Hello everybody and welcome back to another hot flannel
My name is Evan Edinger and I’m from a little state in the US called New Jersey.
Though I would never really say that.
I’d say I’m from South Jersey.
And I’m sure everyone else from South Jersey would agree.
We don’t wanna be associated with people from the north.
For being such a small state, we have a huge amount of culture.
There are so many foods and expressions that I thought were just American, or even just
English, but no we also have our own culture and language it seems.
1.
First thing you need to know about people from New Jersey, we’re proud.
We’re proud to be from New Jersey.
Where I see people from a lot of other states constantly talking down on their states, New
Jersians seem the opposite.
Driving If
you were gonna move to New Jersey and asked someone what their one piece of advice would
be… no doubt in my mind… it’d be… stay in the right lane.
New Jersey is very religious about driving.
And nothing annoys us more than a Pennsylvania driver seen on the road mostly because they
don’t know how to drive, will chill in the left lane under the speed limit or will miss
their exit on the turnpike and attempt to go in reverse.
Because we’re a state with a very beautiful shoreline people from Pennsylvania and New
York will commute through our state to get there, in the summer months especially, it
can get really frustrating cause these people just don’t know how to drive.
If you’re ever in the car with someone from New Jersey I’d be surprised if at least
once you didn’t hear them complain about a Pennsylvania driver on the road.
We’re so big into driving that a lot of people will tell you where they live relative
to their exit on the turnpike.
Now as someone from the south of the state, this has never really been that big of a thing
as I just kindof have to say you know Cherry Hill?
And then go yeah I live like 40 miles from there.
For those from New Jersey, I grew up around exit 3 and moved to exit 2.
alright I’m probably driving you crazy talking about roads, but it’s a big deal for us.
On a lot of roads you can’t even take a left in New Jersey so you gotta take a jughandle.
So when you wanna go left you get in the right lane and either before or after where you
want to turn will be a slip road that brings you back to the intersection from the other
road.
Fun fact: Jersey has the most dense system of highways of any state in the US.
So we’re proud of it.
Stay in the right lane please.
Also if you wanna leave the state you have to pay cause every bridge leaving the state
is a toll road but only to leave.
You’re free to come in though!
Cuisine But driving aside New Jersey is really big
on its cuisine.
If you’re unaware New Jersey is actually the diner capital of the world, despite being
the fourth smallest state it has more diners than any other state at around 525.
It’s not even more diners per square mile… it’s just got more diners.
It’s a big community thing for us and everyone’s got a local diner to go to.
The breakfast food there is usually unbeatable but they’re always open 24 hours a day so
no matter where you are in jersey and no matter what time of day, there’ll be a diner you
can go to.
One Jersey specialty you can snag at a diner is pork roll egg and cheese.
I don’t know why pork roll hasn’t caught on in the rest of the states cause it’s
amazing.
People from the north call it Taylor Ham which causes quite a lot of fights as pork roll
just makes a lot more sense.
Now you’ve heard me talk about it many times before but for New Jersians, Wawa is a way
of life.
They say it’s a convenience store, but we all know it’s so much more.
You can get a hoagie made to order however you like, loads of different tastycakes, great
coffee, and most Wawa’s these days are gas stations so you can just pull up and get food
while they pump your gas.
Cause it’s against the law to pump your own gas in New Jersey.
We pump our fists not our gas.
The name “Hoagie” comes from when Italian Immigrants would make sandwiches on Hog Island
in the Delaware River during World War 1 and Hoggies or Hoagies caught on.
Meatball sub You’ll never catch me calling it a sub.
I WILL ask you sub to my channel though.
thank you
Now a lot of you that aren’t from the states might have heard that New York is known for
its pizza, it’s also known as not quite as good as New Jersey pizza which is the best
in the entire country.
The worst thing about leaving New Jersey is that no pizza no matter where I go will ever
compare.
Every small town and suburb you go to will have a countless number of pizza places run
by italian immigrants like papa luigi, pat’s pizzaria, mac and manco’s which is boardwalk
pizza which is on a whole nother level of pizza.
