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1. Drivers. Illinois drivers treat Wisconsin frankly, like sh*t. I've seen and heard about countless littering, speeding, and just odd complaints. Primarily and I can relate to other posters here - Illinois drivers on their way home really don't care about the locals and will drive 20-30 miles in excess of the posted speed limits to get home. And the sad part is, on more than one occasion I'll see a really bad accident on a Northern Highway and it always involves someone from FIBland.
2. Hunters. Every hunter I've ever met from Illinois is a jacka**. Sorry, but they have no respect for the woods, and their idea of hunting is "if it's brown it's down" as I heard a FIB tell his kid once. They shoot at everything. The other problem I've seen is they really eat up public hunting lands. There's been more than one occasion when I would go out to my hunting stand which I had built earlier in the year and some SOB from Illinois was sitting in it, acting like it was his, leaving his garbage on the ground after I kicked him out. It's very upsetting.
3. Their kids run wild and are just very disrespectful.
1. Yep. Theres been numberous time when I'm tooling along I90 at 80mph on my bike only to get passed by a IL car going 100+. Had one IL moron in I43 heading east towards Delavan pass cars on the shoulder when they had it closed to one lane from 140 to 14. He ended up clipping a bunch of the marker posts at teh edge of the shoulder when a pickup started straddling the shoulder. They have a tendancy to go straight in turn lanes in Janesville.
2. Pet peeve. Morons in the woods with high powered rifles (aka CITY PEOPLE). Seen one Chicago flatlander try to regiser a HOLSTEIN as a deer. Another group bought some old timber land next to where we hunted and they made it "clear" that it was their land and no one can hunt on it. Well as soon as it was legal to start hunting (yet too dark IMO to safely shoot), they opened up like WWIII. Had a round hit the tree I was kneeling at 3' above me. For 10 min all you heard sounded like machine gun fire. They had to had fired off over 300 rounds between the 4 of them. But didnt hear a peep out of them the rest of the week. The IL hunters from western IL I never had problems with. Just Chicago area ones.
3. Doesnt really matter where the kids are from. Half of teh kids nowadays are that way due to the lack of parenting skills.
I was born in IL (1967) by IL native parents and raised in WI (1969-1987), moved to MN when I married in 1987. My cousins from the Chicago area were CLUELESS. I think the resentment tends to come from a (perceived) attitude that WI people are all country bumpkins (and yes, having lived all over WI - and later MN, I experienced that personally).
I would personally agree, the idea of WI vs. IL comes more from country vs. city.
Anyway, having loved relatives in IL, including the Chicago area, grown up in rural areas of WI and lived almost 20 years in Mpls/StPaul MN - I suggest that it is more of a city vs. country thing and ultimately all of us who live in "Fly over land" should stick together!
I bought a piece of land dirt cheap back in 1988 with over 600 feet of lake frontage~~bought it for $2,000.00 from an estate. The local people were very upset because they had been waiting for it to be put up for sale and I bought it before it was advertised for sale. I was called "city folk" even years after. I'm not a "country bumpkin" here and never will be and a lot of my friends aren't either. It has turned out to be an asset.
Here in my town of Oxford anyone who comes to town from the city is forever called "city folk". Sad.
Not only the 'tude some of them have, on the road especially, they come to WI and buy $200,000 "cottages." My "everyday" home doesn't cost that much! It drives our property taxes WAAAAAAY up... UGH!
My family is native to wisconsin and the Milwaukee/Kohler/Lacrosse areas and i love Wisconsin(and the city of Milwaukee, its very nice). We are now in Illi but of course are Wisconsin fans Brewers/Badgers/Bucks/Packers/Marquette/UWM . As are many in the Northern IL suburbs but one thing i notice is that people have labeled ILL drivers as crazy. Some is true. If you understand and respect Wisconsin people tend to like ILL people more. And having a Packer G on my ILL car helps the world. They can tolerate an ILL packers fans!
