30.3.12

This. So many times this. Central New Jersey has all the price inflation you'd expect of a rural area with lots of high-level professionals that's close(ish) to Manhattan and houses a major research university, and yet there are all sorts of little, unexpected ways that things end up being yet more expensive than that. I could never figure it out. Even if money is no object for you, there's no shortage of inefficiencies that persevere for no discernible reason.


(I could never, for example, figure out why approximately half of the food establishments insisted you pay with cash; I literally never have cash on me in Durham because there's no need for it.)

2 comments:

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

What also never ceases to amaze me is that despite NJ's BYOB regulations (maybe two places in town have liquor licenses?), the min.-$50-for-two rule always holds, even when with wine or beer, dinner out in NY never seemed to cost that much, unless you were seeking that out. And unrelated to the cost, of course, there's the question of what those regulations accomplish, other than to encourage those who might otherwise have a single, $9 glass of wine with dinner to have half a bottle or the whole thing.

This town just baffles me.

Katherine said...

Why have a "cash only" policy? It makes it easier to skim off the till. (What the IRS doesn't know...)