North vs South....

From http://www.weirdnj.com/


There Is No Dividing Line Between North and South in Weird New Jersey

As if New Jersey always being the butt end of jokes from outsiders wasn't bad enough, we still maintain identity crisises within our state about ourselves and where our north/south boundary lies. But in the land of the weird, does such a dividing line even exist? We all know that a "hoagie" or a "sub" is still a sandwich, and a "brook" or a "creek" is still a stream. Porkroll or Taylor Ham is still identifiable by taste, so why put up such struggles to find that imaginary line of demarcation?

Undeniably New Jersey has a culture all its own that most people who live here will defend until the end. Weird NJ magazine has always maintained that the state as a whole is a very weird, strange, and unique environment that we call home. For the record, if we have to define boundaries with horizontal lines, in the last issue there were 54 stories from above the Raritan River, 17 stories between the Raritan and Toms River, and 45 stories from Toms River to Cape May. The stories may range from a photo to a news item, a letter or a full-fledged expose. We've never received letters from the Central Jersey folks telling us to get weirder in their area, nor have we ever gotten letters asking us to lay off the North Jersey weirdness, but for some reason, the Southern portion of New Jersey always feels like they are cheated out of their weirdness quotient.

So where is the weird dividing line between north and south? Whether you sit on a "stoop" or your front steps, or prefer your local cryptozoological creatures to have big red eyes or cloven hoofs, we don't think there is one, and we've never made any comparisons north, south, east or west. The"Weird Eye" knows of no boundaries when it comes to covering all 8,729 miles of the state. We know the north and south have many cultural differences and opinions of each other, but that should be addressed elsewhere, in someone else's magazine. We'll have no part of it.