It seems odd that I comment on this, since I'm currently sitting just north of sunny Orlando, but having toted my box of He-Man action figures around the Dairy State for a quarter century, I spose I can still toss in a few cents. I think the major differences lie in a subtle clash of cultures. Wisconsin, as a state, has a unique cultural landscape that, I suspect, mirrors like states throughout the Midwest. It is a state that features numerous medium-sized towns scattered in between large rural areas. This gives the entire state an aire of being "in the country", a sort of small-town rural pride, if you will. Most IL visitors to WI come from the densly populated and considerably more cosmopolitan area of Chicago. As the Nation's third largest metropolis, The Windy City is as close to an urban mecca as the Midwest is likely to get. Whether accurate or not, it is far too easy for many sheltered and small town Wisconsinites to paint a negitave picture of their urbane neighbors to the south. Having been born in Chicago to a Wisconsinite family, I have always felt a deep fondness for the big-city mistique of The Second City. My frequent visits southward opened my young eyes to people and clutures far beyond the reach of my grade school contemporaries. Sadly, not everyone has enjoyed the benefit of such diverse experiences, and is thus relagating their judgement solely to a few fast-moving lisence plates. This has resulted in a forced competition, best exemplified by the well documented highway patrol contest and also by football fanatics in the long standing Packers-Bears rivarly. As a newcomer, this may seem trivial, but I can assure you beyond any doubt that Green Bay Packers fans take their football team (and culture) very, very serioulsly. There have actually been publicized instances where students in gradeschool were asked to remove the jerseys of opposing teams on school sanctioned "Packers" days or face suspension for being "disruptive". I belive that particular story resulted in a lawsuit, but I share it to illustrate how upsurd some people can be when they get overly passionate. (Though I should mention, as a life-long Bears fan, my perspective may differ somewhat from most Wisconsinites.) In any event, Wisconsin is a beautiful state, whose hospitatly and warm culture I miss very much. If you want to blend in, you need simply to 1.) change your plates and 2.) avoid wearing any NFL clothing that does not come in green and gold. Your three year old, still having a vast stretch of highway before him, will likely make himself just as home in the Northwoods as he would in your suburban back yard. Good Luck!
First, to clarify for outsiders, the resentment is mostly a Wisconsin/Chicago-area thing. Wisconsinites don't care anything about rural Illinois folks because they're not the ones invading Wisconsin every weekend, particularly the holiday weekends.
Second, this letter is only for haters. If the shoe fits, this letter is for you. If it doesn't, this letter is not for you. You decide which category you fall in.
Third, I understand some of the frustrations Wisconsinites experience with boorish Chicagoans and our up-north exploits. But you don't seem to appreciate that the whole purpose for us going up there is because we want to experience a different culture and lifestyle, and we get tired of insular folks with no interest in the world outside their little corner of the woods and who have been to Chicago maybe once in their lives telling us our city sucks, it smells, it's crime-ridden, nobody in their right mind would live there, etc. (Never mind that most of us visitors are actually from the suburbs, but for many Wisconsinites there is apparently no difference.) For every complaint about Chicagoans being ungracious guests, we can lodge a counter-complaint about Wisconsin folks being ungracious hosts.
Fourth, I'm not moved by people complaining of Chicagoans buying up lakefront and hunting property. (By the way, Milwaukeeans and Twin Cities folks are doing the same thing.) If it weren't for the property taxes and tourist revenue generated by weekenders, the Northwoods economy would have collapsed by now. Weekenders are keeping the Northwoods afloat. If you want an idea of what the area would be like without urban money, go check out the western half of the Upper Peninsula. It's like Mississippi with snow and Canadian accents. The people there are having no easier a time eeking out a living even though the property is cheaper than in northern Wisconsin. You know why? Because they don't have as much tourist/weekender money fueling their economy.
The truth of the matter is this: the reason many of us own weekend homes up north is because we wish we could live there, but like you, we can't find decent-paying work there. So for those of us who have the means, we do what we must in order to have a piece of the life we wished we could live full-time. We're not responsible for the economic and demographic shift away from rural areas toward urban centers; that's been happening across the country for decades. If you want to afford a piece of the action, do what we've done. If you're not willing to follow the demographic trends, tough luck. Life is full of tradeoffs and nothing is going to stay exactly the way you want it forever.
