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Old 06-23-2019, 09:07 AM
sub
 
Location: ^##
4,963 posts, read 3,672,104 times
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^I’m not a Texas fanboy by any means, but these days it seems to be more diverse, integrated, and less racist than many parts of the country I’ve been to. Not saying racism doesn’t exist there (no place is immune, never will be), but things do seem better there.
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Old 06-23-2019, 10:05 AM
 
Location: Buffalo, NY
3,551 posts, read 3,018,974 times
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I think the only thing that has ever shocked and surprised me in the US was my first visit to Texas A&M. I was used to universities (especially state universities) in the sense of ivory-tower/school spirit/free-thinking places, but A&M is about as close to a cult as any public institution I have ever seen. It is a former pretend-military school that went co-ed but continues to carry on "traditions" for damn near everything they do. My subsequent years in Texas dealing with alumni have only reinforced, not dimmed, that opinion.
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Old 06-23-2019, 10:55 AM
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6,287 posts, read 6,932,089 times
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Went to Florida for the first time a couple years ago....

Auto horns....heard more horns in two weeks in Florida then a lifetime of driving out west!! Really folks, when I hear a horn my first reaction is to stop, open the door and walk over to see what the honking person wants!!! That really got a reaction in Florida!!

The second was really irritating. People would fill up their gas tanks....THEN lock their car at the pump and go inside the station!!! Everybody just sat there like this was NORMAL behavior!!! In parts of rural West, this would get your locked car “moved” so other people could use the pump.

On a positive note....totally impressed with the local food and restaurant scene in Florida, particularly in the small towns. Great seafood, wish we could buy stone crabs out west.
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Old 06-23-2019, 02:58 PM
 
Location: TN/NC
34,821 posts, read 30,885,993 times
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I took a job with a Boston based tech company at 28. I’m from Tennessee, and had heard about how rude New England was. That wasn’t true at all.

I lived in Indianapolis for three years. For the most part, the people from metro Indianapolis were the nastiest I’ve ever met in my life. Southern IN is basically KY and the small towns are fine, but Indy and those doughnut counties had awful people.

The New Englanders were very friendly and the Midwesterners were nasty. My experience was reversed from what folks find.
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Old 06-23-2019, 07:55 PM
 
Location: Wichita, Kansas
402 posts, read 332,312 times
Reputation: 715
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801 View Post
That's how I felt when I went to Dallas. Another Jersey friend and I stayed in an apartment with a friend whose mom was from Texas, and she had moved back there. The people in her complex threw the "N" word around casually in every other sentence. My sister was married to my black BIL for a few years by then, and I knew I'd better not mention that. It's not as if we didn't have racism in Jersey (still do), but it wasn't so openly demonstrated, and saying "N" wasn't acceptable. Back in the 60s, I remember my brother getting whacked with a wooden yardstick by my mother for teaching that word to my sister and me.

They also all kept talking about the "wetbacks". We had no idea what that meant, and then someone explained they meant Mexicans.

Another weird thing was that we were in our early 20s at the time, and the woman our age who lived there already had two or three kids and some of them were on their second marriages.

Everybody carried a gun, too. Women in their purses, men in their boots.

It was like visiting a foreign country. That was in the early 80s. Don't know if the level of racism is the same there or not now.
I relocated to the Dallas area last year from up North. The level of racism is still the same as what you experienced in the early 80s. They just hide it better now. I want to leave this area as soon as I can get a decent job offer elsewhere.
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Old 06-23-2019, 08:00 PM
 
Location: Mid-Atlantic
32,765 posts, read 35,979,500 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801 View Post
Wawa is known more for its cawfee than its gas. Decent sandwiches, too.

But I stop at a place in northeastern PA off of I-81 called Morabito. There's a chain of them.

The gas pump was spewing out an advertisement, and I was startled to hear it pronounced More-RAB-bit-oh. Anyone I've ever known with that name said, "Mo-ra-BEE-toe.
The location where you probably stop is just over the border in New York south of Bimington.

Since I'd never heard of them, I had to search for company information and locations. It took a minute longer than anticipated because they're named Mirabito.
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Old 06-23-2019, 08:34 PM
 
Location: Mid-Atlantic
32,765 posts, read 35,979,500 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rynetwo View Post
I have also never heard of this being an issue. Have family that lives in Houston and Corpus Christi and none of them have experienced this either.
It can happen pretty quickly when your power goes out in the hot, high humidity season. It's happened to me.
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Old 06-23-2019, 09:52 PM
 
Location: Wonderland
67,666 posts, read 60,237,699 times
Reputation: 101000
Y'all really need to up your caliber of friends - that's what it sounds like to me, because racism among ignorant people is EVERYWHERE. And ignorant people are everywhere.

