Jersey wuz here

February 22, 2020 4:58 PM

Hi Haters: “Who let New Jersey have a Twitter,” a guy named Gary wondered, on Twitter, not long ago. “your mom,” the State of New Jersey responded. With moments like getting baited by the feds over Sentient Pork Roll, the realness of Central Jersey, dunking on Delaware, and declaring itself the Pizza Capital of the World, @NJgov is redefining what it means to be an official state Twitter account.
posted by Miko (42 comments total)

Now let's see Florida on Twitter... NOT.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:55 PM on February 22, 2020

I will gladly twitter for my state Tuesday, for access today.
posted by clavdivs at 6:23 PM on February 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was thinking pizza capital of the world was ridiculous but I think NJ might have more coal fired pizza than NYC at this point. Now I'm not sure of anything.
posted by BrotherCaine at 6:31 PM on February 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

"Coal fired" pizza always struck me as a strange thing. Coal is a bad and dirty fuel, and people only ever used it when they couldn't get wood. It was kind of weird to watch it gain traction as a positive thing in the early oughts.

As long as I've been alive NJ has been home to what I think is the gold standard of pizza, and yet I don't think any of it has been "coal fired." The real claims to fame are a very-thin crust style, really good ingredients, and so very many indepently owned pizza places that time has weeded through them, leaving only the excellent and the serviceable.
posted by Miko at 6:43 PM on February 22, 2020 [8 favorites]

Anthracite coal is a whole different animal and mined in PA; very clean burning
posted by BrotherCaine at 6:48 PM on February 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

Grew up in NJ, moved to Chicago for college and have lived here ever since (1991). I've tried every pizza in Chicago (obvs not every one but you know what I mean) and no contest. Jersey has the best pizza.
posted by tzikeh at 7:13 PM on February 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

Can confirm: Jersey pizza is great. Maybe even the best.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:20 PM on February 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

By the way, Sentient Pork Roll is the name of my new Primus tribute band.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:58 PM on February 22, 2020 [20 favorites]

*central Jersey is real

*it is called pork roll (but when we moved 6 miles south when I was 9 all of a sudden it is called Taylor ham)

*i have been wanting someone to tell me the story of this twitter account for months and finally someone has thank you, flagged as fantastic
posted by capnsue at 8:55 PM on February 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

As someone who has never been to New Jersey but has been to Nevada a bunch of times: can someone(s) who have been to both states tell me which one is worse? Because Nevada is literally covered in nothing but sagebrush and gambling within a few minutes of driving over the state line, and I can't help but imagine that for all the hype, Jersey has to be at least somewhat better than that. Or at least I think they have beaches and less sagebrush?

Signed,
A West Coaster
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:08 PM on February 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was born in New Jersey, but we moved away not long after my 6th birthday. I went to school, grew up, and have lived here in Georgia more than four decades. My grandparents were Irish, Danish, English, and Ukrainian. A friend calls me his, "Italian guy," because apparently you can take the the boy out of New Jersey, but you can't take the New Jersey out of the boy.

P.S. I could really go for a pork roll sandwich on a hard roll. We can get Taylor's in Georgia now, but good luck finding a decent hard roll.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:15 PM on February 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

can someone(s) who have been to both states tell me which one is worse?.... at least I think they have beaches

New Jersey is incredibly beautiful, and yes, southern NJ has beaches all along the Atlantic, but no one in New Jersey goes "to the beach"; we go "down the shore."

It's The Garden State for good reason. NJ gets a terrible rap for, basically, the area around the airport, which is all a large number of people ever see of the state (usually on their way to NYC). If I had the money I'd go back and live there in a hot second.
posted by tzikeh at 9:55 PM on February 22, 2020 [21 favorites]

Metafilter: nothing but sagebrush and gambling
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:58 PM on February 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

Dunking on Delaware? At least we can turn left.
posted by Automocar at 10:52 PM on February 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

apparently you can take the the boy out of New Jersey, but you can't take the New Jersey out of the boy

You should read up on this. Surgery has made some advances in the last few years.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:53 AM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Our official agency Twitter account occasionally tries to be clever but when you have to publish everything in two official languages most of your opportunities for humour are sadly lost.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:51 AM on February 23, 2020

