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I was talking about crossing over into Camden from Philly. Obviously PA has nothing like the coastal Jersey towns nor does NJ have anything like Pittsburgh.
Perhaps it's easier for me to discern the difference since I'm a native.
The whole border area is strongly Southern Baptist (in contrast to New Mexico's dominant Catholicism) and has that Texan drawl, both of which are signifiers of a Southern cultural heritage.
While that estern fringe of New Mexico definitely has more in common with Texas, the New Mexican mean is pretty damn far from the Texan mean. New Mexico has far more in common with Colorado and Arizona.
I'd say El Paso is in the running for most similar city to ABQ. Agree that the panhandle culture is similar to Eastern NM, but that whole huge part trans-Pecos Texas is very similar to New Mexico in culture, ethnicity, Catholicism, etc.
I think Colorado / Oklahoma wins and pretty much any state West Virginia touches.
But take out Denver-Boulder area and blue counties and then Oklahoma and Colorado aren't all that far apart, especially for the political culture. Like Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Colorado Springs went for Trump.
I'd say El Paso is in the running for most similar city to ABQ. Agree that the panhandle culture is similar to Eastern NM, but that whole huge part trans-Pecos Texas is very similar to New Mexico in culture, ethnicity, Catholicism, etc.
I would agree that the Trans-Pecos is more similar to America's Land of Enchantment than the it is to the rest of Texas.However that being said I would agree that New Mexico is more similar to the interior western states than it is to Texas.But hey thats just me.
Perhaps it's easier for me to discern the difference since I'm a native.
And we know how native Philadelphians talk about south Jersey: as if it's some far away place like Siberia. I wonder if that's nothing more than trying to be like NYC--in whose case northern NJ may not be Siberia, but it feels a lot farther away than simply "across the river."
I’m not sure if I understand you post, but what I was saying is that there is a lot of cultural differences between the different regions of Texas, and a lot of time that difference is bigger than between those regions and the neighboring states. East Texas may not have much in common culturally with Northern New Mexico, but it also doesn’t have much in common culturally with the Panhandle. While you have the panhandle and Little Texas, you also have the El Paso area and Southern New Mexico. They a much more culturally similar than El Paso is to the Gulf Coast or the piney woods. Likewise Houston and SE Texas have a lot more in common culturally with Louisiana than they do West Texas or the Rio Grande valley. Same with Dallas/North Texas and Oklahoma compared to San Antonio/Central Texas.
I agree with this. El Paso is extremely similar to New Mexico, Wichita Falls is similar to Oklahoma, the Golden Triangle is similar to Louisiana, etc. Those areas are totally different from each other, though. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to calculate a "mean" of Texas.
The state border I think is most noticable for Texas is the one with Louisiana; not because the culture is drastically different but because the highway infrastructure is much better in Texas.
From where I sit in New Mexico, all of them are strange: Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. There are parts that might be fairly close, like maybe the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Mostly there is no comparison on the state level. To the south is Chihuahua state (and a sliver of Sonora) in Mexico, also very different.
It's not a total shock the moment you cross the border from Louisiana to Texas, since Far East Texas does resemble neighboring parts of Louisiana, but Texas as a whole is culturally very different from Louisiana as a whole. Both the Sunbelt culture of Dallas and Houston and the Mexican culture is San Antonio, El Paso, and Laredo are very different, along with the cowboy culture of the Panhandle and West Texas, nothing in Louisiana like these. Louisiana is a blend of the traditional Southern, Cajun, and Creole cultures none of which are very common in Texas. The predominant minority subculture in Louisiana is African American while the predominant minority subculture in Texas in Mexican.
Having lived in these areas I would argue Maryland and Virginia are more different than Maryland and WV. Culturally Virginia truly is the south-you get a dash of Northeast energy in Northern Virginia but you feel the cultural difference pretty much as soon as you cross the line. On the other hand Maryland has a firmly east coast, northeastern culture, as does WV. Many people in WV commute in to both DC, Maryland, and PA. Of course the parts of WV that border VA will have a Virginia vibe but in my experience, culturally Virginia is the most dissimilar.
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