Small problem - we're talking about Jersey, here, and this
born-and-bred New York resident is having a hard time swallowing the idea.
"It's probably too hard to pay taxes in both states," I'd offer, "I couldn't
say I lived in New York anymore," or "Won't people laugh?" But my
curiosity got the best of me, and one day, when I was doing nothing in
particular and happened to be passing by, I jumped on the Waterway ferry for
a three minute trip to Exchange Place, or Colgate Pier, or whatever it was.

I've really, really tried. I took a neutral attitude from the start,
eschewing the jaded provincialism of my compadres, desperately making an
attempt to look at the bigger picture. I'd be living less than 10 minutes
from work, a vast improvement over the 50 minute commute from Astoria, the other cheap-quasi-hip neighborhood in which I was now residing. Downtown was
absolutely out of the question for reasons that should be quite obvious to
anyone that's been paying rent for the last oh, I don't know, forever?

The fact that upon stepping off the ferry, I am lost in a sea of
parking lots, dirt-piles and junk heaps should have clued me in that I was
definitely in a different world. I jumped puddles, dodged fast-moving sports
cars with tinted windows, crossed over orange construction fences and went
in search of a bathroom. For some reason, now I had to pee.

I didn't get it too rapidly, I was thinking, well, maybe further up
along the waterfront, there'll be something worthwhile. I sought, and did
not find. I decided to enter one of those horrid office towers that looked
as if it were ripped from the Houston skyline, and found the usual blend of
chain lunch counters, drug stores and clothing emporiums. (Me to Au Bon
Pain: Drop Dead.)

Further inspection reveals nothing but private developments that hog
the waterfront for their residents, gated communities that open onto busy
thoroughfares with waist-high weeds in the medians, crossing over to massive
shopping plazas, which cross over into massive indoor malls, and it all
screams, "This is Car Country!" I am not impressed, but I am determined to
forge ahead.

We are now walking briskly, in a very midtown-at-rush-hour fashion,
up a ramp, seeking waterfront public spaces. I am suddenly faced with a
large school group taking up the entire sidewalk, bearing down on me, making
no note that there is traffic (me) approaching in the opposite direction. As
any self-respecting New Yorker should, I simply continue, in hopes that a
path to the right will be formed, allowing two-way traffic on what seems to
me to be a two-way thoroughfare.

Oh, I was wrong, I was wrong. The leader of the group of
impressionable children stops them all dead in their tracks, and turns to
face me. "Please wait," she chastens, as if I were one of her little pupils.
I level my eyes to hers, and stare, blankly, as if she were speaking German.
Wait? I want to retort - hey lady, this is New-

It hits me. This is not New York. It's New Jersey. And I'm the
schmuck that wants to push a crowd of small children aside so that I can get
to where I'm going just as fast as I normally do dammit and there's nothing
that you can do to stop me so don't you dare try, etc etc.

And so I do what I normally do, just push past, as she yells loudly,
"That was very, very rude of you, sir," and the children all stare at me
dolefully, wide-eyed, somewhat unbelieving, me, the mean old man, me the bad
guy, me, stranger-with- candy that their caring parents warned them about.

You could just hear her, informing the little boys and girls "Good
boys and girls always wait patiently for their turn to walk on the
sidewalk." I knew, that in those young children's minds, I was, if only for
a day, the personification of evil in their little worlds.

Needless to say, I am blushing, and I'm ready to get back on the
train and go home, where I can walk at lightning speed anywhere I want to,
and the visitors will gladly move into the slow lane, and the one
know-it-all in the group will go, "I heard about it on Rosie - the people
here walk really, really fast - I think we're supposed to be in the 'slow
lane." While they stand and observe, wondering where in fact the alleged
'slow lane' is, I'm already an avenue block away.

And so I must apologize to New Jersey - I won't be moving in,
anytime soon - not as if you'd care, but I do, for every time I gaze across
the harbor and watch the slowly building skyline, the sun glinting off the
greens and greys and blues, I wonder, wouldn't it be nice if that were New
York? Not so much because it strikes me as particularly exciting, but - it'd
be a great commute, a few minutes on the boat every morning - how romantic!

We could incorporate it as part of the city - hey, they did it to Brooklyn -
anything can happen.

Let's call it "The West Bank." It'd be livable in no time, guaranteed.