I can stay away from NYC for free. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by CalMeacham *
**What’s wrong with Seaside Heights? It’s classic Boardwalk. Of COURSE it’s tacky – that’s part of the charm! A couple of years ago MTV chose it as the site of their Beach House.
When we go down there we stay at Seaside Park, but we ALWAYS visit Seaside Heights.
(Why Seaside HEIGHTS, though? It’s all at sea level – the highest point is where route 37 goes up onto the bridge off Island Beach – and that’s manmade.) **[/QUOTE
/hijack on
To the OP Sorry to hijack your thread but I need to send a message to Cal and he doesn’t allow E-mail from board members
Cal- next time you go down to Seaside Park send me an email I’m emanuel@levy.net I live 10 minutes from there and am always intrested in meeting dopers
/hijack off
Damn straight! Especially the beaches.
A related question:
According to census.gov, Jersey City is the second most densely populated city in America, next to New York. New York is such a cultural center… so why doesn’t anyone talk about Jersey City? It’s density alone must make it interesting, right?
I moved from Idaho to East Brunswick NJ in 1991 and was filled with many concerns about how I was going to survive in such a garbage dump. All the stories I heard about NJ filled my head: it’s dirty, dangerous, damp, and damn expensive. Then I actually got here and the paradigm-shift began. I found a state so varied in food, culture, politics, and ecology that anyone can find a niche here and be happy. In the middle of the suburbs (on Cranbury Road, for CalMeacham and psycat), there are 4 cows that live kitty-corner from me. A small garden farm is in the next-door lot - New Jersey tomatoes! I can find Greek, Italian, Indian, Ethiopean, Thai, and Lebanese food just minutes away. The public library shows foreign films and Rutgers offers plays that anyone can afford. And politics can be a wild and wooly ride in a state where people are expected to express their opinions.
Part of my job (banding birds and taking blood samples) takes me throughout the state. New Jersey has far more beautiful places than places of blight. I just spent 4 days at the Bergen County Zoo and it is a truly lovely area, especially considering how many people live there. High Point through the Delaware Water Gap is breathtaking when the rhododendrons are in bloom or when the leaves turn in the fall. And the Meadowlands :eek:…okay, I wear my flakjacket while sampling in the Meadowlands. And the Pine Barrens - tiny pines restricted in height by both genetics and their environment, some to the point where you tower over them. (Before entering the heart of the Pine Barrens, I had the most surreal drive to Cape May earlier this year. I was driving down Rt 539 at night in the fog. The fog began to lift to about 20 feet off the ground such that the treetops remained covered with fog while below was clear. The effect looked like I was driving down a fluorescent-ceiling hallway with living walls.) And my heart is in Cape May along with the fall migration.
Enough of this travelogue. Don’t believe the lies about NJ. Well, maybe the ones about aggressive drivers. I think we like to apply the idea that the best defense is a good offense to driving.
Sofa King - I have gotten lost so often here in NJ that it has become a way of life for me.
Brachyrhynchos:
I think I know where you live. Mrs. Cal (Pepper Mill) says that SHE knows. You’re right in the heart of former apple orchard country, and not far from where I used to camp when I was in Boy Scouts.
That region has become unbelievably built up n just the past couple of years – it used to be all woods and farms. I can’t believe all the new warehouses and complexes along Cranbury Road.
If you haven’t done so, go into the town of Cranbury and browse through the used books at the Cranbury Book Worm. Then drive into West Windsor and look for the park with the monument to the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, which was supposed to take place at Grover’s Mill (part of West Windsor, nowadays). Nearby is the Grovers Mill Co., which still has the conical water tower that was mistaken for a Martian War Machine.
Interesting Place, New Jersey. Look up my article on Weequehela in New Jersey History magazine circa 1992 for some odd history.
