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I disagree. Having been born outside of the Baltimore/Washington corridor, there are many different types of people you simply won't see in this area. For example, where I'm from in California, there are a lot of Samoans and Tongan people. The average Baltimore native thinks a Samoan is a type of pizza. In addition, Maryland lacks the diversity found in nearby Northeastern cities like Philly where there are large Puerto Rican, Chinese, Italian and mixed race populations. All these types of people wouldn't last a day in Baltimore because of all the intolerance and the ugly homogeny that exists in the City. I remember I was in Philly earlier this year on South Street getting a haircut and the female barber cutting my hair asked me where I was from. I told her I was born and raised in California but residing in Baltimore. She told me that she was born in Baltimore. She then went on to explain the biggest difference between Philly and Baltimore. She said Philly was more a much more cosmopolitan and open-minded place with people who are mixed with everything and anything. In Baltimore, she said that race was a much more important factor and that she was even harassed as a child because she wasn't Black enough in Baltimore but was okay in Philly. I completely understood where she was coming from seeing as I was harassed when I first moved to Maryland as a teenager in Baltimore schools because I was mixed and wasn't really White or Black.
I'm sorry, the gene pool IS stagnant in Baltimore. It is one of the most segregated places in the country. Go to the Mondawmin Mall area or Edmondson village and see if there are anything but 90% Baltimore born Black natives a handful of White natives and a couple bullet-proof Korean owned businesses. If the gene pool isn't stagnant out here then why are half of the Black people that live in different places around my neighborhood all blood related in being cousins and uncles and aunts. It is obvious Maryland natives don't know what diversity and integration looks like. The truth hurts.
What makes Baltimore so ugly is that there aren't a whole lot of happy people in the city. There are a lot of stressed out cigarette smokers, self medicating alcoholics and angry looking folks. Where I'm from in California is filled with friendly, accepting, easy going pot smokers to be honest. Similarly, the DC Area is a stress capital. Even though DC Area folks are among the highest paid individuals in the country, DC tops the list in terms of stress. Just drive on the beltway during commute time or any time of the day and get the picture.
I think you have a lot of truth in here. Just for interesting thought-inducing future posts...thought I'd comment on it nontheless.
Part I - California. Yeah, CA has that large varied Pacific Asia thing to all new levels. Nowhere in the western world can compete on that level. But for outside of CA, it seems that NY/NY and DC/MD/VA and Chicago could be closer 2nd tier leaving far behind everyone else after them though.
Part II - Maryland vs Pennsylvania. That's tough, sounds more like Baltimore vs Philadelphia that you are stressing. From what I know of PA as a state, they have the largest elderly population outside of FL...people just don't leave PA when they get old. Driving around PA, I also feel that there is step back in time of yesteryear throughout most of the State. Feels so different from the rest of the country. I'm a big fan of PA, but it seems that your experience in South Philly is what you are stressing, but speaking in terms of all of PA is mixed and groovy and all of MD isn't and stressed. Seems like should be Baltimore vs South Philly rather than 'Maryland' being the problem one. But, I would agree with you on the South Philly over Baltimore.
Part III - which brings me to Philly vs Baltimore. I recently spent some time in both cities trying to get a feel for them. I INSTANTLY loved Philadelphia and more I explored, the more impressed and just plain comfortable I felt with it. I really wanted to love Baltimore - both rowhome cities with character. I INSTANTLY did not like Baltimore at all. Absolutely hated it. I could go into more details...but they did have significantly different feels to them. I can completely understand your preference for Philly over Baltimore.
Part IV - Growing up experinces vs being adult. I think pretty much everyone everywhere has issues with where they grew up and 'racial issues'. I think teens and such are just that way...whereas adults really appreciate and admire the beauty that comes from mixed kids, adulthood, etc. Seems like often the beautiful people in high school become ugly in adulthood, and the uglies in high school become beautiful in adulthood. I also fondly recall moving to NYC as an adult and thinking that racially NYC was pretty damn cool and progressive and everything else. However, my NYC friends who were born and raised in NYC thought it was the most racist divided city they had ever known. I think it basically come down to adulthood impressions of a place versus teenager impressions of a place.