Jersey is many things. It is the maze of construction between NYC and the rest of America. It is home to lush, verdant forests. It is where many tri-state area people got their first few speeding tickets. It gestated Chris Christie. It produced Action Park. It cradles in its bosom both Atlantic City and Great Adventure, treasured by all within a 250 mile radius. It has ludicrously high property taxes. It has a law which dictates that property with a cesspool onsite is ineligible for resale, resulting in exorbitantly high cesspool removal and replacement costs which lock poor homeowners out of capital they could otherwise access. It has very reasonable liquor laws. There's an awesome bar in Paterson called Paul's with four bowling lanes in the back. Princeton is there. It has great malls. Did I mention Atlantic City? Because A/C is great. Yes, the Shore. Beautiful, often serene, somewhat exclusionary since you need day passes to sit on the beach and those passes are often limited to residents or guests of residents. Teetotal your day away in dry Cape May or get lit on a mini-golf bar crawl in Wildwood. It is very long, the Shore. Many, many years ago New Jersey was the first place people driving down I-95 would encounter billboards for South Of The Border. Wisely, New Jersey removed them. New Jersey has the best views of Mahattan and Philadelphia. RIP Maxwell's. Long live the American Dream. Be sure to hit the Meadowlands on ostrich racing day.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:24 AM on February 23, 2020 [26 favorites]

New Jersey is incredibly beautiful

That has not been my experience, but maybe I just never went to the right parts.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:32 AM on February 23, 2020

Speaking as a botanist, I can say that the Jersey Pine Barrens are a special place. There are dwarf pines, unusual flowers, rare birds and butterflies, and, oh, also the Jersey Devil.
posted by acrasis at 6:40 AM on February 23, 2020 [13 favorites]

Sadly, no evidence of Jersey Devils has been found ever since the game wardens banned the setting of traps in the Neutral Zone.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:54 AM on February 23, 2020 [10 favorites]

Would you like to know more about the Garden State? Chris Gethard's Taylor Ham, Egg, and Cheese has got you covered. See especially "Everyone in New Jersey is a Little Bit Italian."
posted by whuppy at 7:08 AM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

As for the evergreen argument-starting topic of pizza, the reason that NJ is the pizza capital of the world isn't about the "best" pizza joints that are on par with DiFara's, Juliana's, Sally's, Pepe's, etc. (Although I'll put a DiLorenzo tomato pie up against any of them). It's the ability to walk into any pizza joint with the confidence that it will be at least decent and probably quite good. From Jersey City to Lambertville to Moorestown to Lyndhurst to Princeton to Mountain Lakes to Sea Isle City, they all know what they're doing. Go a little bit outside of the Northeast Pizza Corridor and those odds drop precipitously.
posted by whuppy at 7:19 AM on February 23, 2020 [9 favorites]

I spent some time in Ramsey last year. It was nice. Nice enough that I stopped being angry at the Big Ten for admitting Rutgers. I still don’t think you fully belong, but fat sandwiches are cool.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:58 AM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

no one in New Jersey goes "to the beach"; we go "down the shore."

I have a small rant about this and am going to indulge it now. We do go to the beach. I grew up and live in Monmouth County, 10-20 minutes from the beach, and my entire life we have "gone to the beach" on a summer day.

The usages are not exclusive. The deal is that the Shore is a region, and the beach is the major feature of the Shore. In other words, you go to the Shore to go to the beach - but if you already live at the Shore, you ...also go to the beach.

People get confused about this, but in reality, the way they use it in practice is the way I'm describing. When people in Philly or inland South Jersey say they're going "down the Shore," they mean they're going to the region that is the Shore, where the thing they do is go to the beach. You don't wake up in the morning at your beach house 2 blocks from the beach and say "let's go down the Shore." You are already at the Shore. You say "what time you wanna go to the beach?"

There's also a bit of difference in the North part of the shore and the south part. The South part is more "down the Shore." The North part goes more by "Jersey Shore" or just the name of the beach town you live in or go to.
posted by Miko at 8:17 AM on February 23, 2020 [18 favorites]

Now let's see Florida on Twitter... NOT.

