Everyone is different.
I couldn't imagine living in an apartment. But that's me. A
quick search shows me $3200 - $12k for a three bedroom apartment. (A three bedroom is a bare minimum for me.) Instead, I pay $1500 for my roomy 3500 sq foot house with four bedrooms, a playroom and two garages.
I disagree the suburbs are boring. With the exception of museums, we have pretty much the same stuff you have in the city. We have tons of restaurants, bars, breweries, and taprooms. We have movies, bowling, etc. We also have things you do not have - My town has it's own little airport and it's own air show, and we also have things like wineries. You might go to Chinatown for Chinese, but we have three Chinese restaurants here in town as it is. We also have Vietnamese, Afghani, Indian, Sushi, etc.
New Jersey smells? That's news to me. I am a Jersey boy myself, born in Lakewood NJ, but raised in rural New Jersey almost in Pennsylvania. Where I lived it was beautiful, all rural. I also lived in Brooklyn too when I was a teen.
It's a trade off. You pay out the ass to live in the city, and frankly you get little bang for your buck.