My daughter is attending Delaware Valley College, in Doylestown PA. We drive through some of the prettiest country in New Jersey to visit her.
But I am still going to make jokes about the place.
It comes from people who have been there. Jersey is like Cleveland without the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Plain ugly. If you get out in the countryside it isn’t so bad. But yuck, what an ugly hellhole.
I was going to mention, I’ve heard way more shit about Cleveland than NJ.
Actually, it’s a meme that has outlived the conditions that gave life to it. And I mean no direct insult to the State of New Jersey, which has some good points.
But contemplate the America of fifty years ago, before environmental cleanups, when mobs still and political bosses flourished here and there, when the Rust Belt was still an industrial giant. And when New York City truly was the Big Apple, the undisputed center of American popular culture (with L.A./Hollywood competing but not yet on a level playing field. Thee TV networks, the major newspapers, the publishing industry, all were headquartered in New York, and its sensibilities swayed the nation.
Now, look at the New Jersey of then from the perspective of this ascendant New York. Newark and Jersey City had bosses, and there was mob influence all along the Jersey waterfront. Perth Amboy, Bayonne, Hoboken were industrial suburbs, smelly and dirty. Behind this were cookie-cutter suburbs with no cultural significance and literal backwaters like the Hackensack Swamps, stagnant and polluted.
Yes, that’s a very negative picture of New Jersey. Even then it was by no means completely true, and hardly described the whole state. And today nearly everything negative has been cleaned up.
But the point is, it was the impression that Jersey gave to the movers and shapers of American culture in New York City at that time. And that’s the answer you are looking for in this question.
For the record, Cleveland used to be pretty bad, but the city’s biggest industries currently are telecommunications, banking, and tourism, none of which are particularly polluting. It’s a lot cleaner than it used to be.
But wait, Jersey has two NFL teams and the state of New York only has one (and that one is 350 miles from Manhattan).
Jersey exist to make Staten Island seem not so bad. Or is it the other way around?
Actually, the people who make the most jokes about New Jersey are the people who live there. A few years ago, the State of New Jersey ran a contest for a new marketing slogan for New Jersey to replace “New Jersey and You. Perfect Together”. The contest ran for about two weeks before they simply took down the web page. My favorite nomination was “New Jersey. It doesn’t smell all that bad.”
I think much of New Jersey’s reputation was solidified by the beautiful route that the New Jersey Turnpike takes through Northern New Jersey. As you go from Jersey City over the bridge, you pass by several heating oil storage towers. Then as you head South, you go by some refineries and finally Linden’s Co-Generation Power Plant.
Also much of Northern New Jersey is swamp, and unlike the Everglades, factories and other warehouse structures were built in that area. You take the New Jersey transit train from New York, and you see this combination of swamp, urban decay, and it just doesn’t do much to enhance your reputation.
There are some nice spots in Hoboken and Jersey City that are attracting many people. As one person told me. If you live in Jersey City, you see the New York sky line, if you live in Chelsea, you see New Jersey.
By the way, my nomination for a new marketing slogan was “New Jersey: Open Thursdays till Nine!”.
Also, the industrial area that surrounds the norther part of the New Jersey Turnpike has had a disproportionate effect on people’s perceptions. I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned this.
Bill Bryson once commented that Cleveland (at least I think it was Cleveland) seems to be the subject of perpetual “Cleveland on the rise” and “Cleveland bounces back” type travel stories, IIRC.
Bolding mine.
Q: Why wasn’t Christ born in Kentucky?
A: Because they couldn’t find 3 wise men and a virgin.
“I got arrested for smuggling books into Kentucky. But I got off on a technicality: no one could prove they were books.”
Now he’s heard 2 jokes about Kentucky. 
Sorry, but I don’t know any about Minnesota.
I’ve lived in Cleveland for many years and like it very much. I’ve lived in New Jersey, too, and there are many nice parts. My mom hails from Elizabeth originally, although I’ve heard it’s, ahem, gone a bit downhill since the Thirties.
Maybe there’s no state anthem with the word “suicide” in it, but for sheer bloodthirstiness it’s hard to beat Maryland’s pro-Confederate tune: Maryland, My Maryland - Wikipedia
That’s it right there. In any populous area of NJ, there is barely room to turn around. This makes for lousy drivers, lousy neighbors, and lousy attitudes - people are as tense, harassed, and impatient as stereotypical New Yorkers, and a lot less forgiving. Keep a Jerseyite waiting 30 seconds and you might as well have spat on their shoes. Be 15 minutes late and you’ll need a bodyguard.
They’re jokes?
Minnesota – where the people think of Prairie Home Companion is their edition of “60 Minutes”.
Not purely Minnesota but check out
http://www.oldlutheran.com/oldlutheran/page.php?page=humor
especially the lutefisk song.
Lutefisk by itself qualifies as a joke but if you ever had it at the St Olaf student cafeteria we probably have met before.
The factual answer is something along the lines of this:
From stand-up comedians who got their gigs in NYC and area comedy clubs. On their tours, they were exposed to places between Newark and New York City in New Jersey, and these are some of very worst sides of the state. Of course, other travelers in and out of the NYC and the greater NYC area were exposed to the very same things/areas.
It is not hard to imagine how the largest city in the USA, host to numerous comedy clubs and acts, and one of the most visited places in the world, would play a role in how New Jersey is perceived, especially since most visitors were exposed to a very specific set of areas (a corridor, if you will), many of which are just awful representations of the state of NJ.
Little bit of irony: Without NYC, sections of North Jersey wouldn’t be so crappy.
Other notable tidbit: People from South Jersey try to secede at one time. Or so I think…
We used to drive to Jersey City from Princeton all the time to take the PATH to New York. The traffic was nowhere as bad. On the other hand, I drove past a farm and a couple of places with horse on my way to work, a trip of less than ten miles.
I think some of the jokes are an attempt to keep the riffraff out of the good areas.
First, tell us which exit you are from.
For me, and I suspect it is true of others, the only view I’ve ever had of NJ was the turnpike as I drove from the south to New York or Boston. Not a pretty place. When you combine that with the state’s motto - “The Garden State” - you have to wonder if they are joking. I have since left the turnpike a couple of times and have found that NJ isn’t nearly as ugly as I thought, but I’m not going to let that get in the way of an old joke.
I tended to believe the jokes, and when I had to visit a vendor in Wyckoff, NJ, I felt like I was being sent to hell. Then I went there:
DAMN! it was a nice place.
Even with wierd zoning that put this light industry in the middle of a high class suburb, it was still the sort of place I’m sure I’d never be able to afford. The whole time I was there, I kept thinking “Where in the heck does Bubba live?”
If there is a kernel of truth in all those NJ=Hell jokes, I sure never saw it.
I joke about it because my wife grew up (partly) in NJ so I can twit her. I have probably driven 100 times between exit 3 or 4 and 16. Also down to exit 1 since she lived 8 miles from there and we were married there. But the view from anywhere north of exit 9 or so is dreadful. And it stinks.
On the other side, in Philly, the phrase “Jersey tomato” was high praise. They were really a cut above the local ones and they had asparagus to die for. Growing up, all our vacations were in Atlantic City (Ventnor, actually) before the gambling when an evening’s entertainment was to walk down to the inlet and take the jitney back–and I loved the beach, one of the finest beaches, if not the finest, I have ever seen.
But it is really two states–the over-industrial north and the rural south.
Rose Nylund is that you?