Monroe Township, New Jersey
Monroe Township was infested with old people, smelled like train, and anyone under the age of 40 had been enslaved to work in dry cleaning shops and gas stations - the two things old people never get tired of apparently.
Lotten had disappeared off to some shaman gathering in the woods in Pennsylvania early that morning, I'm still not entirely sure how she got there, I just know she was gone when I woke up. I also had to sit through a ridiculous breakfast with Howard and his mother where they argued about whether sugar or raisins were better in oatmeal: fantastic.
After Breakfast, Jon and I wandered around the nearby area eager to get as far away from the old people, and their fortress village, as we were able. We didn't find much. Among the highlights were a Baskin-Robbins which promised free WiFi but failed to deliver, a park next to a pond which no one was at, and a high school. We stopped at the library for an hour or and decided to get the hell out Dodge, before we got recruited into the elderly's secret internment camps.
Where to go? I didn't know much about the cities of New Jersey other than most of them are ugly, violent, boring and smell like car exhaust. We decided to go to Rutgers college in New Brunswick for lack of a better thing to do.
So we drove as best we could avoiding the turnpike, and avoiding the turnpike in Jersey is a pretty impressive task in itself, passing dozens of signs promoting New Jersey as "Not just a turnpike". Right. We managed to dodge it for most of the trip, only being forced onto to one or two times for a short length. About an hour later we arrived in New Brunswick. The first impression wasn't too bad, there was a neat looking church right in the center of downtown with a graveyard houses nearly 200 graves shoved into a corner of a city block. I wouldn't be surprised if they unearthed several of those graves when they built the street and buildings around the church. There was a decent sized train station that was slightly reminiscent of the EL stations in Chicago, and they had plenty going on outside of them.
We ambled up a hill and down what seemed to be the main drag through the downtown and university area. About a half mile outside of the busiest area, we found a parking spot on the side of the street, locked up, and packed out into the town to explore. What we found was so far less than impressive that I could only imagine playing with a cup and ball would have been more fun then roaming the streets around Rutgers university. At around 6, no one seemed to be outside. The few that were, if I were to guess, were completely preoccupied about getting shit-faced later in the night.
Everywhere we went there were deli-like shops toting their city's famous "Fat Darrell" sandwiches which all had cute names like "fat bitch" or "fat whore". Fat sandwiches, by the by, are monstrous creations that are able to turn a city's population into a large scale recreation of "Biggest Loser" overnight. They are sandwiches that are stuffed with, but not limited to, mozzarella sticks, French fries, an entire steak, ketchup, pork rolls, a pound or two of cheese, fried fat, chicken tenders, eggs, mayo, or an entire hamburger and pretty much anything else they can fry and shove into a sub bun together. For example, the "fat bitch" includes: a cheese steak, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, French fries and ketchup. That's right, it's an entire steak with 4 mozzarella* sticks and chicken fingers smashed into it, sprinkled with a quarter pound of fucking French fries, and dunked in a vat of ketchup. For the vegetarian selection,(yes, vegetarian) simply take away the steak and add a splash of lettuce. That's Jersey's famous food, a big pile of fried shit. Fuck you Jersey.
We wandered for a bit more, and finally decided we should find a better spot for the van. Here's another shitty thing about Jersey: parking. You know the street signs in cities that say something like, "No parking 2:00am - 7:00am Mon-Fri" or something vaguely similar? Well let me give you an example of a Jersey sign: Take the "No parking 2:00am - 7:00am" and add an : "except for permit district 1 residence." Then, underneath that sign...make another sign, an addition if you will, that is square. This part of the sign will say something like "District 1 parking 3:00 pm - 9:00pm only, except holidays." Now we have two signs stacked on top of each other, so under those put another long rectangular sign like the one on top that says, "Bus route 7B, DO NOT BLOCK BUS," and below that something that says, "Handicapped parking on Sunday, unless park is closed." And finally, at the very end of it all: "City of New Jersey, Violators will be towed, except Tuesdays."
I don't even know if I could figure out if it was easier to violate the sign or just ignore it and hope no one else knows how to read it. I park next to one of these signs, not really sure what the fuck is going on, and decide to ask someone to translate this Jersey chicken-scratch for me. I flag down a kid walking into a nearby house and ask him how parking works. He replies, "Oh, it doesn't matter. They don't check. I just park in the handicap space everyday." Great work, good job.
Jon and I eventually stumble into an underground hip-hop / punk club which is actually pretty great. We stayed there for about 3 hours and listened and chit-chatted with some locals. One of these locals we found ended up being a real gem of a find. Standing about five foot ten and in the shape of a Twinkie, Ski-boy introduces himself to us (I'm not really sure what his name is).
I call him Ski-boy because in the natural course of speaking, he finds it necessary to tack a -ski onto about every third word or so.
"So you broski's wanna go over my friend Jeffski's place and chillski?" he asks us. We have nothing better to do, so we go. On the way there he asks us where we're from, and we tell him. He also adds, "You look like you belongski in Brooklyn broski." I wasn't sure if that was an insult or just an observation, and at this point I really didn't care.
When we get to Jeffski's house, no one is there. We begin to try to separate ourselves from this hodgepodge Jersey posse that has formed around us and go back to the van to sleep. We eventually get clearance to leave. Just Before we go Ski-boy asks me why I keep making fun of the way he talks. I tell him, "Because if you talked like that in Michigan you'd get punched in the face," and walk away.
*In Jersey, mozzarella is apparently spelled mozzerrela.
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