New Jersey

From RationalWiki

New Jersey is one of the United States, located an easy bridge or tunnel ride from New York City.

One half of the state is unjustly derided for being an industrial wasteland, populated by people who couldn't really make it in the Big Apple (often called the "armpit of America" by snarky Pennsylvanians), while the other half justly claims fame as the "Garden State". People from the ugly half go to the pretty half for their honeymoons in the Poconos.

Truthfully though, New Jersey is neither as good as its residents will tell you it is, nor as bad as New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians say it is. People misjudge the state because they think the entire place looks like what you see driving the northern half of the New Jersey Turnpike.

New Jersey is a state with many extreme contrasts: extreme wealth (northern Bergen County, parts of Hunterdon and Mercer Counties) and dire poverty (Camden, Trenton, Paterson, parts of Newark and Atlantic City); lush farmland and forest (much of South Jersey, parts of Sussex, Warren, and Morris Counties) and industrial clutter and pollution (much of Middlesex, Union, Hudson, and Essex Counties); social progressivism (relatively liberal politics, the Christian Right having little political clout) and backwardness and corruption (most of the state and local governments).

[edit] Cultural yardstones

• Important: Nobody who actually lives in New Jersey refers to it as "Joyzee". Only assholes from Brooklyn say that.
• The Sopranos