I comment a lot on stories having to do with state governments and legislation or regions of the country. It got me wondering how many people I’m accidentally disparaging when I don’t mean everyone in said state or region is terrible. So… Please be as specific or obtuse as your privacy filter requires. I’ll start:
I’m in the Bay Area, specifically Oakland. Despite Bay Area hate from some posters, I think it’s great. How about you?
West Michigan, helping turn a previously red district purple.
I actually kind of love Michigan. It’s a beautiful state and the people are generally kind and friendly. But it does have some bullshit, especially when you get outside the cities. Though I suppose that’s true everywhere.
I am juuuust outside the MSA, without doxxing myself too badly.
Chicago is accessible, if I plan around a few hrs drive or an Amtrak that’s not crazy far.
We are collectively mostly left-leaning though the UIUC students prob skew that to some degree. We landed here because it was a reasonably affordable place, close enough to something else to be feasible for holidays, and also close enough to a major ish city that not WFH would be on the table, maybe.
Got here via south central PA, New England, and marrying a girl from Kettlecorn, KS who missed the flatlands.
I miss the mountains, but I’m also sane and honest with myself - the local bouldering place is as close as I’m getting to a mountain, at my age.
That makes me sad, having hiked up plenty of mountains back before I fell off the “fitness cliff”…
Within driving distance of a former presidential candidate’s childhood home (hopefully he doesn’t ask for money again), in the great state that still won’t apologize for its cheese.
I’ll say, haven’t been in a while, but my brother lived in SF and then Palo Alto for a bit during and after law school, so 2009-14 we’ll say, and I had a blast every time I went to visit. I haven’t been back since, and obviously people say the city has changed a bit, but back then it was such a different lifestyle from the East Coast.
I always go back to this story, at that time Dunkin Donuts’s catchphrase or whatever, at least in the NEC, was America Runs on Dunkin, but when I went out west they would say America’s Favorite Coffee, and I always found it a pretty apropos juxtaposition of the coastal mentalities. In NY/NJ, we were all about work. Everyone works, you go out after work in your fuckin suits, you talked about work. It was a culture, and it ran on coffee (sometimes Dunkin). But out west, people seemed to be more interested in taking in life, the sights, the food, and yes, the fucking coffee.
And the catchphrase for the middle of America was “drink it or don’t, nobody cares about you”.
I carry a bunch of pride for all of my favorite places I’ve lived in (I was easily bored in my early 20s), but…
Jersey?
Kidding, ofc, friend.
Lived up and down the east coast along the way, including places whose current inhabitants I would not want to publicly associate myself with.
South Central PA wasn’t per se “appealing,” but it was home for many years so I get it. Neither good nor bad, just home, but easily judged.
I still smile a lil when I happen to cross US 30 and notice it, so I get it. Feels like I “could” make that turn and be “home”
OC, MD was “the” vacation dest growing up so…. I have very little affinity for Jersey. A few years working for a guy who was proudly “from JC” (sorta) and a giant dick didn’t help my perspective, to be honest.
including places whose current inhabitants I would not want to publicly associate myself with.
Long way to say Staten Island.
And a giant dick from JC sounds like someone who moved in sometime after 2000. I feel like the old timers, the real legit JC people, are anything but dicks. That city went through some hard, hard times, and it’s in its golden age right now, it’s nice to see.
I think NJ tends to be a love it or hate it kinda place. I lived outside of NJ a couple of times, but it pulled me back in, as they say.
As for South Central PA, closest I’ve gotten was probably King of Prussia, perhaps. Don’t really know much about it, but I’m always interested. Got a family now, and being able to pop them in a car to go to some kind of experience, versus the cost and hassle of flying (i.e. doors fall off), is appealing to me. And I’m at a point in my life where I can bring my kids to places I find interesting but they find incredibly boring, but when they get to my age they will continue the cycle (barring the apocalypse, of course).
And as for OC, MD, I feel like if you have a beach place you go to, that’s where you go. I’ve been going to essentially the same place for 37 years, at this point. On our way there, we pass Ontario license plates for all them who head down to Wildwood or maybe to MD too. I’ll probably take the family to Rehoboth or Ocean City, MD, at some point, just for the sake of checking the box (barring them being underwater, of course).
I’m in, and from, Florida. Am over 50 so have seen the devolution of the political situation as we get more populated. But am in a very diverse city with a large queer community, and I think that’s what people get wrong about Florida, we have ever been diverse, not like up north where it’s more stratified. Everyone here, at least in the more populated areas, most neighborhoods are mixed on just about any axis you can spin us on. Like my street has old people, families, black, white, Asian, Muslim, Catholic, protestant, atheist, conservative, progressive, gay, straight, trans, able bodied and disabled.
I’ve lived in a few different states and I was born in a foreign country. I absolutely love Florida. South Florida is an amazing place with great weather and great people.
It all depends on the cultural lens which you use to look at it. One shopping plaza looks different to a Jew then it does to a Brazilian then it does to a Haitan. The Jew may come for the hummus lunch place and the Brazilian goes for the Brazilian nightclub. They exist in the same physical space but it’s like a parallel universe because they don’t see each other. I find this so fascinating.
When you take the time to really explore you see a massive depth of different cultures. I love living among immigrants, including many fresh people right off the boat.
Up north it simply isn’t the same. In Chicago there’s a lot of Latinos, but they’re virtually all Mexican. In South Florida you get every single type. Brazilian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Central American… Mexicans are a minority.
