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I've lived my entire life, with the exception of approximately two years in Manhatten, in Bergen and Passaic Counties and, quite frankly, I've always considered New Jersey's designated tourist attractions boring. My idea of fun is to investigate neighborhoods and allow my imagination to run wild. I instantly wonder what it's like to live in the towns I choose to explore and would I like to live there? Which neighborhoods and houses do I like best? I learn the architectural styles of those neighborhoods and become acquainted, as much as possible without intruding on the privacy of the owners, its houses.
With that in mind, my favorite towns for walking and driving around in are the tudor and Victorian-filled Ridgewood (my personal favorite), Teanack and Montclair, the fast-changing yet always wealthy small towns of Essex Fells and Saddle River, the small tudor section of Hohokus or the catch-it-before-it's-ruined-by tasteless-New-Yorkers East Hill in Englewood, the erudite Leonia, Franklin Lakes, a fascinating town with interesting post-modern architecture, the Eastside Park section of Paterson where I spent many days in my earliest years, the Victorian towns of Glen Ridge, South Orange, Ocean Grove (a town I've been obsessed with since I was three)and Cape May, the rebuilding Asbury Park which I remember in its heyday of the late 40s and early 50s as a small child, the countrified Sussex County seat, Newton Blairstown, which was my father's childhood
hometown and its incredible wild west-like main street, Pines Lake which has the most interesting log cabin homes and the ever fascinating Packanack Lake, both in Wayne, the gorgeous Route 202 that winds through the western part of Mahwah, Pompton Lakes and Pompton Plains, two time capsules of 1950 Americana, downtown Ramsey, an example of an early 1900s New Jersey county town, much of rural Hunterdon County, Harding Township and Morristown in Morris County, Maplewood, the Summit Ave. area of Hackensack, Deal Township, the oddest shore town of them all, magnificent Rumson, Summit and Westfield, the super preppy Princeton and nearby Riverside, Tenafly, nouveau riche Alpine, waspy Allendale, the brownstones of downtown Jersey City, oddball
Hackettstown and Ocean City, my ex-wife's favorite shore town with a boardwalk.
Good lord, just give me a car, some obnoxiously-priced gas and a pair of good walking shoes and my imagination and excitement soar much higher than it would if I had to suffer through a visit to a stuffy old museum (I prefer living, breathing museums with the exception of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) or an obnoxious amusement park with its obnoxious people(neighborhood's have been my amusement parks ever since the kitschiest of them all Palisades Park was closed).
House tours like the Eastside Park affair every October in Paterson or the Woman's Club of Ridgewood tours can also be interesting if you want conversation to go along with the eye candy.
Obviously, those of you with young children, unless you train them well, will prefer amusement parks, zoos and museums so my suggestions may be best suited for those of you with imaginations like mine who like to dream both big and small. If you do, then wherever you live becomes an amusement park.
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El Touristo vs. Intellectual Curiosity
