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Dear New Jersey:
When I first moved to Philadelphia, I'd tell people that everything I knew about New Jersey came from Kevin Smith movies...and that once I moved here, I realized he wasn't too far off.
When Kevin Smith came to Penn, I told him this. I meant it as a compliment, but he took it as a great insult to his home state. "You ever been to Jersey?" he asked me.
"I've been to the aquarium in Camden," I answered. It was to piss him off—he'd been trashing the aquarium earlier.
"Go deeper," he said.
"I go there to buy booze."
"Great," he said, in a room full of 1300 of my peers, "but, you ever fucked a guy from Jersey?"
I told him an ex-boyfriend had been born there, but didn't grow up there.
"He any good?"
"Eh," I shrugged, not really wanting to risk the possibility that said ex was in the audience.
After a few more rounds of banter, Smith seemed to give up on me. I think he wanted to make me cry, but I was enjoying myself, as I usually do when presented with an attentive audience. I was left with a great story to tell my friends, and an affirmation of the fact that you, New Jersey, and your people, were simply not my favorites. Like I told the director: it was a place I went to for family-friendly activities and cheaper alcohol. Occasionally, it was a place I went to to change trains. Once, it was a place I went to for Thanksgiving. (Most. Uncomfortable. Dinner. Ever.) So I had no problem, whatsoever, continuing to make fun of you. Still really don't, but for one thing.
More after the jump...
Last weekend, I took a trip to Lambertville, New Jersey. That's where columnist Katie is from. We were bored and decided to go visit her parents and then wander through Lambertville and then into New Hope, Pennsylvania. And, well, Lambertville is absolutely adorable.
This isn't how I think of New Jersey. There were trees and little Victorian houses. Everyone over the age of thirty had either a dog or a baby. The leaves were beginning to turn, the sun was shining, and there was hardly a Jersey accent to be found. Nothing smelled like a landfill. The streets were clean, the people were friendly—two things that I've oft-lamented about the Northeast in general, and your state in particular.
There was more to do in New Hope. More restaurants, more interesting stores—but it was amazing how just crossing the bridge between New Jersey and Pennsylvania made a huge difference. New Hope is more touristy, more impressed with its own cleverness (case in point, a store called "Lost and Faust"). It was cute. I had fun. But I think I actually liked Lambertville better.
Two things may have contributed to that. The first was Tomasello Winery's store at the intersection of North Union and Bridge Streets. I've heard that some of Tomasello's wines can be hit-or-miss, but the bottle of Raspberry wine that I picked up there (for ten dollars! a steal!) was definitely a hit. Unlike most fruity wines (ahem, Arbor Mist), Tomasello's fruit wines (they also come in Cherry, Blueberry, and Cranberry) are made from the fermented fruit they're labelled by, not just fruit flavoring added to grape wine. AND, you get a recipe for cooking with the wine with every bottle you buy. AND they have all sorts of gifty things in the store that I had to force myself to not buy. AND the gentleman working behind the counter was friendly and really knew the products (alcohol and not).
The other thing that contributed to my sudden fondness for New Jersey (well, a place in New Jersey, anyway) was Lambertville's annual Halloween Dog Parade. It was kismet, Katie and me being there that weekend. (Everyone knows how much I love puppies.) Ordinarily, people who dress their dogs up to be cute/funny/clever/stylish (Paris Hilton) make me sick. I understand putting a sweater on your short-haired Chihuahua when it's cold out, or putting booties on your dogs to keep the salt on the sidewalks from getting between their foot-pads, but I just don't get people who dress their dogs up for the sake of dressing them up. Except for on Halloween. (Because, really, it's no more cruel than dressing up your toddler.) We saw biker-dyke Burmese, fox terriers dressed as flowers, Chihuahuas dressed as charming princesses, and several other ridiculously precious pups that I could set my alliterative mind to if I didn't think my co-editors might kill me for it. Accompanying most of the adorably costumed dogs were adorably costumed kids. There was so much cuteness that I could almost forgive the parade's host for her thick Jersey accent.
As we left the parade, Katie said to me, "So, what do you think of my town?"
"It's great," I said. "I like it. Puppies and babies. Totally my scene."
"You know, I can really see you living here someday."
I thought for a moment about this. "Yes," I said to Katie, realizing that I still had a long way to go, "but I still don't think that I could handle having a New Jersey return address."
Sorry, New Jersey. I've learned I can't make sweeping generalizations about you, but I just don't think that I'm ready to move in.
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Oh, I still think that ten, fifteen years down the line you could change your tune and find yourself sitting on your porch, sipping wine from Tomasello's, with your babies and costumed puppies nearby.
I grew up in Lambertville, then moved to New Hope when I was 13. I'm down in the District now, and am a regular reader of the DCist, and happened to pop over to the Phillyist today where I came across this article.
I always liked Lambertville and New Hope. They're quaint little towns, but they're real. Well, Lambertville is real anyway. The only real things about New Hope were it's art community and it's gay community (New Hope was a gay town even back in the 60's), but these aspects have long since been drowned by the throngs of tourists and suburban type families moving in. Down here in DC and its burbs, people shell out ridiculous amounts of money to live in supposedly quaint, picturesque , artsy locales, but little do they know that people in NJ and PA have them beat, and are paying 1/3 the price to live there. My girlfriend thought I'd be impressed with the Georgetown area, with it's rows of Victorian homes and canal and mule barges.
"Looks a bit like New Hope", I told her. :P