For the second time this year, I found myself accompanying The Woman for a “musical experience” at NJPAC – that’s the New Jersey Performing Arts Center for you non-locals. The first one was an orchestrated version of Led Zeppelin – which was a lot of fun. This time it was Rain: The Beatles Experience. The group did a very good job impersonating The Beatles, and it was a lot of fun watching the progression from the teeny-bopper pop group to a mature band of psychedelic musicians.
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any of you to actually go there. Why? Because Newark is a shithole. Yeah, I normally avoid words like that on this site but, seriously, how else can you describe 75% of Jersey. NJPAC is about 2 miles from I280, but it’s a royal pain in the ass to get back on going west. Even if I hop right back on the route we came down, there is no entrance for I280 West. This is a common occurrence throughout this lovely state – you can go in one direction but not in the other. You know what another common occurrence is? Not posting signs to major highways. Or, only posting enough to get your confidence up, and then not directing you the rest of the way.
Once again I ended up heading a few miles East for no reason other than there was no decent way for me to turn around and head back home. I swear, it would have been easier to just drive 25 minutes to Hoboken, spend 10 minutes looking for parking, and then take a 20 minute train over to the center – even though it’s technically less than 15 minutes from our house.