New Jersey

Freehold's fun, I've only been there a few times though. All we've got is East Brunswick. It has a movie theater, so we go there occasionally. You can tell how little there is to do around by the crowds on school breaks.

there's a roller rink around too that we go to. that it though, only 2 things to do around.

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Yeah, I don't think I've really been to East Brunswick too much. I just went to New Brunswick today (well, yesterday now), which has the State Theatre there, but that's still a bit of a distance for me.

A roller rink? Sounds interesting. A friend of mine in Jackson, the place he used to work at was right across from a roller rink, but it couldn't have been the same one. I never imagined NJ still having more than just one roller rink in such somewhat close proximity to each other.

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the rink's in south amboy. Linky

It's pretty fun. Something to do at least. Theres a mini-arcade with a few games and a mini bowling alley.

Other then that, we just screw around in parks or the clay pits.

edited 4th Mar '12 7:44:11 AM by Joesolo

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The reasons people hate New Jersey:

• It isn't New York.
• There are supposedly more garbage dumps than usual there.
• Some parts of Jersey are like Staten Island and the non-ghetto parts of Long Island.
• Newark is a pretty awful city with neighborhoods that look like District 9.
• NJ-haters have never been there and don't know why they hate it, they just do because media and the Internet say they should.

Worst of all is that Jersey Shore convinces idiots all around the nation that those orange, blow-out sporting motherfuckers are actually from New Jersey when all but I believe one cast member are from various parts of New York. Pauly D is actually from Providence, Rhode Island. Shore people aren't like that, by and large. There guidos everywhere in the greater New York Megalopolis, but more of them are concentrated in Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester than anywhere else. Most shore people are like California surfer types, but more Italians and a good number of them have non-rhotic speech.

I'm originally from Hasbrouck Heights in Bergen County, and I never knew a single guido or saw a blowout until I started going to Binghamton University and met a bunch of fools from Long Island. Hasbrouck Heights and most of the small suburbs in Bergen County are very nice, middle-class towns with plenty of trees, nice front lawns and great Italian food everywhere. The funny part about the hatred from New Yorkers is that when someone from the Boroughs "makes it," they usually move to New Jersey. Towns like Englewood Cliffs, Alpine, Franklin Lakes, Tenafly and most of all Short Hills are full of million-plus-dollar homes and people who moved out of the City because they can finally afford to.

edited 4th Mar '12 2:03:31 PM by Martello

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

I hate Jersey for the same reasons I hate all of New England...

Cold climates and obnoxious accents. Don't need a better reason. Oh lord the accents...

edited 4th Mar '12 4:31:26 PM by Barkey

I hate Jersey as a place because it stinks, isn't as interesting as NYC and large parts smell bad.

Ok?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Cold climates? New Jersey? You sound like a Floridian there

Does that make me utterly reprehensible as a person? (I'm originally from Staten Island but have lived in NJ most of my life thus far.)

@Joesolo: Damn. Crappy website design aside, that looks like an awesome place. I should check that out ASAP.

edited 4th Mar '12 5:13:47 PM by 0dd1

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Honestly my stay in Elizabeth did not give a good impression.

So many graveyards, so much barbed wire...

Californian, not Floridian. Hell, I'm from LA, if it snows then it gets crossed off the "places I'd ever consider living" list.

Did pre-deployment training at Mc Guire AFB, not something I want to do again.

I grew up in a desert, it does get cold at night, but it isn't moist cold. I don't do humidity, and I don't do moist cold, meaning I'm pretty much restricted to the good parts of Cali, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Barkey, you know New Jersey isn't part of New England, right?

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

Don't you know, all of the East coast in the U.S. is the same! But seriously, we're the Mid-Atlantic. New England is very different. They have more fish. And the worst baseball team in history.

@Cats: Elizabeth is one of those cities in NJ that instantly evokes the phrase "wretched hive of scum and villainy" for most NJeans. That, as well as Camden (one of the most dangerous in the nation! :D) and Newark.

The graveyards, though, there's plenty of those everywhere. There's actually a lot of Jewish cemeteries near where I live for some reason.

edited 4th Mar '12 9:10:54 PM by 0dd1

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Newark, of course, is the car-theft capital of the world. Camden's just hellish.

@odd Yea, it's pretty fun. I don't always enjoy the music(mostly more modern stuff), but they'll do requests, so thats cool. Website is pretty crappy.

Maybe we'll have a NJ troper meet up

I'm baaaaaaack

Well Odd is right, all of the East Coast of the US is the same. They all have that wet thing next to them... you know, I think you call it the "ocean"? I may be remembering incorrectly.

So my school only took us to the wretched hive parts of New Jersey? makes sense, I guess.

That'd be an awesome idea We gotta look where NJ tropers are distributed throughout the state and find a good midpoint there. Or we can all just go to the shore. Point Pleasant and Belmar are always nice.

Yeah, you pretty much got the worst possible example you could have. It's like visiting Europe during the Black Plague.

edited 5th Mar '12 9:35:00 AM by 0dd1

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Point Pleasant's always pleasant. Just from the map, most of us are in central or northern Jersey. One or two is a bit more south

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Wow, then that's perfect. If we actually do this, mostly everyone's in relatively close proximity.

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There's one down in evesham(never even heard of there before) and one's in Brick. Everyone else on the map is north of that. quite a few are pretty close.

Course, the question is- be nice to the New Yorkers who gave us these stereotypes, or let em in?

Oh, one's WAY to the northwest. About as far as the one down south.

edited 5th Mar '12 2:06:18 PM by Joesolo

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Hmm, well, considering I myself lived in New York the first few years of my life, I'd be inclined to say let 'em in. They can bring calzones, pizzas, and zeppoles with them.

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True. I was born there. Never lived there though.

Kinda freaked me out when my passport came in with "new york" on it before I remembered that.

80% of my family lives there anyway. Can't hate on it too much.

I'm baaaaaaack

Yeah, my entire family (after getting off the boat from Sicily around the beginning of the last century) is comprised of New Yorkers. My immediate family's the only ones who live in NJ. The rest are in Staten Island, Long Island, and Brooklyn...with a couple who moved to Florida because they like frying their brains or something.

Actually, now that I think of it, I have a couple cousins in Buffalo.

edited 5th Mar '12 2:36:55 PM by 0dd1

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Ditto. I dont know about all of them, but great-grandma come over on the boat from Naples. All I know past grandparents on the other side is one of them ran a ice-block truck. the horse pulled kind.

long island and Staten island most of them. a few cousins of mom and dad followed us out here. maternal grandpa went crazy and moved to cali.

edited 5th Mar '12 2:40:24 PM by Joesolo

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If there's a stereotype about all Italian-Americans being from New York, it's well-deserved.

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yea. where else were we supposed to go? philly?

a troper meet up would be cool to plan out. I'd call it tropercon but that's too cliche. we could probablly plan something cheap to do. aside from planning theres not much i could help with though. no job (yet) so not much money to throw at a project.

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Very true

Same same, just a broke college freshman here. The only really plausible thing I can think of on a shoestring budget is a beach meetup. Actually, now that I think of it, not too far from my school is Pier Village, where there's a pretty nice beach and a bunch of restaurants (some very affordable, some...not so much so). And it's more or less directly in the center of the NJ coastline.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:08:21 PM by 0dd1

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Yes, there are many of us Italians in the Tri-State Area in general. My family's from Sicilia, and we lived minutes away from Lodi, the most Sicilian town in the country as far as I know.

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.