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Get a little away from the Lancaster Dutch Country & the rest of the state (other than Pittsburgh & its immediate suburbs) has very little Midwestern to it ...... every bit as Appalachian as Western Maryland, Western Virginia, West Virginia & Eastern Kentucky. Pennsyltucky is a very fitting name for the area between Philly & Pittsburgh.
I agree the Mountainous parts of the state are Appalachian.
I agree that Buffalo's feel and cultural vibe leans more Midwestern than Northeastern.
There was the list the OP posted about Buffalo's Midwestern traits. How about it's Northeastern traits, though?
* As what was said before, lots of Italians. (A much higher percentage than in the Cleveland area.)
* Unique local style of pizza.
* Houses with a lot of decorative ironwork, much like Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey.
* Labor: more heavily unionized in sectors outside of manufacturing.
* Lacrosse is very popular.
* Public and private colleges attract students from Downstate/Long Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, not Ohio, Indiana, or Michigan.
* Spanish-speaking population is dominantly Puerto Rican, not Mexican.
* Religion: very, very, very Catholic. Very few Lutherans outside of Niagara County.
* Exclusive public and private high schools feed graduates into Eastern Ivies and Seven Sisters schools, not University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Northwestern, etc.
* No Appalachian community.
How about we all agree that the Great Lakes are a distinctive region with cities that have things in common that makes them different from heartland cities and east coast cities?
People will still be removed from the original person from the "old country" but traditions still remain. My family that is actually from Italy is almost all dead, but the traditions still remain. The food still remains. Even lots of slang still remains. That plays much more of a role on culture than other things I've seen.
The pop/soda thing is not accurate at all as "pop" is term that spreads from the northeast to the northwest. A person in Rochester doesn't have much in common with a person in Akron which doesn't have much in common with a person in the northwest.
My cousins from Iowa always called it "pop," whereas in St. Louis it was always soda.
Not sure what that adds to the discussion but I thought I'd throw it out there.
How about we all agree that the Great Lakes are a distinctive region with cities that have things in common that makes them different from heartland cities and east coast cities?
That may be true, but I believe someone hit on it with the ancestry of the groups that predominated around the turn of the century in 1900 or so.
St. Louis is obviously not a Great Lakes city nor an eastern one, but I would submit it has a lot in common with cities like Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit (and perhaps Buffalo, Pittsburg and others) due to the fact that it is heavily catholic and was comprised largely of similar ethnic groups (German, Italian, Irish).
My husband has 3 4th cousins w3ho live in Conneaut on one side and a bunch in Cuhouga county ( sp? ). All came from Buffalo or Cattaraugus Co. Very similar people
In my Cleveland-area grade school, the teacher made it easy: just say: "buy a hog-a" and just change the b with a c, and you've got it: Cuyahoga ...
And Cleveland is Cincinatti's little brother which would make Buffalo and Cincinatti brothers yet Cincy seems much more midwestern than Buffalo
Now that I'm out west, I will keep my prior Buffalo blasts out of it. Cincy and Cleveland are quite different politically.
Cincy is essentially Kentucky culturally. Right from the accents down to it being far more of a Red Area than Cleveland which like Great Lakes rust belt towns is a Blue area.
Also, Cincy's population is not much more than Buffalo's. Cleveland has atleast 150000 more people city proper than Cincinnati. Have you been at the Cincy airport in KY across the river ? Furthest thing from Cleveland. Cincy identifies with Lexington and Louisville,KY way more than Cleveland and even Columbus. The whole SW quadrant of Ohio is pretty redneckish. Springfield and Dayton too.
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