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Compare the number of Sunoco gas stations to the number of Exxon gas stations in a given area. The more Sunocos, the more northern the city is. The more Exxons, the more southern the city is.
i thought restaurant chains was the stupidest way possible to gauge an areas culture. i must correct that statement now, gas stations are by far the stupidest way to gauge an areas culture.
I have a hard time understanding your post. One minute, you are shooting down my list of characterictics that DC shares with northern cities and then you post drivel about DC being southern because of Dunkin Donuts and Sonoco's? You credibility and reasoning is awful.
George Preston Marshall was a racist plain and simple. He embraced segregation. It didn't have anything to do with the city of Washington. He was one business owner who used his team as a platform for his personal views. It's obvious you don't much about DC because you posted that DC doesn't have a signature food. Well you are wrong again. Fire Fighter mentioned DC's signature food. But I have posted two links to school you.
Compare the number of Sunoco gas stations to the number of Exxon gas stations in a given area. The more Sunocos, the more northern the city is. The more Exxons, the more southern the city is.
Is the city known for a particular food? For example, Boston Baked Beans, New York Style Cheesecake, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Baltimore Crab Cake.
Do you have to pay a toll anywhere to either enter or exit the city?
Can you drive more than 15 mins in any direction without being detoured?
Judging a city by chain restaurants and gas stations is a rather stupid, idiotic way of gauging a region or its culture. For the record, there are plenty of Sunocos in Florida, and Florida is not a Northern state, no matter how many transplants move there.
And Exxons are nationwide. There are a lot of them in New Jersey, right across the river from NYC. Surely, you're not mistaking New Jersey as a Southern state are you?
There are a lot of Dunkin' Donuts here in the Atlanta area, and Atlanta is southern city.
DC is known for its Half-Smoke, and Chicken Wings with Mambo/Mumbo sauce. I know just about every time I'm in DC, I'm stopping at the "Carry Out" for them. Are they as well known as Baltimore Crabcakes? Probably not, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a city is northern or southern. Louisiana is known for its Cajun and Creole cuisine. Louisiana is the South.
As for detouring frequently in cities, that happens in cities nationwide. That is not a phenomenon unique to the Northeast.
You have to pay a toll to enter into San Francisco from Oakland. SF is not in the Northeast. You don't necessarily have to pay for a toll to enter into Boston if you come in via I-93 rather than the MassPike. Boston is considered a Northeastern city last time I checked.
These are ignorant, silly arguments that have no merit to them.
Sorry, but you have shown no facts at all, just extremely subjective, misinformed opinion.
We've been down this road many times. Facts are backed up by sources and links, not biased opinion.
Oh, and as far as Waffle House goes, Atlanta is their HQ's. Of course they are going to be blanketed across the city - the exact same way DD is blanketed across Boston. Also, there are no Harris-Teeters or Piggly Wiggly's here (please!) - try Publix & Kroger for the market leaders.
How is my opinion biased? Please quote my "extremely subjective, misinformed opinion[s]." I don't even see how bias would apply here. I've lived 20-30min from DC for nearly all my life and have been to the South many times (every state on the coast from N. Fla. to VA).
If you actually went back and looked at earlier posts you would see the facts that I and a many other posters put up. It was actually the posters arguing the Southern stance that brought in subjective opinions (such as retail chains), not that anything was wrong with that. However, please show we where I said that Piggly Wigglies and Harris Teeters are located in Atl. As for the Waffle House, they're located in pretty much every Southern city except DC.
It would seem the you're actually most biased person here. You seem to have an obsession with Atlanta (judging from your remarks on the DCvsBalt.vsAtl thread). This was an interesting disccussion before your condescending remarks.
Here are a fw of the facts posted from earlier, with the sources you requested. Since your so heavily focused on your own city, I'll compare the two:
Civil War:
Washington D.C.- Union
Atlanta- Confederacy
Density:
Washington DC- 9,776.4/sq. mi. (wiki.)
Atlanta- 4,018.4/sq. mi. (wiki.)
