The following is going to settle once and for all that Central Jersey is, in fact, the best part of the Garden State. It’s not close either.
For starters, if you’re one “they” (DJ Khaled voice) that doesn’t think Central Jersey exists, go ahead and just stop reading this. You’re dead wrong and you’re probably a sociopath. Living in Central Jersey gives you the best of both worlds. We’re close to just about everything there is worth being close to. We’re an hour or so away from New York City, so North Jersey can’t hold that against us. We’re also a quick trip from South Jersey’s beloved Atlantic City. We're close enough to make a last minute power move, yet far enough to not develop a crippling gambling addiction. Along with that, just about everyone's senior after-prom involves absolutely manhandling Wildwood for a weekend. I don’t think I have to go into detail of what goes down in Wildwood during after prom weekend. To sum it up, if Wildwood is Ronda Rousey, us Central Jerseyans are Holly Holm. We super kick Wildwood and Southern New Jersey right in the mouth for essentially the entire month of June every single year. But that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, if you truly break down all three portions of this great state, this shouldn’t even be a discussion. Central Jersey is home to some of the most incredible beaches New Jersey has to offer (Manasquan, Point Pleasant, Belmar, etc.), which should, in itself, put this debate to bed. I mean, the fact we have Bar A is a major x-factor in this whole thing. Beat The Clock is simply a gift from God. It’s basically a tourist attraction at this point. When they look back on the history of mankind, people are going to be talking about three things — the discovery of fire, invention of the submarine, and Bar Anticipation.
Not only do we have the best parts of the Jersey Shore in our corner, we also have pork roll. Not “Taylor ham” you bug outs, it’s called pork roll. It was invented in our state capital of Trenton, (Central) New Jersey and you should be thanking us for it every single morning. After crushing a pork roll egg and cheese, you can make your way to Six Flags Great Adventure, which is the greatest amusement park in the country. That’s not even a biased opinion; it was literally voted as the G.O.A.T. of all amusement parks in America. If you can’t handle Kingda Ka, not a problem. Go kick back and relax at Monmouth Park for a few hours and have an awesome time. I’m sure plenty of North and South Jersey folks were there to see Triple Crown winner American Pharoah at the Haskell this past summer.
The PNC Arts Center resides in Central Jersey, and personally I can say seeing Luke Bryan live on the lawn at PNC may or may not have been the greatest day of my life. The Stone Pony and Starland Ballroom are also here, amongst many other cool venues to catch a show. Remaining on the topic of music, Bruce Springsteen went to Freehold Borough High School. That’s right, “Born To Run.” That Bruce. He’s from Central Jersey. For those keeping score at home, Central Jersey has turned this one into a blowout.
I could go on for days about why Central Jersey has the rest of the state beat, but I’m not going to. I feel bad at this point. To North and South Jersey, I am truly sorry. I didn’t want to do it to you, but you left me with no choice. This simply wasn’t a contest for us. With March Madness coming up, I’d like to think of this matchup as Central Jersey with the number one seed. North and South Jersey are like the play-in game for who gets to be the 16 seed and lose by 20 in the first round. We could have beaten you by 50, maybe even 100, but we have more respect than that. We weren’t raised that way. We’re from Central Jersey, the best Jersey there is.
