The Jersey Life, 2.0

This is my second go-round living in New Jersey, which are nine words I never imagined writing.

There are places you dream about living – New York, Paris, Hong Kong, somewhere high on a mountain – and there are places you never dream about living. New Jersey falls into the latter category. Nothing against New Jersey. It’s a perfectly fine place to live. But it has suffered from a bad rep, and more people are departing than arriving.

We live in a leafy little commuter town next to a bigger town (Montclair) with a decent hipness quotient, excellent restaurants, one of the best bookstores you’ll ever visit, walkable streets, cool little coffee shops and boutiques, and a generally cheery vibe.

I can see live jazz in a cozy setting near our home. Our girls go to good schools that are walking distance from our home, and they’ve already made good friends. My wife can get to her job in New York City in about 30 minutes by train, and the local train station is walkable from our home. It’s a safe area.

There are many rich folks ‘round here, but also many working-class folks from diverse backgrounds. It feels like 80% of the plumbing, contracting and lawn care businesses are owned by Italian-Americans. Visit certain restaurants and the only language you hear is Spanish. Visit others and everyone has a Caribbean accent. You’ll see plenty of hajibs, turbans and yarmulkes in this area.

There’s much to like about where we live. Even so, lots of people are fleeing for parts elsewhere.

For six straight years, New Jersey has topped the list of U.S. states with the most outbound moves. It landed on the top of that list again in 2023, when we moved to New Jersey from London. The state we previously lived in before moving to London – North Carolina – ranked sixth in the country for inbound moves, meaning it’s a place a lot of people are moving to instead of from.

Whenever I tell someone from New Jersey that we previously lived in North Carolina, they almost always say, “Seriously? Usually it’s the other way around.” That’s true. Nearly 11,000 people moved from New Jersey to North Carolina in 2022, which ranked 10^th among the states moving to North Carolina.

Anyway…

My first swing through New Jersey was in 2000, when I spent around eight months living here so I could commute into Manhattan for my job. I left NJ for Los Angeles in late 2000, when I got a job promotion.

I have good memories of those early Jersey days. I lived there mainly during the spring, summer and fall, which means I didn’t have to endure the cold, crappy New Jersey winters. I was a renter at a house owned by an old friend (who I originally met in North Carolina!) and spent many relaxing summer evenings listening to baseball games on the radio and grilling out. We lived near the coast – or the shore, as they say here – and would ride my bike by the beaches fairly often.

New Jersey has some lovely beaches. It has some lovely hills and mountainous areas. It has some lovely communities, towns, and countryside.

But many folks equate New Jersey with ugly industrial areas, factory pollution, broken-down old neighborhoods, ramshackle buildings, crowded freeways, and trash. This is the view you sometimes get driving on the NJ Jersey Turnpike toward New York. It’s a window view of the world, at 50 miles an hour.

Every state gets perceived as something, and New Jersey gets perceived as a place with ugly factories, crumbling neighborhoods, trashy streets, crime, and loud, gum-smacking residents. This is an unfair perception, but there it is.

I grew up in the American South, which has had to battle its own image problems. I know of what I speak when I say that New Jersey has been unfairly treated.

*****

In many ways, New Jersey is the most retro American place I have ever been. It’s like Beaver Cleaver land (google “Beaver Cleaver”). You can’t pump your own gas here because all the gas stations still have attendants that pump the gas for you. This has to be the only state that still does that. The last time it happened in my hometown of Charlotte, N.C., was probably around 1972 or so.

I have to write a check to the local water company here in New Jersey because you can’t pay online. Many of the restaurants don’t sell wine, beer, or spirits – you have to bring your own.

People leave their bicycles on the front lawn or porch overnight. I can’t remember the last time I left a bicycle on the front lawn or porch, even in broad daylight, figuring it would get stolen inside of three minutes.

American diners are still big in New Jersey – packed, busy as all hell. And honestly (seriously, honestly) the best American diners are in the State of New Jersey. I’m not sure any other state is close.

(In case you don’t know, American diners specialize in a maddeningly wide spectrum of food – breakfast, sandwiches, burgers, Italian, Greek, Jewish, seafood, steak, chicken, home cooking, soups, salads, pies, cakes, ice cream, whatever. All the menus seem to have about 143 items. You pay your bill at the cash register instead of paying the server. Tres retro).

People put flags up for every occasion in our Jersey community.

Shops and eateries close early. Good luck getting a full-course meal past 9 p.m. here.

There are parks everywhere.

Everything seems old – the homes, the schools, the public buildings. New Jersey appears to have a manic fear of modern. The most modern home in our neighborhood was probably built in 1943 or so – and I am not exaggerating.

A few of the grocery stores do not have self-checkout. You have to be rung up by a cashier, just like the old days.

You can’t park your car in front of your house overnight. I got a ticket for doing it.

You also get a ticket if you don’t shovel the snow from the sidewalk in front of your home. This ticket, I also got.

(BTW – nobody told us any of this when we moved here).

It all seems so 1953 to me. Some of it drives me completely out of my gourd. But most I’m cool with – because I’m a husband and parent with daughters and a wife who live in a mean, violent world, filled with predators and sociopaths who want nothing more than to inflict pain on others.

So, at this time of life, I’m glad we are a little insulated from that – that we live in a place that wants to cling to a safer and saner world that mostly died out a long time ago.

If it means I can’t pump my own gas, so be it.