San Francisco says the same thing, only we have better landmarks, and weather.* And more Hippies and Homosexuals.
Other stereotypes…
And most of the people in the mid-west are supposed to be like the characters in Fargo. (Aside from all the murdering.)
The South is full of backwards, poor, racist, inbred religious fanatic rednecks. (Louisiana is a bit better, because they’re all Cajuns, and thus have a sense of style. Plus, they know how to party. :D)
Anyone who lives in Montana or Idaho is a survivalist. (They have relatives living in Nevada, and holed up in the rocky mountains.)
Utah is nothing but Mormons.
Washington State is basically one big subarctic rainforest.
And…everyone has a vague awareness of something called “Canada” along our northern border, but damned if we could tell you much more than that.
*A little note…Northern Californians and Southern Californians each secretly believe that they’re better than the other half of the state. It’s not open animosity, or anything…that’s mostly because we all think “our” superiority goes without saying.
…when the reality, of course, is that Washington State west of the Cascade mountains is one big subarctic rainforest populated solely by commie pinko liberal gay hippie Democrats, while Washington State east of the Cascade mountains is one big desert populated solely by gun-totin’ evil salmon-hating Republicans.
I’ve heard this crazy stereotype that Californians have this weird geographic superiority complex. For instance, some people think that Californians believe everybody else wants to live there (but couldn’t get in or something) and that living anywhere else is like living in a… well, not a third-world country… though maybe second world.
It’s news to this Wisconsinite, too. All I can say is that that sort of culture isn’t all that rampant except in places where they have [insert ethnicity here]-fests. Like Milwaukee in the summer, where there always seems to be some sort of celebration of ethnicity going on. The part of the state where I’m from seems mostly to concentrate on food, so we eat pasties and brats and that’s about as far as we go for culture. There’s no dressing up in dirndls and prancing about Maypoles or anything.
There’s also the cheese thing – there aren’t as many small-time, local cheese factories any more. Most people buy their cheese from the grocery store, which is a shame. Cheese is important because dairying is central to our agricultural community/economy.
Oh, and there aren’t cows EVERYWHERE. Up north, it’s cranberries, potatoes, and lumber. And paper mills. (My aunt keeps telling me I need to go to college in Green Bay or Stevens Point and “snag” me a paper mill boy, because they’re all rich, and, if I’m understanding her right, have big penises. Whatever, auntie.) Apples are big in the western “ridge country” part of the state.
The entire state isn’t rural – the eastern portion of the state is pretty heavily urbanized. Also, the state ISN’T flat. I don’t know where people got that idea – a whole section of the state was missed by the glaciers way back when and is quite hilly.
I don’t know that we’re a conservative stronghold, either. The majority of people I know (both old and young) lean towards the left end of the political spectrum. We may not be uber-liberals or anything, but we certainly have a tradition of progressive thinking. (Which is coming severely undone in the current political atmosphere – it’s quite scary.)
One (apparent) peculiarity of Wisconsin is the Friday night fish fry, where you go to the local bar and pick up (preferably) beer-battered fish and fries and coleslaw or potato salad and chow down on greasy goodness. There’s nothing like beer-battered cod fresh out of the fryer.
Oh, and did I mention the enormous number of bars there are? There’s seriously one every block in the neighborhood I live in Milwaukee. Back home, there’s two or three in every town, average population of 1500. There are a lot of bars in this state.
To sum up, people think Wisconsin is flat and all about cheese, cows, drinking, and serial murderers. We’re used to the first three, but last one . . . yeah, we don’t understand it either.
I remember that there was one Law and Order (a cop show that takes place in New York City if it hasn’t reached you yet in Europe) in which there were tourists from my home state of Ohio. Apparently, we are complete idiots who have never seen a big city (because we have never been off the farm), and are so baffled by black folks that we tape them to show the folks back home! Hate to tell the nice creators of Law and Order this, but we have a couple of big-ish cities (um, Cleveland?), most people don’t live on the farm (although some of the state is agricultural), and we even have our own black folks. Really. We were even an abolitionist stronghold.
I think Ohio is also considered pretty provincial by the rest of the states (if we are considered at all–I am not sure how much anyone else really notices us. I think we are just lumped in with the other folks from the Midwest—except for apparently Wisconsin and Illinois. :)), and that is true to a certain extent–at least in the rural areas, and the small towns. But the cities tend to be far more progressive and liberal. Cleveland papers even publish gay personal ads (which is so not happening anytime soon in my hometown–way too many Christian Conservatives). But I think that tends to be a rural vs. urban thing rather than an Ohio thing.
Consider the diversity within just one state, Pennsylvania.
The two major metropolitan areas, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, are very different from each other. Philadelphia is an very Eastern city, in its industries and its outlook. It shares much in common with other Eastern cities like Baltimore, Washington, Boston, and New York.
Pittsburgh, however, resembles much more closely other cities of the Industrial Midwest, like Cleveland, Cincinnatti, Milwaukee, or Chicago. It even gave itself a nickname reflecting a more Midwestern attitude, “Gateway To The West.”
