From the Record:
With predictions of snow accumulations ranging up to 3 feet, people across North Jersey started preparing Sunday for The Big One, snatching snow shovels and ice-melting supplies from store shelves and forming long lines at supermarket checkout counters to stock up on staples like milk, bread, eggs and water.
The National Weather Service predicted a record-setting snowstorm, with blizzard conditions and zero visibility. The storm was expected to start gradually before 9 a.m. Monday — but the region was warned to look for a total of 2 to 3 feet of snow by the time it was expected to end Tuesday night.“This storm will be extremely impactful, if not life-threatening,” said meteorologist Tim Morrin of the National Weather Service.
And with temperatures predicted to remain below freezing through Wednesday, even a day of clear skies would have no melting effect before the possibility of a little more snow Thursday night, Morrin said.
“We’re warning of the possibility of whiteout conditions throughout the area from 7 p.m. Monday to 7 p.m. Tuesday,” Morrin said. “We are not recommending anyone to be on the road from Monday afternoon through Wednesday.”
Morrin said wind-driven, light powdery snow could result in drifts that “even snowplows will have difficulty getting through.”
…
The detailed forecast from the National Weather Service for the North Jersey area called for snow to start before 9 a.m. today, with a possible accumulation of 1 to 3 inches by nightfall.Then, the weather service said, 10 to 16 inches more will accumulate tonight, accompanied by winds of 16 to 26 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. Some thunder is also possible. The low temperature will be around 20 degrees and, with the wind-chill factor, feel between zero and 10.
Widespread blowing snow all day Tuesday is likely to add 9 to 13 inches more, and the temperature will continue to feel as if it was between zero and 10, with winds gusting up to 41 mph during the day. The winds are expected to ease somewhat on Tuesday night — and so is the snowfall, with an additional 1 or 2 inches possible, the weather service said.
Good Morning New Jersey
A dusting here in PA overnight, not even enough to sweep. Schools here usually hit the panic button early but they say they are open for the full day.
Based on current reporting, we should only get a couple of inches here. The new plow blade is doing its job and keeping the snow at bay.
Latest reports I see has this starting to ramp down. Mostly a coastal event. I would not be surprised if the areas west of the turnpike see less than 6 inches.
Snowmageddon!!!!
Nom I’m expecting 8 inches and a good laugh at the overinflated news coverage in Tawny Morris county
Numbers scaled back a bit since NOAA’s 36 inch bombshell yesterday:
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/stormtotalprecip.php
Back to 18-24.
For the rest:
http://www.weather.gov/images/phi/winter/StormTotalSnowRange.png
5. That’s wot she said mate .
[5] pain
I’d be surprised if you get that much. Anyway, I am off to walk the dogs, then off to the office in Cherry Hill.
My only concern at this point is that the panicky school superintendent here suddenly calls a half day like he did last week. I was halfway up 295 when I got the message that schools would close in an hour. %*&!@# as I turned around in Gibbstown and headed back to PA.
[7] grim
That has us at 6-8 inches. I doubt we will see 6 inches.
(that’s enough out of you, SX)
10 – Christ you live in the middle of nowhere.
Been snowing in Monmouth since 5:00.
I’m firmly in the 18-24 band.
Gas for the generator, back up propane tank for the grill and a trip to the liquor store still to do.
Nom I would be more worried about the panicky southern jersey drivers. Man they can’t drive in the snow. Half and inch and you would think they were in Buffalo. I’m in the 18-24 band but looking at the models on the news before I headed off to work looked closer to 10. now if I lived on Long Island. Jeez JJ may be regalling us with his man card all day only to freeze on the LIRR in Hempstead never to see home again.
Need to pick up a slab of pork belly, some short ribs, more bourbon, and good eggs.
Maybe a rabbit too, wonder if the butcher is open.
We are stocked baby…..newly opened bottle of Makers 46….Lot’s and lots of food. Wife working from home. Oh yeah!
Grim just had hasenpfeffer last week. yummy rabbit. Used to go to goffle farms for my game meats that I did not shoot. Should just be over the mountain for you
Everyone in my house has been puking their guts out with the stomach flu. Is it supposed to snow today?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/does-jerseys-lagging-economy-doom-christies-bid-2015-01-26?link=MW_home_latest_news
BTW I am at work right now. All the straight hetrosexual men are in the office. A few NJ Nancy boys who take the bus are home cleaning out their butt plug drawer
BTW I had that stomach flu Martin Luther King Weekend. I could of had my colonscophy done by end of it as my system was cleared out.
I had it, my wife had it and one kid had it. Usually I am immune to the laws of nature so this one was bad
I was at work too Blizzard of 1996 and that was pretty bad wall street was fairly empty.
My old boss I have to love him. We worked 9-12-2001 and he told us the terrorists win if we stay home and not work as it is what the victims would have wanted.
Man after my own heart.
Oil prices turn positive as OPEC sec gen calls bottom to market
REUTERS — 13 MINUTES AGO
By Himanshu Ojha
LONDON (Reuters) – Oil prices turned positive on Monday, erasing early losses after the Secretary-General of the OPEC producer group said he expected the market to bottom out around current levels.
March Brent crude was trading at $49.13 per barrel by 1317 GMT, up 34 cents, bouncing from an early low of $47.57.
I guess I should fix the snowblower today.
19# haha!! You made me laugh!! I was giving up hope for the men in NJ!!
Aw god. I’m so sick. I could use a butt plug today.
cleaning the butt plug draw!! Yup, the porkers are ready to eat like slobs, the addicts are gearing up for dope fest, the boozers all ready still going since Sunday and gays are getting butt plugs ready for fudge fest!
Mentally prepping myself for having to watch Frozen 17 more times in a row.
Drove my rear wheel drive Caddie with the Sport/Summer tires to train today, no need for a shovel, just will piss by my rear tires if I have to.
Snowblowers and Generators what is with you NJ Nancy boys the snow is hitting LI not NJ and we got out in flip flops with a dollar store shovel to do our shoveling.