Hey, Joe_Cool, your mention of Sandia Crest caught my eye, since I mostly grew up in Albuquerque, my family having moved there when I was a young kid. My mother, however, was born in Roxbury Township, Morris County, NJ (near Lake Hopatcong.) So were her parents, and their parents, a few of her great-grandparents and maybe a great-great; before that they came from Lawn Guyland, Ireland and England. Heard so much about “back home” I decided one place on earth I’d never live was Berkshire Valley, NJ… so naturally by concantenation of circumstance I lived there 17 years, across the street from where my mother was born, then moved to only a mile from where her mother was born. (Have learned never to say “Never.”)
My husband grew up in Flemington, where his family were chicken farmers, a wonderful area for bicycling–still seems to be despite the transmutation of many family farms into housing developments and strip malls; my son moved from Highland Park to Piscataway, right across from Rutgers.
If one avoids rush hour, one can easily drive from the sublime to the depressing, disgusting, and probably ridiculous in an hour or less. I gotta get periodic mountain-desert-&-vast-sky fixes, but NJ’s my home now, and it ain’t bad at all!
[serious rant]
Seaside is a freakshow of the lowest layer slice of society. I lived just outside of there for six years. The highest point is actually going into pelican island, my previous residence. I was never able to decide which were worse, the locals or the bennies. For an interesting view of seaside, go to Riggers Bar on a weekday morning in the winter, about 10AM. That’s when they open. You can see 'em filing in. Seaside Park is nice, No cruising past the Arcadium, and no clubs or rowdy bars for the bennies. (Bayonne, Edison, Newark, New York). It seems the asshole gene gets activated when you cruise over the Thomas J. Mathis bridge, I’ve been assaulted, cursed at, had ugly bodies exposed to me, and been propositioned by weird women in that town. It took me less time to walk two miles from my home than to drive in the summer, and one day I had to drive half-way home to park- and I had a keg to bring to my buddy’s place. Seaside Heights is a corrupt and drug-ridden town visited by people in cars whose “customizations” should have been forgone, and the money spent on their illegitimate offspring’s welfare…
[/rant]
MannyL- Did you work at MicroWarehouse?
Ain’t I cranky!
Former is right. The last major apple orchard (that I know of) on Milltown Road near Rt 18 has been sold to a development firm. Very sad. It reminds me of the slow disappearance of the orange groves form Southern California when I was a kid.
I am definitely making a trip to see that monument and I will look for your article on my next trip to the public library (I love learning about the local history). Thanks for the tip!
I just moved into milltown, and was wondering what the deal with that field was. Damn Shame, I like apple orchards- At least there’s still Delicious Orchards.
Wonko:
How long ago did you live in Seaside? Mrs. Cal says it was like that in the 70s and the 80s – but it’s changed. For my art, I’ve never experienced any of that – except the ugly bodies (but I’m not in a situation to complain). Heck, I LIKE Seaside in the summer. The winter, too, for that matter.
Sad about the orchards. But Delicious Orchards in Colt’s Neck is a pretty long drive.
I moved out about 2 years ago. When you live there, you see things in a different light. You also see things that you wish you hadn’t. When a town has bustling business five months a year, and near nothing for the rest, it does odd things to the economy and residents.
<rant deleated>
MannyL- Did you work at MicroWarehouse? **
[/QUOTE]
Did and still do. If you want to contact me go private
You all forgot NJ’s pride and joy, Our very own super hero, The Toxic Avenger!
And the Jersey Devil. And Mr Magoo was a Rutgers alumni. Hey, we got it all!
Wonko, a preemptive apology: If you should cross paths with a cranky blonde in a maxima sporting a Finn decal and swearing at her fellow drivers on Ryders Lane, well I apologize for my language and gesticulations. I probably haven’t had my Wa-Wa coffee yet. Welcome to the neighborhood!
Consider it pre-emtively accepted. Where is there a WaWa around here? I miss their subs, I used to get one every day when I worked south of Philly.
Corner of Ryders Lane and Milltown Road. If you’re into peaches, there is a peach farm a couple of blocks east(south?, well, toward the Atlantic Ocean) on Ryders Lane. They sell on Sundays.
OK, I think the GQ portion of this thread has been more than satisfied. I’m going to send the thread to MPSIMS for more.
manhattan disses New Jersey, who would have seen that coming? 