How do the people from Louisville / Kentucky and Indiana get along? (Dayton: transplants, neighborhoods)

[Cosmic Thunder]

How do the people in Louiisville and the people from Indiana get along up there? Are they friendly towards one another? Or is there a lot of hostility between the two groups? Is it kind've like a Cold War going on?

I have heard there is an intense rivalry between Kentucky and Indiana, more intense than any other 2 state rivalries in the nation, including Texas and Oklahoma.

Soon as you cross the river in either direction, can you tell you've left one region of the United States and entered another?...Say if you were blindfolded, and then you spun around in a circle 20 or30 times real fast, then somebody drove you back and forth across the river several times until you had no idea which direction you were, and then took the blindfold off, would you be able to tell by the "feel" of the place if you were in Kentucky or Indiana? Or would you need a sign to tell you which state you were in? How would ou be able to tell?

I don't mean because of certain landmarks you would know where you were, but Im talking by the feel, or the vibe, of where you were when you took the blindfold off.

What are the main differences between Hoosiers and the people from Kentucky in particular and Louisville in general?

Thanks. I think border areas are interesting places. That's why I ask.

[Crazee Cat Lady]

There is an extremely intense sports rivalry yes, and yes for the most part you would be able to tell pretty quickly if you were on the Indiana side or the Kentucky side.
(historically the Ohio River, served as the Mason Dixon Line in this part of America,
Indiana was considered Northern and Kentucky Southern...There have always been a lot of jokes about - People from Indiana making jokes about people from Kentucky, and people from Kentucky making jokes about people from Indiana - but I have always seen it more as good Natured fun and teasing between close neighbors, than actual hostility.) I have several cousins who grew up in Louisville and still work in Louisville, yet live in Indiana...and I have several cousins who grew up in Indiana and moved to Louisville.

[jp1251]

Having been born and raised in Jeffersonville then moving to Louisville as an adult I can tell you this. 1. People born and raised in Kentucky dont have a clue about getting around in Indiana unless it includes getting to the Bass Pro Shop. But for the most part I have found that there are a lot of people crossing the river to live on both sides, Kentuckians looking for cheaper housing, and Hoosiers moving to Kentucky to work, and not having to cross that bridge everyday. Southern Indiana can feel at times like it is twenty years in the past compared to The Ville.

[tomocox]

If the OP is serious. Wow.. The people of Kentucky and Indiana and Ohio and West Virginia and Virginia and Tennessee and Missouri and Illinois just hate each other. We are constantly laughing at each other, pulling stunts on one another, teasing, and simply hating. Oh, yeah, we as eight states and therefore eight different groups of people hate each other....

Come on now, if you were being serious, it's this kind of racism (and that is what it truly is) that destroys American unity. I may have an issue with one or two people, but never with an entire populace.

If you were joking, welcome to the Ohio Valley Rift.

[MissingIndiana]

People get along just fine. Aside from the occasional good natured dumb Kentuckian/Hoosier jokes and a basketball rivalry between IU and UK, nobody really cares. Saying there's a world of difference between Louisville and southern Indiana is like saying that the north side of Indianapolis is 20 years ahead of the south side of Indianapolis. They're both just different parts of the same metropolitan area and the river doesn't somehow make one a magically and drastically different place than the other.

Since you mention Kentucky in general apart from Louisville, there is even less difference there. At least if you're talking about the southern part of Indiana. Topographically, there they're extremely similar on both sides of the river. People wise, you'd never be able to tell a difference between someone from Brandenburg vs someone from Corydon. At the extremes of the state I doubt people in one even think about the other (ie I doubt anyone from Hazard thinks on a regular basis "man, I hate those a**holes in Kokomo.")

Now, if you're looking for two states where the people hate each other you need to look at Ohio/Michigan. More so on the Ohio side, but still. There are people, even in the farthest southeastern parts of Ohio that hate the whole state intensely. They make Muck Fichigan t-shirts, and in Columbus every year they play a song to the tune of "I'm in the Lord's army" with the words "I don't give a d**n about the whole state of Michigan, the whole state of Michigan, the whole state of Michigan. (repeat). Cause I'm from O-hi-oooooo." I also knew of a guy from Columbus that had to move to Michigan once and got University of Michigan license plates for his car. He got vanity plates that read ORONS. Why, you may ask? Because the university plates had the big Michigan 'M' at the front of the plate so it read M ORONS.

