"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
3 comments:
Part of the reason traffic is insanely bad (at least around Princeton) is that NIMBYs killed I-95, so all the traffic that should be on I-95 is crammed on US 1 and other local roads. It's like if Burlington N.C. had decided "no I-40 for you" so everyone who wanted to go anywhere between Greensboro and Raleigh had to drive through Burlington or drive 30 miles out of their way to avoid driving through Burlington. Except now imagine two of the largest metropolitan areas of the country replacing Greensboro and Raleigh in the example, with Princeton replacing Burlington.
$13 hamburgers? Guess I'll stick with cooking/the dining hall.
I do actually like it here quite a bit, and NY has its downsides as well. My only real complaint isn't with Princeton but with myself - not knowing how to drive/already owning a car. I'd been to Princeton before and knew that Nassau Street has... stuff, if $13-hamburger-type stuff. But once you're far from that anyway, you might as well be able to drive to the strip of infinite strip malls, where there are stores a bit less quaint. (Like, maybe Bed Bath and Beyond or Target is a better bet for soap dispensers than a kitchen supply store across from a Lilly Pulitzer boutique. Although the CVS container refilled is probably best of all.) Traffic or not elsewhere, the grocery situation on Nassau appears to be a high-end fish shop.
Some of my grousing is admittedly unfair to central New Jersey, since my reference point was and still is Durham, which has thoroughly cultivated foodie/hipster culture minus the prices usually associated with it. It also had the misfortune to remind me (a lot) of the place that I grew up in, a comparison first made for me by an undergrad professor (who is now himself at Princeton) who had visited my hometown. And it was the general consensus amongst the (mostly single) postdocs that we'd think differently about it if we had significant others. Or were there for more than one year. So, none of those really has anything to do with Princeton itself, except the lackluster social scene--though, like my hometown, it's hard to fault a city of 40,000 for not having one--and perhaps also the price mark-ups.
Agreed, of course, about the necessity of a car. I feel bad for anyone who'd have to learn to drive there: NJ drivers are by far the least accommodating I've dealt with.
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