It the power goes out you don’t want to know how they will be defrosting their hot dogs
Marilyn says:
January 26, 2015 at 8:59 am
cleaning the butt plug draw!! Yup, the porkers are ready to eat like slobs, the addicts are gearing up for dope fest, the boozers all ready still going since Sunday and gays are getting butt plugs ready for fudge fest!
[19] Meh. Real men don’t need to schlep into work in weather like this because they’re not b!tches for paymasters.
The National Weather Service has issued a Blizzard Warning for the Tri-State area from 1:00 PM this afternoon through midnight Tuesday. The current forecast indicates light snow with accumulations of 1-3 inches by sunset and then pick up in intensity overnight with accumulations of 18-24 inches in the city. High winds and white-out conditions are expected. Regional forecasts vary with respect to the timing and amount of snow accumulation. Higher snow accumulations are expected in many areas.
NJ Folks stayed home cause 1-3 inches of the white stuff will fall today in the City. Then again NJ housewifes will tell you 1-3 inches of white stuff is all they get from the Jersey men in the bedroom anyhow
If the King does not watch his troops someone else will.
Happy Renter says:
January 26, 2015 at 9:03 am
[19] Meh. Real men don’t need to schlep into work in weather like this because they’re not b!tches for paymasters.
sx (16)-
Makers 46 at 8:37 AM? Strong.
Should be a red-letter day on the blog. jj already in 9 PM form.
@SenSanders:
The Syriza victory tells us that people around the world will no longer accept austerity for working families while the rich get richer.
[32] “If the King does not watch his troops someone else will.”
Weren’t the kings the ones hanging back at the castle with vino and a harem while their generals took care of managing those pesky troops?
I’m not from Jersey, but I like the irony of the guy from inbred-central Long Island on the board making jokes about NJ.
The market is not open and we already have three references to butt plugs……jj you hit my funny bone with that…
If you go to the Shop Rite in Union City and buy cut pig snouts (3 to a package from the butcher counter)…then I’m game…..gizzards are not haute enough….
Liquor Luge says:
January 25, 2015 at 8:25 pm
I can make a dinner out of hearty greens and thawed-out A&P chicken gizzards that would make any of you nancy boy girly men forget Whole Foods.
If you can make it to my front door in the next two days, I’ll serve you some. If, that is, you can make it to my front door.
JJ, have you got a hotel or are you calling up the old girls on 8th?
– We are being notified that all major highways, NY subways, LIRR etc. are going to be shut down in the afternoon today before evening rush hours.
Have to grab some extra gas and I’ll be good to go.
I have to get over to Goffle Farms at some point to pick up some replacement chicks for our coop.
no garlic please……I’ve become a bit intolerant to it…..
Wow, someone gets it.
“America’s challenge, like Jersey’s, is building industries that pay what it costs to live here. The answer isn’t to be Georgia —38th among states in personal income, 36 spots behind New Jersey, and boasting America’s second-worst unemployment rate — any more than America’s answer is to undercut China on price.
Obama tries to do this, with all the appropriate caveats about government’s ability to pick winners. The administration financed Tesla’s TSLA, +0.33% Model S factory, for one example, and some duds too. Christie hasn’t shown such risk-preferring vision. That may be one reason Christie’s approval back home, and the president’s rating nationally, recently crossed paths — and why they’re moving in different directions.”
JJ says:
January 26, 2015 at 8:37 am
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/does-jerseys-lagging-economy-doom-christies-bid-2015-01-26?link=MW_home_latest_news
Don’t forget to remove the batteries from your carbon monoxide detectors…..
Fabius Maximus says:
January 26, 2015 at 9:26 am
JJ, have you got a hotel or are you calling up the old girls on 8th?
– We are being notified that all major highways, NY subways, LIRR etc. are going to be shut down in the afternoon today before evening rush hours.
Have to grab some extra gas and I’ll be good to go.
I have to get over to Goffle Farms at some point to pick up some replacement chicks for our coop.
41- Amen. Keep blaming it on the high costs of living and the taxes that come with that. Time people stop taking the party line and open up their eyes and think for themselves. Nj can’t compete with low cost areas because we do not want to be like those areas.
You know what, people like rags are right, just cut everything and give people crap jobs to increase profit, soon every store will become a welfare line with lines of people out trying to survive.
“New Jersey’s problem is that Jersey depends on high-wage pharmaceutical companies and financial services. But traditional pharma is losing ground as medicine’s focus shifts toward biotechnology, and Wall Street hiring has been stymied by post-crisis federal regulations, IHS economist Jim Diffley says. Plus, Atlantic City’s gambling industry has bled 10,000 jobs in the last year.
Nowhere is New Jersey’s misalignment clearer than at Merck MRK, -0.40% , which announced in 2013 that it would lay off 20% of its 80,000 worldwide workers over two years. Merck’s problems range from expiring patents on its $5 billion asthma-and-allergy drug Singulair to its four-year old Victrelis hepatitis C treatment being wiped out by Gilead Sciences’s GILD, -0.21% Sovaldi. There’s not a state tax issue in sight.
Stories like Victrelis sum up what may be Christie’s real economic failure — no vision about where the state should go next. Victrelis didn’t get killed by New Jersey’s costs — that took a better product, developed in even-more-expensive Silicon Valley.
“Costs are just as high in San Francisco and Boston,” Diffley says. “Princeton is a great university, but it’s nowhere near as commercial as Harvard or Stanford.”
New Jersey needs a new high-wage core. It could be in biotech, or rebuilding an historic strength in telecommunications damaged when Basking Ridge-based AT&T T, -0.15% was sold to Dallas-based SBC Communications . Or even following New York City’s new-media cluster. But Jersey is doing none of these things effectively.
Christie’s response has been piecemeal. His head of economic development, Michele Brown, is a career prosecutor with 21 LinkedIn connections running an agency built on networking. His signature economic bill is a consolidation of location-incentive programs that hasn’t done much. Christie bragged about it in the State of the State, but could do little better than trumpet the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers building a practice facility in Camden — which somehow cost $82 million in incentives.”
