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Sorry if you're a fellow NJ native but what is redeeming about this state? I have lived at the NJ shore (Belmar area) almost my entire life and cannot wrap my head around what is appealing about this state. If you go 30 miles north you're crossing the Driscoll and looking at a lovely view of wasteland and highway all the way into NYC. If you go ten miles South or West its tantamount to being in Dixieland. Suburbs and shopping malls, no scenery, a massive tourist industry based primarily on the beach. Let's not even get into the financial problems this state has taxes, cost of living etc. So what do you guys find great about the Garden State?
Sorry if you're a fellow NJ native but what is redeeming about this state? I have lived at the NJ shore (Belmar area) almost my entire life and cannot wrap my head around what is appealing about this state...
...So what do you guys find great about the Garden State?
Sorry if you're a fellow NJ native but what is redeeming about this state? I have lived at the NJ shore (Belmar area) almost my entire life and cannot wrap my head around what is appealing about this state. If you go 30 miles north you're crossing the Driscoll and looking at a lovely view of wasteland and highway all the way into NYC. If you go ten miles South or West its tantamount to being in Dixieland. Suburbs and shopping malls, no scenery, a massive tourist industry based primarily on the beach. Let's not even get into the financial problems this state has taxes, cost of living etc. So what do you guys find great about the Garden State?
Yes, the cost of living is high, taxes are ridiculous, the government is lousy, Constitutional freedoms are trampled on, parts of the state look like industrial wastelands, some urban areas are the armpits of America, both ocean and river flooding periodically wreak havoc, and the congestion due to population density is terrible.
So your choice is... Get over it or leave! And honestly, for the above reasons, I may choose to leave.
More so, some of my top considerations that may not have made those websites...
• Aside from a couple of recent anomalies, NJ is relatively safe from natural disasters.
• We have top notch healthcare resources both within our state and in neighboring states. Would it surprise you to know that NJ is within the 25% of states where average life expectancy now exceeds 80 years?
• Middle class folk find NJ a surprising tax haven for retirement when willing to resettle to the central and southern parts of the state.
• More so, the climate in central and southern parts of the state reflect all four seasons but with less severe peaks of heat and cold in summer and winter.
So there are many factors enabling me to take pride in my home state! Will New Jersey and you be perfect together? Maybe, maybe not. But it's worth serious reconsideration.
Sorry if you're a fellow NJ native but what is redeeming about this state? I have lived at the NJ shore (Belmar area) almost my entire life and cannot wrap my head around what is appealing about this state. If you go 30 miles north you're crossing the Driscoll and looking at a lovely view of wasteland and highway all the way into NYC. If you go ten miles South or West its tantamount to being in Dixieland. Suburbs and shopping malls, no scenery, a massive tourist industry based primarily on the beach. Let's not even get into the financial problems this state has taxes, cost of living etc. So what do you guys find great about the Garden State?
I drove up and crossed the Driscoll yesterday. Your description sounds just like that of someone from out of state. What is the rationale behind hugging that tiny eastern corridor when traveling to North Jersey and pretending everything west of the Turnpike or Parkway doesn't exist?
As I said, I went north, to exit 160 on the GSP, where I got off and drove another 8 miles through local roads to visit my mother. Although the area has changed from semi-rural to suburban since I grew up there, it was still beautiful in the snow, with huge majestic trees, solid older houses set on appropriately-sized lots, historic buildings still standing from the earliest settlers in North Jersey and the unmortared stone walls they created when clearing their fields. (That was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Monmouth County--no rocks. I guess we are south of the glacial line here.)
For some bizarre reason, some of you want to clutch tightly to a belief that most of Northern New Jersey looks like Elizabeth or Newark, when in fact they are the exception.
Beautiful natural areas: Delaware Water Gap, Sandy Hook, Pyramid Mountain, High Point, Wildwood beach...
Close proximity: 2 Major cities, the shore, skiing, gambling...
Your description sounds just like that of someone from out of state. What is the rationale behind hugging that tiny eastern corridor when traveling to North Jersey and pretending everything west of the Turnpike or Parkway doesn't exist?
For some bizarre reason, some of you want to clutch tightly to a belief that most of Northern New Jersey looks like Elizabeth or Newark, when in fact they are the exception.
Precisely!
I think that we have all heard the blather from out-of-staters who are of the belief that all of NJ looks like what can be seen from a few stretches of the NJTP and the GSP. Clearly, they have never bothered to venture off of those expressways in order to explore everything else that the state has to offer.
But...for somebody who claims to have resided in this state for "all of his life" to be so ignorant of the wealth of beautiful vistas in NJ is...simply incomprehensible to me.
A few times in my life, I have driven through Gary, Indiana, a former industrial hub that is still grimy, but has now yielded to untold acres of rust as its shuttered factories decay into the ground. While driving through Gary, Indiana I can recall wondering about how people could possibly live in a city where a greenish haze actually hung over the city. (No, that is not a joke. On all of the occasions when I drove through that city, the air pollution had a greenish tinge to it.)
However, I never gave any consideration to the possibility that all of Indiana looked like that God-awful area of Gary that adjoined the highways. In fact, given that state's agricultural output, I assumed that Gary was the exception to the rule, just as what can be seen from the NJTP and some stretches of the GSP are the exceptions to the rule in a largely suburban NJ that is still a major food-growing state.
Why do some people look at a narrow strip of industrial property in NJ and assume that the entire state looks like that?
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New Jersey and You — Perfect Together!
And honestly, for the above reasons, I may choose to leave. 
Will New Jersey and you be perfect together? Maybe, maybe not. But it's worth serious reconsideration.
