I’ve been reading Bushwacked by Ivins and Dubose and I just read a bit about New Jersey.
It has 114 superfund sites. Those are areas of really bad pollution that need special clean up.
One of those places was so bad that local wild rabbits had turned green from the chemicals in the ground and water.
When I got out of school I moved to Princeton, and then moved to Pennington, already mentioned. Nothing in New England is as beautiful as driving down some Princeton streets in the fall, with the leaves golden and orange. I drove to work past a working farm every day, with but one stop light on my commute. In Pennington friends of ours had a broken lock, and lived for 5 years with the door open - and no problem. There was a surplus of people volunteering for the community. We had the world’s best garbagemen. Lots of parents volunteered in the schools, which of course were great.
Uh - forget that. Terrible place. I don’t want the propery values to go up when I move back. 
Oh, yeah. I grew up not too far from one of these sites. This one was due to WR Grace, the same company (partly) responsible for the events depicted in A Civil Action.
Lovely. Some of the reasons why NJ gets a bum rap are accurate, after all.
one thing I’ve learned, and actually take offense from, is that many people live in the waste-land section of NJ (Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, etc) so that they can be fake-New Yorkers. They call themselves New Yorkers, not because they are ashamed of their home state, but because they want to have the status without having the city tax or city-priced rent. Most of them who can’t keep the secret about their street address will feed their friends bullshit about how Hudson county is actually the 6th borough of NYC, or how some parts of NYC are actually farther away from midtown than they are (this part is actually true, but keep in mind that they are not only across a wide river but in a different state, and that their transit system is only going to get them as far as Penn Station; there is no free transfer to the vastly superior NYC subway). I don’t mind people choosing to live in NJ so that they can be close to the city without having to pay for it, but don’t you dare call yourselves New Yorkers!
“Why does New Jersey have all the toxic waste dumps and California all the lawyers?”
“Because New Jersey got first choice!”
Seriously, there are nice parts of New Jersey, just not as many as there used to be. I grew up in Morris County in the early '60s, and there were still some rural areas about. I gather there isn’t much of that left, although the Great Swamp still exists and is a facinating nature preserve. But, down in the southern parts of the state the farming and coastal areas still exist.
When it is overcast and it rains, it is the most depressing place I have ever been to.
Oh, bite me. I spend more time in NY than in NJ, and am closer to Manhattan (and have a shorter commute) than most of my friends in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Hell, I can see the Empire State Building from my apartment! So, yes, I live in New Jersey, but after 24 years in NY, I have the right to also call myself a “New Yorker.”
may I present exhibit A…
Hey, you wanna wind up in da Hackensack Riva’ wid’ a pair o’ cement overshoes?
New Jersey is indeed the most densely populated state in the country; it’s also the most “over-retailed,” or so I read several years ago. We also have several outlet (discount) malls here; setting aside for the moment the visual blight that all the malls and strip centers entail, it’s wonderful for shoppers and bargain-hunters. The traditional “main street” business districts are often charming and offbeat, with unusual and often upscale boutiques and other unique shops.
The architecture is tremendously varied. New Brunswick is often dismissed for its crime, blighted areas, and poverty, but it sports a lovely downtown where Rutgers U., the I.M. Pei-designed Johnson & Johnson HQ tower (and ancillary buildings), a 17th-C. church and cemetary, other churches and brick structures from other eras, a Hilton, and a gamut of contemporary eateries and shops in a revamped business district, where the establishments appeal variously to the Rutgers student body, local business executives, and the local workers.
NJ music lovers have two of the nation’s very best (as in voted in the nation’s Top 10, etc.) indie music stores to browse through: Vintage Vinyl in Fords, and the Princeton Record Exchange near the Princeton U. campus. The P.R.E. in particular has a reputation for being not just a regional draw, but being a sort of musical Mecca for collectors (esp. jazz and classical vinyl) from all over the world. OTOH, Vintage Vinyl often hosts free mini-concerts on their own in-store stage, and some of these sets feature notable talents and better-known names. Both stores feature huge linear footage of bins for used CDs, many of these are deeply discounted.
What else is charming about NJ? Well, many of the townships throw community garage sales every year. Imagine 50-150 different garage sales going on in a small township of a few square miles; now imagine the traffic that draws… oh, but it’s worth it – the bargains can be incredible!
Oh, one more thing: there was a local TV news report from the past week of how authorities were busily fixing a pothole that had opened up just outside the 'Jersey entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be newsworthy, except this was a particularly large pothole, measuring approximately six feet by twelve feet! Personally, I think we should christen the pothole our state critter adopt as a licence plate motto: “fuhgeddabout yer wheel alignment”.
Or, as one student reportedly put it, “The population of New Jersey is very dense…”
I like New Jersey. It’s the only State that you can drop the “new” from it and still people know where you are talking about…Jersey. Try that with the other “NEW” states and people will think you are crazy ( i.e. "We are heading out to Hampshire? York? Mexico?)
Jersey is the only state in the union where all the counties are in a metropolitan area, not even R.I. or Delaware can claim that.
In Jersey they have jughandles, you can’t pump your own gas and don’t even think about buying beer from a grocery store or gas station.
