I would warn tourists from anywhere that in some remote areas of the rural West, “tourist season” means it’s time to get a certain stamp renewed on your hunting license.
Oh, come on, people, it was a joke! Do not tell me that was a thread killer!
What?!! BART is great. It goes right to SFO!
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Traffic circles are rare and dangerous. People often enter the circle without yielding, and it’s common to have a 25 mph speed limit for a mile or so before you get to the circle.
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Authority figures seem to yell more here than they do in Europe.
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There is something called “American Cheese” you will want advance notice about, for example a product called “American Singles” from the Kraft company. It is more precisely called “American Cheese Food” or “American Cheese Food Product”. It’s a heavy opaque gelatinous substance that is normally extruded into folded over polyethylene tubing which is then cut into short lengths. To use these little square sheets you unwind the polyethylene. It’s made of something to give it mechanical strength, such as gums from seaweed or tree bark, and coloring, and flavorings. It does contain some real cheese, too, for flavor (and maybe for legal reasons). There are also other physical forms of it, for example a solid brick form sold under the “Velveeta” trademark. American cheese food has a tangy flavor when melted onto a cheap greasy fast-food hamburger - any other way of consuming it seems to be even worse at disguising its nature. People who are fond of cheese should not try this without thinking about it first. Of course, haggis isn’t all that tasty, either, and it doesn’t kill you. Yeah, yeah, I know my Burns, but I’m a teetotaler.
Yike. My first thought was that that was the Orlando subway system or something, but then I saw the outline of the state…
I beg to differ - provided there’s enough innards in it 
You need the passport, though, if you’re young. A friend of a friend (~25 and looked it) unintentionally got us invited to leave a bar when she forgot hers. UK driver’s license wasn’t an acceptable substitute. Though the rest of us might have been able to stay if someone hadn’t said “well, why don’t we just order for her?” 6 feet from the bouncer… it took 4 more bars before we got someone to accept the license as a valid ID.
Crocodiles And Boulevards probably lives far away from me, which illustates another point: there are vastly different levels of danger to people depending on where in the country you visit. If you want safe, come to New Hampshire or Vermont. Less than 20 murders a year in both states (in 2006 your odds of being murdered in NH were all of 1 in 100,000, so that’s 13 people for the year). You might die of boredom or freeze to death, but no one will harm you.
Speaking of freezing to death: several states, NH included may charge you if you need a high resource rescue because you did something idiotic in the wilderness. Those two guys who went hiking in the white mountains and got caught in a storm a couple of months ago, just a week after one hiker died and another got rescued on the same area? WMUR said they will likely be billed for search and rescue, even though they weren’t NH residents (they were from VA). If something genuinely terrible and not of your own doing happens you don’t get billed, but to ignore posted signs and claim you don’t know it’s a bad idea to hike the white mountains during the winter isn’t going to get a pass. There’s also a bill up for consideration to make it even easier to charge for rescues, not only ones where the state can prove you willfully put yourself into danger or otherwise acted recklessly. There are a lot of beautiful undeveloped places in the US, but they aren’t free of rules put into place to keep people safe.
Even in big cities, it can be tough to get your money changed. Besides the international airport terminals, around here there’s a “Deak And Co.” that specializes in moneychanging, but pretty much have only weekday hours, and not too early or late. And their branches are few and far between. Ordinary retail banks usually do not do this, unless perhaps you are a customer.
On the other hand, many Europeans, especially Brits, will find it considerably safer than their own streets;
“From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England’s inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world’s crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.”
(Source: Reason Magazine.)
“American property crime rates have been lower than those in Britain, Canada, and France since the early 1990s, and violent crime rates throughout the E.U., Australia, and Canada have recently begun to equal and even surpass those in the United States. Even Sweden, once the epitome of cosmopolitan
socialist prosperity, now has a crime victimization rate 20 percent higher than the United States.”
Bottom line: As long as you pay attention to where you are and especially your immediate surroundings, you’re generally safe. But if you blindly wander past the 10 guys hanging around the parking lot at 2am, you’re pretty much fucked. But then again, the same would be as true in London or Berlin as it is in New York or Detroit.
I’ve seen too many horror stories about Greyhound employees: ignorance, incompetence, contempt for customers, such as you usually don’t see this side of the Russian border.
For some reason there is an international myth that prostitution is illegal in the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, prostitution is such an important part of our culture that small brothels are routinely attached to many businesses and public facilities. When you visit the U.S., just look for the door marked “Women”! (Or the door marked “Men,” according to your preference.)
Not very funny
The cheapest NYC ATM’s are in McDonald’s. They only charge 99 cents. They are everywhere, and open 24 hours.
And you go counterclockwise in them.
