A Field Guide to Central New Jersey

MCMANSIONS

I’m driving past the dilapidated red barn on Pleasant Valley Road on the border of Marlboro and Colts Neck, New Jersey, ferrying my seven-year-old daughter to a pool party at Joey Martinelli’s house. The view is of tree-stripped low hills punctuated by colonies of pop-up McMansions, hastily built in the aughts and faced with Dryvit. Scattered among them are the remains of nineteenth-century Dutch farmhouses and Revolutionary War battle sites. There are no mature trees in McMansion Land, no; those are only in the distance, far away but there, still. This is Monmouth, the northernmost county of the Jersey Shore, one hour south of the Holland Tunnel, exits 128–117 off the Garden State Parkway.

On the Martinellis’ block, the yards are all meticulously landscaped, replete with topiaries, emerald green thuja arbor-vitae pruned in spirals, and the occasional stone lion. The street names betray aspirations they don’t quite reach: Lecarre intersects Coleridge Drive; Huxley Court runs parallel to Blake. Barbecue and grass cuttings commingle in the breeze.

“You didn’t bring Dunkin Donuts, I hope,” Jamie Martinelli calls, standing in the frame of her enormous front door. “My bulldog is allergic to gluten.” Jamie has long corn-flower locks, eyelash extensions, and muscles. She is genuine, informal, and inadvertently in-your-face—which is to say, flamingly Central New Jersey.

“Nope, I just brought Ellie.”

“And a birthday present for Joey,” my daughter adds. Guests are arriving. The bulldog, wearing a hot-pink leather collar, squeezes by Jamie, running floppy-tongued and respiratory to greet them.

“How cute is this dog!” says Jamie’s neighbor, elongating the aw in “dog.” She is dressed in a black leotard and sequined sweatpants—for an event, she explains. Her family runs a bar mitzvah dance troupe. The bulldog jumps like a spring. Kids swarm. It’s a cacophony of hellos, loud as an Italian dinner. I get a bear hug from the guy who recently designed Jamie’s bespoke home garage. It’s a marvel of sleek organization, with epoxy-coated floors, overhead storage, and slate-colored cabinets. He also coached my son’s team in Little League. Under the cathedral ceiling, two dads swap tips about where to find sales on leaf blowers. What does Bespoke Home Garage Guy talk about?

I wonder, so I linger. I overhear something about barbecuing and Peter Luger’s sauce. Then he turns to kibitz with another dad about his business delivering drums of equipment to stadiums. Jamie Martinelli gestures over the din, responding to the admiration of her family portraits—taken on the beach and mounted in ascension along the twin winding staircases. The Martinellis own a scrap-metal recycling plant. What other people throw away has made them millions.

The McMansion Tribe knows how to make a living, not by trafficking in...