Transit:
Washington DC- Metro RT/HR (daily ridership-~800K ), MARC/VRE commuter rail (DR ~45K), Amtrak HS Northeast Corridor and LD trains (YR ~4,000K)
Atlanta- MARTA RT/HR (DR ~480K), Amtrak LD (YR~96K)
Politics:
Washington DC- 2008 Election 93% Obama, 7% McCain (CNN); #4 most liberal city in the country according to The Bay Area Center for Voting Research
Atlanta- 2008 Election 67% Obama, 32% McCain(CNN); Atlanta not in top 25 most liberal cities
Same-Sex Legal Environment (not number of gays since that's not correlated to the N/S while, legal friendliness is not, excluding CA):
Washington DC- recently legalized gay marriage, recognized domestic partnerships for years
Atlanta (GA)- constitution bans same-sex marriage and unions
Cultural Diversity:
Washington DC-12.8% of pop. foreign born (CB)
Atlanta- 6.8% of pop. foreign born (CB)
There's a Northeast/Southeast correlation in all of the above categorie, for the most part. I don't have time to post all the links, but if you have a problem with any of them I'll post the proper link.
How is my opinion biased? Please quote my "extremely subjective, misinformed opinion[s]." I don't even see how bias would apply here. I've lived 20-30min from DC for nearly all my life and have been to the South many times (every state on the coast from N. Fla. to VA).
If you actually went back and looked at earlier posts you would see the facts that I and a many other posters put up. It was actually the posters arguing the Southern stance that brought in subjective opinions (such as retail chains), not that anything was wrong with that. However, please show we where I said that Piggly Wigglies and Harris Teeters are located in Atl. As for the Waffle House, they're located in pretty much every Southern city except DC.
It would seem the you're actually most biased person here. You seem to have an obsession with Atlanta (judging from your remarks on the DCvsBalt.vsAtl thread). This was an interesting disccussion before your condescending remarks.
Here are a fw of the facts posted from earlier, with the sources you requested. Since your so heavily focused on your own city, I'll compare the two:
Civil War:
Washington D.C.- Union
Atlanta- Confederacy
Density:
Washington DC- 9,776.4/sq. mi. (wiki.)
Atlanta- 4,018.4/sq. mi. (wiki.)
Transit:
Washington DC- Metro RT/HR (daily ridership-~800K ), MARC/VRE commuter rail (DR ~45K), Amtrak HS Northeast Corridor and LD trains (YR ~4,000K)
Atlanta- MARTA RT/HR (DR ~480K), Amtrak LD (YR~96K)
Politics:
Washington DC- 2008 Election 93% Obama, 7% McCain (CNN); #4 most liberal city in the country according to The Bay Area Center for Voting Research
Atlanta- 2008 Election 67% Obama, 32% McCain(CNN); Atlanta not in top 25 most liberal cities
Same-Sex Legal Environment (not number of gays since that's not correlated to the N/S while, legal friendliness is not, excluding CA):
Washington DC- recently legalized gay marriage, recognized domestic partnerships for years
Atlanta (GA)- constitution bans same-sex marriage and unions
Cultural Diversity:
Washington DC-12.8% of pop. foreign born (CB)
Atlanta- 6.8% of pop. foreign born (CB)
There's a Northeast/Southeast correlation in all of the above categorie, for the most part. I don't have time to post all the links, but if you have a problem with any of them I'll post the proper link.
My last post was strictly tongue-in-cheek. Glad to see that the sarcasm detectors are as acute as I thought they'd be...
Anyways, I will address each fact in turn.
1. Virginia (even the northern part) was not part of the Union. Maryland, as I stated before, had very strong confederate sympathies. The District didn't have much of a choice since it was a federal city and not really even a population center at the time.