Too late. Twitter is an unfiltered portal into Florida's suppressed subconsciousness.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:26 AM on February 23, 2020 [5 favorites]

I have lived in NJ and NV. NJ in a hot second indeed. Much richer and more diverse culture. The best pizza (fact). OUR OWN DEVIL. And yes most of the state is beautiful. Tons of forests, lakes, state parks. My family is in far northwest NJ and pretty much every time we visit we see a bear. There is amazing produce in the summer. There is taylor ham, egg, cheese sam. Hard roll v good but consider a bagel instead mmmmm. I could go on but hey I live in CA now so NJ seems kinda dinky in some ways but NV is just meth heads and old people.
posted by supermedusa at 10:03 AM on February 23, 2020 [5 favorites]

shoutout to Delaware

#LoveYourPetDay

Dying.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 10:22 AM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

people from new jersey are gonna fucking hate this, and I feel like people from new york don't admit this, but while we rag on jersey all the time we don't like it when anyone else does. is that a sibling relationship? is that what it's like?

anyway, i'll never admit it again, but yeah jersey is cool
posted by schadenfrau at 10:24 AM on February 23, 2020 [4 favorites]

Anywhere that has a place called “Cheesequake” has to be cool…

As a Brit working in NYC, for years all I knew was The Bit Round Newark Airport. Then I went to see folks further down the coast and found that, yes, it has some really lovely parts.

(And as a Brit, I cannot comment on the pizza, because just about all pizza I’ve had in the US has been miles better than most of what we get over here)
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 11:25 AM on February 23, 2020

New Jersey is incredibly beautiful

We‘re Europeans living in CA now and our description of NJ landscapes when we stayed there for a month boiled down to ‚it‘s a bit like England, except in beige‘.

The food (of various ethnicities) is indeed surprisingly good. An interesting state, but maybe all of them are.
posted by The Toad at 11:48 AM on February 23, 2020

I grew up on Long Island but my mom had a sister in Woodbridge. We could tell when we getting close to her house by the smell, in those days of no car airconditioning the outside air was unavoidable.

I think it smells better now.
posted by tommasz at 1:15 PM on February 23, 2020

when i die, bury me low
where i can hear the petroleum flow
a sweeter sound i never did know
da rolling mills of new joisey
posted by Clowder of bats at 3:11 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

is that a sibling relationship? is that what it's like?

Sure. I feel the same way about Ohio. Even after its war with Michigan.
posted by clavdivs at 5:35 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

NJ is a nice place. The hell with some fancy cruise for a vacation, give me Lucy the Elephant, Ocean City, Cape May, and Avalon any time. All the charm of Catalina with 100x the convenience, and much cheaper to stay over.
posted by blnkfrnk at 6:19 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Jersey is great and it's where I grew up but I could never afford to live there unfortunately.
posted by Ferreous at 8:15 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Along the Delaware River is one of the prettiest rides you can imagine. Also, 🍕.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 8:44 PM on February 23, 2020

The coolest thing about NJ is that it has the crumbling wreck of a WWI concrete boat, the SS Atlantus, just off the shore from Sunset Beach in Cape May.
posted by srboisvert at 5:57 AM on February 24, 2020 [3 favorites]

I forgot to mention the Pulaski Skyway, a truly terrifying and wondrous elevated roadway with exits and entrances that just sort of appear in the left lane. GTA IV fans might remember it as the Plumber's Skyway.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:35 AM on February 24, 2020

I love living here. I can be in NYC, Hershey Park, or DC in a few hours. I can day trip in the mountains, on a farm, at a winery, or down the shore. I'm a 26 minute train commute from my job in Philadelphia. I always try to get my coworkers to come to NJ instead of buying out in the Western suburbs where they have an hour+ car commute. "But taxes!" they say. Yes, my taxes are high, but they take care of our schools, our roads, and our parks.

The corn. The peaches. The tomatoes. The pizza. The pinelands. Our hockey team (even this year, sigh)! And now our Twitter account. I love living here.

I would really like to pump my own gas though.
posted by kimberussell at 8:01 AM on February 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

The coolest thing about NJ is that it has the crumbling wreck of a WWI concrete boat, the SS Atlantus, just off the shore from Sunset Beach in Cape May.

We have one of those in Galveston, too!

They really are neat.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 5:05 PM on February 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

Oh hey just because this thread is open here's what happens when Macca shows up in Metuchen.
posted by Miko at 5:46 AM on February 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

“Garden State Licks”—The Ice Cream Show, Munchies, 18 February 2020

Isaac is off to the Jersey Shore to check out ice cream culture boardwalk style. Join him at the beach as he slings scoops and slides into sundaes!

P.S. Aaaaaay! Seaside!
posted by ob1quixote at 9:58 PM on March 3, 2020 [1 favorite]