This guy gets it. Just keep cutting off the wage-based demand for goods and services. Cutting is so good for this type of economic system.
“Mr. MacArthur indicates that revolution is the only path for real change. First I would caution where that path leads after viewing “The Square” which tracks the recent attempts at an Egyptian revolution through the eyes of real citizens on the ground.
Mr. MacArthur apparently has overlooked the inherent financial instability of the course we are taking. As worker wages are squeezed we are cutting off the wage-based demand for goods and services which fuels are economic engine. We could very well undergo an economic collapse where the oligarchs will be forced to choose between losing all the liquidity of their investments for an extended period or rebalancing the economy to give workers a fair share, lose half the value of their investments and enter into a new age of sustainable shared growth and valuation.
Such a time occurred in 1933 — suddenly anything and everything became possible. Under such dire circumstances we would need to put key elements of change in the form of constitutional amendments in order to neutralize the Supreme Court and shield them form any shifts in the political winds of Washington.”
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-democrats-bow-wall-street/
Nom – from last thread: I actually watched a video on weather.com yesterday on how to shovel, and your technique is exactly the one they espoused. I think this is the right URL, but it won’t play for me right now at work:
http://www.weather.com/tv/shows/amhq/video/winter-snow-shoveling-brainstorm
I usually only use the ergonomic shovels for pushing anyway. I actually find it worse to lift with a longer handle. For lifting, I use a smaller, traditional handle, shorten the lever by getting closer, and use my legs more to keep the back straight.
“Mentally prepping myself for having to watch Frozen 17 more times in a row.”
Let it go. Let it go!
Yesterday’s offset shovel thread. If it was a white shovel with a blue handle (stem), I had that one too. Great shovel, but awfully heavy. And yes, if the snow wasn’t perfectly balanced, it would slide off the side. I’ll take one of the right-handed models expat.
JJ 21 – As everyone was running to escape Manhattan on 9/11, my boss kindly reminded me that we were scheduled to deliver the current issue of V0gue to our international affiliates that evening. I carried my laptop on the walk to the ferry and completed the issue by manually and delivered that evening. I immediately got a phone call from a lovely colleague in Australia asking me if I was crazy and if everyone in our offices was okay.
“Wall Street hiring has been stymied by post-crisis federal regulations”
If this a joke?
We had SEC deadlines and it was difficult getting the crew to focus. Once we got most of our work done, I heard the ferry lines were 6-8 hours. I walked up to a bar in midtown where lots of retired firefighters were hitting the juice pretty hard. I drank for 4 hours, then trains started running from Penn. I nearly beat Gator home who waited on the ferry lines.
Grim 27 – I feel your pain. Our little tyrant will probably be monopolizing someone’s iPhone running the Frozen Karaoke app 24/7. It’s like fast forwarding through the movie and just watching all the songs. Crack for a 2 year old. Let it Go 587 times in a row.
Lib 50 – Why do I remember it a different way? Didn’t you almost get stranded at Newark Broad late at night when NJT didn’t run the Montclair line even though it said the trains were coming? I seem to remembe a NJT bus driver that wanted to leave you stranded because you didn’t have exact change for the bus. Or was that the great blackout of 2003?
44-
“Full on class warfare.
Wall St’s
– taken your houses.
– gambled with your savings accounts and lost them and obviously plan to do so again.
– erased your pension.
– skims your 401K with fees and hides the profits from your “investments”
– uses your cash for free and charges you for access to it.
– proliferated bogus “universities” producing worthless degrees.
– offshored many of your jobs.
– lays you off and has you train your immigrant replacement, because you’re “unskilled”.
– cowered the poor holding down minimum wage and making their jobs part time.
– is charging your kids 8% on federally insured student loans, handcuffed, unable to refinance or default.
– declared the poor they created are freeloaders.
etc.”
And in news way bigger than the storm, we considered putting in an offer on a split level we visited in River Vale yesterday. If the bedrooms were “this much” bigger, the papers would have been drawn up.
44- Yup!!
“You do understand that the vast amount of profit from paying .04 cents for Chinese, Indonesian, Thai labor etc, per $100 retail shoe, went into the OWNERS pocket? The savings were not passed on to the consumer. The more we outsource, the less jobs here, the less jobs here the less Americans have to spend on products they can no longer afford at any price.
Are you so willing to throw your own family, neighbors and country away so that the monopolists can profit at any cost to ourselves and the planet? Because unfettered greed decimates everything… air, water and land… this little blue marble in the sky is finite and at this continued rate… completely destroyable.
It’s time that we were responsible sons and daughters to this planet which gave us life or Wall St’s bottom line addiction will be the death of us.”
That was the blackout where they weren’t even cross honoring NJT rail to bus and the driver would not accept my $10 bill and claimed I needed exact change. She only let me on when I said I would gladly pay for everyone who gets on the bus after me until my $10 ran out. She then was OK with it. Oh to be in a public Union.
Grim – If you need a break from Frozen, see if you little one will sit through “The Lego Movie.” Very entertaining to my 3 year old, but you will get a song stuck in your head:
“Everything is Awesome!!!!”
I hear the Hotdog song from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in my head when I’m sleeping.
And what the heck do hot dogs have to do with Mickey Mouse?
At least you don’t need to run out in a snowstorm anymore to rent movies.
Netflix is pretty good at keeping my kids entertained for hours.
Their parental controls are pretty good too.
I wonder before 9/11, how many companies had Business Continuity Plans? We ended up purchasing several floors in a hotel.
I’ve given up on parental controls. Seriously, with the internet, you are wasting your time. I have fully accepted that my kid is going to watch p0rn before he’s 12. Heck, we found 16mm reels in our parents basements and this required finding a 16mm projector to watch it and we still succeeded. This was until true zen was obtained with the introduction of soft core p0rn on WHT. And somehow, I did not end up with a midget or rape fetish.
[62] I wouldn’t be worried about watching it, with snapchat kids are making it themselves at that age.
