Denver locals tend to wear fleece vests over long-sleeve shirts and hiking boots. All the time.
We tend to dress in layers - coat over sweater or the above-mentioned vest over button-up long-sleeve shirt over short-sleeve shirt. We get used to adjusting the layering throughout the day.
Directions are given as cardinals (turn east) instead of right/left, because the mountains are to the west and they never move.
When I was there, I noticed everyone seemed happy all the time. As New Yorkers, my girlfriend and I found it weird and uncomfortible.
Locals still talk about “Richland Fashion Mall”, “Sydney Park”, and “The AT&T Building”. I know it’s Finlay Park now, I think the mall is Midtown at Forest Acres although it may have changed again? and I have no idea what the AT&T Building is now. It was the Affinity Building but I think it’s changed again. Also we know how to pronounce all the street names.
Also, furriners don’t know it’s called the State House, not the “capital building” or the “state capital”. I’m not sure but I think it may be the only one in the US to be called that?
God, speaking of tourists in Charleston, fuck that. I had a wedding to go to, oh, off of King Street somewhere? I forget. Anyway, right smack in the middle of Tourist Ground Zero. And I’m running late because I had a race to run that morning. So I think I’m doing really good when I get off of 26 with half an hour to spare, right? It took me an HOUR AND A HALF to get from there to the damned church. I sat through a light four times between the horsedrawn carriages and the ghost-white Yankees with fanny packs. I missed the wedding entirely (just got there in time to find out where the reception was, since it wasn’t on the invitation) and as I’m getting out of my car to run to the church I hear in the most obnoxious Brooklyn accent I’ve ever heard outside of the movies, “Oh, LOOK! Look, honey, look! I bet that girl’s going to a WEDDING! I bet a lot of people get married here! I wonder if we could follow her and see a WEDDING? I bet it’s just like Gone With the Wind!” If I hadn’t been running before, I certainly was then. I could just imagine slamming into the church late with my dear new friends Archie and Edith at my heels.
God, I hate going to Charleston. It would be a nice place if you could magically zap all the tourists away.
ETA - this was a Sunday in May, I believe - the absolute worst time to be where I was.
The accent. The Buffalo eyacksint is very nasal and harsh, and unlike elsewhere in the GNVS-speaking Great Lakes region, even well-off, educated locals will have it. The accent doesn’t really kick in until one is in their mid-20s, though.
If somebody pronounced my first name with an extra syllable, they’re a local.
In Montana, license plate numbers start with a one or two-digit number that identifies the county the car is registered in. It’s always easy to spot locals when they’re driving.
If the temperature is 40 degrees (F) with snow on the ground and you see a boy in shorts and t-shirt walking with a girl in a miniskirt and high heels, they’re local high school students.
If someone gives you directions that include the phrase, “turn left where that big red barn used to be,” he’s a local.
If someone mentions seeing a bear in the alley, tourists say, “Really? Cool!” and locals say, “Damned bears. Better take in my garbage cans.”
If someone is stuck in the snow, locals will stop and pull out a tow chain (or at least offer a ride). Tourists will just keep driving.
If traffic is heavy and you’re waiting to turn onto the main drag from a side street, a local pedestrian will often step into the crosswalk and stop traffic so you can turn (there are no stoplights in this county).
Interestingly, many of these apply here in small-town Montana, including:
[ul]
[li]You think New Jersey is a toxic waste dump.[/li][li]You have deer in your backyard.[/li][li]You have at least 10 friends who drive Jeeps. [/li][li]You know girls and guys that have the same names. [/li][li]You don’t have an accent.[/li][li]You get pissed at anyone that doesn’t know how to drive in the snow.[/li][/QUOTE]
[/ul]
And that last one is elevated to an art form here. If you’re going to live where it snows, learn to drive in it!
Heh. A couple years ago when Nebraska was playing in the Rose Bowl, you could tell very easily who was in Pasadena for the game/parade - not only were they very distinctively tall, ruddy, corn-fed looking white people; not only were they almost always wearing some bright red clothing; but they were dressed for much colder weather than we have on New Years’. We’re talking thick cable-knit pullover sweaters over long-sleeved shirts under jackets!
(Whereas all the locals were complaining about the cold, since it was down in the 50’s at night, but wearing T-shirts and jean jackets since many of us don’t own more than a cardigan or two.)
I spent a couple of summers in the San Fransisco bay area. You could tell the locals because they were the only ones NOT wearing SF sweatshirts. Y’see, tourists would plan trips to SF thinking, “hey, it’s California in the summer! All I’ll need will be my flip-flops, shorts, and some t-shirts!” But SF gets pretty chilly in the evenings. By the second day of their vacations, the tourists all realize they didn’t bring anything warm enough to wear, so they all go out and buy warm touristy gear.
Here’s how to tell if you’re a local in the Pacific Northwest;
I wear this all the time (actually, right now spookily enough) and I was born in Boulder.
