Yeah, the Marty Robbins song doesn’t make it sound that big.
Living just 100 miles away, I barely know anything about San Jose, I’ve never been to San Jose and I wager my friends also barely know anything about San Jose. Despite being larger than San Francisco, it’s been thoroughly overshadowed by it’s smaller cousin.
To add insult to injury, I’m much more familiar with the smaller towns in between: Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Santa Clara, those being the headquarters of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple & Intel respectively.
Not at all. Don’t know where you stayed, but SA is a surprisingly cosmopolitan town for a city of its size, not surprising situated as it is between the capital of Texas and Mexico. A number of countries have consulates downtown, and you had better enjoy Hispanic culture as there is little Anglo power structure here, especially of the political kind: Despite being in Texas, Obama won Bexar County handily this past year, 53-46%, a 7-point lead, and the Democratic party is dominant.
The economy has been, and is, good here, with many people ranking SA-Austin as two up-and-coming cities of the future. It is a wonderful city to raise children as there are a kajillion things for them to do - again, the influence of Hispanic, family-oriented culture. It’s also one of the most Catholic cities in the country, as one can imagine, so Protestant fundamentalism is muted in San Antonio the way it isn’t in, say, Waco or Midland (or Atlanta, GA and Knoxville, TN, 2 cities I’ve lived in.) It’s almost non-existent.
To be honest, I’d rather people not hear about San Antonio. That’s what killed Atlanta for me - it got too big.
I have to get down to #23 before I get to a MSA that I have not been before: Portland, OR.
So that gets my vote.
“Riverside-San Bernadino” is a collection of about 30 cities, not just one or two. It encompasses 27,000 square miles, 3 times the size of Dallas-FW MSA (9k) and over 4 times the size of NYC MSA (6.5k sm).
I’ve heard of Wichita Falls primarily for having had a particularly terrible tornado back in 1979. ’
Couldn’t tell you anything else about the place though.
Yes, Virginia Beach is the largest city in the state, and has been for a while now. But I’ll bet hardly anyone knows that.
I’m not sure I agree Riverside counts as its own city. Yeah, it’s a separate municipality, but it’s really part of the Los Angeles metroplex.
If you can count Riverside, I think this might be a competition Canada wins, though; hardly anyone gives a second thought to the city of Mississauga, Ontario. The name even sounds obscure. But Mississauga has well over 700,000 people. In terms of just within the city limits it is the sixth largest city in Canada, and would be in the top 20 in the USA; it has more people than Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, or Portland.
What’s fascinating about it is that it is almost deliberately obscure, despite its huge size. Mississauga has no daily newspaper. It has no commercial radio station I am aware of. I believe it is the largest city in North America about which those things can be said. It has no landmarks of note, unless you count the huge mall it has, which is pretty much representative of the city itself; it’s the biggest shopping mall in eastern Canada and it’s this huge frankenmall that goes on and on, added onto a dozen times, with no real rhyme or reason to its design. Like the mall, the city has no clearly definable center mass, no one downtown area. It has no mass transit system of is own of any significance, it’s just… it’s there. It can’t support sports teams because nobody thinks of it as a community. It’s a giant growth on Toronto’s west side.
I live near Columbus and I agree with all of this. We don’t even have a local word for the grass between the sidewalk and the street.
I remember that tornado. Some friends were living there and tended bar in a place called Chapter 11. Not sure what happened to it the first time, but the tornado destroyed the building, and when it was rebuilt, it was called Chapter 11, the Third Edition.
I spent some time there visiting those friends. It was an okay place. Certainly more exciting than where I was from in West Texas, more stuff to do and it was a lot closer to Dallas-Fort Worth. But … it was still Texas.
For Canadian cities, I’d say that at least among Americans, it’s the smaller second-tier cities in Quebec that are largely forgotten, Sherbrooke, Gatineau, Trois-Rivieres, Drummondville and Saguenay. More Americans probably know about places like Saskatoon, Barrie, Sudbury, and Lethbridge, than the equivalents in Quebec. Even the mega-burbs of Toronto like Mississauga, Oakville, and Markham probably have more buzz in the States than Laval, Brossard, and Longueuil.
Satanic Oasis? 
Charlotte is such a nothing that even this thread forgot about it!
Or Jacksonville.
Texas cities like to have their city limits way far out.
When passing through Texas I remember seeing city limit signs. I would look around and see nothing but cows.
Wait, you mean tree lawn isn’t the official, common term all over?
“Often?” By whom?
But that’s still only half the population of Staten Island, NYC’s smallest borough.
Until a couple of years ago, if you had asked me what the second largest city in New England was, I would have guessed Providence or Hartford.
Worcester would never have occurred to me.
(Also, Hartford isn’t even the largest city in Connecticut, nor is it the second largest.)
What’s the second largest municipality in New York State? You’re wrong.
Omaha is often overlooked. It’s a big city - over 400,000 in the city proper and almost 900,000 in the metropolitan area. Home to 5 Fortune 500 companies and Warren Buffett, uber rich guy. It has a world class zoo with one of the best big cat breeding programs in the world and some great museums. People out here on the left coast think it is a dusty little cow-town. They are always surprised when I say it’s about the size of Portland. I lived there from 1997-2001. It is definitely fly-over country in terms of music, though.
Any city that features in the title of a famous hit song can hardly be called obscure, even if (like me) most people couldn’t tell you anything about it or even what state it’s in.