Shellsuits are all the rage.
Posted on 03/09/2006 6:48:25 AM PST by Huck
Who's laughing now?
New Jersey, the state that spawned a thousand wise-guy bumper stickers and became the butt of a million late-night jokes, is actually a nice place to live.
The research group Morgan Quitno crunched the numbers this year and yesterday ranked New Jersey the fifth-most-livable state.
As for its neighbors?
Pennsylvania finished 30th, New York 32d.
"The people we talk to say they wouldn't live anywhere else, and I have to go along with that," said Mark Moran, a Bloomfield resident and one of the editors of Weird New Jersey magazine. "Whether it grows on you or people just don't know any better, I don't know."
New Jersey has long had a tragically poor reputation, earned by corrupt politicians, homicidal mobsters (real and fictional), surreal traffic patterns (who invented the jughandle, anyway?), toxic waste, and big hair.
The state's image has been so bad that even then-acting Gov. Richard Codey took the time last year to rollick in some of the more humorous entries in his public slogan contest.
Among the favorites: "New Jersey: You got a problem with that?" and "New Jersey: Most of our elected officials have not been indicted."
Morgan Quitno, a Kansas-based publisher of statistical data, based its rankings on 44 factors, and New Jersey shined in many.
The state moved up from eighth place a year ago. New Hampshire was judged the most livable state for the third year in a row.
The study determined that New Jersey has excellent schools; an educated, wealthy population; and relatively low rates of crime and poverty.
"We don't claim to be finding the most exciting place or the best place to take a vacation," said Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno. "It's just looking at very basic things. Other people can choose to look at other factors."
In other words, the things that make Jersey so Jersey didn't count against it. (Except for the toxic waste: Morgan found New Jersey had the most "hazardous waste sites on the National Priority List per 10,000 square miles.")
Moran also noted that if auto insurance and property tax rates had been considered, New Jersey's ranking would have sunk like a stone.
But in Morgan Quitno's world, livability is measured by factors such as student-teacher ratios and per-capita spending on the arts, and New Jersey excelled in both.
For Moran, there is no conflict in a state's combining livability with a tradition for the weird and absurd.
"You've got to take the good with the bad," he said. "The fact that it's such an odd and unique place... certainly makes it more livable for me."
Morgan visited the state last year and made a swing through Camden, the city his publishing company has famously labeled the most dangerous the last two years.
"We didn't advertise who we were," he said.
Shellsuits are all the rage.
As a Brooklyn boy, you might find it interesting that we used to refer to Valley Stream (where I went to elementary school) on Long Island as "Bensonhurst with grass."
We volunteered for Rural Medical Tour and lived everywhere from Immacule Florida to Biddiford Maine.
The whole "Joisey" misspelling has become trite and overused. You have some interesting and valid commentary, so please don't lose your message due to overdone humor.
~ Blue Jays ~
I lived there most of my life. Born and raised. They can keep it.
I know what you mean about the San Andreas thing. Spooky, although I was on a business trip in Ohio for the '89 Bay Area quake. I think almost every area of the country has some possible natural disaster problem. Hurricane Hazel went through upstate NY when I was living there in 1954. But there is something unnerving about an earthquake. I think they are unique in that there is no warning.
That's good bravado. Unfortunately it won't work to well for a defense when the state decides to exercise it's power over you.
Not to jynx it, but NJ is pretty good when it comes to natural disaster/weather type stuff. We get some flooding and storm surges from the bigger hurricanes that make it this far up the coast, but whatever damage we get pales next to Carolinas, etc. Supposedly there's a fault line, and we do get tiny little quakes that only instruments detect, but we don't, as far as I know, have San Andreas type worries. There's the occasional twister, but nothing like the tornado belt. No problems with wildfires. It's pretty stable.
LOL! You can't even type with the slang :))
::giggling::
Kentucky is pretty nice. And we don't have a chip on our shoulder...
It's not bravado.
LOL. That's funny, too!
Really? I've never seen one.
Yikes! That means this post: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1593088/posts?page=141#141 Wants to see McG in one???
:0
I guess McG would sport one better then me. I don't think scallop shells come in my size ;)
It's one of those cheapo tracksuits that Italian Americans are often seen wearing in the Sopranos.
The only other possibility is foolishness. NJ ranks low on the list of states allowing personal liberties. You can pretend it doesn't matter but that only works until it does matter.
However, I have noticed a trend away from the guitar slingers that this town was once famous for. It probably goes in cycles.
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