48. Did you mention that in your edit interview?
Edit=exit
[39] fabian
“Have to grab some extra gas and I’ll be good to go.
I have to get over to Goffle Farms at some point to pick up some replacement chicks for our coop.”
Geez, you sound just like the crazy-ass preppers you profess to despise.
[62] libturd,
“I’ve given up on parental controls.”
I haven’t. But deep down, I want my kids to be able to defeat them.
Good read.
“OP: Given technological advances in both the onshore and offshore sectors which greatly increase production, how likely is it that oil will stay below $80 for years to come?
Arthur Berman: First of all, I’m not sure that the premise of the question is correct. Who said that technology is responsible for increasing production? Higher price has led to drilling more wells. That has increased production. It’s true that many of these wells were drilled using advances in technology like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing but these weren’t free. Has the unit cost of a barrel of oil gas gone down in recent years? No, it has gone up. That’s why the price of oil is such a big deal right now.
Domestic oil prices were below about $30/barrel until 2004 and companies made enough money to stay in business. WTI averaged about $97/barrel from 2011 until August of 2014. That’s when we saw the tight oil boom. I would say that technology followed price and that price was the driver. Now that prices are low, all the technology in the world won’t stop falling production.
Many people think that the resurgence of U.S. oil production shows that Peak Oil was wrong. Peak oil doesn’t mean that we are running out of oil. It simply means that once conventional oil production begins to decline, future supply will have to come from more difficult sources that will be more expensive or of lower quality or both. This means production from deep water, shale and heavy oil. It seems to me that Peak Oil predictions are right on track.
Technology will not reduce the break-even price of oil. The cost of technology requires high oil prices. The companies involved in these plays never stop singing the praises of their increasing efficiency through technology—this has been a constant litany since about 2007—but we never see those improvements reflected in their financial statements. I don’t doubt that the companies learn and get better at things like drilling time but other costs must be increasing to explain the continued negative cash flow and high debt of most of these companies.
The price of oil will recover. Opinions that it will remain low for a long time do not take into account that all producers need about $100/barrel. The big exporting nations need this price to balance their fiscal budgets. The deep-water, shale and heavy oil producers need $100 oil to make a small profit on their expensive projects. If oil price stays at $80 or lower, only conventional producers will be able to stay in business by ignoring the cost of social overhead to support their regimes. If this happens, global supply will fall and the price will increase above $80/barrel. Only a global economic collapse would permit low oil prices to persist for very long”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/real-cause-low-oil-prices-interview-arthur-berman.html
68-
“OP: The Current Oil Situation – What is your assessment?
Arthur Berman: The current situation with oil price is really very simple. Demand is down because of a high price for too long. Supply is up because of U.S. shale oil and the return of Libya’s production. Decreased demand and increased supply equals low price.
As far as Saudi Arabia and its motives, that is very simple also. The Saudis are good at money and arithmetic. Faced with the painful choice of losing money maintaining current production at $60/barrel or taking 2 million barrels per day off the market and losing much more money—it’s an easy choice: take the path that is less painful. If there are secondary reasons like hurting U.S. tight oil producers or hurting Iran and Russia, that’s great, but it’s really just about the money.
Saudi Arabia met with Russia before the November OPEC meeting and proposed that if Russia cut production, Saudi Arabia would also cut and get Kuwait and the Emirates at least to cut with it. Russia said, “No,” so Saudi Arabia said, “Fine, maybe you will change your mind in six months.” I think that Russia and maybe Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria and Angola will change their minds by the next OPEC meeting in June.
We’ve seen several announcements by U.S. companies that they will spend less money drilling tight oil in the Bakken and Eagle Ford Shale Plays and in the Permian Basin in 2015. That’s great but it will take a while before we see decreased production. In fact, it is more likely that production will increase before it decreases. That’s because it takes time to finish the drilling that’s started, do less drilling in 2015 and finally see a drop in production. Eventually though, U.S. tight oil production will decrease. About that time—perhaps near the end of 2015—world oil prices will recover somewhat due to OPEC and Russian cuts after June and increased demand because of lower oil price. Then, U.S. companies will drill more in 2016.”
This looks like as much fun for me as a Red Sox World Series title:
http://www.weather.gov/images/box/winter/StormTotalSnowRange.png
Giving out bonus numbers and raises today. The troops will be happy they came in.
Actually I am letting everyone work from home tomorrow. Will ship the NJ bus folk some new butt plugs to sit on for three hours tomorrow to replicate the feeling of their bus rides.
re: 71 – “bonus numbers”
Let me guess 5.6% increase.
My favorite business outage was it was an unusual hot day back in Summer 1988. Some client who lost his life savings climbed to the top of the Shearson building around lunch time and jumped, instead of hitting payment he landed in the flat roof connecedt to building around floor five right into the big green mix for the Central AC unit. It shut off all ventilation to building, with old hot computers, mainframe, old light bulbs and like 5k people in building it started getting really hot quick. Had to let folks leave early at five pm and many was Peter Cohen the CEO mad.
Also at Deutche Bank in 1990s I had another jumper from the LTCM fall out.
WTC you had tons of jumpers too.
At least with three feet of snow jumpers are not a big deal
FKA 2010 Buyer says:
January 26, 2015 at 10:40 am
I wonder before 9/11, how many companies had Business Continuity Plans? We ended up purchasing several floors in a hotel.
This is so Pumpkin. First he finds all the wage inflation he could ever wish for and then his plans for it don’t go like he planned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAxARJyaTEA
I see CC just started his Presidential PAC. Every time Anon regurgitates a tweet, I’m going to send $100 in to fatman’s PAC.
wow…LTCM brings back memories. 1997, my first year on the street.
Question for those here: What is your opinion on Basking Ridge?
That movie is actually pretty dark when a kid watches it for the first time…..a main character’s parents are close to being killed, and also a main character gets decapitated…..if you watch it through the eyes of a kid, it is scarey until Will Farrell makes his first appearance….and that point is 2/3 of the way through……
homeboken says:
January 26, 2015 at 10:30 am
Grim – If you need a break from Frozen, see if you little one will sit through “The Lego Movie.” Very entertaining to my 3 year old, but you will get a song stuck in your head:
“Everything is Awesome!!!!”
