I had to chuckle when one of our friends from the Weather Channel today described Tysons Corner, VA (just beyond the I-495–The Capital Beltway) as “the westernmost suburb of the Washington DC metro area.” Well yeah, if the calendar on your desk said 1985. 1990 arguably. Now, however that’s as correct as saying Burbank, CA is the northernmost suberb to Los Angeles. Generally a conservative sizing of the DC metro area includes Dulles Airport (about 15 miles more westward than Tysons). People can argue that Leesburg VA, and Frederick MD, (which are twenty to thirty minute drives from DC in good traffic) as part of our metropolitian area.
Do you have any cases of outsiders being mistaken on your basic local geography?
Roundabouts Chicago, all the mountains tend to confuse newcomers.
My fave was when we took an out-of-towner up in the Sears Tower, they saw the large body of water to the east of the city, and asked “What river is that?”
In St. Louis we have three little tricks that always fool the tourists.
First off, we always refer to streets by the names they had 40 years ago. When we tell you to look for the Inner Belt or 12th St. or Wharf Street, good luck.
Secondly, we change the names of streets in the middle of the journey. Sometimes we get really clever and change them back. So if you want to travel down Lindbergh-Kirkwood Rd.-Highway 140 or across Airport-Chambers-Hereford, have a safe journey.
Finally, everything in the area is 20 minutes from everything else. But it’s not our job to tell you whether that’s 20 minutes door-to-door, main street to main street, or just the 20 minute drive on the highway between the main streets, 20 minutes in normal traffic, rush hour, or at 2:00 a.m.
We do too, kunilou. We also have a really irritating habit of naming our expressways by things that have nothing to do with it’s signage, e.g. the Edens (I90), the Ike(I290), the Stephenson (I55) (yes, it’s possible I spelled that wrong), the North South (355), the Elgin O’Hare (which goes neither to Elgin nor O’Hare), etc. Let’s not even go into Route 12/20/45/The Kingery/Manheim Rd. the name depends on the town you happen to be in types of situations.
If necessary to confuse out of towners, we have been known to tear down perfectly functional street signs and move entire villages and towns.
Okay, I was watching one of those FoxTV Cops shows. Showing a high speed chase in North Mississippi. Nice territory. Except that John Stoyanovitch or whatever his name is kept refering to it as “Bayou Country”.
(pause for hysterical laughter)
Okay. There is nothing CLOSE to a Bayou, Swamp or whatever you want to call it in North Mississippi. It’s dang near 80% forest.
Oh, it irritates me so when people refer to Fort Worth as a suburb of Dallas! Or when they place Fort Worth landmarks in Dallas!
Example #1 - Texas Motor Speedway (a huge-ass NASCAR race track) is located in the northern reaches of Fort Worth. Whenever a race is broadcast on television, the announcers invariably say that they are at the Texas Motor Speedway in Dallas. Huh? Dallas is about 50 miles and an hour’s drive away!
Example #2 - Almost every flight attendant on every airline makes the following announcement when arriving at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport: “Clueless Airlines would like to welcome you to Dallas, where the local time is blah blah blah.” I always want to shout out, “When do we get to Fort Worth?” The ironic thing is that part of the airport is actually in the city limits of Fort Worth, but no where near the city limits of Dallas.
Why does all this irritate me? Because Fort Worth has a population of over half a million, completely independent of Dallas, with its own downtown skyscrapers, its own set of suburbs, its own attractions, and its own identity (which is totally opposite of Dallas). It’s like saying that Oakland is a suburb of San Francisco, or St. Paul is a suburb of Minneapolis, or Milwaukee is a suburb of Chicago, or Baltimore is a suburb of Washington.
Ok call me ignorant. I thought that Oakland was a suburb of San Fransisco. Noone disabused of the notion when I was there. SO does this mean that Berkeley (sp?) is its own town too? I just thought it was all San Fransisco.
I come from a cold part of Australia. Yes we get snow. Annually, and we can go skiing on it and I actually know how to ski. It is not such a big surprise. And I don’t live anywhere near a beach. For me to swim in the sea takes a five hour drive.
[ul]
[li]Arlington as part of DC - One day in Crystal City (business area in southern Arlington County), a father of a small family approached me and asked about getting somewhere in DC. I started by saying that he’d have to get back onto US 1 and drive into DC.[/li]
“I thought we were in DC right now,” he said. He then pointed to his map, which had unincorporated areas in white and incorporated areas in yellow. Mistakenly, it had Arlington County in yellow. And since it used to be a part of DC, its shape filled in the original DC diamond.
What’s also confusing is that the Pentagon is in Arlington, but naturally is associated with Washington.
[li]The “western-most surburb” question of DC - Right now, I’d say Manassas, VA has that title. (Manassas is right around where the Bull Run battles were fought in the War to Keep the Negros as Slaves.)[/li]
But as SterlingNorth mentioned: Tysons Corner? If a jumper on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge can cause two-hour traffic delays in Centreville (30 miles away), it’s definately a suburb of DC. Tyson’s Corner, being only 12 miles away, is also included.
[li]The Mall - tourists are looking for a shopping mall, not “a large area, usually lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade.”[/li]
[li]The Potomac River - Some people think it’s a lake because it’s so wide. Some people jump in to swim. Many of these people drown. There are nasty undercurrents.[/li]
[li]DC is part of Maryland - It was originally formed by two pieces from Maryland and Virginia. Virginia’s piece was ceded back.[/li]
But DC is a separate entity, not just a jurisdiction of Maryland.
