Northwest Ark. - More southern or Midwestern?

[bagelw]

Originally Posted by marmac

Just cuz there is a gay bar in Omaha, that doesn't make that city San Francisco .

And just because San Francisco is a gay friendly city doesn't make everyone that lives there gay. I guess the heteros are just less gay.

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by bagelw

The majority of people living in NWA are not southern in attitude. They are much more midwestern. Anyone that has lived in the south and the midwest would think this. There is a huge cutural difference between Fayetteville and Ft Smith and they are only 45 minutes from one another.

I have to smile when I think about the people we know here in NWA> Many of them are from other parts of the country, anywhere from MN, CA, NJ, etc and the ones with real accents are all from Texas...

[SC_Huguenot]

Yes! I would consider Arkansas as being a Southern state but not the Deep South. I would also consider NWA as being different from the rest of the state.

I would consider Arkansas a border state of the South although the U.S census states that it is in the South-Eastern United States. Arkansas is historically Southern-- being a former Confederate State-- though I must add that being a former Confederate state does not make a state Absolutely Southern (Example: Arizona).

My wife is from Stuttgart, AR-- which is on the Arkansas Delta. Stuttgart is about 1 hour from Mississippi and 2 hours from Louisiana and because of that, it has some similarities with Mississippi and Northern Louisiana. We have lived in Little Rock, Stuttgart and Benton Arkansas and we have been all over the South. We now live in Northwest Arkansas and we have noticed a huge difference between different areas of the state and it is not just population--People act a lot different in this area.

For one the accents are not necessarily as heavy up here-- which could be because NWA is cradled by Oklahoma and Missouri and that many people come to NWA from different areas of the country (primarily from Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota and Iowa). We have also noticed a difference in attitude-- people are a lot less friendly and the ones who are friendly seem to be from other parts of Arkansas or from other Southern states, like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia-- not to say that there are not a few nice people from NWA. We have noticed that the food is not as spiced as much in NWA as it is in other parts of the state. While living in central Arkansas, we frequented the Copeland's restaurant there but when we tried the one in Rogers(we have been multiple times) we noticed that they don't spice as heavily as they do in Little Rock let alone in New Orleans or Charleston, SC. It is not the only restaurant-- we have been to many including Mexican, Asian and Italian restaurants and it seems like it is a common trend in the area to not spice as heavily as they do in Southern Arkansas or other parts of the South, which is a trait associated with the North East and Mid West.

In my opinion (Having lived and visited various areas in the Deep South as well as other parts of Arkansas and the Country) I say that NWA shares many similarities with Mid-Western States, although Arkansas is in the South and some areas of the state (particularly South Arkansas and the Delta) are more akin to the Deep South.