Nationwide New Jersey gets a bad rap because some people from New York invaded our shores to create the most entertaining reality TV the world has ever seen. Each year, we send a farm system’s worth of orange future sorority girls to the University of Alabama. But all things considered, if you ignore that ashtray that is the surrounding area the Newark Airport, it’s a pretty great state. Within an hour, you could hike a mountain and end up on a beach, Corona in hand, as you dismiss the pleads from college lifeguards with 17,000 followers on Tik Tok to stop drinking in public. We have clinically depressed Mets, Jets, and Knicks fans, Yankees, Giants, and Nets fans, and the Philly bunch too. And honestly, that’s what makes Degrom’s injury so tragic; it pains my heart that a large number of New Jersey construction workers, who wake up at 5 in the morning every day just so they can send their daughters to Florida State, where she will wear less cloth than a PBS video from an African Village taken in the 1980s, will not get that one little thing that makes them happy.
New Jersey is the kind of place where an Irish Catholic family from Summit will be seated next to a guy who got lucky Forex trading and a family of Guatemalan immigrants that came to this country for a better life. Kids from the Garden State roast entirely differently than almost anywhere else in the country besides maybe New York and Massachusetts. The combination of mental illness and good public school systems has created many of the meanest Instagram comments I’ve ever read.
My favorite part about New Jersey is that whether it’s a guy from Far Hills driving a Mercedes because he’s had family wealth accruing since before 13th amendment, an IT guy making his way back to Bayonne, or a Lawyer driving back to Ramsey, they will all happily flip you off on the Turnpike. Regardless of race, religion, and creed, people from New Jersey wake up with a fuck you attitude until DJAIs opens. If you live in the State of New Jersey, are of legal drinking age, and haven’t been to Belmar bars yet, you either go to WIldwood or were the type of person that loved Quarantine.
There are many telltale signs that someone is from New Jersey. Here are a few:
- If it’s a lady with a wrinkly tattoo of a seahorse wearing a bedazzled Yankees hat…New Jersey
- If it’s a guy complaining about how shitty a bagel is…he’s from New Jersey
- If you see someone pumping their own gas like the entire DSM-5 was thrown at them…New Jersey
- If you overhear the words “what exit?”…New Jersey
- And finally, if you hear a “Fuck Delby” or “Fuck CBA” …New Jersey
So weather you played Lacrosse at Mountain Lakes high school, regularly get drunk at the Mount Laurel applebees, have sat on the LBI bridge for more than twenty minutes, had to wait at the Salem DMV, seen a Dad from Morristown rocking a “fuck Phil Murphy” bumper sticker, ran cross country at Princeton High School, or still call PNC the Garden State Arts Center…fucking cheers. “I like people that don’t need everybody to live them” – Tony Soprano.
