From September through May, New Jersey is the butt of the joke. 'Yet when the weather turns warmer, you will descend anyway, and pretend for the three months of summer that you didn’t really mean it,' byJenAMiller writes.
This sounds like a silly lament — just ignore people dumping on you! — but after living here all my life, it grates to hear other people mock a state they use as a playground, and a resource. Recently, a Brooklyn vintage-store owner told me that he couldn’t believe prices at a secondhand store in Asbury Park, where he’d gone for a long weekend, were on par with New York, and then called the town a backwater. I was too stunned to respond, but not surprised.
So what I say to you, dear out-of-stater, is that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t hate on our state until you’re trying to find items to buy and then mark up in your store, until that first kid turns 4 and you “need” our schools , or until you need weed, an abortion, or just a summer break. Don’t complain about the prices that you drove up, or the crowds that you form. Doing so is like hitting a piñata and then complaining about what kind of candy comes out.
I know you won’t listen, and you’ll do all this anyway, and perhaps write me off as some dumb suburbanite who doesn’t “get” why your state is so great — until you’re here and decide New Jersey is fine now, which is what I’ve been saying all along. And also, the town that gave us our patron saint Bruce Springsteen is not a backwater. Get some education. Rutgers will give you an in-state discount, once you move here. I won’t say “I told you so” when you do.
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