On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 14:18:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"DrollTroll" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"DrollTroll" wrote in message
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"Wes" wrote in message
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Gunner wrote:

Its actually the ass end of the universe.

If they were going to give the planet an enema..NYC is where they
would put the hose.


Close, Newark, NJ.

Well, getting closer:
Camden, NJ.

One of the poorest districts on the East Coast. Where ahm movin to!
Soon....

I hope you're kidding. But if you're not, there's one thing you won't
have to worry about in Camden: Nobody is going to try gentrifying it in
our lifetimes. They'd have to clean up all the lead, for one thing.

It's an alarming place in many ways. The mayor sits armed in his home,
and had to pull a gun on someone a couple of years ago.

I guess dats why the wife is telling me to send her a postcard!

There's an on-again/off-again regular on amc who lives right outside of
Camden -- Laurelton, iirc -- who sez it's not that bad.

Without getting into a travelogue, I thought you meant you'd be right *in*
Camden. That's a hellhole, South Jersey's version of Patterson or Trenton.
Nobody I know goes there on purpose. But, surprisingly, most of the suburbs
are very nice. Choose carefully. They come in several flavors, from old
blue-collar to the full-yuppie version.

There's Camden, then a thin row of suburbs, and then there's South Jersey,
which is the rest of it. I was born in South Jersey. It's rural -- truck
farms -- with housing developments sprouting up all over like milkweeds. If
you like rural places, there are lots of places you'll find to like not far
from Camden. Otherwise, you'll think of it the same way most New Yorkers
think of it: a flat, sandy wasteland overrun with eggplants and tomatoes.
The truth is in the perception.


But I suspect, judging from other areas in NJ without nearly the rep, that
it might very well be that bad. So, OK, mebbe not Camden.

Not Camden. Not *in* Camden, at least. Somewhere outside of Camden.


NJ, I'm told, is in general like NYS, a miserable (read: administratively
hostile/expensive) effing place to conduct bidniss.
Your bidness is grass, and the state/local municipality is the lawnmower.

It's a mixed bag. After two Republican administrations (Kean and Whitman),
it got a lot better for business. We drew in the biggest pharma companies in
the world, and lots of little ones and other research centers, with good tax
deals for them. The Democrats in that office backslid somewhat. But the
state is so fouled up that it's in a financial crisis right now, so it's
anybody's guess how it will come out. Having a financial whiz for governor
(Corzine, a Dem) has helped everyone to see the underlying reality, and it
ain't pretty. But he's not a magician. He inherited one hell of a mess. When
he tells people how it really is, which he's been doing a lot, he has to
duck behind a piece of armor plate.

Don't count on anything long-term. It's all in flux.


Of course, NYS is the worst, and in fact has lost a lot of business to NJ.
NY is second only to Hawaii in overall expense, and at least Hawaii has a
3,000 mile excuse.

But still, NJ has absolutely deee-licious industrial areas, big brick
fortress-like industrial buildings.

Mebbe Delaware, Maryland, or proly PA.

I like all three, and I've lived in both PA and MD at different times.
Delaware, though, is booooring...

What I like now is Virginia, especially 'way out where my son is, in
Lexington. You really have to like the outdoors, though, to appreciate those
parts of it. One thing that redeems it is that there are lots of small
college towns, so there's something else going on besides milking contests.


The fuknYupsters have speculated much of the East Coast out of contention,
so mebbe all's that's left is Camden and PA, and PA only because it's
inward a little.

PA is desolate a little. Get out of the cities, and you're in the woods. I
like that (I lived in the woods near Bloomsburg, which has no known
connections to the rest of the universe). But not everybody does. I've been
trying to move to PA for 30 years, but my wife knows too much about what
it's like to go for it.


But, if I wind up any broke-er, Camden it will be!!

My prediction is that real estate will hobble a little for a cupla years,
but then it will be off again to the races, cuz, well, making real estate
fundamentally unavailable to the masses is second only to a food/water
shortage in efficiently and effectively ****ing them clear up their
ileocecal valves.
And also a lot subtler.

And, what would Cable be, without its litany of mind****ing home shows?
Doesn't everyone need a 3-story stained glass cathedral ceiling in their
bathrooms, so's they can **** in religious epiphany??

It will not stop until the working class -- what's left of them -- will
have to commute, long distance, to mind-numbing jobs from military-style
barracks, replete with triplex or quadriplex bunk beds.

We'll be sleeping the same way ParkFast parks cars in Manhattan: in
stacks.

--
DT, Sleepless -- and broke -- in Yonkers. And cramping.....

LOL! You really do need to get out of Yonkers more. g

The last time I was in Camden (always by missing a turn around the Ben
Franklin Bridge) it looked better, with live people moving about,
sitting on the steps visiting, playing chess... That was about 2004
or so.

Of course, the Thumbian I was taking to Bookbinder's was wishing for a
Hummer with twin .50's. Like my son said about Michigan folks, "They
may be yankees, but some are the damnedest rednecks I've ever met."
This one checks his handgun at the plant gate on the way in to work
during trapping season.

The time before was about 1980, and it looked like nothing but burned
out buildings, broken windows, and few winos or bodies propped up in
doorways here and there.

Pete Keillor