Jersey Fucking City

Jersey Fucking City

So about 5 minutes ago I'm adjusting the window when I see a strange man in our backyard. I'm about 2 seconds away from calling the police when he climbs back over the fence. Turns out he was just retrieving his kid's ball. Let me tell you people something for future reference. When your ball goes into some random peoples' yard that you don't know, RING THE FUCKING DOORBELL AND TELL THEM. Do NOT climb over their fence like you own the whole fucking world and get it yourself. Not only is it a complete fucking violation of common courtesy, it's also a violation of respect. Because if you get yourself hurt climbing our fucking fence, and hit the concrete with all of your body weight, shattering all the teeth in your mouth, you can sue us. Even if you were trespassing. Such goes the idiotic laws in this country. 3 minutes later, one of the kids goes over our fence, while her parents watch. She almost killed herself doing it too, we do not have an easy fence to climb. Meanwhile her parents are just sitting there watching her. I had to actually go outside and tell them that if their ball goes into our yard again, to just ring my doorbell. It's like having to tell someone to flush the toilet.

Top 10 Reasons I Loathe Jersey City

1. People here drive poorly but really fast. Cars should be equipped with some sort of Automatic Safety Mode. If you drive really bad, your car goes into ASM and reduces your speed. Thus, you'll injure people with your stupidity but not kill them.

2. Maybe it's the whole single parent phenomenon (that if we're all being honest, exists at a higher rate here) but the kids here do not know how to act properly. They throw rocks at my dogs, hurl racial slurs at me when I'm sitting outside our house, ask you for money to buy candy, feed your dogs garbage because they think it's funny, jump your fence to retrieve their balls, litter in your yard and show up at your door on Halloween without a costume, rudely demanding candy. Not even "trick-or-treat" but "give us candy" like they're carjacking you instead of trick-or-treating. And I understand that costumes are expensive but if you have a mother or your dad has a ho, make-up is free.

3. There are potholes everywhere larger than any pot I've ever seen. Including those huge pressure cookers. I sat in one once. They're really big.

4. Cops in Jersey City (some not all) don't care about ticketing cars that are parked on intersections, where they potentially cause accidents because people can't see around them. Every day I see at least 2 near-accidents because people can't see around some illegally parked car. The other night it took a fire engine 6 minutes to get onto our street, because it couldn't make the turn properly because of 3 illegally parked cars. The guy they were saving could have died by then. There was a black and white with the fire engine but it just drove off in the opposite direction after. We were screaming "Give those motherfuckers a ticket" but he didn't care.

5. The mayor, police commissioner, cops etc don't seem to notice the car thieves. 6 cars were stolen in 3 days outside our old apartment and we never even saw the cops around. Nor did they care when everyone filed their reports. Cops in Jersey City can also be extremely biased towards their own race. Which screws us over because you can guess how many Filipino or Asian cops exist period. Some Spanish guy clipped my brother-in-law Nev (who's black) and the Spanish cop didn't even ask Nev his side of the story. She asked the Spanish guy in Spanish what happened, they had a 10 minute conversation, she bitched at Nev, then filed her accident report. Meanwhile Nev is the one whose car got hit. She also bitched at me but I was so annoyed at her by that point I just told her she shouldn't be so fucking biased just because she and the other guy are both Spanish. She didn't even respond, just left. Fucking meter maid cunt.

6. People don't curb their dogs in here. There is always shit on the sidewalks. The other day we drove by some guy letting his dog take a big green shit in the sidewalk area before the crosswalk. Nice.

7. People in Jersey City don't have any concept whatsoever of noise. They walk by with boomboxes blasting hip-hop at 3 in the morning. They drive by blasting Spanish music at 8 in the morning on a Saturday. They honk their horns like beep beep beeeeeeeeeep is Morse Code for "I'm here." They hook their cars up so that they make as much noise as possible, then race them up and down the streets at 4 am. They'll even walk by randomly singing or rapping at the top of their lungs, at midnight. It's insanity.

8. A lot of parents here do not take care of their kids properly. EVERY FUCKING DAY I see some 2 or 3 year old kid running down the street unsupervised. When school is in it's like a kidnapper's dream. I see 5-year-old kids standing by themselves at crosswalks. The other day Geo, Aud and I were outside and some 2-year-old kid went running down the street. His dad was just letting him run around when all of a sudden he made a beeline for the road. I knew I was too far away but I was literally standing up to start screaming at the dad when he finally caught his kid in the street, as some car was zooming by. And I see this with different parents, every fucking day. At the laundromat last week, some woman rolled up with her 3-year-old sitting in the front seat, without a seat belt. First of all, she's supposed to be in the back. Second of all she's supposed to be in a carseat. Third of all that carseat is supposed to be belted in. This is all state fucking law. But do people give a shit? No.

9. Store personnel here don't know how to act properly. They act like they're doing you a favor, instead of it being their fucking job. No you're not doing me a favor. You're getting paid real live money, to ring my shit up into the fucking cash register. We've all had to do it.

10. Everything in Jersey City used to be a landfill. You know what that means? RATS. Really big ass rats. Rats scampering down the street, looking like cats but more disgusting. In fact we call them "crats" which is short for cat-sized rats.

I'm not saying ALL areas of Jersey City have crats or that ALL people in Jersey City or ALL cops pull the shit I griped about. But I've seen enough of it to know it happens a lot. Okay now I'm feeling guilty. I feel obligated to talk about the things I *do* like about Jersey City:

1. Jersey City has some really good food.
2. When I worked on "Wall Street West" my commute was 20 minutes round trip.
3. Geo is from Jersey City.
4. There are a lot of beautiful churches here, like St. Aloysius.
5. There's a diverse racial mix here, black, white, Spanish, Indian, Arab, Filipino, Asian, whatever. They're all here. Makes for good food choices.

Yeah that's about it. Give me an E for effort.