Don't hang out with goobers.

I've lived in NE Texas for 25 years and never experienced the sort of racism you're talking about, except from ONE person and he was as old as Methuselah. He got the "Old Man" pass. And if we're honest, I bet every single one of us knows at least one "Old Man" - from anywhere - who can occasionally throw out racist crap.

One of the most racist old men I've ever known was from Long Island. Just to throw that out there.
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Old 06-23-2019, 10:24 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,193,363 times
Reputation: 35920
Quote:
Originally Posted by MinivanDriver View Post
Driving from Casper, Wyoming, to the eastern entrance of Yellowstone, we were startled at how empty it was. At one point, we realized that we had driven something like a half hour without seeing a single car.
Yes, well, Wyoming has the smallest population of any state yet is the 10th largest, physically.

Quote:
Originally Posted by C24L View Post
I was shocked that it was 60 degrees on the June afternoon I was at the beach in San Diego and 112 degrees in Palm Springs on the same trip.
It was 65 here in Denver today. Just sayin'!

Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Speaking as a Pittsburgh resident who grew up in New England, went to school in Massachusetts, and spent a lot of time in Boston, the two cities have a lot of similarities. Both are historically working-class white blue collar cities which were reborn as "eds and meds" capitols (although Boston is further along). And both are very heavily influenced by the numerous colleges located within them, functionally making large parts of the city a "college town." Both are also the core of rather decentralized metropolitan areas, with numerous smaller cities and towns stretched around the metropolitan area which are more urban than a great deal of the city proper.
The "Eds and Meds" were always there in Pittsburgh. I mean, there for a long time. Ever heard of Dr. Salk? His team invented the polio vaccine in 1954.

Quote:
Originally Posted by KathrynAragon View Post
I was shocked at how much I liked so many cities in Ohio - and at how picturesque so many areas are of Ohio. I don't know what I was expecting, and I actually lived outside of Columbus when I was a kid so I do have some memories of that region but they were mostly of fall, the little town, my school, etc. So seeing Ohio again as an adult was very interesting.
Same here. Hudson, Ohio is an especially cute burb of Clevenland/Akron.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sub View Post
Perhaps not shocked, but disappointed on how trashed out towns can be in places like Colorado. So trendy and expensive, yet not nearly as well kept as an average dirt-cheap midwestern burg.
I’d love to find a reasonably affordable place out west. 100k or less for something that didn’t roll in on it’s own wheels.
What towns are you referring to? Asking sincerely.
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Old 06-24-2019, 12:06 AM
 
Location: Land of the Free
6,550 posts, read 6,587,458 times
Reputation: 7374
Few things:

-Cowboy hats in the Dakotas. Saw more of them around Bismarck and Rapid City than anywhere I've ever been, even Texas. Guess it's a Western Plains thing.

-American cars around Detroit. This seems obvious, but Camrys and Accords can feel exotic there. Similar trend in Cleveland.

-All the Spanish language signs in Miami. Don't even see this in LA.

-How similar new home, outer suburban areas can feel to one another. Santa Clarita, California reminds me of Ashburn, Virginia, just with palm trees.

-How much snow surrounds LA in the winter.

-How walkable, interesting, and hipster Boise is.

-How rural and behind the times I-81/I-78 between Harrisburg and Allentown, PA feels, yet its a couple hours from New York one way, and DC the other.

-Midwestern sounding accents in Massachusetts near the NY border. People in North Adams do not sound like people where I grew up near Boston.

-The lack of mosquitos in California. Went back to DC recently and was quickly reminded of this.

-How Nashville seemed like the party bike/pedal pub capital of the world.

-How there are so many single family homes on large lots in Atlanta between Midtown and Buckhead.

-How Austin rapidly shifts from high rises to single family homes west of Lamar Ave.

-How wide the roads are in the cities of the Plains, including Denver.

-How there are no truly safe parts of Baltimore, wherever you go in that city, always feels like you're less than two blocks away from a run down neighborhood.

-Times Square in the late 90s vs. the early 90s
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