Isquen posted...
From a Jersey standpoint, meanwhile, I'll go for Camden. They cleaned up quite a bit in the last few decades, and I was always a fan of the area by the baseball stadium and aquarium.
So funny story. Apparently people I know just can't follow the signs to/from the concert arena on the waterfront because it's happened twice.
The first time, my friend was driving a car of four to a concert. It must have been winter because it was already full dark as we were heading in. Anyway, we get off the bridge into NJ and soon after find ourselves driving through random streets in Camden. Four scared white high school kids, looking around wide-eyed at everything, terrified that we're going to get shot or worse because everyone knows you ONLY go to the waterfront area in Camden and somehow we missed a turn. There's people on the street occasionally -- all of them black -- and while we're pulling up to a stop sign on a one-way road, another car comes up beside us and honks the horn. Nervously, we lower the window, and this dude in his fifties or sixties looks at us and says, "You want to turn
that
way." We thanked him profusely and ended up at the concert in another two or three blocks.
Fast forward a couple years, and I'm at another concert with two different friends. This is an afternoon concert in the summer, so it's still light when we're leaving. The driver misses the turn to get onto the bridge, and starts panicking. The other friend, in the passenger seat, starts freaking out. Meanwhile, I'm in the back, cackling at them because this is nowhere near as scary as the situation I'd been in and we could see the giant F'ing bridge overhead, so it's not like we were completely and utterly lost. Also, U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday was playing on the radio, which is what day it was. My friends were not amused when I pointed that out.
Both of these incidents were over 20 years ago. I don't think I've heard anyone say anything negative about Camden, its crime, its schools, its poverty, or take a dig at its racial make-up since. So for anyone who remembers those days, yes, it's probably extremely underrated. But it's still in New Jersey.