FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: guidedbyboognish on May 11, 2011, 08:17:05 AM
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Am going from London to New York with my wife in a couple weeks and staying in Brooklyn for a few days. Having listened to the Best Show for 3 years, Tom's convinced me that I have to go with her to New Jersey for at least a day and was hoping for some tips from FOT'ers so that I can prove to her that New Jersey is great.
Places to eat/drink/shops/things to see would be awesome. Thanks in advance (if anyone responds).
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Seaside Boardwalk.
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Some possibilities:
Silverball Museum at Asbury Park (a pinball museum)
If you want to stay close to NYC, you could go to Liberty State Park in Jersey City. Great park with an amazing view of Manhattan.
Point Pleasant Amusement Park
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If you wind up going to Liberty State Park, you could probably volunteer at WFMU, if you wanted to check the station out -- I think they're mailing out premiums for the next little while. Email scott@wfmu.org.
You'll probably need to rent a car for a lot of it, but Jersey City is accessible via public transit, as is Princeton, which is worth seeing, if only for the Record Exchange. And you get to take the beloved Dinky, the best train on earth.
There are loads of cute little towns in the state -- Maplewood, Montclair, Red Bank, Lambertville -- but if you're staying in NY and live in London, there's not going to be anything there that you won't already have access to, unless you like cute little towns or antiquing.
Ditto the Boardwalk -- Island Beach State Park is also particularly beautiful. If you're into nature, look into hikes in the Pine Barrens, which are geographically unique and amazing. The Delaware Water Gap is pretty breathtaking, and you can spend the day rafting down the river. Bear Mountain is pretty great for hiking/camping, and you can hike the Appalachian Trail in the state.
If you want to see oddities, check out the Weird NJ website.
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If you go to Princeton keep an eye on your wallet. My mom got her credit cards stolen at Panera Bread. The Record Exchange is awesome. Mint Darkness on the Edge of Town for $2! Not sure of it's proximity to NYC.
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Will you have access to a car, or will you rely on public transportation? Jersey City is easy to get to from Brooklyn by subway, some other parts of New Jersey you can take a train to. The Silverball Museum is amazing, it is right on the ocean, but you may need a car to get there.
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http://www.weirdnj.com/ (http://www.weirdnj.com/)
all the fun The Garden State has to offer.
though in my opinion, Clinton Road isn't as good as it seems also I'm pretty sure Midgetville doesn't exist. I searched for it for 8 years.
I suggest the (mostly) abandoned mental hospital in Marlboro, NJ. Be ready to run though if the security comes by in their golf carts, also the fence is very sharp at the top, I've ruined a couple of pairs of pants climbing it and my friend Eric sliced his wrist open on it once.
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Thanks so much for all the suggestions, really grateful for them. We won't have a car so are reliant on public transport. Think that we'll probably be limited to Jersey City and Princeton (Record Exchange looks great), though some of the other suggestions are so tempting...any bars/coffee shops/restaurant suggestions within these two would be awesome. Then I won't pester any further.
Happy to return the favour if anyone heads over to London.
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A town away from Jersey City--and easily accessible from both Jersey City from New York--is Hoboken. If you have a night, I'd check out the famous Maxwell's to see a band or grab a drink. Maxwells has a nice bar area away from the stage part. Maxwells is where they have the end of the marathon Hood and Mouth Show and is partly owned by WFMU DJ Todd-O-Phonic Todd. You will be indirectly supporting the Best Show with every drink.
Good places to eat include Helmer's (German food across from Maxwells) and La Isla--a Cuban restaurant. There are probably better suggestions in restaurants but I have not been out to dinner there in a few years.
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A town away from Jersey City--and easily accessible from both Jersey City from New York--is Hoboken. If you have a night, I'd check out the famous Maxwell's to see a band or grab a drink. Maxwells has a nice bar area away from the stage part. Maxwells is where they have the end of the marathon Hood and Mouth Show and is partly owned by WFMU DJ Todd-O-Phonic Todd. You will be indirectly supporting the Best Show with every drink.