I am a Southerner born and bred and would never want to move to Jersey, primarily because it’s too cold for me, but I do enjoy visiting there. I married a Jersey boy and a few of his family still lives there.
It’s true that the areas just out of The City are a little rough, but the Delaware Water Gap area, the NW corner around Suffolk with all its hills, the Cape May area and the Princeton area are quite lovely.
As said before, some of the best views of The City can be seen from Jersey. They also have good roads (a little rough from the weather) but far better expressways than Florida. Great malls too, just love Short Hills here.
The people can be a little rough sounding and acting when you don’t know them, but once you are “in” with them, they are quite nice and good to you. Except they all still make fun of my accent…“please y’all listen to yourselves, I aint’ the one talkin’ funny.” 
It’s also a little too expensive for my taste in Jersey especially where my in-laws live…Middlesex County…with the escalating housing cost and property taxes, but the schools are good.
I also love Wawa’s and the diners in Jersey.
True it’s not all a “Garden State” (especially Linden and Elizabeth) but it does have its charm.
And yeah it’s a very diverse state, you’ll find all different types of nationalities with their speciality foods and etc.
I visit about 4 times a year and always have a great time.
Any yeah Eve my Jersey relatives would still call you a New Yorker!
You’re thinking of North Dakota.
Delaware.
For me, my love of New Jersey really depends where I am. I was born and grew up in Bergen County, which is right next to the George Washington Bridge. While I wish I lived in the city, I can’t really complain about growing up here. There’s plenty to do, and if you get bored Manhattan is only 15 minutes or so away. In fact, with all the the time i spend in NYC, I practically live there, except when I go home I can hang out in my giant backyard.
On the other hand, my dad currently lives in Monmouth County, and every time I visit him there a small part of me dies. It’s such a… wasteland. Dozens of tiny carbon copy suburban towns, with no downtown area. Everything is on the highways, which means you can’t get anything done without a car. There’s no originality or history, just generic minimalls filled with stores you could find anywhere in the US. Worst of all, it’s about an hour away from anything vaguely interesting, and on the way you have to drive by the industrial plants. The smell gets into your car no matter what, and you want to open the windows so bad but you know it’ll just make it worse.
All that being said, I can’t wait to get out of New Jersey the first chance I get, and you couldn’t pay me to stay.
Also, if you know someone’s from Jersey, it’s probably not a good idea to tell them jokes about how much Jersey sucks. Yes, we’ve probably heard them, and no, we don’t find them funny. We might complain about living here, but the fact is we do live here and if you make fun, you’ll probably get your ass kicked.
No, really, North Dakota. We even had a thread on the subject of North Dakota being a fabrication of the US Government but it seems to have been lost to the ether.
There’s a sign going into Trenton, on a bridge I thin, that says “Trenton Makes, The World Takes.” I used to work with a guy who finished that with “And What The World Refuses, Trenton Uses.”
I see that bridge every time I take the train to Philly, and I always think, " . . . and does the world ever call to say thank you? What, its fingers are broken or something? Don’t mind me, I’ll just sit in the dark and eat cigarette butts like a dog . . ."
Born and raised in NJ. I fled at the first possible opportunity, and I may be a little biased.
I’m from the small part of the state that’s not actually in NJ. Culturally, my town at least is in Pennsylvania. It’s ten-twenty minutes from center city Philly, and very much a suburb of the city. We’re also the one part of NJ where if you say you’re going into “the city”, it’s Philly, not NYC. That said:
Camden is, indeed, currently the most dangerous city in the United States. I know from experience it is not a place where three teenage girls want to drive into and get horribly lost in at night. They’re trying really hard to revitalize it, so it’s got a teeny-tiny piece of waterfront with insanely expensive rents. The rest of it is very much a typical inner-city: gangs, violence, drugs, and a huge problem with AIDS.
A lot of north Jersey is, as said before, industrial and generally regarded as a sprawling industrial wasteland. I don’t know all that much about it, really.
The shore varies wildly, from wonderful, adorable little towns (Sea Isle City comes to mind), to the big Atlantic City, to some small towns that have really fallen past their prime. It’s also one of the few places possibly in the world where you need to pay for a ‘beach tag’, which gives you permission to sit on the beach. Island Beach State Park is, indeed, a state park and doesn’t require beach tags, but you need to pay a fee to get in.
The Pine Barrens can be really nice, in fact. My school district, every year, sends the sixth-graders for a week-long wilderness education retreat thing, at a place called - ready? - Mt. Misery. It’s actually a great place. Some decent hiking trails and whatnot, but there are a ton of deer ticks. My mother once got Lyme disease from hiking there (she wanted to go for her mothers day gift, too!)
Then, there’s the rest of the state. It can be summed up thusly: 4 nuclear power plants, the first indoor shopping mall on the east coast, lots of other malls, even more strip malls, suburban sprawl, the Turnpike, the Expressway, toll-booths, toxic waste dumps, at least one rodeo, bizarre laws about left-turns and gas stations, and some of the least friendly people in the country.
And, diners, and out in the 'boonies, roadside produce stands where you can get the best tomatoes, ever.