I'm Sick Of Western PA Being Lumped In With New Jersey and New York (Philadelphia: school, college)

[BLUE COLLAR]

Originally Posted by CookieSkoon

Okay but... most of upstate NY and a good chunk of New Jersey are not "pretentious, cosmopolitan hellholes" either. Plenty of people there do not work on Wall Street either. Aren't you generalizing while in protest of being generalized?

WHAT is your point exactly?

First and foremost, PA and NY are very similar states overall. In fact they are more similar to each other than they are to any of their other neighbors by wide margins (that happens when you are both the largest states in your region and share such a massive border). Secondly, there is a rugged, lower to middle class, salt of the earth population in Jersey as well. Northwestern and a solid swathe of southern Jersey are both fairly similar to their NY and PA neighbors.

Sure, I get that Erie and Pittsburgh are gonna more akin to Cleveland, Wheeling or maybe even Columbus than they would be to NYC or Philly. However, Buffalo and Rochester would also be on that list and they are in... NY.

FURTHER MORE, Long Island further away from the city is pretty working class and down to earth. Hardly a land of millionaires from end to end.

CookieSkoon,thank you for mentioning Northwestern NJ in your post.It's true,in my County of Sussex,there still are,thank God,the type of Americans that you mentioned.Our County is changing unfortunately with the city types,moving in from "down below"trying to change the County to make it like"down below".

[CookieSkoon]

Originally Posted by BLUE COLLAR

CookieSkoon,thank you for mentioning Northwestern NJ in your post.It's true,in my County of Sussex,there still are,thank God,the type of Americans that you mentioned.Our County is changing unfortunately with the city types,moving in from "down below"trying to change the County to make it like"down below".

All it takes is a little research! And meeting people if you can.

Once upon a time the ARC even included northwestern Jersey into northern Appalachia. To this day it remains the only area that managed to "recover" from that status. At least in the eyes of the government.

I find that most people don't know what a place is like simply because they refuse to let go of their assumptions about it. New Jersey as a whole gets a very, very poor treatment in this regard (and as always, Hollywood does NOT help matters).

Northwest Jersey could quite easily be part of or mistaken for NEPA or the eastern twin tiers.

EDIT: I mean, come on. Does this look like a Cosmopolitan Wall-Street hellhole to anybody? :P

https://goo.gl/maps/mBNgagvNoGr

https://goo.gl/maps/dyaAxHngGcm

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by CookieSkoon

I'm not sure if the Erie coast has a nice resort, honestly. However, I didn't intend to imply that Long Island and Western PA are specifically very similar. They are part of overall similar states but those extreme ends, like in any comparable case, are not identical to each other.

By even mentioning Long Island I just meant that assuming Long Island is also an end-to-end Wall-Street-working pretentious cosmopolitan hellhole (quote from OP) is inaccurate.

My reply had a lot more to do with debunking the OP's own assumptions about NY and NJ as states than anything else.

Yeah. Lots of Suffolk County is still pretty rural. However, Long Island is clearly in NYC's orbit. If we're only comparing Western PA to New York state, it's really not fair to include anything which is influenced by NYC, since all of the Philly influence in PA is being discounted.

[Ohiogirl81]

I think the takeaway here is that we all need to jettison our assumptions about multiple states and their regions, and get out more.

[CookieSkoon]

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

I think the takeaway here is that we all need to jettison our assumptions about multiple states and their regions, and get out more.

Good lord do I agree with that!

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by FL_Watch

Not everybody who lives in Western PA works on Wall Street. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a SINGLE Wall Street banker in Clearfield County, for example.

I was thinking the same thing and I live in Philadelphia.

[Patmcpsu]

Everyone is overlooking OP's mention that they're referring to "utterly ignorant folks who've never ventured east of Cleveland".

If you are from PA, you're familiar with its various regions. If you've never been to PA, you just know that it's adjacent to NJ/NY. But because of NJ/NY's prominence, people overlook the fact that PA also borders DE, MD, WV and OH. We're The Keystone State, after all.