Old Mille Inn has a great specials on Toothless Tuesdays, and Sunday night is open mike banjo music……
Essex says:
January 26, 2015 at 12:28 pm
Question for those here: What is your opinion on Basking Ridge?
79. Perfect.
@GovChristie: From 9pm tonight to 9am tomorrow will be the worst times for this storm. I ask everyone to pls stay home during those times. #blizzardof2015
http://nypost.com/2015/01/25/8-surprising-real-estate-tips/
ChiFi…..http://exiledonline.com/confessions-of-a-wall-st-nihilist-forget-about-goldman-sachs-our-entire-economy-is-built-on-fraud/
Question for those here: What is your opinion on Basking Ridge?
I love the Basking Ridge area! I would buy there in a second!
[70] expat,
I’m hoping you get to enjoy the latter, and often.
84 Basking Ridge is a nice town but is the definition of bubble country. My sister used to live there and was looking to upgrade, a million dollars wasn’t buying them anything good in 2012. They eventually sold their 2006 purchase at a slight loss and then bought in Chester 20 minutes away for 50k less than they sold their place for, 3 acres, 4500 sqft house, in ground pool, summer kitchen, beautiful house a better commute for my brother in law as well(works in morris county). Basking Ridge is far from NYC, the train commute isn’t great and the pricing is worse than Franklin Lakes which is Bergen County(and has lower taxes to boot). To me the value proposition is just not there and it is more a function of cache(my sister and brother in-law I think didn’t want to move because of town cache).
Typically can’t stand SNL anymore but they hit it out of the ballpark with their Bushwick Brooklyn segment. So amazingly accurate about what’s happened to that area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAsBta25OGQ
If you spend 20 minutes watching and laughing with your kid, it is not as horrible/traumatic as you make out. It is a funny move with good music, my son and I enjoy it together.
Then again – keep shielding your kids from the horrors of animated-lego’s, it will only help my kids to keep yours under their thumb later in life.
chicagofinance says:
January 26, 2015 at 12:45 pm
That movie is actually pretty dark when a kid watches it for the first time…..a main character’s parents are close to being killed, and also a main character gets decapitated…..if you watch it through the eyes of a kid, it is scarey until Will Faraell makes his first appearance….and that point is 2/3 of the way through……
@DavidCornDC:
A Public Service Announcement: Attention GOP Presidential Candidates, Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming
I think pricing in Basking Ridge is far better than Franklin Lakes.
Looks like the 36″ snow estimate is starting to creep back west.
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/stormtotalprecip.php
90. Grim there is more inventory and wider range of housing in Basking Ridge. Like for like comparisons are not easy between the two towns, it is just my opinion that Franklin Lakes is a fancier town and it should carry more of a premium but I don’t really see it, they seem to trade pretty closely.
Thanks for the share. Pretty funny stuff, but sounds about right.
Essex says:
January 26, 2015 at 1:17 pm
ChiFi…..http://exiledonline.com/confessions-of-a-wall-st-nihilist-forget-about-goldman-sachs-our-entire-economy-is-built-on-fraud/
I like Basking Ridge as a commuting locale. No train is fine. Neither of us need a direct NYC connection. As for the inventory, we buy below our means because I happen to be a cheap bastard and high priced homes scare the piss out of me. So we’ll be happy with a $600k max budget…..FWIW.
Bottom line I am looking for a great place for a little girl to attend middle and high school. One very great kid that deserves a nice experience.
Re: did you adopt?
Hardly any snow here at the beach. The ocean is wild and the wind is whistling.
96. No I just haven’t treated an eleven year-old with the narcissistic contempt most people heap on their offspring.
Robert Thomas
Mr MacArthur and Mr Moyers are concerned citizens who care about people. They are also polemicists who know little about manufacturing or the production of – or the markets for – manufactured goods. Others of us do know about these things. I have been a manufacturing engineer for thirty-five years.
During WWII, the United States and its Allied Forces destroyed the manufacturing capacities of Europe and Japan and retarded the nascent manufacturing capacity of Asia in a way that guaranteed that North American workers would be able to dominate as suppliers of manufactured goods (and of a substantial proportion of agricultural production) both domestically and world-wide for the third quarter of the twentieth century.
Prominently over the last forty years, manufacturing capacity in the world has recovered. The United States is a significant market for manufactured goods, but the balance of the world is a bigger one and has been so for more than seventy years. If the United States did everything possible to protect its own markets for itself, by themselves those domestic markets would not be sufficient to maintain the economic prosperity American workers enjoyed when they were the primary providers of goods to the entire world.
In order to access foreign markets that (added to domestic ones) can offer prosperity for hard-working Americans, three avenues present themselves: 1) destroy the manufacturing capacities of other nations; 2) conquer, occupy, subjugate and control other nations or 3) negotiate trade agreements with other nations.
Having among these alternatives chosen negotiation, the United States (along with other other participating nations) will find that trade negotiations will result in agreements that – however fair or unfair – are not universally advantageous for its people.
There is little question that since continued access to the foreign markets that assured American prosperity after WWII will expose American workers to greater competition, Americans must rely upon the natural, historical, organizational, temperamental and cultural resources we possess that differentiate our society from others.
Achieving this distinction from our competitors will require a greater degree of the average worker’s attention toward mastering skills and disciplined behavior than was necessary during America’s tenure as the world’s predominating manufacturer.
Our nation will benefit from its propensity for developing the most creative techniques of design and production (again, of agricultural as well as manufactured products) and products that have been best conceived to serve their functions and meet their users’ desires and needs. Despite the experience of anyone owning a motor vehicle designed in Detroit from 1970 to the late 2000s, Americans are actually still pretty good at this.
Juice…you made me snicker out loud.
So you don’t want to beat people up anymore?