It's not just a person's physical appearance to most people that makes them attractive. I think the personalities of many native Baltimoreans and Washingtonians make them ugly. I have lived in Maryland since the 90's and in my experience I have noticed that many people from Baltimore are loud, vulgar, proudly ignorant, uneducated and sometimes violent folks with abrasive personalities. I have lived in other ghetto areas before but Baltimore takes being HOOD to another level. There is no doubt that Baltimore is home to a unique ghetto brand of hedonistic, anything goes, anti-moral, lawless low-brow culture of rampant violence, promiscuity, substance abuse and general underachievement. Many B-More natives like to hang outside all day doing nothing but getting drunk 24/7, stare down passerbys and fight complete strangers. Many people from Baltimore think all outsiders are scared of them and don't have a sense of personal space. In addition, many of the Black and White residents are very vocal in the fact that they hate out-of-towners as well as Asian and Hispanic people. I'm not saying all Baltimore natives act like this, but if you are familiar with Baltimore City, you know that a huge percentage of the population behaves in this fashion.
Similarly, many Washingtonians attitudes make them ugly intolerable human beings. DC people tend to be impersonal and stand-offish. This is because money talks in DC and the people don't. Many DC natives also are very pretentious and snooty. Their is an undeniable air of thick elitist attitudes in DC and the rich parts of the outer suburbs. Meaningless signifiers of wealth and maintaining an exclusive snobbish status quo are infinitely more important than basic respect and manners to many DC residents. Everything in DC is a competition of who has the spiffiest suits, the most prestigious education, the best paying job, the nicest house in the most desirable neighborhood and the sexiest car. Regular joes with regular jobs are low-lives to these DC Area elitists. Money and status corrupt well-off folks so much in the DC Area to the point where they are almost sub-human and incapable of empathy and charity. Ghetto folks in DC are similar to B-More residents in their exclusive insider culture and resentful upper and middle class hating attitudes.
I can vouch for the bolded part, especially for the DC area. Where Baltimore and DC might not be anything to write home about when it comes to looks, what makes it unlivable and undesirable to me is the social interactions of many people, and this attitude spreads to DC suburban parts of MD. Also, the socioeconomic divide is very huge, as Maryland (and DC) tends to support either the high-end class or the lower income spectrum, with little sympathy for the middle class. And as for the middle class, the upper-middle class has the snootiness or billionaires, while the lower-middle class are a bunch of wannabe-hood tryhards.
The reason why I have such constant disdain about this is because our "great president" is only producing jobs in the DC area. Does this dude realize that socially, DC and MD is unbearable on many levels to deal with for a long-term basis unless you fit into the callous, pretentious, ghetto, and soulless personalities that dominate both areas. And if you say "family" as a reason to stay, I would have to disagree, since many natives of DC and Baltimore are so backwards and provincial that anything and anyone who is seen with attributes that are "not local" are written off as uncool and the black sheep of the family, which is where I find myself especially as the holiday season approaches. Even though I was born here and have "family" here For me personally, jobs are the only reason why I'm still in the area, and one the economy improves to the extent that jobs produces in places I actually want to live in, then it's good riddance DC & MD for good!
Quote:
Originally Posted by goldenchild08
I think the reason why places like Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico rated high on the most attractive city list is because many of the residents of these cities are Latinos that have generationally diverse multiracial backgrounds. Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans are all descendants of hundreds of years of interracial mixing. According to many studies, people from multiracial backgrounds are more likely to be physically fit and attractive because having a diverse gene pool makes an individual healthier from a Darwinian standpoint.
However, unlike Latin American countries and American cities like Miami, Maryland has always been very segregated by custom. Generations of Blacks and Whites have remained separate for centuries in this area. Baltimore and DC are two cities where outsiders are shunned by natives. It has gotten to the point where the gene pool is simply stagnant in this area as I stated in my previous post. There has been a lot of distant inbreeding going on in Maryland and it is obvious. I know this because everyone I can tell I'm not a Maryland native because I am obviously mixed and "exotic" looking to Marylanders. Most of the immigrants in the Baltimore/Washington Area seem to be very ethno-centric and ghettoize themselves as well. In my opinion, the gene pool in MD is like a frozen microwave TV dinner with all the separate races of people being artificially preserved and not touching each other and mixing whereas other areas are more like a fresh tasty melting pot stew. More liberal places like NYC, LA and The SF Bay Area have always been more open to interracial couples, mixed people, different demographic groups than MD and are more cosmopolitan which accounts for a much more diverse gene pool overall.
I will also validate that many natives of both races and cities are very close-minded and racist. This is actually one of the main reason why I refuse to move to Baltimore, despite being an educated black dude and with Baltimore being less pretentious and money & power hungry than DC. However, this goes without saying that many of the transplants to DC and MD tend to be just as racist as well, but in more subtle and condescending ways. This ranges to sticking with same-race cliques (or only accepting approved minorities), showing "fecal-eating grins" whenever the wrong minority crosses their path, and expecting all under-privileged minorities to be uneducated while getting all tensed up when a minority that is on "their level." Many of the immigrants who come to DC and MD are also self-segregating and very anti-black as well, which is not helping the situation. The result is just as socially damaging as what the natives are doing. And the pseudo-interbreeding is indeed evident with many of the physical, psychological, and social illnesses noticed in many natives.