I think a pilgrimage to Maxwell's is a great idea. From the PATH station it's a short walk or a $5 cab ride. My wife and I honeymooned in Hoboken and caught three of Yo La Tengo Hanukkah shows. We both really liked Hoboken and would definitely stay there again. The boardwalk (Frank Sinatra Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmarks_of_Hoboken,_New_Jersey)) along the Hudson is nice too.
We also saw Tom at Maxwell's but thought it'd be best to leave him alone because we're shy, and also because he was surrounded by adoring female fans, and from what he says ("alotta dudes, alotta dudes") we didn't want to ruin a rare event for him.
Next time I'm there I'll check out the Cake Boss, not because of the Cake Boss, but because I'm a fan of Paul F Tompkin's Cake Boss impersonation.
Also, as far as transit goes, we got pay-as-you-go MetroCards instead of passes because you can use the money on them for the PATH train to NJ.
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I love Maxwell's, and there are tons of great, cheaper-than-NYC-restaurants in Hoboken. But be warned, a lot of Washington Avenue, especially close to the PATH train, is fratguy central. Not that this is really a big deal, but if what you're passing looks like a shitty pub, it probably is.
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I love Maxwell's, and there are tons of great, cheaper-than-NYC-restaurants in Hoboken. But be warned, a lot of Washington Avenue, especially close to the PATH train, is fratguy central. Not that this is really a big deal, but if what you're passing looks like a shitty pub, it probably is.
Yeah, it did have a drunk 32-year-olds shouting like frat guys vibe at midnight, but during the day Washington St was pretty pleasant. I wasn't that excited to go into anywhere but it was nice being on the street. I'm from the west coast so anything from before 1930 seems old and interesting to me.
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Just a word on New Jersey's public transit -- there are two separate systems to use. The first is the PATH, which is a subway system that connects Manhattan to Hoboken, Jersey City, Harrison and Newark. Hoboken is really small (geographically speaking) and has one stop that puts you in walking distance to everything. Jersey City has three stops, so where you want to go depends on that. There's also a small trolley-type of system (we call it light rail) that connects those towns.
Then there's New Jersey Transit. NJT stops at Penn Station in Manhattan and then goes to most of the rest of North Jersey. You would take this to get to Princeton. You can also take it to the Jersey Shore -- it's a bit of a hike from Penn Station but that might be the most quintessential Jersey experience there is. The Jersey Coast line can get you to Asbury Park (spiritual home of Bruce Springsteen, the Stone Pony and the pinball museum Tom touts -- albeit, it's a pretty dicey place, but I haven't been there in a few years). It can also get you to the more typical shore towns like Belmar, Bradley Beach and Point Pleasant. Out of those three, Point Pleasant's the one I would suggest -- they have a Boardwalk with a bunch of rides and you can get fried candy bars and stuff like that.
Also, I think the best cuisine the state of New Jersey has to offer is the hot dog. You can't get hot dogs like you can anywhere else in Jersey. I don't know Jersey City or Hoboken (JC didn't have anything going for it until the past 10 years; Hoboken I avoid like the plague because of its frat-guyish nature but Maxwell's is AWESOME) all that well so maybe someone else can have some suggestions. Jersey City also has a Little India neighborhood which has some pretty great food, but being a Londoner, that might not be too big a deal.
Princeton is worth a trip. That's one of my favorite small towns in the US. It's a nice little college town (Princeton University) with some really nice shops and places to get a bite to eat and the Princeton Record Exchange is really great. They also have a really good college radio station down there.
It might be a bit hard to do Jersey City/Hoboken and Princeton in one day. You'd have to take the PATH from Jersey City to Newark Penn Station (confusing) and then onto New Jersey Transit to Princeton. Princeton's about an hour on the train (depending which one you hop on -- it's on what's called the Northeast Corridor and there's certain express trains that get you there faster). I think the Princeton train station's a bit outside of the town so you'd have to take a shuttle bus from the train station to the heart of the town, but someone might know better than me.