100. Maybe at the next GTG you two can sneak off for a bit of fun….
sx (77)-
Basking Ridge is a town full of snotnosed wannabes.
103. I’ll fit right in
Sx, don’t send your kid to Ridge. Overrated skool, and the kids are as prep as you can find for a NJ public skool. Yuk.
Bridgewater is a really good skool, but it’s big. If you can find something in Bernardsville, you can send your kid to Bernards, which is a very good skool and not large.
Come out to my neck of the woods, and send your kid to N. Hunterdon. The brainwashing is intense, but there’s a shred of edumacation to be had if you can get into the honors and AP track. Also, the area is affluent, but not so affluent that all the kids are dicks. Something for everyone there.
They didn’t ruin my daughter, and my son is immunized against idiotic liberalthink.
Daughter is a senior in kolledge and believes that N. Hunterdon prepped her better for math/sciences than kids from Phillips-Exeter, Choate, etc.
re #104 – Fit in? Your $600k budget is like shopping for a Chevrolet in a Mercedes dealership. You will be more like the underemployed Dad in Pretty in Pink than you think.
107. Perhaps. We’ll see.
600K buys you a POS 2BR cottage, in-town Basking Ridge. It will also buy you a nice townhome on the Bernards side of The Hills, which is sort of like a gentrified section of hell.
God help your kid if she lives close enough to walk to Ridge HS.
In-town Bernardsville offers more value than Basking Ridge, and people there don’t suck.
106. That sounds pretty good. No one wants to be the poor kid trying to keep up with the gentry.
107. Pretty in Pink….wtf??!
I like Bernardsville as well. The whole area is really nice.
The $600k is completely arbitrary – Could go higher based on the property.
re # 87- $8 dollar mayonnaise!
Empire mayonnaise Brooklyn responded they are going to make the garlic truffle mayo.
60,000 jars a year! They are really killing it…..
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150121/prospect-heights/empire-mayonnaise-may-make-mayo-inspired-by-saturday-night-live-parody
Anyone wanting truffle mayonnaise should be able to make it for themselves.
600K buys you a baller house in Annandale, Lebanon or Clinton Twp.
…just be prepared for bear attacks.
Oh boy, we have another fast eddie in the making. Searching for a 600 k livable house in towns that are at the top of the food chain. Don’t even waste your time.
Essex says:
January 26, 2015 at 4:53 pm
The $600k is completely arbitrary – Could go higher based on the property.
I really don’t need a big place. In fact I don’t want one. More land? Yes. Better Schools? Absolutely. People? Meh.
Why land? More to mow and more to be taxed on.
Better a gang of fast eddies on this blog than even one more Punkinhead.
119. If I need your input I’ll bend you over and ask for it….
Sigh and I paid $1.77 a gallon today.
Gas tax increase on the Horizon.
http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2015/01/transportation_funding_concerns_voiced_at_raritan.html#incart_river
grim, not sure how old your kids are, but my 6 year old daughter loves Treehouse Masters on Animal Planet, and I can sit through a short marathon as I enjoy the projects they build. they do some cool stuff.
Liquor Luge just made my day. Complimented my town’s school system which has a major inferiority complex to Ridge. (Bridgewater).
Here’s the deal with Basking Ridge. Within Somerset County, to live in Basking Ridge you pay 40% higher home prices in return for maybe a 10% better school system versus nearby towns. Houses there I consider genuinely nice cost at least $1.5mn. Real estate prices are high enough to guarantee the lowest % of disadvantaged minorities in the schools. Very high levels of average family income and education. Ridge is a large school too, and like Warren, the buses cover a really wide geographical area, which you would need to watch out for. Warren typically offers bigger lots and newer houses than Ridge. Luge says he hates that school though. Starting price for nice is about $1.1mn there these days. I’m in the Martinsville corner of Bridgewater, where nice houses can be had for about $850k (5/4s on 1-2 acres). On the other side of town there is a development popularly called “Chindia” for obvious reasons full of 4/3s on tightly packed lots, and some place called Bradley Gardens where I hear the druggies and lowlifes in town live.
I’ve never taken the train from Basking Ridge, but it looks like a pretty long haul.
If school is a top priority, don’t need a lot of space, there are plenty of townhouses in Basking Ridge “The Hills” area for a relatively high price, but are also relatively easy to sell when your kid is through with school. Here’s a stereotypical example:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Bernards-Township-NJ/condo,townhouse_type/39840989_zpid/395572_rid/40.760131,-74.437609,40.653034,-74.660769_rect/12_zm/1_fr/
600k in the ridge is a townhouse or a pretty beat up 3 bedroom home. The Martinsville section of Bridgewater is a good suggestion to get some value, Chester, or even further Long Valley/Washington Twnshp you can buy a lot more for your money, schools are pretty good too. It just depends on your commute.
rags (126)-
Watchung Hills is a suck ass high skool. You get all the riff-raff from Stirling and Gillette.
They are doing something right at Bridgewater HS. I have friends with both brainiacs and special needs kids going there, and everyone seems to go along and get along. No mean feat for a giant HS that serves a wide range of kids.
I would also put Hunterdon Central into the same box as Bridgewater. However, potential problems there are squelched by the gulag-type discipline, which even the parents complain is too strident.
I would shy away from sending your children to a high school like Ridge. You could take the top 30 students at Ridge High School and they would probably be valedictorian in any other district. You have a better chance at getting into a top university by going to a different suburb. If your kid isn’t even close to cracking the top 50, there is absolutely no point at all. Basking Ridge imports smart kids into the school system which dilutes high achieving students from standing out.
Great feedback. Things to consider – thanks!
I had an agent way back when move to Flemington. He had a kid who was sort of a tough nut and put the kid into Central. Kid did some low-level cutting up- nothing serious, typical teenage hijinks- and they suspended him twice, then kicked him out within a semester.
Kid got his GED, became an Army battlefield medic and did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a cabinet full of medals now, and I told him he should send a picture of them to Central’s principal.
