New Jersey gets a bad rep for a variety of reasons including the rock and roll and the ugly landscape. Anyone whose seen the lovely side of the Garden State can tell you that it doesn't deserve all the bad mouthing, but anyone whose driven through the industrial wasteland on the Jersey Turnpike (on their way to Secaucus perhaps), would have to resign themselves to that fact that this is a blight on the Earth.
Walt Whitman would weep, maybe not quite as intensely as he would when he found out his name is attached to a Mall and a Long Island route; a most typical ugly American roadway complete with tuxedo rental shops and discount tire palaces, all snuggled next to his dear old home.
That stretch of road, Old Walt Whitman, is a fairly common US phenomenon, every city has a street like it, and everybody has stopped to use the bathroom in one of its stores.
This grim area in New Jersey is not typical at all. It doesn't just stand as an example of ugly commercial America, it looks like a dangerous planet in a sci fi movie; a dump waste land of thriving and failed industry. There are acres of stalled trucks, oil refineries and miles of cranes.
Driving through there will put you in a foul mood for wherever you're going, no matter how gorgeous the destination.
I know an area like this is a necessary trade off in an industrialized country, but the worst thing about it is that it seems to confirm the negative jokes about New Jersey.
But what do you think?