Oh, that’s interesting. Because I used to driver that stretch, and I came here to say that it has a bad reputation because as you leave NY and enter NJ (along the most common route), it objectively smells REALLY BAD.
And my husband’s uncle claimed that before those refineries were built, the land was high-density hog-farms, and smelled of hog shit, which also smells REALLY BAD, much worse than cattle or horses or a sewage treatment plant.
NJ is also called “the Garden State” and parts of it are really nice. But it used to make a really bad first impression on New Yorkers.
Not to mention Jersey tomatoes, which are a cliche for really really good tomatoes. My wife grew up in Jersey (8 miles from exit 1) and that is pretty country. Then there is the shore which is really fine. But I would regularly drive between NYC and Philly and it was pretty awful, even leaving the smell aside.
Also landfills in that area which probably contributed to the ‘mix’ were capped. I agree that smell is long gone but lives on as a trope.
My socio-cultural take, my background I consider myself from NY (the city) but have actually lived in NJ longer, 'burbs when in high school (disliked), Hudson county now many years (like): I don’t go in that much for accusations of ism/phobia to try to counter people’s specific serious arguments. I think that’s become a bad intellectual habit of too many people. But IMO certain general tropes about NJ do have to do with class and race. Making fun of ‘Joisy’ is basically making fun of working class whites in NJ. I have a middle-middle class background (kid of school teachers, pretty dead center middle class in most societies) and I don’t talk like that. Few people I know do. The 40 % or so who are foreign born in Hudson Cty certainly don’t. Working class white people do. That’s who is being made fun of basically with the accent thing.
Then ‘ugly’ areas in terms of Newark and Camden parts of the greater NY and Philly areas does also refer to heavily black areas, even if people putting those places down insist that’s not why, and perhaps in many cases it isn’t, consciously.
Similarly the idea that suburban or rural-ish* areas in NW NJ are ‘the nice parts’ has some social assumptions built in too I believe. But aside from that, what’s really so ‘good’ per se about places with slightly less population density and more trees? You can find large such areas all over the Northeast, or if you want or like a different landscape even more endless such areas over the great majority of the geographic area of the US as a whole. But there’s only one NY, in the world, in a comparatively tiny area, and parts of NJ are very convenient to it, some more convenient than large parts of the Outerboroughs of the City itself. That doesn’t make the City ‘belong’ to NJ in a rah-rah NJ sense, but now I’m just being practical. People want to be near Manhattan, for arguably very good reasons. That’s why it’s become sky high expensive to buy property where I live (it wasn’t nearly as true when I moved here). Telling me I live in an ‘armpit’ is ridiculous more than anything else.
*I think officially per US census districts NJ has no actually rural areas
I can’t be too objective about N.J. having grown up on Staten Island. A vivid childhood memory is of watching TV in the living room with my sister when an enormous BOOM occurred and the house shook for several seconds. We ran outside, scanned the horizon and saw leaping flames above a gas refinery in New Jersey (It was this blast. There was looting, but not in my neighborhood). Then there was the time a plume of some industrial horror from a New Jersey plant withered part of the garden (fortunately I’d moved away by that time, though I still wonder what effect my childhood proximity to the state has had on my life expectancy).
A semi-ritual of summer when I was growing up was going out to buy “Jersey tomatoes” which were coveted, enormous beefsteak types. Probably most sources of those tomatoes have been converted to malls, commercial strips and tract houses by now.
Although it is the most densely populated state you are pretty much talking about 8 or so of the counties out of 21. Mostly lined up between NYC and Philly. And the Shore 3 months of the year. Most of the other counties are very rural. I live in Hunterdon County which is a mix of rural and suburban and one of the richest counties in the US. It’s a good place to live.
Historically NJ has been the butt of jokes for not being New York City or Philadelphia.
But every bridge that does have a toll is now a one-way toll - pay to leave NJ & most of the free bridges to PA are narrow, two-lane weight & speed (either 15 or 25mph) restricted bridges. Any type of truck needs to pay to go South or West.
New Jersey’s greatest natural wonder is a desolate stretch of scrub forest on land so poor it can’t be cultivated, that stretches over 1/4 of the state.
Not really. There is some sort of plant at the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge but the next refinery upriver (Paulsboro) is across from Pennsylvania, Downriver is nothing. Have a look at GoogleEarth. Philadelphia on the other hand…
I live in southern Jersey at the shore and the NJ of legend is as alien to me as Mars.
For the record, I’ve always wanted to plan out a trip to the Pine Barrens. Would a weekend be enough to take in all the sights?
I’ve driven through Newark dozens of times — in a hasty, near-panicked fashion — and I’ve always been curious about that enormous, forbidding church that squats like a gigantic stone toad about a half-mile north of I-280. Anybody know anything about it? (I love Catholic kitsch and big scary churches, so I’ll go for a visit if it’s as creepy, say, as the St Paul Cathedral in Minnesota.)
My wife is from Jersey and has not missed a summer spending at least a week on Long Beach Island. Her mother now lives there as her official residence. But say “Jersey Shore” and that is not the image that people see in their minds. Most of the state are the small towns. But yes densest population functions as suburban NY.
Best deli I’ve ever been to is The Kosher Nosh in my wife’s home town of Glen Rock.
The vast majority of the state deserve its name of The Garden State. As pointed out that though is not what most who fly into NY by way of Newark airport see.
Wait, was that both a fat joke and a DP reference wrapped in one slutshamey package, disguised as a dad joke about drinking? Dude really *was *ahead of his time.
Do you know why NJ has more toxic waste dumps than any other state, and California has more lawyers tha any other state?
Because NJ had first pick!
I’ve had friends from the area inform me that there are some very beautiful areas in NJ, in which it is lovely to live. But they acknowledge that some areas are essentially warzones/sewers. I have no reason to disbelieve them.
If you find yourself in Newark your best option is to find your way over to the PIP (Palisades Interstate Parkway) that will take you to New York State.
Granted, parts of it are in NY rather than NJ, but it’s an extremely beautiful drive… probably the nicest thing that is (partially at least) in NJ.