Ridge is also full of rich kids who are too stupid to get into Pingry and not talented enough athletically to get into Delbarton or Immaculata.
Here’s a really smart play: move to the sticks, and send your kid to Del Val. I have two friends whose kids were valedictorians in two separate years, and both kids were accepted to multiple Ivies with what would be borderline SATs and academics in any decent HS.
However, your kid will at least need to be able to feign an interest in shotguns, NASCAR and tractors for four years.
Del Val only has 1-2 AP programs, because every time a new AP program is proposed, the parents are up in arms that kids will have to do homework.
Not kidding on that one.
Most of the parents in Del Val’s district look like “before” pictures in NutriSystem ads.
I am not mystified by the Ivies. My first cousin is a Harvard grad, I’ve worked with a few over the years. It simply isn’t something I think matters.
Yeah, I agree on the Ivy thing. However, the NESCAC skools and the better state universities (UNC, Michigan, UVa) have become as hard to gain admission into than Ivies.
SX, your Kentucky background might help you fit right into Del Val’s district. Right down to their dirty little decades-long n@rcotics problem. :)
Wifey and I decided to get out of Frenchtown when: 1) Del Val parents protested AP English because there would be homework, and 2) after the first OD death in the alley directly behind my house.
hahaha…..
The Great Pumpkin says:
January 26, 2015 at 5:12 pm
Oh boy, we have another fast eddie in the making. Searching for a 600 k livable house in towns that are at the top of the food chain. Don’t even waste your time.
Essex says:
January 26, 2015 at 4:53 pm
The $600k is completely arbitrary – Could go higher based on the property.
wasn’t clotlova looking for a $300K in summit?
Ridge is also full of rich kids who are too stupid to get into Pingry and not talented enough athletically to get into Delbarton or Immaculata.
The only thing it takes to get into Pingry is the ability to pay. And in terms of academics, I’m pretty sure the top 50 in Ridge would run circles around every single student in Pingry, Delbarton, and Immaculata. Private school education is a joke in this state.
Funny thing, my “SEC” background makes me laugh. It is like being from a foreign country around here. I really just want a ‘normal’ little town. A place where the kids get along (as well as can be expected), the schools are nice, and the population isn’t filled with fanatics, crackheads, and imbeciles…..
Ben, you have some VERY smart kids in the private schools, the education might not be the finest but it can be good. But yes they will take anyone who can pay except the problem children and the incredibly dumb, most are merely average students with rich parents.
127. a beat up 3 BR doesn’t really phase me….We can do a rehab next year….if need be. Not a big deal…I know a great contractor. We bought a place that was built in the 50’s did a series of upgrades and improvements. And now when we sell are completely prepared to toss all of the cash we spent out the window. Such is life….but it was great living in a place with a great kitchen, top flight windows, and a decent electrical system.
@GuardianUS: NYC mayor warns of “calm before the storm”: “When it starts in earnest it’s going to come in very fast, very hard”
DiBlasio talking about the storm or his wife coming at him with her strap-on?
Ben, you have some VERY smart kids in the private schools, the education might not be the finest but it can be good. But yes they will take anyone who can pay except the problem children and the incredibly dumb, most are merely average students with rich parents.
Never said there weren’t smart kids there. The teachers at that level are lackluster. They are paid 25 to 35 k at best. Your worst teachers in public school make 40 to 50k in year 1. Private school attracts the absolute worst teachers in this state. So, despite their intelligence, their crappy teachers prevent them from performing as they would in a decent public school in NJ.
So my question is, why pay the ridiculous tuition when you don’t get your return on investment at all?
grim, mod
SX
All good comments here. Some thoughts.
That area bordered by 24, 206, and 287 is some of my favorite in NJ. Couple decades ago lived in the ‘roxiticus valley’ part of Mendham. Still go back regularly, was at the Black Horse last night lol. Parts inside that triangle are very pretty, affordable, with good land. It’s socially and geographically diverse, you can tuck into a corner with easy accessibility to Morristown, be ‘in-town’ in a BR or Bernardsville, or in the sticks like we were.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the high schools. I have a business that caters to youth/families and interact regularly (2-3x a week) with no less than 30 MS/HS students and their families from each of Bernards, WHRHS, and Ridge. Bottom line, there are good/bad families, programs, peer groups, and courses of study everywhere. What you do with your child and how you raise her will be infinitely more important than whatever the current flavor of in loco parentis will do for her. There are social differences to be sure but truthfully you can’t manage that for her and it sounds like you are not inclined to try (good for you).
Maybe the most important point, at least from my kids’ and their peers’ perspective, is accessibility to your social circle. It is different for every child but there has been a marked movement with my kids and their friends to convenience and walkability. Kids – even with cars – who can’t walk to Main St or arrive by the specific N-S travel route through the town to get there are actually a bit marginalized. Not intentionally, but the typical 14-17 year old mind seems to not differentiate between being a mile outside town and Bensalem PA. The kids on the geographic fringes just don’t seem to get the call or have the same flexibility to hang around for a pickup football game in the snow after early dismissal like today. There is actually a very weird (to me) migration going on in our town with more than a few families with nice 4/5BR homes, 0.5-1.0 acres, and maybe a pool two miles out on the edge of town selling and moving into the heart of town into a smaller house on a quarter acre so their kids can be ‘closer’ to their friends and town.
Good luck. We moved from Mendham to our super duper multiple blue ribbon one ranked district 15 miles or so east for our kids. It’s worked for them but I’ll twist my shoulder joint to pat myself on the back for that one. Actually wish I stayed out there with them. Just a whole different atmosphere.
#73 JJ
Summer of ’88 was BRUTAL. Sweated it out in an attic studio apt. with no A/C (yeah, cheap MF).
I jumped once, over 20′ into the snow off a second story deck back in 1993 (St. Paddy’s day storm). Wife had to dig me out. Mine was because I got a bonus that was…incredible. In your twenties you’re indestructible. Today I did a white knuckle drive home from PA.
leftwing (150)-
Good call on the in-town migration of HS kids and their families. This happens a lot when the family is down to one last kid in HS, and they’re sick of living in the 5BR Toll Bros mausoleum on the tract out in the middle of nowhere.