North Jersey's best part is that there's just a lot of nice small towns to bum around in. If you're pressed for time, you can take New Jersey Transit to Montclair (kind of a college town that has decent restaurants and a few good bars, including a spot called Tierney's which is one of my five favorite bars in the world), Morristown (similar to Montclair but has a lot of history stuff), South Orange/Maplewood (two suburban towns right next to each other, both have pretty nice little downtown areas and have a few good Irish bars. I really like Cryan's in South Orange a lot.) and Ridgewood (pretty haughty but has a lot of decent restaurants -- Baumgarten's is really well known.) You could also go to New Brunswick which is home to Rutgers (New Jersey's state university) and eat at the Greasetrucks, which are these insane sandwiches that can kill you.
And don't EVER worry about asking a New Jerseyan about places to go. We 100% get the short end of the stick. We're the butt of jokes from the rest of the country constantly. And people who live in New York act like we don't even exist.
I live in Philadelphia these days but North Jersey is where I grew up and will always be my home.
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Yeah, it's pretty much impossible to do both Hoboken/JC and Princeton in one day without a car -- almost all of the decent public transit in NJ is designed to get people in and out of NYC, or to a lesser extent Philadelphia. I was one of those people who didn't get a license until I was 24, and getting from one place to another in-state is a huge pain in the ass. I would frequently have to go into NYC just to get to another place in NJ.
I would say the best NJ food is not the hot dog (are you thinking of that one place on Route 46, Greggulator?) but pizza. New York pizza sucks now, despite all the mythology around it, though there are still a few good fancy brick oven places, and some pretty great (though often overpriced) pizza to be had way out in places like Flushing or Bay Ridge -- but the days of delicious, cheap slices to be had from any Manhattan hole in the wall are long gone. Not so in Jersey! There's crappy fast-food pizza there, too, but great pizza is ubiquitous. And you can feed your whole family with a single slice of Benny Tudinos, a few blocks away from Maxwell's.
Somewhat irrelevant if you don't have a car, but NJ is also full of amazing restaurants tucked away in totally charmless strip malls. I've had some of the best Italian, Vietnamese, and Indian food of my life in these places.
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I just kind of discounted pizza because of how ubiquitous it is here. Listing great pizza joints in NJ is pointless since even the worst places are usually better than you'll find anywhere else.
As far as hot dogs go, my number one spot is and forever will be Jimmy Buff's in West Orange. Rutt's Hutt in Clifton is pretty spectacular, as is the Falls View Grill and Hot Dog Johnny's which is way out west on 46.
Also -- I think the most slept on areas of New Jersey are the Highlands of northern Passaic, Morris and Sussex Counties. Ringwood and West Milford have some pretty awesome state parks that are the complete opposite of what people think of New Jersey. Too bad Action Park has ceased to exist...
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We're getting a new Sir Pizza over off Davis Drive. Is that that great pizza everyone's always talking about?
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New Jersey is nice, and if you have time for a side trip to Washington DC there is a lot to do and see there. You can take a train from NYC to DC. The best bargain is that all the museums are free! So you can walk in and out of them all day. The best pizza outside of Italy is at 2Amys. If you go on Orbitz.com you can make a last minute hotel reservation and stay in a 300 dollar a night room for around 100 dollars, that's fun. Although I have taken the train both ways on the same day, it's a long day trip, but once you are on the train you are fine.
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I just drove up to North Jersey from Philly on Rt. 1. I can't believe us Jerseyans haven't mentioned DINERS yet! Diners are a perfect example of Americana and are an integral part of any New Jersey adolescent experience.
The ability to have fried eggs, cheese fries and gravvy and a vanilla milkshake at 3:45 in the morning is something I'll always cherish. You'd also be surprised how infrequent real diners (not crap like Denny's) are around the rest of the country.
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I'm loving this thread. I too have a little bit of spare time on the East Coast coming up, and I too am from the UK. I was going to pass the time in New York, but I'm now strongly considering making it NJ instead!