Feel free do define the place where you live to be as large or small an area as makes sense for you.
California’s water supply mostly depends on the Sierra Nevada snow pack. Whenever it rains where I live my mom always says something like “Oh, that must be good for your water supply” or something to that effect. Except it really isn’t, apart from the fact that rainfall here is correlated with snowfall in the mountains. Rain that falls in my immediate vicinity doesn’t end up in the reservoir, because the reservoirs are all upstream from here. And rainfall upstream from the reservoir often has to be released from the dam to make room for the spring snow melt. But people who haven’t lived here for a while can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that snowfall in the mountains is what we really need, not rain.
Some regions of California are actually quite conservitive/libertarian leaning. I don’t have to drive all that far to see people flying State of Jefferson flags and pickups sporting Trump bumper stickers. It’s just that those regions are very sparsely populated, and get outvoted by the large urban areas in statewide elections, making California a reliably blue state overall. But most outsiders will take stereotypes about San Francisco and Los Angeles, and think they apply to everyone in every corner of the state.
Nobody who’s never been here knows anything about it, except maybe that we’re rich and have favorable tax laws that the rest of Europe complains about.
More commonly, when Stateside friends hear where we live, they assume it’s a city in Germany.
Our part of Wisconsin (the Driftless Area, aka Coulee Region) is all valleys and ridges. It’s hilly. Looks and feels like parts of Vermont and upstate New York. Along the Mississippi River (another misconception —- yes, we’re on the Mississippi!), it forms bluffs.
There’s a line in This is Spinal Tap where the band’s manager says something like “the Boston gig is cancelled. I wouldn’t worry about it, it’s not much of a college town.”
I think you have to live here to really get that joke. The whole area is sick with colleges and universities.
People don’t understand how inaccessible everything is. You won’t get a Starbucks w/o driving, awhile.
People are often amazed at the trees lining the highways.
The big thing: how very poor the inhabitants are. Seriously, homes that look like sheds and hovels are where people live. There’s just no jobs. Or they’re not able to work because of sickness. Healthcare is abysmal. If you can get there.
It can be a sad thing to see.
Generally speaking they are a happy, diverse population.
I live across Puget Sound from Seattle. As the crow flies I’m merely 15 miles from Pike Place Market, but for me to actually go there is effectively a full day trip, and that’s within walking distance of the ferry terminal.
Actual people are fairly easily convinced that the listed ferry crossing times don’t include waiting, loading, and unloading. Online location search tools, however, seem to think we can all walk on water. No, Home Depot, the closest location is not West Seattle. No, Indeed, I can’t commute to Mercer Island.
Most people think Montana is all pristine parks and ranches, with very few towns and almost no people. Over a million people live in Montana, and it’s the seventh least populated state.
Think of it this way, Montana is roughly the size of California, but California has nearly 40 times more people than Montana. Santa Clara County, in Northern California, has almost twice the population as the entire state of Montana.
There are lots of small towns in Montana, but only a few large cities. The town I live in, which is on a huge lake, has 3,000 people, while the “big city” 30 minutes up the road has 26,000 residents. That city has all the big box stores and supermarkets you need.
We’re 75 minutes away from Glacier National Park, and there are lots of wooded trails to walk, as well as rivers and lakes to enjoy close by. It’s not a nature’s paradise as some people might imagine. It’s a low-population, mostly rural state with abundant natural resources (and hard winters, but great skiing) and we like it that way.
And the water is cold compared to the Atlantic beaches at the same latitude. If you’re going to spend more than a few minutes in the ocean, you need some insulation, even in Southern California.
So true. I grew up 30 minutes from Santa Cruz, California and used to head to the beach on a hot summer day only to freeze after five minutes in the water. A wetsuit is definitely a requirement any time of year. Head down the coast toward San Diego and it warms up a bit.
Local rain can help to replenish groundwater, which is why we in San Francisco have a (low-key) campaign to remove concrete and replace it with permeable pavers or plants where appropriate. This takes the form of sidewalk gardens, and the postage-stamp front aprons of most homes. This is very slow going, especially the front aprons, which most homes use for off-street parking. Unfortunately, our rainwater runoff goes into the sewage system, so it ends up in the bay and does little good to our water supply.
What outsiders think of San Francisco can be seen in the threads here about it – that it is dying, and that large parts of it are over-run with homeless. Neither of these are true. Yes, there is currently a glut of office space in the Financial District and South of Market areas; yes, there are places where you can see homeless tents in clusters. The city itself is still just as expensive to live in (or more), and yet just as crowded, as it was 5 years ago. Our house continues to rise in estimated value; it is still routine for homes for sale to go for above asking within 30 days. And so on.
I live outside of Detroit, not in inner city crime ridden Detroit. When friends first come to visit me from Ohio and get off at the 8 mile Rd exit they are shocked! Shocked to see a huge jewelery store, one of the largest discount wine stores in the state, a towering Sheraton hotel and numerous high end restaurants. They walk my neighborhood and comment on how safe they feel. Then they ask me to take them to the ghettos to gawk at run down buildings and see graffiti.
I was wondering the same thing, actually. I assume because I mentioned his name in the OP. Does Discourse automatically add that tag to any thread that mentions his name? Because I didn’t add it on purpose.