Not to play favoritism, but this is actually the reason why I am a fan of Northern Virginia and wish they would become its own supplemental metropolitan area and make their own city at least on the level of Fort Worth, St Paul, or San Jose (I'm looking at either Reston or Tysons Corner for candidates). While it's pretty stressful place to live in with the traffic and COL, and it does have its pretentious parts especially closer to DC, the racial divide in that part of the Washington-Baltimore area significantly declines, and interracial friendships and relationships of all flavors (not just Asian Females and White Males) flourish in that subregion. I've just always seemed to be treated better overall by people from all backgrounds while in Northern VA even as a black person. I get better service from the Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern restaurants & workers in NoVA compared to DC and MD. I don't get nearly as much flack from fellow blacks for not being "black enough" in NoVA as I do in DC and MD; although I will admit that I get treated less crappy by black Baltimoreans than I do from black Washingtonians despite DC being my "hometown." And the racial acceptance (not just tolerance but acceptance) I receive from whites and Asians from NoVA is way greater in comparison to those from DC and MD. Alongside that, the provincial and ghetto attitudes are very minimal in Northern VA in comparison to DC, Baltimore, and their Maryland suburbs.
Sorry to be blunt, but this is just my experience while I lived in Maryland.
Nothing more than False Information Gibberish crap coming from a Maryland Hating Biased Good Ol' Boy Southerner that resents the state of Maryland because of its more importance to DC than Virginia and any other State South of Virginia will ever be....
Anyone that takes this characters BS above rant seriously have no backbone or the desire to educate themselves about how beautiful the state of Maryland is.........
More evidence that Maryland is NOT a Northeast state. Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore were settled like the rest of the coastal south, largely English and African. The area north and west of Baltimore was settled by Germans in various waves, children of the originial English settlers moving west, and the Scots-Irish headed towards the back country.
You should read Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fisher. It is all about the original settlement of the East Coast and how the 4 primary waves of immigrants impacted the folk culture, dialect, and settlement patterns we see today. Maryland has populations of 3 of the 4 groups. We have the "cavaliers" from the coastal south, the Germans from PA, and the Scots-Irish from the border country. We lack the Puritian groups that settled in the Northeast.
Actually the Puritans in colonial Maryland were so numerous that they were able to seize control of the colony in 1650... which was notable since they repealed the Toleration Act and thus MD's status as a Catholic haven.
Nothing more than False Information Gibberish crap coming from a Maryland Hating Biased Good Ol' Boy Southerner that resents the state of Maryland because of its more importance to DC than Virginia and any other State South of Virginia will ever be....
Anyone that takes this characters BS above rant seriously have no backbone or the desire to educate themselves about how beautiful the state of Maryland is.........
I like this state a lot, but Northern Virginia's a pretty huge powerhouse of the DC area. Lots of companies, when choosing to relocate to the DC area, have moved to NoVA.
I like this state a lot, but Northern Virginia's a pretty huge powerhouse of the DC area. Lots of companies, when choosing to relocate to the DC area, have moved to NoVA.
Why?
Why what?????????
Why Virginia gave Martin O'Malley and Montgomery County Council Members Money(Endorsements) for election/re-election.................
There are 5 distinct regions of Maryland. The Western Panhandle, DC Metro, Baltimore Metro, Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. Each region has it's own distinct heritage, dialect and customs, making it hard to characterize any one person as a Marylander.
Western MD. is more oriented to Southwest PA. Baltimore is more of a blue collar/seaport town. DC metro is more diverse, with a lot of transients who are tied to the federal government. Southern MD. is still mostly a rural county with Waldorf growing into an outer suburb of DC. It still has a southern flair to it but is disappearing at a rapid rate due to urban sprawl. The Eastern Shore is still mostly untouched, with the exception of the Ocean City area. It still holds it's southern roots with farming and the Chesapeake Bay as it's main source of revenue.
Five pages and only two posters actually mentioned something that Maryland is "known" for (crabs). Instead, there is post after post discussing topography and demographics with the mandatory inane political comment here and there.
So, as an outsider who has never been to Maryland, here are some things that the state is known for:
John Hopkin's
US Naval Academy/Annapolis
The FDA
The US Census
Goddard Space Center
Crabs
Crime (sorry, but true. This should be #1)
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