I don’t know if there’s another place in the world that has such a diverse mix of people from around Latin America. So many opportunities and interesting things to do.
I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I hate the government, but I refuse to move.
Respect for staying and staying strong. That devolution has been rapid and concerning.
You sticking around encourages every person (disclosed or otherwise) in any of those groups to stay, and eventually force that SOB running your state out.
My partner is a huge Disney fan, and I see behind the magic and respect everything they do to hide the actual mechanics of it all. It pains us that we can’t get on a WN flight to MCO because we refuse to spend money (that we are aware of) in states behaving that way generally.
We miss Nashville, too, as well as a place between Nashville and Orlando that sells stuff people failed to “claim” for cheap.
But I’m not buying gas in GA or FL, much less anything else, in the current environment.
Miami once was a haven and a melting pot, and I personally welcome everyone to this country. But… current state of affairs.
I couldn’t do it, we are both straight and a conventional married couple (mosly, aside from things that are no one’s biz). We fled a Midwest state because, among other things, we got tired of defending that WE wore masks/used hand sanitizer over a period of years.
Fuck those people, we are not hurting them by vexing cautious. Turns out (it seems, per current research) we were right.
The diesel bros are slowly feeling the long term results.
It’s fine. Boycotts will hopefully get the attention of the businesses and they will push, we are dependent on tourism money. So yes, stay away if you need to, it may help eventually. DeSantis is such a fool to push the culture war stuff - as I said in a different thread, I’m tempted to run for governor myself on a platform of Make Florida Freaky Again. We have a culture of circus folk and drag queens, it’s literally part of our heritage.
The state is gerrymandered to fuck, the legislature doesn’t represent us, as you can tell by all the constitutional amendments. But on the ground here, it’s still vibrant and diverse in my city and neighborhood, and there is so much I do like about this state, the actual land and creatures here, we have so many state and city and county parks, lots of public land.
DFW area of Texas. There’s a lot that’s good here, but the number of people who combine various levels of being small-minded and short-sighted are indeed very frustrating.
And they all have cars that contribute to our THUNDERDOME traffic situation these days. I legit don’t even like driving anywhere in the metroplex these days out of safety concerns.
My company has a campus there (among several other places) and I’ve abs ruled out any chance of landing there. Not just because screw you, I am more effective WFH, not less, but because the highly vocal haters populating the area make me look like an asshole just for living there.
I’m also particularly sensitive to heat, but car ac is a thing. I just can’t justify supporting and effectively representing TX. Not a lot of good ways to state that I’m an ally of anyone misunderstood or whose rights have been trampled, while living in a state that consistently makes news for the exact opposite.
Not worried about colleagues who know me, but if I want to make a move into a new position - internal or external - and the hiring mgr or hr rep is e.g., my friend who went through NB and landed on male, whose decision I respect, how the hell can I possibly claim to support them or any other group, if I’m daily buying gas and food in TX?
Pennsylvania is a weird state because we have half the population in cities, Philly and Pittsburgh are the big ones, but we’ve got quite a few smaller cities peppered throughout. The other half live in the middle of nowhere, Amish country and farmers for miles.
The rural is deep red. I can see a Confederate flag from my porch. We can’t even claim that as “our heritage” or whatever bullshit the South says to justify it.
Feel free to disparage my area, it’s pretty disgusting.
I’m outside Allentown, but half my family is from up near Towanda. It is an odd state due to how we’re spread out.
We’ve got Confederate flags around here as well. Less things plastered with Trump signs lately, but the last few months I’ve seen businesses with Houck signs all over. He’s an anti abortion activist that twice assaulted a 70+ year old man that was a patient escort at a clinic.
All the people I meet from all over the state are usually very kind, but politically what many of them believe just confuses me. I just didn’t know what would ever change their voting bloc if things haven’t done so by now.
But, seriously: rural PA can be gorgeous. The issue is, as you said: the politics. When we first moved there, a new friend told me: “Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Alabama in between.”
Another replier to your comment said they lived outside Allentown - I don’t consider that “rural” PA. The suburbs in PA are vast, and while it can look rural, you don’t know PA rural until you drive to somewhere like New Berlin: through coal country. I knew people who’d grown up within 3 miles of where their grandmother grew up, lived there their entire lives, and never ventured more than a few dozen miles from the Mainline. Never visited Gettysburg, a mere 4-hour drive.
And you’re so right! The Mason-Dixon line is the Southern border of PA, and yet Confederate flags abound. That, and Trump signs; they just never take those down, campaign year or not.
We moved to Minnesota from PA (answering OP’s question) and I was surprised at the political similarities. Around The Cities it’s fairly liberal, and even through the few-hour drive to Deluth. But once you get off the main commuter thoroughfare, those Trump signs start appearing everywhere. Iron ore is to MN what is coal to PA, and mining is mining. Although, the property around the big Northern lakes is all lake-homes owned by urban families who can’t afford lake homes around The Cities, so there are pockets of Blue out there. Anyway, I found the similarities to be surreal. The biggest difference is that the PA coal country is far poorer than MN iron country.
But I’ll repeat: the countryside in PA is amazing, especially in the Poconos, but also in the farmland. Just beautiful.
No argument from me on the beauty of the countryside. I had moved to Cleveland for a few years, and came back to hillbilly Town because it was worth having a crick for my kids to play in. That’s not a typo, my PA folks get it.
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