[Cosmic Thunder]

"Hate" never crossed my mind. I just heard about a rivalry between the 2 states, separated by a river and I was wondering if there really is a difference in the 2. I know in some of the deep South states and in some of the Northeastern states, there seems to be a genuine dislike for one another. Yankees vs Rebels. I didn't know if that extended up to Indiana and Kentucky or not.

It sounds like Ind and KY is a region unto it's own, and not that much different then the Rio Grande that separates Mexico from Texas. Residemts on both sides have friends and family on both sides of the river and they go back and forth across the river on a daily basis for business and pleasure, and they even have their own unique language.

I didn't mean to offend anybody and if I did, I apologize. I sometimes use the wrong words and say the wrong things and people take my comments in a way I never intended.

[censusdata]

There is not much cultural difference between the KY counties in the Louisville metro area the adjacent areas of Indiana. Like most of the rural American South, Southern Indiana was originally settled by ethnically mixed people of English, Scotch Irish, and German stock from North Carolina and Virginia and in the past 50 years has been resettled by tons of people from Kentucky, most of whom aren't from nearby Louisville but Eastern KY. It also has a very small German / Irish Catholic presence, as opposed to the urban ethnic neighborhoods in many Northern states. In fact several Indiana counties just on the northern fringe of the L'ville Metro Area have not a single Catholic Church.

My significant other is a native of Washington County IN, which is 30 to 60 minutes NW of Louisville. The most popular local restaurant up there serves frog legs, fried catfish, and biscuits and gravy.

In terms of college sports teams U of L and UK fans combined way outnumber IU and Purdue fans in every Indiana County in the L'ville metro area I frequent. I also see lots of WKU and EKU stuff on cars with Indiana plates over there. U of L seems to be the most popular team in urban areas like New Albany/ Clarksville / Jeffersonville and also rural Harrison Co while UK is the most popular team in further out parts of Clark Co into Washington Co where so many people from SE Kentucky have moved in the past few decades.

There is a pretty intense rivalry been the parts of Indiana that are actually Indiana LOL. Central and Northern Indiana people definitely dislike KY.

[tuckessee]

As a southern Kentuckian (Warren County) I'll say I hate IU... and really don't care for that state, or any above the Ohio for that matter. Once you get across the hills on the northern bank of the Ohio you are in the Midwest, and as one with in-laws from Jeffersonville, I can say they have different manners and very different speech from rural Kentucky. Louisville is an island in the Commonwealth and full of transplants from all over especially southern Indiana, so there is no strong culture there, and the people there think nothing of crisscrossing the river. The lower Ohio river valley is the northern terminus of the South, and in southern Indiana and Illinois you find southern cultural influence still due to migration, proximity and environment. In SW Indiana and southern Illinois you find a humid subtropical climate, more Southern crops ( tobacco, Posey co. Watermelons) and even a few bald cypress swamps. Now while I can relate much easier to someone from the lower regions of those 2 states then, say an upper Midwesterner, they are nonetheless Yankees IMO.

[jp1251]

I have found something quite offenssive living in the Chicago/Nortwest Indiana area. There seems to be a place in NWI called Cedar Lake that the locals up here refer to as Cedar-ucky. They use this term in a derogatory manner as it has some trailer parks around a lake. I have asked some people I have heard use this term if they had ever been to Kentucky. Of course they havn't. Funny thing is, I have seen more trailer parks up here than I ever have in my 40 years of living in Kentuckiana area.

[Dayton Sux]

I have found something quite offenssive living in the Chicago/Nortwest Indiana area. There seems to be a place in NWI called Cedar Lake that the locals up here refer to as Cedar-ucky. They use this term in a derogatory manner as it has some trailer parks around a lake. I have asked some people I have heard use this term if they had ever been to Kentucky.

the "Placename-tucky" thing is pretty common up here in Dayton (even beyond that as a part of one suburb is called "Dogpatch", and another is "Little Kentucky"....tho there are as many or more folks from West Virginia and Tennessee as Kentucky here in the Dayton area.

also a derogatory reference to the midsection of Pennsylvania, too, "Pennsyltucky"...which is fighting words over there, so fair warning in using this term with Keystone State folks!