[Ridge is also full of rich kids who are too stupid to get into Pingry and not talented enough athletically to get into Delbarton or Immaculata.
The only thing it takes to get into Pingry is the ability to pay. And in terms of academics, I’m pretty sure the top 50 in Ridge would run circles around every single student in Pingry, Delbarton, and Immaculata. Private school education is a joke in this state.]
Wow. Tough to get a post and response both off.
Pingry is academically hands down some of the best education you can get locally. Content and methodology.
I have personally seen extremely talented athletes, some with professional lineage, declined at Delby because of academics. Delby is not at Pingry’s level academically but believe Delby is all about athletics at your own risk. I’ve seen the stunned parents and crying top flight athletes.
After Pingry and Delby privates (in the North) drop off dramatically. Your characterizations are valid for the others, like Mo-Beard which used to be where kids ‘tossed’ from publics congregated. While it’s improved from that 80s image it still does resemble Summit HS for Summit residents who don’t want to send their kids to Summit and don’t have the academics for Pingry or Delby.
BTW, letters go out today. And I don’t have a dog this fight, on my last kid and he’s nearly done.
Clot, thanks.
No insult meant on the above response. Probably more vested than I should be with kids’ decisions who aren’t my own but I have a ton of respect for Pingry. In hindsight, I wish I stayed further west and put mine there. Would have worked socially (destination school, not a town school) and for what I saved on taxes would have had a decent discount off rack rate.
I’ve heard of the occasional top athlete turned away at Delbarton, but they had to have been certified mouth-breathers. Also very likely that those turned away got pegged as having egos bigger than their talent. Delbarton can’t handle kids who they suspect will put their own interests above the team’s.
Agree. The interesting followup for me is how Delby students used to being top dog athletically handle being average or not even on varsity in one of their top sports. Can they adjust.
Most I’ve known so far have been multi-sport athletes and although not making one sport excelled in another.
Speaking with them and their parents as they progress it is not lost on them that in nearly any other school, public or private, they would likely a top varsity player in the sport they didn’t make.
Big adjustment.
woops moderated…no insult taken, wing.
wing (156)-
Yep. A couple of kids my son played youth soccer with went to Delbarton as two-sport players. They were tops at both soccer and lax, immediately flamed out at soccer and got told they would play JV lax until 11th grade, despite being absolute machines.
They buckled down, did as they were told, and one committed to Notre Dame at the end of his 11th grade year…despite having not played a varsity game yet. The other kid is doing well and will certainly end up in a good school and good lax program.
Funny, but a kid the same age from our town, a lax-only athlete, got turned down cold by Delbarton. He’d already been ranked a top-10 in the US by a couple of Maryland-based camps and was 6’2″ and 190 lbs by the start of 9th grade. The parents have a visible aura of nouveau riche troublemakers, though, and it got him turned down at a handful of top privates. Natch, Pingry took him. Too bad their lax program is a joke.
Y’all way too obsessed with this crap, your kids are going to get nailed with 50 bags of smack stuffed between their cheeks freshman year.
Nah. Sports are the best way to get your otherwise average kids into a skool that would laugh them out the door in any other circumstance. My oldest is about to graduate from one that wouldn’t have given her the time of day if she didn’t play lacrosse.
So what’s the least competitive female sport?
I’ve got a daughter and Obama is going to take her 529 away.
She is about 99th percentile in height.
I’m in the thick of it. I might have to jump on the BC shuttle one more time to make sure our liquor preserves will get us through the next few days.
dang…moderated again
Grim – chess!
Yeah you are going right to blacklist for some reason
grim (161)-
grim, surprised to see you aren’t getting that little girl out onto the Passaic for some urban pentathlon.
“So what’s the least competitive female sport?”
juice (164)-
No NCAA chess. Ergo, no scholarship money.
Sitting here and we are two bottles of wine down and there is only 1 inch of the snow on the ground and none falling. I am starting to wonder if there will be work tomorrow.
Urban pentathlon is more about teachable life lessons than scholarship money.
Prolly where I belong. No one in their right mind should take the avenues my wife and I took with kolledge for our kids. The whole sports thing could just as easily have backfired in our faces (it nearly did, for both of them)…and it does backfire on a whole lot of kids. The only thing we knew for sure at the start was that they could really play and that they were emotionally resilient enough to deal with failure if it happened.
“Yeah you are going right to blacklist for some reason”
The thrill of shooting a pistol from a moving boat…
Nice on your buddy’s ND, congrats on your daughter.
Yeah, huge downside at Pingry is athletics are abysmal.
yeah, bowling then.
wing (172)-
Even the soccer at Pingry’s going down. MB just stands there and yells. Players are all a bunch of PDA robots. Not at all the level they were at 5-10 years ago.
LOL, Grim, girls full contact no helmet football.
Then she can get a job in broadcasting and say what the reporter just did on the ten o’clock news regarding a show canceled at MSG tomorrow: “Sucks when you can’t control what you can’t control.” No joke. Hope she has big cheeks for that smack career…
Drink faster, juice. Even if you have work tomorrow, I’ll venture a wild guess it won’t be your first time at the potted-at-8 AM rodeo.
Tall girl? Hell, get her into modeling.
Sadly my daughter is obsessed with dance, which doesn’t count as sport, and seems to irritate private schools that want their spare time spent on team sports.
Starting 11pm it’s illegal to drive in NJ without an excuse. Until some guy says so. Meanwhile, I haven’t seen snow for the last 6 hours.
Re: 176 – it’s been decades since I was sober why stop now.
Why stop, indeed! Everyone I know who stops drinking is surly all the time.
Anyone wanna venture a guess as to why this is still available??
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/80-Fanny-Rd-Mountain-Lakes-NJ-07046/2120911981_zpid/
Re:#181 – that’s age. Time is not on your side.
Re: #182 -Boonton has a nice ring to it?