2. Without even delving into this data, let's understand that "Catholic" is a proxy for "working class, blue collar white people." It's not just Catholics per se, but a certain type of Catholic. When CNN had a special during the 2008 election about the "Catholic" voters who weren't voting for Barack Obama, they were not talking about the ilk of Lord Celcius Calvert who drive Subarus and send their kids to St. Albans. They were talking about the people from Chris Matthews' neighborhood in NE Philadelphia who wear hard hats, carry lunch pails and absolutely despise "spooks" and "moolies." They were essentially talking about Italian and Irish enclaves in northern cities, but couldn't be so politically incorrect as to come out and actually say that. The Northeastern U.S. is defined more by the latter than the former. That might sound offensive, but I'm just being honest.
3. Yes, DC is a denser city than Atlanta. And this makes it less southern because...
4. Baltimore has NO subway system. It still has more in common with Philadelphia, which is a northern city, than D.C. does.
5. First, this data is based on precincts reporting in Fulton County, which encompasses the city of Atlanta. So this data also includes the suburbs of Alpharetta and N. Fulton, which are naturally more right-leaning than the city of Atlanta itself. In the city of Atlanta, with its high concentration of blacks and liberal whites, Obama probably ran up the score just as he did in the District. If you look at Dekalb County, where Emory University is located (and also a small slice of the city of Atlanta), Obama really tallied up the votes.
The District of Columbia is virtually 100% Democratic because all you have are blacks and trust fund babies. If you had to toss half of Loudoun County's population into the District, that number would not be so skewed.
6. Again, the District of Columbia can do this because it is its very own political jurisdiction. If it were not for home rule, I don't think same-sex marriage would be legal in the District (Congress would not allow it). It would be legal in Atlanta, but the state legislature prohibits municipalities from legalizing it. What does that have to do with the progressivism of the city? Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) and NYC (New York State) (and Jersey New Jersey Senate Defeats Same-Sex Marriage Bill, 20 to 14 - NYTimes.com) don't have same-sex marriage either. Does that make those cities any less northern? Philly can't even impose a hand gun ban, which every other major city on the Coast has, because Harrisburg won't let cities do it.
7. You also seem to always drive at this point that liberalism (political, economic, and social) is one of the hallmarks of a northern city. I assure you that it is not. Compared to Washington, DC, Philadelphia is, I think, fairly conservative. When white voters vote Democratic in Philly, they are not voting for civil rights, gay marriage, and preserving the ozone layer. I mean, there are some voters who vote for that stuff, but most are working class people who are frustrated by globalization. They are pro-union voters. They are pocketbook voters who are just as likely to vote Republican (on the national level, NEVER on the state and local level) if they feel it serves their best interests. These are people who have pretty conservative attitudes about abortion, welfare, guns, and especially race. That Jesse Helms ad would get traction in Philly, but not DC.
I think you said in one of your posts that I thought the North was a "racial utopia." I never said that and never meant to say that.
What I meant was that blacks and whites were more or less equal under the law in most northern states, whereas in the southern states, including the District of Columbia, they were not. It's a status issue.
Let's imagine Atlanta and DC following the Second World War. In DC, you have blacks cooking for senators (still done by blacks), cleaning their houses (done by Latinas now), nursing their children (done by Latinas now), shining their shoes at Union Station, etc. Of course, you have black doctors, educators, etc. I know it's a gross oversimplification. My point is that you have a class of people who don't pose any threat to the city's white establishment. You have a black underclass and service class for which education and Jim Crow pose significant obstacles to progress. I don't think Atlanta was all that different.
The majority of blacks in the Northeast migrated there after the conclusion of the First World War (at least that was when my maternal grandfather moved there from South Carolina). When he arrived, my guess is that there were also a lot of European immigrants who were just as new to the city as he was. They were probably just as uneducated and perhaps even less skilled. These immigrants perceived my grandfather, and everyone who migrated along with him, as a threat to their economic and social advancement. It's not like you had this rigidity in class the way you did down South. Italians, Irish, blacks, and Puerto Ricans and Jews all came to Philadelphia poor. The city's history is defined by all of these groups struggling against one another to get out of the ghetto, slum, barrio, etc.
This is the socioeconomic/cultural difference that makes northern cities so different from Washington. In this regard, it is far more similar to Atlanta than it is to any city in the northeast.
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