The rest of the state is very socially conservative and rural. Anyone who has driven through this vast countryside wouldn’t be surprised by the fact that it includes millions of acres of national forest, produces billions of dollars worth of agricultural exports annually, has a large Amish and Mennonite population and has America’s second largest contingent of NRA members, by state.
Michigan: aside from the smouldering ruins of Dee-troit, it’s a state filled with snowmobile-riding, gun-toting, militia-card carrying outdoorsmen whose lives revolve around the hunting season calendar.
New York: according to most travel guides, popular media, and mass media, New York State = New York City. Maps of the state should be labeled “Here there be Draggyns” north and east of Westchester County.
New Mexico: not even a state.
Florida: not “California with humidity,” but rather a dysfunctional collection of mulleted rednecks, elderly Jews, Cubans, models, perky Disney e"cast members" and Don Johnson circa-1986 wannabes.
Indiana: kind of like Georgia, only flatter, colder and with fewer billboards. All the men are 6’ 14" basketball-playing farm boys. Doesn’t use Daylight Saving Time because it’ll confuse the cows. Gary, Hammond, and the surrounding area are really in Illinois.
Wyoming: Cowboys. Lots and lots of cowboys who somehow can talk without moving their lips and mouths. Amazing to see.
Picture the U.S. as a giant gradient. People are more uptight in the east, and get more relaxed as you go west. There is a big difference in talking to someone from the east coast, and someone from the west coast. I’m talking about the people born and raised in their respective region.
Minnesota Scandanavian decendents that are immune to cold and play hockey. Very tolerant and liberal people.
Wisconsin Beer drinking, Packer watching party animals with blocks of cheese on their heads.
Illinois Chicagoans- impatient drivers that beep as soon as the light turns green. Corrupt politicians and rabid sports fans. Downstate- corn growing plowboys.
Ohio Boorish sports fans that are jealous of Michigan’s beauty.
Indiana A Republican weed in the Democratic Great Lakes paradise.
Florida Old farts, Cubans, and drug lords.
Texas Big Oil, Big Cattle, Big Egos. Big deal.
Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky Put Elvis velvet paintings in their mobile homes. Name their hound dogs for confederate generals. Family trees don’t fork.
California American version of Sodom and Gomorrah. Voted two half-talented movie stars into governor’s office. Surfers, gang members. and starlets- oh my.
Oregon, Washington Green freaks.
Montana Home off the Unabomber and precious few more. Population of about 3,000, all of which are clogging the same section of road at once.
New England Elitist liberals that can do the New York Times crossword in ink in under 10 minutes while drinking cappuchino.
I’m getting there now. I’ve got this page open in another window while reading and laughing. It’s teach myself geography afternoon.
Let’s see… I think there are blanks for Hawaii and Alaska, Iowa, North and South Dakota, and Nebraska.
All I got for Virginia is that life is slower there thanks to VDOT. Huh?
Then if I understand correctly, anyone from Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachussets and Maine is a liberal clever asshole on caffeine with time on their hands.
Around here, we make fun of people from Iowa and South Dakota.
How do you get to Iowa? Walk south until you step in something.
South Dakota: Land of brown grass and Harley boys.
What do you call a state park in South Dakota? A pine tree and a farm pond.
Oh, and I’ve never made a joke about anyone or anything in West Virginia. Arkansas on the other hand …
Nebraska: Bleak with despair, as popularized by the highly recommended Bruce Springsteen album of the same name and the highly recommended documentary The Farmer’s Wife
VDOT is the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Virginia is really three states, Northern Virginia, Tidewater, and The Rest.
Northern Virginia is very close to Washington, DC. Government and high-tech industries drive the economy of this very wealthy, populous region. This area has attracted transplants from every part of the U.S, and immigrants from every country of the globe, and has a polyglot, cosmopolitan feel.
VDOT concentrates here on completing the massive, multibillion-dollar Mixing Bowl project connecting Interstates 95, 395 and 495, also known as the Washington Beltway.
In Tidewater, you’ll find one of the largest concentrations of military might anywhere in the world. The Norfolk naval base joins several other naval bases, an air force base at Hampton, and army and marine corps presences to produce a home for hundreds of thousands of military personnel.
In addition to this, the area’s economy depends on tourism, with the city of Virginia Beach having miles of shoreline and drawing millions of visitors every year.
The area is also very religious. Several “megachurches” draw thousands of worshippers every Sunday. And prominent (some would say notorious) televangelist Pat Robertson runs his media empire from here, next to his own college, Regent University.
VDOT’s priorities here are with river crossings. They present natural bottlenecks, and the closure of one lane of a tunnel or an entire tunnel because of an accident can paralyze an evening commute. The main crossings of the James River are the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and the Monitor-Merrimack Bridge Tunnel, and they are engineering marvels in their own right.
The rest of Virginia is more rural, socially conservative, and significantly poorer than either Tidewater or the cash cow that is Northern Virginia. VDOT’s priorities in these areas typically is either building miles and miles of interstate to cross it quickly or else paving the remaining dirt roads.
And more Hippies and Homosexuals.