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Location: Appalachian New York, Formerly Louisiana
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No state has a monopoly on "stark differences" within.
A difference is a difference. There is not much of a scale. Upstate NY and NYC NY are night and day. It doesn't make them any more or less different from each other than Northern California and Southern California are.
Further more, people are going to answer with what they know, and in most cases, their own home state(s).
No state has a monopoly on "stark differences" within.
A difference is a difference. There is not much of a scale. Upstate NY and NYC NY are night and day. It doesn't make them any more or less different from each other than Northern California and Southern California are.
Further more, people are going to answer with what they know, and in most cases, their own home state(s).
This is not a precision thread.
I disagree. Certain states will definitely have an edge here.
The Baltimore-Washington corridor. DC and its suburbs are very different from Baltimore and its suburbs. DC is much cleaner and more gentrified than Baltimore. DC has minimal urban blight. Blocks and blocks of Baltimore consist of nothing but boarded up old factories and abandoned rowhomes. DC doesn't even have a skyline. DC is very status conscious, pretentious and has much wealth in most of the Northwest half of the city spilling out into surrounding Montgomery County in towns like Bethesda. Baltimore is very ghetto with everybody trying to get into your car like its a taxi cab to run a "hack". Heroin has ravaged swaths of Baltimore as dope fiends can be seen leaning at bus stops and sidewalks throughout the city. About half of DC is ghetto as well, but in a much more understated unsuspecting way much like California ghettos with very little visual blight and often empty daytime streets with seemingly well-maintained homes just with bars on the doors and windows.
Culturally, black DC natives and black Baltimore natives are very, very different. Black DC natives dress very different and have their own fashion trends (i.e. Helly Hansen jackets) as well as their own local style of music Go-Go, which is quickly dying because of gentrification of the District. Black Baltimoreans have their own music as well which is completely different in Baltimore Club music which is basically a local style of ghetto House music. Black Baltimoreans, as a whole, care much less about clothes than black DC natives. Many black Baltimoreans still wear played out 90's/early 2000's fashions like super baggy jeans and tall tees. Baltimoreans who do dress well often have similar style as black Philadelphians and some black New Yorkers who have a somewhat outdated more classic East Coast urban style (i.e. Pelle Pelle leather jackets). Baltimore and DC even have different ghetto carry out food corner store culture. DC is home of Mambo sauce. Baltimore is home of chicken boxes and half-and-half ice-tea/lemonades. Baltimore is also much more ghetto as a whole than DC. In Baltimore, you will see people drinking alcoholic swill in the middle of the day out of black plastic bags even walking downtown near Lexington Market. In DC, you don't see stuff like that unless you go to the heart of the hood in places like Anacostia. Predictably, the black natives of both cities generally don't like each other.
The DC Area does not have a sizable population of lower middle class or working class blue collar white people. White people in the DC Area work white collar office jobs and are upper middle class or wealthy coming from old money. Baltimore has large lower income white populations in the city, proper, in areas like Hampden and Pigtown as well as in surrounding Baltimore county in communities like Lansdowne, Essex and Brooklyn. Anne Arundel County is also home to a solid middle class of blue collar white workers. Baltimore suburbs are much less materialistic and status conscious than DC suburbs. In DC suburbs, people brag about their level of education and the prestige of their jobs. Even in Baltimore's wealthiest suburbs in Howard county, rich people tend not to be pretentious or brag about their levels of education or what they do for a living.
Awesome analysis. The mention of the Chicken Boxes made me hungry. But great analysis. I'm not from Maryland, but I've been to both DC and B'more, and this was an informative post.
Rhode Island and Mississippi are pretty homogenous.
Actually, in Mississippi, the southern portion of the state is more Catholic dominated with a French influence. You have the Delta with a strong Black influence/culture, with the rest of the state being pretty similar. You have the Choctaw influence around Philadelphia too.
A state that is often forgotten about, but for its size has stark differences is West Virginia. Its Northern Panhandle is like the parts of OH and PA it touches. Then the Eastern Panhandle has more influence from DC, in which parts of it is in that metro, along with MD and VA. Southern WV is more Southern in terms of character. North Central WV has more of a college/more professional influence due to Morgantown/WVU and Fairmont(which has a NASA facility) along with arguably being the region with the best economic climate in the state. Wheeling will have a different feel versus Beckley and Martinsburg will have a different feel than say Parkersburg and so on.
No state has a monopoly on "stark differences" within.
A difference is a difference. There is not much of a scale. Upstate NY and NYC NY are night and day. It doesn't make them any more or less different from each other than Northern California and Southern California are.
