Certain telltales announce you to be a local. If I see you veer to the right and avoid the manhole cover on Hwy 7 I know for dead certain you have lived here for a while. Not only do you know it bounces, you are in the best lane, the one that always beats the others every time. I know you live within a few miles of that spot.
See that guy, the one with the tweed suit and the stupid red bowtie? He is a lawyer and his office is on Broad Street. No, I never saw him before, but I know. It’s a “strictly in downtown Charleston” thing. Not only is he a lawyer, he is also an S.O.B. (this is a source of pride).
His home, passed down for generations, lies South Of Broad, meaning he is a “blueblood.” If his forebears were not granted land by King Charles II (a proper blueblood), his family has, at the very least, lived in the home since the War of Northern Aggression (the Civil War to you). This is the meaning of the bowtie.
The tweed suit is to demonstrate proper breeding. White patent leather shoes are optional. Boating shoes are acceptable. His teenage son will wear an Izod shirt with a small alligator on it, khaki shorts and either Docksider boat shoes or gum rubber duck hunting shoes. This is an unwritten law. Poseurs are frowned upon and will not be tolerated. He pronounces the name of the town Chaasston, where the Ashley and the Cooper rivers meet to form the Atlantic Ocean.
Charleston can’t be the only place with such strange telltales that only locals recognize. Whatcha got?
One way to recognize someone not local to the Washington, DC area is to watch them as they attempt to ride the Metro. If they call it a subway, or “the” subway, they aren’t local. If they stand on the left hand side of an escalator, they aren’t local. There is a strong local tradition that when riding a Metro escalator, you stand to the right side. The left side is for people who want to WALK it as well, i.e. walking in the direction of travel so as to make their final velocity = velocity of escalator + their walking speed.
I read that article and looked at the pictures and still can’t get a hold of how that thing is better. It seems to me that they are merely pushing the left turn lane at an intersection forward a few hundred feet, into an area where cars are going to be moving faster since it’s not the intersection, jamming up the road further on, and then additionally, forcing people into a U-turn in traffic without the benefit of traffic lights
How is this better or safe? The article says it reduced congestion and accidents but I’m having a hard time figuring out how.
How nice to see an OP from Charleston - I grew up on James Island, and still miss seeing all the sobs downtown. One of my good friends makes a living fleecing… er, selling trinkets to… tourists in the Market. He’s quite good at it.
It’s very easy to tell “snowbirds” here in the southeast - it’s harder to know about someone truly ‘local’ in terms of the actual town or city in the middle of nowhere truly important, but if someone’s a retiree from Florida or from the midwest (which is oddly where just about all of our retirees seem to be from…) they stick out like a sore thumb.
Usually all they have to do is be driving; most usually, it comes up when someone doesn’t realize that a proper set of directions includes at least one reference to a landmark which is no longer in existence.
Or you notice when they are speaking, especially if they’re ordering food in a restaurant or a deli counter. No understanding of how tea is supposed to work, or arcane references to something called ‘pop.’
In Phoenix in winter, the visitors (snowbirds) are walking around in T-shirts and shorts, while the natives are bundled up in down parkas, long pants and maybe even ski masks.
When I mention I went to a concert at the O-rena and they know what I’m talking about.
Between the O-rena and the present Amway Center, the venue had lots of other names based on corporate sponsorship, but to me it was always the O-rena (Orlando Arena).
When I mention I went to a concert at the O-rena and they know what I’m talking about.
Between the O-rena and the present Amway Center, the venue had lots of other names based on corporate sponsorship, but to me it was always the O-rena (Orlando Arena).
God, I wish this were universal behavior everywhere. Why the hell do people get so lazy the second that they step onto an escalator? I find that at airports, especially, it’s quicker for me to walk up or down the adjacent stairway than the use the escalators, due to all of the inconsiderate people that just stand there blocking it.
There’s usually a light. If not at the point on the boulevard, then further up, that gives everyone a change to turn. How is it better? The vast majority of traffic goes straight. That means only two cycles of the stop light, instead of four. It can be slightly longer to make a left turn, but you usually only need to make one, and you’ve saved a lot of time beforehand by not sitting at left turn signals while getting to where you want to turn left. And more most major roads, you have two choices: turn right to turn left, or go straight to turn left.
I really wish there were a lot more of these throughout the country.