I read this thread a few times and have thought about what would help me out spotting locals where I live. Honestly, it isn’t hard, but it is hard to describe. The big one is Ski. If you have lived here for any length of time (and here being my county and two others on it’s borders), you drink Ski. I know people who don’t drink anything but water otherwise, but when you go into the pizza shop, you get a Ski, and it is usually in a little glass 10 oz. bottle. If you buy the plastic ones, there is something wrong, and they must’ve been out of the real ones.
Another huge one is naming things by county. We live in Vinton County. It is home of Vinton County Schools. There is only one other school in Ohio that is a county school, and that is Morgan. Of course, schools are the only way to use county descriptions. Sometimes, we have large groups of people come through (GOBA, for example) and some of those people don’t seem to grasp that when we say Athens, we may mean part of the county east of us, not just the town with Ohio University in it. I’ve at least always thought this, but it could be less prominent than I thought…
Brendon Small
My wife reminded me of another one. If you are from here, you don’t give a look when someone says “Go to the stoplight.” For us, there is only one stoplight in town, and two in the county (but everyone knows that other one is illegally placed, that is why there are stop signs on the cross streets). Often, people who come down to meet us at work are told to come in to town on 93, go to the stoplight, then turn left. They often answer with “which stoplight?” It is kind of a fun conversation…
Brendon Small
There ya go. 
When driving in my Brazilian wife’s home town outside of Rio, I found that only the neighborhood locals know which traffic lights are totally ignored and which not.
Someone explained to me that the prevailing flow generally follows the bus routes. So, when you come to a red light at seven in the evening and you are on a major bus line, just blow through the red signal. But if you are on a big street that is not a bus line, you had better stop and look. Then go through the red light.
I’m not sure you can spot a Worcester local just by watching them. Our quirks mostly come out when you talk to us. Unless, that is, you were like me and had a mother from Upstate NY. I never did develop the accent.
If you are for real driving to the Bronx from Manhattan and you know what you’re doing, you take the Willis Avenue Bridge because there isn’t a toll. There is a lane dedicated to the entrance ramp for the bridge. The traffic moves pretty briskly in this lane, more so than the through traffic lanes. There is always some yahoo who gets in the bridge lane (directly ahead of me, natch) thinking he/she will use it to zip around the slower moving through traffic. However, it’s the kind of lane where you quickly encounter the barrier that prevents you from changing back. Therefore, the person in front of me will slam on the brakes and then sit there, trying to merge back into the through lane. The whole thing just screams “OMG, I almost went to THE BRONX!!!1!” and makes me think evil thoughts about non-locals.
Fortunately for me, this problem may be solved now because they finished some construction that seems to have freed up the traffic flow a bit.
Good Lord, this. Don’t forget shorts year round, at least when I was living there, and an accompanying Golden or Lab named “Aspen”.
In Buffalo, every other 20something/30something woman is now wearing a black The North Face Denali jacket. Since Buffalo tends to be about five to 10 years behind the times with regards to fashion, I assume anyone wearing TNF in Denver would be laughed at as an out-of-date poser, and that the “real Denverites” are now wearing Marmot or Mountain Hardwear fleeces.
Buffalonians are split into two camps: those that wear The North Face, and those that wear Carhartt.
I know in Plattsburgh they go with Carhartt. I had one when I lived there. No matter how often it was cleaned, it smelled like cigarette smoke, dirty hydraulic fluid, and burning rubber, just like everyone else’s where I worked. At my sister’s company, they all smelled like cigarette smoke, dirty hydraulic fluid, and burning plastic. I don’t much miss living in Hickville NY and I don’t miss the smell on that coat. But, I miss the coat. That thing was warm.
I don’t know if it’s a local thing (especially because most of the people doing it are not from the immediate area), but there is a distinct (and, imho, hideous) “uniform” that undergraduate girls at the University of Michigan wear, consisting of leggings, Ugg boots, and North Face jackets. It’s ubiquitous enough that a friend of mine dressed as an undergrad for Halloween last year and no explanation was necessary.
Usually people don’t dress in brown & orange, unless you’re an old lady around Thanksgiving wearing your quilted Thanksgiving sweater.
Or you’re a Clevelander.
(Our football team’s colors are brown & orange)
I’ve just got a couple — if you live in Louisville, Ky., you say “Louavull,” and you know where you’re going to be the first Saturday in May.
You know a St. Louisan for three things:
They refer to all streets by their former names. FYI: Wharf Street = Sullivan Blvd., 12th Street is Tucker, Highway 40 is shown on GPS and maps as I-64, and Carson Road has been Hanley for something like 40 years. If anyone ever tells you to take “the old streetcar right of way” ask them to just draw you a map.
There is no InBev. For that matter, there is no Anheuser-Busch. There is only “The Brewery.”
That accent. Neither my wife nor I are natives, but we have lived here for decades. We pronounce the name of the eating utensil as “fork.” Despite their upbringing, all three of our children call the damn thing a “fark.”