Further more, people are going to answer with what they know, and in most cases, their own home state(s).
This is not a precision thread.
I gotta disagree here. While each state has an area in which they can claim is slightly different from the rest of the state, there's plenty of states where the demographics and culture is pretty consistent throughout. And on the flipside, there are larger states that have a way more noticeable difference between regions of the state, rather than small differences between urban and rural areas(like what seems to be the common cultural divide that folks in this thread keep mentioning). A small state like Massachusetts, and many NE states aren't gonna have the vast cultural differences throughout their states, that a state like Texas or California has. I think big states like CA and TX do somewhat have a monopoly on stark differences within, just by default on how large they are, and how much land they cover, and the various histories, and previous cultures that inhabited these states, the ever-expanding geographic boarders of these states, and the many flags that flew over them. Western Expansion and the culture clashes that followed, are still seen today in the residents of these states, and in the different regions of these states.
Actually, in Mississippi, the southern portion of the state is more Catholic dominated with a French influence. You have the Delta with a strong Black influence/culture, with the rest of the state being pretty similar. You have the Choctaw influence around Philadelphia too.
A state that is often forgotten about, but for its size has stark differences is West Virginia. Its Northern Panhandle is like the parts of OH and PA it touches. Then the Eastern Panhandle has more influence from DC, in which parts of it is in that metro, along with MD and VA. Southern WV is more Southern in terms of character. North Central WV has more of a college/more professional influence due to Morgantown/WVU and Fairmont(which has a NASA facility) along with arguably being the region with the best economic climate in the state. Wheeling will have a different feel versus Beckley and Martinsburg will have a different feel than say Parkersburg and so on.
Yeah, I'd definitely agree on WV. I haven't been to all parts of the state, but I could sense the differences from the parts of it I've been to, or looked at on Street View. Wheeling and Morgantown having more of a OH/PA feel to it(plus college town feel in Morgantown, via WVU being there), Charleston and Huntington having their own feel, plus you have very southern WV with a lot of small towns based off of coal that are struggling(i.e. Williamson, Welch, etc.). USA Today actually ran a very good article that showed how Welch used to be much economically better off 50 years ago vs. today a year ago, but I wish I remember the URL to that great article. Even some pics that made me depressed as heck, and I decided to street view Welch, WV as a result.
I definitely notice the divides in Illinois myself, from the times I've traveled to various parts of the state. I'd say that the northern part of the state(which I'd define as the majority of it at I-80 or north) has it's own feel, that central IL(from I-80 to I-64) has it's own feel, and then you have southern Illinois south of that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawn.Davenport
Other 500+ Mile Drives Without Crossing a State-line
Montpelier, ID to Bonners Ferry, ID is 778 miles (but less if one cuts across a section of Montana)
Laughlin, NV to Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge is 705 miles
Enterprise, OR to Brookings, OR is 651 miles
From Julesburg, CO to Four Corners National Monument is 599 miles
Jal, NM to Four Corners Monument is 585 miles
San Luis, AZ to Four Corners National Monument is 567 miles
Chadron, NE to Falls City NE is 551 miles
Caruthersville, MO to Rock Port, MO is 545 miles
From Montauk, NY to Westfield, NY is 538 miles (but less if one cuts across a section of Pennsylvania)
From Luverne, MN to Grand Portage State Park 514 miles
Ewing, VA to Virginia Beach, VA is 512 miles
Smithfiled, UT to Four Corners National Monument is 505 miles (but less if one cuts across a section of Colorado)
Guymon, OK to Idabel, OK is 504 miles
Baxter Springs, KS to Goodland, KS is 500 miles
You inspired me to look up the north to south distance between South Beloit, IL, to Fort Defiance State Park just south of Cairo. It was 437 miles sticking to interstates only, and 417 miles if you detoured onto US 51 through Decatur to save time!
No state has a monopoly on "stark differences" within.
A difference is a difference. There is not much of a scale. Upstate NY and NYC NY are night and day. It doesn't make them any more or less different from each other than Northern California and Southern California are.
Further more, people are going to answer with what they know, and in most cases, their own home state(s).
This is not a precision thread.
I agree, which is why I thought putting a poll would be dumb.
I even think there's a stark difference in a state like Kansas between Western KS and Eastern KS, as the elevation gets lower and lower.
Montana has the obvious difference between the mountain areas (which, despite Montana's name, is only 1/3 covered with mountains) with the 2/3 being flat Great Plains "Big Sky" country.
Between California, Texas, New York and Florida, each of them are relatively different depending on what part of the state you're in. Trying to paint them as monolithic really is doing a disservice.
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