(This part confused Mike Tyson, when he was on probation in Maryland. He went to visit DC topless clubs, not realizing that he was leaving the state just by crossing Western Ave. :rolleyes: )
A) State and local roads listed on maps
Maps call roads by number:
417
528
436
434
408
Locals call roads by name:
Greeneway
the Beeline
Semeron Boulevard
Red Bug Lake Road
East-West Expressway
Giving directions to tourists is oh so much fun. :rolleyes:
B) One road, 5 different names (3 within the city limits):
Rte. 192 (goes from Rte. 27 east, past Disney World to the Atlantic Ocean) in said order:
Space Coast Parkway (just outside Disney World and part of Kissimmee)
Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway (Kissimmee)
W. Vine Street (still in Kissimmee)
13th Street (just inside St. Cloud)
some other Bronson family member, but not a memorial (I don’t drive out that far past St. Cloud unless I have to)
C) Not every town in Florida is part of Orlando/Disney World
Kissimmee is a whole 'nuther town, 12 miles south of Orlando.
Sanford is a whole 'nuther town 20 miles north of Orlando**
Cocoa and the Kennedy Space Center are other places 50 miles east.
Tampa is a whole 'nuther town, um, far from Orlando (about an hour’s drive southwest)
D) Disney World isn’t even part of Orlando
Orange County, yes, but not the city of Orlando. Kissimmee is actually closer to Disney World than Orlando is, yet Orlando is given the credit/blame.
[sub]except the airport tried to call itself the Orlando-Sanford Airport to draw in more business. Didn’t work.[/sub]
Ha! Try living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I can’t tell you how many maps of the US I’ve seen that simply leave it off. It’s just not there - you see lower Michigan, you see Wisconsin, but between them is just a big space.
I’ve met people from lower Michigan who don’t realize that Michigan has two Peninsulas. I think it’s because the Detroit papers tend to leave the UP off maps that they publish in the paper. I guess it’s just too much bother to put that extra piece on the drawing.
Also in Michigan, if you refer to “Northern Michigan” you’re referring to the north part of the lower peninsula. IE, the part of the mitten that the fingers go in. Do you know of any other state that refers to the the geographical center of the state as ‘north’ and anything further north is, well, some backwater that we really shouldn’t mention?
I’ve taken to describing the UP to people who aren’t familiar with it as “you know, that part of Michigan that looks like it should belong to Wisconsin.” That usually gets the idea across, unless, of course, I’m talking to someone from the LP. They tend to look at me like I’m crazy - “What do you mean, an UPPER Peninsula? Michigan is shaped like a mitten!”
I live in Woodbury, Minnesota, which is considered a suburb of St. Paul. My mother keeps addressing mail to “Minneapolis, MN 55125”. sigh
Downtown Minneapolis is rather famous, having been featured on a highly-rated classic TV show. That was a quarter-century ago. Since that time, many new buildings have been built, and downtown Minneapolis looks very little like it did. I overheard someone remarking how it looks nothing like it did on TV, so they must’ve done the opening scenes on a set. Ummm… how are they going to fit all that on a set and make it look real?
My favorite bad geography moment is in the beginning of “When Harry Met Sally.” Sally and Harry are driving from the University of Chicago, which is in the neighborhood of Hyde Park, to New York City. Now, Hyde Park is on the south side of Chicago. Where do we see them on the arial shot of Lake Shore Drive?
Driving freakin’ SOUTH into Chicago!
Drives me up the wall, especially since they could have done the same nice-looking arial shot that takes in the beautiful Chicago skyline showing them driving south of the city.
My fave! Ask a Michigander (or most FIPs) for travel directions in the LP, and they are absolutely incapable of presenting them without holding up their hand, saying “Michigan is shaped like a mitten”, and tracing the directions out on their palm. Great fun when they can’t figure out whether Michigan is shaped like their right or left mitten.
Maybe it makes sense when asking someone the general location of their lake home, to distinguish between Saugatuck (base of right pinkie) and Saginaw (below thumb webbing). But when you are asking for directions to the Meijers? “Well, it’s like a mitten. Follow this road about two miles until you reach a stop sign. Turn right, and it’s just past the Pamida.”
The damn Meijers is gonna be in the same place whether the state is shaped like a mitten, a snowmobile boot, or any other article of outerwear! Goddamn state has too many tattoo parlors and not enough dentists. How many of you live up in the UP anyhoo. 12 or so? How many of you are sober this week?
(Just kidding. Nothing like trying to stir up a little midwestern interstate rivalry!)
I’ll tell you what I’m most shocked by after reading this thread: That SterlingNorth and AWB are both DC-area Dopers and have not attended any Doperfests.
Here in Massachusetts I have to laugh at those who mispronounce regional names. My hometown is Leominster, but it’s pronounced “Lemon-stir” (or, to reflect the local pronunciation more accurately, “Lemon-stah”). OK, I understand foreigners will get that wrong as a matter of course, but why do they pronounce “Worcester” like “Warchester”? Huh? It rhymes with “sister”. There’s no aitch in it. I mean, no one has ever said “Dister” instead of “Dorchester”, right?
Being a Texan in Pennsylvania, I often run into folks with major misconceptions of Texas geography (after the obligatory “you don’t sound like a Texan” comment). Yes, there are in fact forests, rolling hills, beaches, and even some decent mountains in various parts of the state. There is also rather little desert in the state; west Texas (the part where I’m from) is grassland. There is, in fact, a big difference.
Also, when I refer to the summers I spent working in northeast New Mexico, it’s often revealed that people don’t know much about that state either.
