People in California will tell you Chicago is “east coast”, but people in Boston will assure you Chicago is “midwest”, so why does Chicago host the Western Open golf tournament and have a university called Northwestern?
Both institutions date back to the 1800’s, when the vast majority of universities and golf clubs/associations were on or near the east coast. Most people still lived in the eastern states, too. The center of population was probably somewhere in Pennsylvania. So referring to Chicago as being in the west or northwest was not unusual at the time.
I had the priviledge of enjoying lunch a a men’s club in L.A. some time back.
The featured item is something you just can’t ever get in N.Y.City… “cool”
And probable not in Chicago etither… : :rolleyes:
Prime Roast Ribs of EASTERN Beef! 
All relative of course.
New Yorkers can be the most insular people. I knew a guy who was born an raised in Brooklyn. In a conversation one day the subject of Long Island came up and during the course of it he kept saying something about “out on Long Island …” I casually mentioned that Brooklyn is on Long Island and he went mildly bananas. To him “Brooklyn” and “Long Island” were on different planets.
And then there is the Boston insularity. There is the story about the Boston nabob who was planning a motoring tour to California. When asked what route west he would use he replied, “Why, through Dedham[sup]*[/sup], of course.”
- About 30 mi west of Boston.
You forget your American history, assuming that you are an American.
In 1783, as part of the Treaty of Paris, Britain ceded the Northwest Territory to the U.S. as a consequence of the Revolutionary War. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set up territorial government over the area and established a process by which the territories could become states. Illinois, along with several other states south of the Great Lakes, was part of this territory. At 1000 miles from the East Coast, this was the western frontier and was thought of and treated as such for decades.
This page has a timeline, a map, and links to supporting documentation.
There are people like that in every big city. I had a roommate who was originally from Chicago and kept referring to the area in which I grew up (the Quad Cities) as “Southern Illinois”. I had to remind him that, while the Quad Cities is technically south of Chicago, it’s still way in the North of Illinois. Didn’t matter to him - if it was outside of Chicago, it was Southern Illinois 
Be fair, now. There are geographic definitions and cultural ones. To a New Yorker, “Long Island” *equals * Nassau and Suffolk Counties. To a resident of the outer boroughs, “the city” means Manhattan, and so, sometimes, does “New York”.
The classic joke is about the Back Bay Brahmin lady, who, when asked by her nephew why she never traveled, answered “My dear boy, why should I? I’m already there!”
But Bostonians can never truly be insular as long as New York is so close. You want insular, I’ll offer a co-worker in his forrties who’s lived in southern Maine, an hour and a half from Boston, his entire life and has never *been * to Boston. Hell, I commute that every day! That does stack up well, though, with all the other people I know in the Boston suburb I live in who only go to their summer places in New Hampshire, take their winter vacations at Disney World, and are simply not interested in even seeing anything else.
And everything that isn’t NYC is “Upstate New York”. I once had a conversation with a New Yorker who took great exception to my referring to the “Southern Tier” which he thought:
A - was something I made up, claiming that he’d never heard of it, and that it was
B- a nonsensical term since most of the southern border of NY state is physically north of NYC and therefore “upstate”.
This, in spite of the fact that the people living along that long straight border between NY and PA refer to it as the “Southern Tier” themselves, the term is in fairly common use, and New York state even hangs out signs on bits of 17 and I-86 labelling them as the “Southern Tier Expressway”.
There’s an amusing bit in William Least Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways” where he goes on about how, being from Missouri, he’s used to every region of the nation including Missouri in some area other than theirs - on the east coast, it’s “midwest”, the westerners consider it “eastern”, the people in the midwest say it’s part of “the south”, etc.
Or the two Boston matrons visiting in Los Angeles when one remarked that it was “awfully hot today.”
“Well, my dear,” replied the other. “You must remember that we are fully three thousand miles from the ocean.”
And a small correction. Dedham is only about 10-12 mi. from Boston.
I can’t let the horrendous canard in the OP stand. We in California do NOT call Chicago “East Coast.” We may occasionally refer to it as “back East,” (as in “y’headin’ back East?” “Yeah, Chicago”) but we are well aware that it’s in the Midwest (no matter how silly the name sounds to us).
I have heard several Chicagoans refer to my hometown of Galena as “Southern Illinois” or “Downstate Illinois” even though it is actually north of Chicago (and quite a bit west)… It’s about as far north as you can go without hitting Wisconsin!
Hey, if it doesn’t have a building over 12 stories or a White Castle, it’s south.
That raised my eyebrows, too. I have never heard anyone anywhere refer to Chicago as “East Coast.”
My brother warned me about “Easterner’s Geography”. He knew a woman in college who complained about the horrible roads “out west”. He knew otherwise. It turned out she was complaining about Ohio roads.
But I was able to top that. Met a Boston couple who claimed to have been “out west”: to Niagara Falls.
The “Midwest” had a different meaning among people I grew up with in the West. Ohio was definitely in the East. Illinois barely qualified. Iowa, Kansas, etc. were central Midwestern states. It still strikes me as strange to call something “Midwest” when it is well east of the Mississippi. After all, 2/3 of the country is west of it.
OK, maybe it was “Chicago is out east” I would hear. But to me, being from Chicago, out east meant NY, Boston, DC, etc., so I just translated that to “east coast”.