Jersey Boy’s hot pink logo seems to come out of an ’80s time warp, and its fluorescent glare and mirrored back wall seem tailor made for stoners stumbling in at 3 am. But it’s not that kind of place. The chairs get placed upside down on the Formica-ish tables by mid-afternoon, 3:30 pm.
From 6 am through lunchtime, the joint is jumping, especially the self-serve coffee station. (You buy your pink paper cup first, then you get to fill it.)
When I look at this picture I think of the coffee station as a kind of self-medicating ER or triage zone for the overworked. Just looking at that stuttering stack of labels makes me think I’ve had too much caffeine already and should switch to green tea.
Or maybe the person who scrawled the plaintive plea for keeping hands off should switch to a tamer brew, maybe a nice chamomile, and decompress in a tufted armchair at Greenberry’s.
Coffee and diners go together, as we pointed out in our DINER ISSUE (February). The second picture for today is of the late lamented funky Short-Stop Diner in Bloomfield, so close to the Garden State Parkway overpass that the coffee practically ripples in its cup from the zooming traffic overhead.
But the Short Stop was converted to a Dunkin’ Donuts back in 2004. That leaves me with mixed feelings. One-of-a-kind eateries are sad to lose. They’re part of our cultural history, and irreplaceable. But for pure coffee prowess you can’t do much better than Dunkin’.
Am I the 500th person you’ve heard rave about the smoothness and balance and tastiness yadda yadda of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee? I drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak, and it’s good. I’m hooked. As for the donuts, I once had a thing for the sour cream donut, available only in the two Morristown Dunkins, as far as I know, but either I changed or they changed, and I haven’t gone near one in months.
With the Short Stop, we have something of the best of both worlds. As you see in this picture, it still looks like a diner, and Dunkin has restricted its signature brown-and-orange to the sign on top and parts of the interior. So I can still go there and roam around the retro building looking for photographs, and when I’m done I go inside and order an extra large black coffee.
Dunk you very much.