I’m talking the big slices you gotta hold and you gotta fold.
And it’s not like just standard topics as well.
New Jersey is the only state you can walk into a pizzaria and find a Philly Cheesesteak
hoagie pizza, and be like… that sounds amazing.
But uniquely instead of saying you’d like a large pizza, most people from New Jersey
will say something like can I get a large pepperoni pie.
We just call them pies cause they’re a pizza pie.
The thing is, New Jersey had so many Italian immigrants in the state and so that’s why
you can get some amazing Italian American food like our pizza or ziti or even panzarottis
which is another thing I didn’t realise they didn’t have outside of New Jersey but
they’re like small deep fried pizza turnovers.
If you get a chance, try the Fat Sandwich or Fat pizza or fat anything really where
a diner or restaurant throws like everything on the sandwich, mozzarella sticks, chicken
wings, you name it.
Aside from these, we’re also known for our salt water taffy which is just taffy made
with salt water by the shore, and also in the summer, you can pick up some water ice.
Another treat from Italian immigrants, water ice is like similar to sorbet / a snowcone,
but it’s it’s own unique thing.
It’s creamy, yet grainy and is a big New Jersey tradition to get some water ice in
the summer or for free at Rita’s Water Ice on the first day of Spring.
One big thing I’ve missed a lot about New Jersey after moving away is the lack of good
soft serve ice cream.
Every small town in New Jersey has its own family-run frozen custard stands.
And these custard stands like cream valley custard in Woodstown or Dippy’s Ice Cream
in Mantua, all offer soft serve ice cream, but they all make it in different ways meaning
you’ll definitely wanna travel a bit to get to your favourite one.
Whereas over here there’s practically no difference between a vanilla soft serve at
mcdonalds and anywhere else, which is horrifying.
They don’t know what they’re missing over here.
It’s very sad.
Slap some rainbow jimmies on my creamsicle swirl and I’m a happy man.
custard stands
And lastly, we are known as the garden state cause a lot of the countries best produce
comes from New Jersey.
Georgia is known for peaches, but anyone from the tristate area knows, New Jersey is known
for its tomatoes.
They’re just hands down the best.
But we also have loads of fresh corn, peaches, blueberries, cranberries and asparagus.
And during harvest there’s loads of pick your own farms you can snag fresh produce
from or pick up something like an apple cider donut from Mood’s.
Fun Facts There are a couple of urban legends from New
Jersey like the jersey devil or driving to a concert in camden and coming back alive,
but the jersey devil specifically is this winged demon creature that lives in the pine
barrens.
As a teen your friends might challenge you to walk down one of the roads the Jersey Devil
is said to haunt at night.
It’s pretty spooky.
A couple more fun facts: New Jersey has the highest population density out of any state
with 1000 people per square mile which is 13x the average.
Also, if you’ve ever played monopoly you’ll find this interesting.
They changed the game in the UK so the properties are just random there, but all the properties
from the game are the streets you pass one by one as you’re making your way to the
boardwalk in Atlantic City new jersey. which by the way is the longest boardwalk in the
world.
And we have many more down the shore.
Personally I’ve always leaned towards Ocean City if I wanted a good all around beach,
and wildwood if I wanted the rides.
We have a crazy amount of malls.
No joke there is one point in New Jersey where there are 7 malls within a 25 mile radius.
As a kid a lot of times parents would drop you
off at the mall Friday after school and you’d just kinda wander around with friends.
Deptford mall and cherry hill mall were always big favourites of mine.
The day before Halloween we celebrate Mischief night where the youth go out and toilet paper
and egg houses.
You’d always see huge amounts of toilet paper in the trees of certain houses on Halloween
morning.
I don’t know why we do this as a state, but no one else seems to do it.
I’m making a part 2 of this video where I talk about all the unique slang from my
home state and what the new jersey accent is like so subscribe to see that in your feed
next Sunday! or click here if it’s up already.
Thanks for watching and if you’re wondering why I haven’t talked about central jersey
it’s because it doesn’t exist.
Bye!