[CookieSkoon]

Originally Posted by Patmcpsu

Everyone is overlooking OP's mention that they're referring to "utterly ignorant folks who've never ventured east of Cleveland".

If you are from PA, you're familiar with its various regions. If you've never been to PA, you just know that it's adjacent to NJ/NY. But because of NJ/NY's prominence, people overlook the fact that PA also borders DE, MD, WV and OH. We're The Keystone State, after all.

No, they really don't. Some might, but far more people think PA is some piece of ol' Dixie stuck in the north than think PA is anything like NY or NJ. BELIEVE me on this, I've spent a lot more of my life than I should have debunking this particular assumption.

I understand that there is a different flavor of ignorance with every group of people, but PA does not have any reason to worry about its rural reputation on a mass scale. NY and NJ, on the other hand, are constantly assumed to be a city from end to end by America at large. Most people literally think PA is the cornfield behind NY and NJ's high rises.

[selhars]

The post that started this thread makes absolutely no sense (to me).

Who in their right mind lumps western PA in with NY and NJ when it comes to ANYthing?

If anything I thought the OP misspoke and meant to say eastern PA. With more NYers moving to Bucks County, and more people commuting from eastern PA to NYC -- talking about eastern PA and NJ/NY would make more sense. But western PA? That's ridiculous to the point of not even being worthy of responding to that premise. (But I will)

The OP says: "Not everybody who lives in Western PA works on Wall Street." How about instead, hardly anybody who lives in Western PA works on Wall Street." THAT would be more like it. How many people commute from ERIE or PITTSBURGH to NYC? Uh, ANYBODY? IF there are enough people to count on two hands. They're such outliers that they're still not enough to merit the "lumping western PA with NJ/NY" nonsense.

1) western PA is darn near an entire state away from NJ and NYC
2) people in my circle of Philadelphians don't think about western PA -- AT ALL, period. And.....
3) IF anything, they certainly don't think of it as "pretentious" and "cosmopolitan." In fact just the opposite.
I won't say they think it's a "hellhole"...because that would mean you're thinking about it to start with......But certainly there's nothing in western PA that those in my circle would find of note.

[Marie Joseph]

Originally Posted by selhars

The post that started this thread makes absolutely no sense (to me).

Who in their right mind lumps western PA in with NY and NJ when it comes to ANYthing?

If anything I thought the OP misspoke and meant to say eastern PA. With more NYers moving to Bucks County, and more people commuting from eastern PA to NYC -- talking about eastern PA and NJ/NY would make more sense. But western PA? That's ridiculous to the point of not even being worthy of responding to that premise. (But I will)

The OP says: "Not everybody who lives in Western PA works on Wall Street." How about instead, hardly anybody who lives in Western PA works on Wall Street." THAT would be more like it. How many people commute from ERIE or PITTSBURGH to NYC? Uh, ANYBODY? IF there are enough people to count on two hands. They're such outliers that they're still not enough to merit the "lumping western PA with NJ/NY" nonsense.

1) western PA is darn near an entire state away from NJ and NYC
2) people in my circle of Philadelphians don't think about western PA -- AT ALL, period. And.....
3) IF anything, they certainly don't think of it as "pretentious" and "cosmopolitan." In fact just the opposite.
I won't say they think it's a "hellhole"...because that would mean you're thinking about it to start with......But certainly there's nothing in western PA that those in my circle would find of note.

I was also very confused when the OP talked about lumping WESTERN PA in with NY + NJ because it just made no sense at all.

Most people here tend to think more of Cleveland, Buffalo, or Pittsburgh. You almost never hear anyone here mention Philadelphia. It's funny how people in each of the 4 corners of PA just kind of ignore the other cities. I did notice that when I was in Philadelphia; they looked almost alarmed when I said I was living in Erie