I Sing the New Jersey Electric

By Joel Stein

The New York Times had to ruin it. The paper finally dropped the snooty subtext sprinkled throughout its Metro section, its Real Estate section and its none too subtle Dining In section ("Tonight, my lord, we shall attempt to eat in our very own home!") and just came out and said it. In a front-page story about the Bruce Springsteen concert was this comment: "Many people seemed, for a day at least, to exult in the fact that they too were from New Jersey."

I attended the first of 15 sold-out Springsteen shows in New Jersey last week, with a love not just for the music but also for the culture of my home state. I basked in the entire scene, complete with outdoors boardwalk games and sand brought up from the Jersey Shore--sand that no doubt had dangerous, used surgical supplies buried in it.

But we are not known only for our medical-supply companies. No, New Jersey is a state that brought us the light bulb, Walt Whitman and the Shopasaurus T shirt. Jersey is the only state that so overpowers its namesake that you can drop the New when referring to it. Try that with Hampshire, York or Mexico. No one has heard of those places. Other than Texas, Jersey is the only state to have a cohesive, distinct personality. It is a state so full of attitude that its capital, Trenton, welcomes visitors with Hollywood-size letters declaring TRENTON MAKES. THE WORLD TAKES. Our mascot is the devil. Jersey is short, tough and looking for a fight. That's because everyone wants our women. Sure, they pretend to want the California girl, all blond and Barbie and demurely flirtatious. But the Jersey girl, with her big hair and stone-washed jeans, takes Barbie's lunch money. If there were a New Jersey Barbie, her clothes would come off even faster than regular Barbie's.

So for one night I got to drop my lifelong defensiveness and bask in Springsteen songs rhapsodizing about drag racing on the highway, riding motorcycles toward swamps, taking dates on amusement-park rides, working at oil refineries and getting arrested by state troopers. I have never experienced any of those things, but somehow I felt them. Because that's what being from New Jersey is really about: feeling things in Bruce Springsteen songs. I have a hungry heart. I am in the dumps with the mumps as an adolescent pumps his way into his hat. It's like he knows me.

New Jersey is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. The "of sorts" refers to the fact that we don't really have anything to bring back, or, in the Latin, "naissance." But now we've got Lauryn Hill singing about her hometown, South Orange, and The Sopranos celebrating our family values, and New Jersey movie director Kevin Smith causing problems for both the Roman Catholic Church and Disney. There are even I LOVE NJ T shirts for sale at Newark Airport. I know airports in every state have those, but for us it's new.

I, of course, no longer live in New Jersey, opting for the more exciting, cultured life of Manhattan. Nor do I intend to return; instead I feel drawn toward the easy life of the West Coast. Still, the New York Times makes me mad. That's probably because they rejected me for a job. That's so Jersey of me.