Located in Montvale, New Jersey, the Garden State Parkway’s James Gandolfini service area feels like a place of semi-solemn observance — well north of Satriale’s pork store in Kearny, northeast of Saddle River, northwest of Gandolfini’s birthplace of Westwood, just south of the New York State line.
It’s not quite on the level of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or JFK’s Hyannisport or FDR’s Hyde Park, but it’s a place that seems to culturally matter…”take your hat off, they serve hot dogs here.”
Gandolfini was a very young boomer (born on 9.18.61**, technically a member of Generation Jones, a cusp between boomers and GenXers). Way too young to have been a ground-floor Beatles or Bob Dylan fan or to have even sniffed the hippie thing…came of age in the early Reagan era…B-52s, Blondie, The Police, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”.
Gandolfini was 37 when season #1 of The Sopranos began filming in mid ‘98, and only 51 when he died in Rome of a heart attack on 6.19.13.
** Six weeks after Barack Obama.