New Jersey is the US state no one thinks to visit – here’s why you should

“Two dead Sopranos in the same bar on the same night, what are the chances of that?”

On stage, Italian-American singer Vincent Pastore mused to a packed-out audience in a thick New Jersey drawl. He was mid-rendition of Van Morrison’s Gloria with his band the Gangster Squad. It was Friday, and I was enjoying a night of live music in the divey low-lit Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, a classic New Jersey shore town with a creative edge set to boom, made famous when American rock legend, Bruce Springsteen, released his 1972 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park.

Pastore made it on screen as mafia boss Tony Soprano’s best friend, Salvatore Bonpensiero, in HBO’s legendary 1999 TV show, The Sopranos, which was set and filmed in and around New Jersey nearly 25 years ago. Ironically, it’s in one episode set in Asbury Park that Pastore’s character meets his end. As for the second dead Soprano? Admittedly I struggled to spot him, but I like to think it was Tony Soprano’s right-hand man, Silvio Dante, played by Steven Van Zandt, guitarist in Springsteen’s E Street Band.

I was halfway through a short but sweet week-long road trip through the unsung US state of New Jersey, which began three days earlier in Cape May in the state’s south, and would end almost 150 miles north in Newark. For travellers short on time, like me, New Jersey offers a journey of bite-sized distances and diverse cultural, natural and culinary surprises, without the overcrowding in other beach enclaves near New York, like the Hamptons on Long Island – even in peak summer.

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And there wasn’t a tacky Jersey Shore cliché in sight. Earlier that day, I’d checked into the dreamlike surfside Asbury Ocean Club – my room overlooking a dune garden – just as Stevie Nicks’ did in 2021 when in town for the See.Hear.Now music festival. Later, at nearby Transparent Clinch Gallery, I’d lost myself browsing the fine art photos of rock greats taken by the owner, Danny Clinch, Bruce Springsteen’s official photographer. I mentioned my love of 1990s band Pearl Jam to the lovely charismatic manager, Tina, who whisked me into the gallery office to show me a typewriter lead singer Eddie Vedder used in a music video. No big deal.