"Do you know why New Yorkers are so depressed?""No. Why?"
"Because the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey."
This is not an anti-Jersey rant. Really, I have no strong feelings about the state either way and I haven't spent enough time there to form an opinion. Having said that, I did spend a good deal of time yesterday in and around Newark Liberty Airport. The airport itself is lovely- efficient, well-organized with nice shops and waiting areas- a traveler's dream. The short term parking was even cheap and close to the terminals.
My gripe is not with the airport or even Jersey; it is with whomever laid out the escape route from Newark. Having gotten there with little problem (admittedly, some may consider reading directions while sailing down the Garden State Parkway at 80 miles an hour to be a problem), heading home, I found myself inexplicably poised on the brink of crossing the GW with little idea of how I got there. Did I miss the signs? Did I confuse the Turnpike and the Parkway? Should I have been better prepared? Somehow I think it is a combination of all three.
Yet, in the case of Newark, I have to go south to go west to go north because, if I go north, I must go east? A lot of highways seem to be laid out with a Robert Moses-like disregard for common sense and the basic considerations of neighborhood, town or just plain humanity. I am not unique in making this statement, but I feel it bears repeating.
Of course, it was Mayor Vincent "Impy" Impelitteri, a Connecticut native (via Sicily), who gave Moses a blank check to rip down, crossover and cross out a lot of NY's neighborhood core (for fun, mention the Expressway to anyone who grew up in the Bronx in the '50s or'60s and see how they react). Maybe all this really points to is the triumph of immigrant pragmatism over sentiment. Odd, since both are considered core "Old World", "ethnic" values.