No time required where the left turn lane light is green. I don’t know about it being safe, as it requires turning right and getting way left right away, but it is the way we do it on a lot of roads.
NH locals confidently approach rotaries (traffic circles), and aren’t the idiots sitting there wondering what they’re supposed to do next. NH locals might cause a car accident by politely and abruptly stopping to let someone pull out of a side street or driveway. NH locals primarily use the word “wicked” as an intensifier, and will give you a puzzled look if you end a sentence with wicked because they are waiting for you to finish your thought. NH locals consider any winter with just five feet of snowfall a mild one. NH locals will bitch about how all those bastards from MA are moving to the southern part of the state and screwing up our local politics…despite the fact that they themselves were born in MA and moved here young (only 40% of the state’s population was actually born in NH). NH locals can’t tell you much about the state’s tourist attractions because the novelity wore off after that one time our parents dragged us to the Polar Caves or The Flume or Echo Lake when we were kids, and we’ve had no reason to go back on our own.
This is taken from the ‘You Know You’e From Fairfield County (CT)’ Facebook group, but most of it seems accurate. Fairfield County, for those unfamiliar, is the relatively affluent south west region of Connecticut.
A lot of these you won’t notice in someone on sight, but you’ll find out if you talk to them for five minutes:
You have hiked up a golf course at least once to get to a keg party.
The fact that the Merritt and the Hutch were the same highway (Rt 15) but named differently just because they are in two different states makes perfect sense to you.
You thought no one could buy beer after 8 PM.
You think New Jersey is a toxic waste dump.
You have deer in your backyard.
Your family owns more than one house.
At least one parent works in New York City. They take the train.
In high school you drank outside, regularly.
You still don’t understand why people say that Connecticut is [one of] the richest states.
The diner is the only place open after midnight.
You have at least 10 friends who drive Jeeps.
Anybody asks, you’re from just outside of New York.
You’ve never looked at a public bus schedule. You would also never get on one.
You know girls and guys that have the same names.
You think Bridgeport is the worst ghetto you’ve ever seen.
You spend the summer on Cape Cod, in Nantucket or Marthas Vineyard.
You were pissed that your sixteenth birthday car was a new sedan instead of an SUV.
You never really went on a “real date” in high school.
You know what Okemo is (and you or a friend owns a house there).
You don’t have an accent.
You know how to play Beruit, and how it differs from Beer Pong.
You have more than one country club in your town.
You get pissed at anyone that doesnt know how to drive in the snow.
You consider Fairfield County and the rest of Connecticut two different states.
I didn’t make the list, but it seems pretty spot on.
I suppose it’s because it doesn’t feel like what people stereotypically think of as “wealthy”. It’s not like everyone lives in gaudy columned McMansions with a Ferarri and a Humvee in the diveway (it’s not New Jersey) and walks around with tophats and Louis Vuitton bags. Parents worked for a living and drove Volvos. Everything feels like an LL Bean or J Crew catalogue. Growing up you just think that’s “regular middle class”. Rich people lived in the big mansions in Greenwich, CT (also part of Fairfield County) and poor people lived in Bridgeport (NOT Fairfield County).
Bus schedules? Every driver in your household doesn’t have their own car (even if it is a shitbox beater)?
Let me give you an example. When my friend and I were home from college (going to an out of state $40,000 a year school did not occur to us as “rich people” stuff), we dated these two girls we met at a club in Westchester (again, it never occured to me that going out clubbing on weekends was “rich people” stuff until a business school professor mentioned to our class that most people don’t). Anyhow, for our first date they had us meet them at a McDonalds parking lot off the Merritt rather than get lost trying to find their house in the suburban maze of Wilton, CT (this is pre GPS). The girls wore typical GAP (or similar) clothing drove a typical teenagers shitbox sedan (an old Ford or Buick or something) so we didn’t think anything ususual about them. Anyhow, as we followed them back to their parents house, we notice the houses are getting bigger and nicer until they pull up to what must easily be a several million dollar home. Other than the house, you would have no idea their parents had money (they were executives at IBM or someplace).
I’m with you—except at the airport. There, you have to make allowance for the fact that people have rollaboard suitcases on the escalator, so they can’t very easily walk. Still, I make a point of putting mine on the step behind me, *just in case *someone wants to pass me.