And you’ll get screwed on the exchange rate and fees. If you have the kind of ATM card that works here (with a magnetic stripe), use that instead. Airports generally have ATMs. Or you could just use your credit cards. Most businesses, especially in large cities, do accept them. Most restaurants that aren’t fast-food places will, for example. Visa and Mastercard don’t like it when stores and restaurants have minimum amounts you can use a credit card for, so that’s not very common.
In Boston and some other cities, a driver’s license doubles as a license to hunt pedestrians and bicyclists.
We don’t make it easy in this country, do we? My stepdaughter, who now lives in Germany, was visiting recently and was broke until she transfered money from her German bank to her American bank. (We helped her out, of course, in the meantime). I asked her if she couldn’t just use the debit card from her German bank, and she said they don’t have those things over there. Conversely, Americans these days are usually advised to just use their American bank cards, instead of bothering to get the local currency, except for the small things.
And that’s about it.
BART does not go anywhere near San Jose, and you have to take a bus (for an extra fare) to get from BART to Oakland airport.
On paper, you can theoretically get almost anywhere on transit. There are over 40 separate transit agencies here. It’s when you realize that half of your journey is on local buses that only run every 30 minutes and you need to make three transfers that you realize how lousy the regional transit is here.
As someone who has traveled a lot outside the US…
The US is probably the most risky and unfriendly country to just randomly walk or drive and explore, IMO. Have a plan.
You will change from shopping tourist district to gun-toting mugger-alley crack-house in the space of a city block or two. Many other countries have their poor and slum districts, but still don’t hassle foreigners. The US’s “wrong side of the tracks” are actively dangerous and hostile.
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Carry either cash or a credit card (MasterCard and Visa are the safest). It’s tough to exchange money here: I live in a state that shares a 545-mile border with Canada and the banks all have signs saying they no longer accept Canadian money. Traveler’s checks are fine in most places, but when you’re near the middle of the country you may encounter store clerks that don’t know what they are.
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Women with certain accents (French and Russian come to mind) are likely to get hit on a lot. Many (most?) American men find the accents sexy.
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The U.S. is NOT a homogeneous society. Prices, politics, and attitudes vary wildly from place to place. We were just in Denver and a bar was advertising a “special” where you could get microbrewed beers for $4.00 a pint (I believe the standard price was $7.00. Around here, $3.00 is standard and $2.00 is common for a good microbrew.
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The sales tax issue is VERY complicated. States, counties, and cities can implement sales taxes. They apply to some items and not others (for example, we pay sales tax here on Pepsi in plastic bottles, but not Pepsi in cans). It ranges from zero in several states to 10% in some big cities.
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Tipping is also very complicated. Even locals don’t always know who (or when) to tip. A column in the local newspaper started a big debate about whether you should tip when you call in a “to go” order to a restaurant and drive there to pick it up. People don’t agree on whether bartenders should be tipped a percentage or a flat amount (a buck a drink, for example).
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Parks here are BIG. It can take five hours to drive all the way across Yellowstone National Park. You can easily get lost there. And the animals are WILD. People are regularly killed by moose and bison. It’s not just the predators you have to worry about.
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When you cross a state line, there is little fanfare and there are no checkpoints. On the other hand, many laws have changed. Be careful!
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Be careful with political discussions. Even people who sit and grumble about the U.S. government may get testy about foreigners bashing it.
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Things are very different between large cities and small towns. In New York City, for example, the word “fuck” is like “um” or “er.” It’s fuckin’ randomly in-fuckin’-serted in sentences everythefuckwhere. People even wear t-shirts that say “fuck you.” In many small towns, on the other hand, the word “fuck” is considered offensive, rude and low-class, and is never to be used where a child might overhear (even though the child may well be using it himself). Be careful with obscenities in general.
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Generally speaking, Americans are tolerant of all religions in a “don’t-ask-don’t tell” sense. Catholics and Protestants don’t shoot each other here. If you’re not flaunting your religion, it’s unlikely anybody will ask you about it.
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Very few sporting events here end in riots, and it’s highly unlikely that anyone will take a swing at you when you go to a game.
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Just about every state has laws against carrying an open container of alcohol in your car. You can even get ticketed for having a re-corked bottle of wine in a car that isn’t moving when every occupant of the car has a blood alcohol content of zero. They take this seriously and the fines are high.
I strenuously disagree. Unless you’re talking about the big cities, of course.
What do you mean by that exactly? If you don’t have a plan, you aren’t going to do too well because everything is so spread out and you would just end up driving a very long way without much to show for it. OTOH, I don’t see how too many places would be dangerous to drive around in. It isn’t like Detroit or East St. Louis are typical destinations. You could drive around New England for days and the only potential trouble spots you would find are places like Hartford, CT and New Haven, CT. Boston would suck but just because it is so confusing to travel around. The crime rate is higher in parts of the South but the people are generally friendly and eager to help.
Senator, is that you?