New Jersey
In This Age of Irony, New Jersey is (Gasp) In
by Debra Galant
July 25, 1999
A few weeks ago, my husband and I were invited into New York for an elegant dinner at the James Beard House. Just about everyone at our table was a Manhattanite and a food writer. I am used to fading into the background in such swell company, as nobody is much interested in a housewife and part-time writer living in New Jersey. But this time, when I mentioned my main credential -- writing this column -- I was treated like a visiting celebrity.
"Oh I love people from New Jersey!" exclaimed a 20-something woman across the table. "They're so funny and quirky."
At first I thought she said we were "funny and perky," but even "funny and quirky" seemed like a hilarious characterization of my 8 million closest neighbors. I regaled them with suburban folklore, getting laughs that would have made Will Rogers blush.
Later, the conversation turned to an article in that day's paper about suburban parents paying $70 an hour to have children tutored in Little League. Again, all heads swiveled toward us, as we were the only suburbanites with children of Little League age. We held them rapt with our opinions on the peewee jock scene.
"I can't wait to become a father," sighed a young Manhattanite, who is a stemware expert for a wine magazine.
Later, a cookbook writer who had reared two children in the city complained about the law that effectively prohibits grilling outdoors in Manhattan. She seemed gleeful at the prospect of being invited to a barbecue in Jersey.
Ah, those poor benighted Manhattanites! All looking wistfully across the Hudson, at those of us lucky enough to be living the funny and quirky life, grilling outside regularly with our well-tutored Little Leaguers.
How different from my experience a year before, when my husband and I were invited to a comedy club in Chelsea, only to be harangued for an hour by the comics Mark Maron and Janeane Garofalo as they disparaged everything suburban while chain-smoking Marlboro Lights.
What had changed in the intervening year? A theory began to form. In this Age of Irony -- with the comeback of yellow smile faces, troll dolls, bell bottoms and lounge music -- maybe New Jersey is now the ultimate in reverse chic.
I just wasn't sure whether we were cool because, as in the Huey Lewis song, it's "Hip to Be Square," or because we really are funny and quirky. Maybe with Seinfeld gone, the nation has turned to the Sopranos for its quirky fix. Maybe we're even beyond quirky into demented -- like some of the freak-house characters in Todd Solondz's New Jersey-based movie "Happiness," which shocked audiences with its pedophile themes last winter.
I decided to ask some of the coolest Jerseyans I know whether they, too, had seen their status rise. Tom Cudworth, a Bloomfield screenwriter, whose movie "Restaurant" will be released in October, says New Jersey is definitely seen as a cool place to be from, particularly in Los Angeles, where everyone has Jersey roots.
It's Jersey's authenticity that scores points, Mr. Cudworth says. "People tend to go to New York to reinvent themselves," he explains. "People who grow up in New Jersey wear it on their sleeves. You're not trying to be something that you're not."
Something about New Jersey's earthy cachet reminded me of Brooklyn's ascent on the cool barometer, based on its association with Spike Lee. Michael Aaron Rockland, professor of American Studies at Rutgers University who wrote "Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike", thinks the Brooklyn analogy is apt.
When he was growing up, Dr. Rockland says, "If you wanted a joke, all you had to say was Brooklyn. Later, that became New Jersey." Both were seen, in their time, as the ultimate "declasse middle-class place."
Bruce Springsteen began to turn that around, he argues, repositioning New Jersey as "something basic and honest and raunchy -- but honest raunchy."
Vinnie Brand, a comedian and owner of the Stress Factory, a comedy club in New Brunswick, thinks we're cool just because we're not trying to be. Recently, he saw a young Manhattanite who "was so incredibly hip that he wasn't hip at all." The kid had a George Clooney haircut, a Starbucks baseball cap, baggy pants and the most important coolness accessory of all -- a look of total disdain. "That's the new rule of cool: you can't display any form of external form of happiness," Mr. Brand explains.
Here in the land of barbecues and Little League, we know better. "If you can't throw a couple of dogs on," Mr. Brand says, "you're definitely not hip."
