even the Gulf Coast) on account f them. I don’t dount that they’re elsewhere, as well. Does NJ get singled out only because of its proximity to New York City?
Yes, sir. I love travelling to DC and getting my gas pumped (that sounds dirty but isn’t) at the Knute Rockne service area. Or the Clara Barton one, I go either way.