In your mind, what defines northwest culture? (Seattle, Bellingham: camp, costs)

[Rcsligar]

Out of curiousity, what do you think northwest culture entails and what distinguishes it from west coast culture in general? This is a broad question but I'd like to open up discussion.

[Ruth4Truth]

Cloudy and rainy weather, and reserved people. A love of water sports and mountain climbing.

[Pahn]

We don't use umbrellas.

We think 80 degrees is unbearable heat. (Well, they think that. It's never hot enough here for me.)

[PS90]

I would agree that a love of the outdoors and outdoor recreation is very pervasive in NW culture, but I think culture is probably less enveloping and more regional around here than it is in, say, the Southeast US.

When people think of "Dixieland", they think of Southern Hospitality, fried food, the Southern accent, fireflies, Nascar, etc.; while there seems to be much less that identifies our region as a whole (salmon and aloof people are about the only ones I can think of).

For example, I think the culture of Eastern WA is closer to that of Idaho and/or the northern Rocky Mountain states, than it is to the culture of Seattle.

[Inkpoe]

Western NW culture would definitely be a walk on a pebbly beach during a cloudy day. Just pure nature and quietness.

[Deezus]

There isn't really such a thing as a really distinct Northwestern culture. Oregon and Washington were just similar to the culture of most of the rest of the West until recently. Same thing with California.

People are asked to provide examples of western Northwestern culture and all that comes up is coffee and salmon and rain... That's hardly a culture. People love the outdoors everywhere in the western US.

[Salmonista]

Recycling! And caring about the environment in general.

[Pahn]

Recycling? Please. In Bellingham, plenty of office buildings and such aren't into recycling anything but paper.

And for residential, my hometown of 10k people in Nowhere, PA was recycling back in 1990. Except instead of those annoying little bins, it was a full size blue garbage can, and no sorting was required.

We're still not even at that point in most communities. I recall reading a success story where some city changed from the annoying sorting paradigm to the one bin paradigm and saved lots of money, even when you consider the costs of sorting it later. That's because more people recycled when it was less annoying, so the city had to pay to dispose of much less waste in the landfill.

[knucklehead_vol]

Originally Posted by PS90

I would agree that a love of the outdoors and outdoor recreation is very pervasive in NW culture, but I think culture is probably less enveloping and more regional around here than it is in, say, the Southeast US.

When people think of "Dixieland", they think of Southern Hospitality, fried food, the Southern accent, fireflies, Nascar, etc.; while there seems to be much less that identifies our region as a whole (salmon and aloof people are about the only ones I can think of).

For example, I think the culture of Eastern WA is closer to that of Idaho and/or the northern Rocky Mountain states, than it is to the culture of Seattle.

Whooaaaaaaaaaaa....

There are no fireflies in Washington?

[pdxMIKEpdx]

A couple of my freinds are from Texas and Los Angeles.

Both say the main thing that irks them is that people in the PNW are so laid back they are almost catatonic compared to Dallas and LA.

The LA guy says things like "Yeah there's a lot to do here, but nothing I like to do. I'm a city boy".

He doesn't hike camp fish hunt boat bike, etc...

Both say the beaches suck big time.

I'm in Portland. kind of.