On the one hand you resent us being up there; on the other hand, were it not for our money, large swaths of your state would be dead broke and you know it. "We want your money, just not you" seems to be the message from the haters. If you were a bit more honest, you'd cut right to the chase and just ask us to send you charity checks.
Thankfully, despite a number of "f*#k you, go home, leave our state" incidents, I find Wisconsinites by and large to be gracious and patient hosts, so I'll keep weekending up north without any regard for what the haters think of me being there, and I'll keep spending money up there so that the haters can feed and house themselves.
For every complaint about Chicagoans being ungracious guests, we can lodge a counter-complaint about Wisconsin folks being ungracious hosts.
... which is directly a result of the behavior of the people from your area. People around here aren't unfriendly because they have no reason. They're unfriendly because year after year we see idiot after idiot come up North with the same antics as those that came before them. If the vistors behavior improves I'm sure the hosts behaviors would improve. People from Illi need to remember that they are guests in our home. This isn't a place to exploit, pollute, trash or destroy. I'm sorry to say but many people who come up from your area think it is just that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drover
Fourth, I'm not moved by people complaining of Chicagoans buying up lakefront and hunting property. (By the way, Milwaukeeans and Twin Cities folks are doing the same thing.) If it weren't for the property taxes and tourist revenue generated by weekenders, the Northwoods economy would have collapsed by now. Weekenders are keeping the Northwoods afloat. If you want an idea of what the area would be like without urban money, go check out the western half of the Upper Peninsula. It's like Mississippi with snow and Canadian accents. The people there are having no easier a time eeking out a living even though the property is cheaper than in northern Wisconsin. You know why? Because they don't have as much tourist/weekender money fueling their economy.
I think you vastly underestimate the importance of out of stater's contribution to the property taxes. What drives the economy is the tourism dollars, not the property taxes. Property taxes are MUCH higher in the southern parts of the state, and less so in the northern parts. What out of staters do, is drive up real estate prices making it harder and harder for locals to stay in an area and provide you with all the wonderful services that make the Northwoods great.
Second, you seem to have the attitude that if an area doesn't have money then it's not a good place to live. Western parts of the UP are untouched areas thankfully, and still retain their natural character which is untouched by the exploits of the weekend tourism trade.
Finally, your tirade in this thread is the perfect example of the attitude that those in the northern areas of Wisconsin, dread. In the second half the above statement you take the attitude that if it wasn't for you and those like you all would be lost in the Northern areas of the state. Which is about as far from the truth as you can get. This is the attitude which the tourists from Illi bring with them to the northwoods which ticks so many people off, thus resulting in much of the hatred. Also you completely ignored one of the major reasons for the disconcern in this area - driving.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drover
were it not for our money, large swaths of your state would be dead broke and you know it. "We want your money, just not you" seems to be the message from the haters. If you were a bit more honest, you'd cut right to the chase and just ask us to send you charity checks.
For everyone reading this thread, the above quote is a PERFECT example of the attitude that those from Illi bring to the Northwoods. In combination with a number of other factors, this is what results in the "strong hatred" towards Illinois in the Northwoods.
On a final note, I don't HATE people from Illinois. I just hate the way many people who visit northern wisconsin act, when they come to visit. They act like they own the place, they litter, they speed, and they bring many of the problems associated with the larger cities to a nice peaceful area of the country. And they all seem to have the same attitude as the poster above has - disdain and a "we are better than you because we have money" attitude.
You make it sound like we Wisconsinites are the bad guys. Thanks for saving us from ourselves...
And plenty of people are making it sound like the weekenders/tourists are always the bad guys and Wisconsinites are always the good guys. There's two sides to every story. I'm just telling the other side.
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Another group bought some old timber land next to where we hunted and they made it "clear" that it was their land and no one can hunt on it. Well as soon as it was legal to start hunting (yet too dark IMO to safely shoot), they opened up like WWIII. Had a round hit the tree I was kneeling at 3' above me. For 10 min all you heard sounded like machine gun fire. They had to had fired off over 300 rounds between the 4 of them. But didnt hear a peep out of them the rest of the week. The IL hunters from western IL I never had problems with. Just Chicago area ones.
They can tolerate an ILL packers fans!
