|
NEWARK,
N.J. _
Jeff Kauflin
was in his first year of college in Vermont when it hit him: People
don't think good things about New Jersey.
The mere mention of where he was from elicited chuckles from Kauflin's
New England classmates at Middlebury College. Then came the “What
exit?'' jokes and references to the mob, big hair, toxic waste dumps
and that smell along the Turnpike.
“It wasn't really until I got to college that I realized the bad rap
New Jersey gets,'' said Kauflin, a native of the state.
Somebody needed to defend the Garden State. Kauflin decided to do it.
Inspired by a group of
New Jersey students at his college, Kauflin
decided to start a Web site devoted to defending the nation's most
maligned state.
In
2002, the Ramsey resident tracked down an investor who owned the
unused domain name http://www.JerseyPride.com and paid him $200 for
the rights. Then he started building his site, posting photos from
around the state, listing famous Jerseyans and all the things he could
think of that make New Jersey great.
To
his surprise, people started to respond. Current and former New Jersey
residents e-mailed their pent-up feelings for their home state. Folks
sent in photos of themselves wearing New Jersey T-shirts everywhere
from Paris to Afghanistan.
A
surprising number of people also sent in photos of their New Jersey
tattoos, most of which featured the unmistakable outline of their home
state permanently marked on their biceps or ankles.
“There
really is a lot of
Jersey pride,'' said Kauflin, 25.
JerseyPride.com recorded nearly 250,000 page views last year. Almost
all the traffic comes through word of mouth, said Kauflin, who has
since graduated and now works for a Manhattan marketing firm.
Kauflin shows off a stack of e-mails from his site's users thanking
him for giving them a place to talk about New Jersey. They wax poetic
about the Shore, the diners, the weather, the food and the state's
history. They also blame New York and Philadelphia for overshadowing
the state and contributing to New Jersey's low self-esteem.
“Without New Jersey inventions, modern civilization as we know it
would not exist,'' wrote one fan, who listed all of the inventors who
have come from the state. “It would be a wonderful thing if the world
could experience `a day without New Jersey.' Perhaps then the unearned
superior attitude of so many regarding New Jersey would be
re-examined.''
Even
Vincent Curatola, the actor who plays Johnny Sack on “The Sopranos,''
sent a thank you and reminisced about growing up in Englewood. He said
he worked as a paperboy delivering papers to Tony Bennett, Sarah
Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie and other
Jersey celebrities who inspired him to go into show
business.
“My
wife Maureen and I love living here.
New Jersey
truly affords us the best of both worlds,'' Curatola wrote.
Kauflin
said most Jerseyans love their state, though they may be afraid to
admit it.
“I
just wanted to provide an entertaining site and get people excited
about New Jersey,'' Kauflin said. “I think I'm helping people who live
in the state to express themselves more _ and at least be able to say
they're from New Jersey.''
Kauflin
has some competition. The Internet is littered with well-established
anti-Jersey sites.
There is IHateNewJersey.com, which says “Everyone hates New Jersey and
that's a fact! Now tell the world why you hate New Jersey ...'' and
offers a message board for people to vent.
There is also JerseySucks.net, where the motto is “Jersey Sucks: It
Just Does.'' The site offers “Jersey Sucks'' T-shirts at $17 a pop and
mails out a free “Jersey Sucks'' bumper sticker with every order.
(The Web also includes a similarly named JerseySucks.com site. But it
is owned by a British Internet promotion company and refers to the
island of Jersey in the English Channel, which apparently also has an
image problem.)
JerseyPride.com occasionally gets venom-filled e-mail from
Jersey
haters inside and outside the state.
“People are rude, you pay a ton of money to live here and get nothing
special in return, car insurance is outrageous, the beaches suck and
you have to pay to get on them and the weather is horrible,'' read one
recent e-mail from a Jersey native. “The state has nothing to offer.''
Kauflin
shrugs off the e-mail and the other profanity-laced messages he fields
on a regular basis. He believes the
Jersey jokes and criticism are actually a sign that
the rest of the nation is jealous of the
Garden
State.
“I
think it's cool. We're important enough to be talked about. We're
important enough to be on people's minds,'' Kauflin said.
“We're
always in the middle of the action,'' he adds, launching into a list
of the state's assets. He admits he occasionally sounds like an ad for
the New Jersey Office of Travel and Tourism.
The
Garden State has no bigger cheerleader than Kauflin, who can recite
obscure facts about the state, regularly wears his Jersey Pride
T-shirts and sleeps with a picture of Washington crossing the Delaware
over his bed.
Born in
Ridgewood, he grew up in Ramsey. He was raised by his mother, who
works in a doctor's office, and his stepfather, a fifth-grade teacher.
In
college, Kauflin enthusiastically joined Middlebury College's recently
revived Lovers of the
Garden
State club. The group, known as LOGS, was run by Michael Kirkland, a
fellow student from Summit.
Composed of a few dozen
New Jersey students, LOGS met weekly on campus to
discuss all things
Jersey. The group's motto was “Semper Jerseus Semper
Fi'' _ Latin for “Always Jersey Always Faithful.''
“We
didn't do much. We'd kind of just sit around and talk about New
Jersey,'' Kauflin said.
At the
start of each meeting, members saluted the New Jersey flag and recited
their pledge, which was belted out to the tune of Bon Jovi's “Livin'
on a Prayer.'' (“I pledge allegiance to the
Garden
State,'' the pledge begins, “to thy beautiful land from Mahwah to
Cape May;
To thy 24-hour diners and thy full-serve gas and to the Boss, of
course ...'')
JerseyPride.com started as the college club's online outlet. After graduation,
Kauflin maintained the site as a labor of love and watched it grow.
He
still sells the club's Lovers of the
Garden
State sweat shirts, along with JerseyPride.com's New Jersey T-shirts.
The proceeds help pay the fees to keep the site running.
“I
would say I'm breaking even,'' Kauflin said.
Kauflin said he hopes to write a book one day about all that is good
about his home state. Until then, he's happy just to act as New
Jersey's online ambassador.
And for now, he has no plans to live anywhere else.
“Unless I meet someone I really love and she refuses to move to New
Jersey,'' Kauflin said, with a smile. “Even then, I'll probably stay
around here. I love it here. I'll probably be here forever.''
(Kelly
Heyboer covers higher education for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
She can be contacted at kheyboer@starledger.com. |
