Culture Differences: Eastern vs Western US

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I love this advice!</p>

<p>This is such a great thread! Now that both of my children are in college, I’ve been seriously considering moving. I live in a small southern town outside a larger city. I’ve been here for years, but will never, ever “belong” since my roots are not from this town. I’m comfortable here, but not content. Does that make sense?</p>

<p>I’ve been told that I would love California. My concern about leaving the South is that I will never have great BBQ again, have trouble buying grits, and stick out like a sore thumb with my slight drawl. </p>

<p>I’ve been lucky to have lived in Boston, Atlanta, Akron, Tampa, and sundry other locations. So many of the regional differences have been mentioned in this thread. The one uniting tie I’ve found that binds each region together is that people everywhere are nice and willing to be helpful - just in ways that are regionally unique. Most people will point the way or answer a question. It’s the lingering-over-the-conversation factor that seems to vary. </p>

<p>Northerners seem to have a more pragmatic approach to life. For example, in Boston I was rear ended. It was a small bump from behind and the other driver stuck his head out the window and called out to me, “There’s no damage,” then drove off. Sure enough, when I got out and checked, there was no damage. In the South, we would have gotten out of our cars, realized there was no damage, then talked for a few minutes to diffuse the tension. </p>

<p>Maybe weather plays a role in how folks interact with each other. Why get out of the car in freezing weather when a shout out the window will do? Why rush around in the heat (of the South) and work up a sweat? :)</p>

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<p>Ah, You are thinking of people (the ones that most of us do not know) who live in some very wealthy snobby community that play tennis and whose kids go to exclusive private schools. Those people are the very minute minority who (I guess) live somewhere in the Northeast, like Long Island or maybe Boston, Main line in Philadelphia? Certainly not the “east coast” I agree that caring about where one was “from” in that sense would be rude. I have never experienced that in my 50+ years.</p>

<p>Speaking of coastal differences, I’ve always found it funny when Californians tend to talk about the East Coast as if we were one homogenous area instead of multiple states, each with it’s own set of history/values/laws etc. Is that from not visiting out this way? </p>

<p>I think I’ve traveled more then most adults, so maybe I’m one of the few that finds it weird that it’s assumed that because the East Coast (in general) is more populated then the west coast, that we all live in snobby cities when the reality is that many of us live in small towns. I’m guessing that we small town dwellers, in whatever part of the country, have more in common with each other then people that live in the cities in our same states.</p>

<p>Busdriver and Kitty: indeed I engaged in a bit of exaggeration. But I do remember the mid-1980s when the locals in our end of town began to complain about seeing so many BMWs at the parking lot at SouthCenter. LOL. Conspicuous consumption was probably on greater display at Bellevue Square or Peter Kirk Place.</p>

<p>But true, Seattle is probably still more casual socially than many other newly affluent metropolitan areas. And thank goodness that public transit still attracts support from the middle class. New York and Seattle are about the only places I’ve been where commuting professionals consider public transit a great asset. In Atlanta, for example, public transit has few friends.</p>

<p>By the way, I’ve never seen so many mint-condition drive everyday old American cars than in the Southland. Land-barge Buicks and Chryslers from the 1970s without the slightest scratch, dent or rust. Now that’s a regional distinction!</p>

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@colmom2two -You can get pretty good BBQ even in NY. Though I’ll admit the further north you go the harder it is. We had adequate BBQ in Boston a couple of weeks ago - after having struck out twice on previous occasions! My dh is a BBQ fanatic, and I’ve had it everywhere! With the Great Migration BBQ is available in most cities that African Americans ended up in. My grocery stores have grits, but you could always mail order them.</p>

<p>My Florida sister-in-law has spent over 30 years in New England and hasn’t lost her accent. LOL about cars in the Southland, we noticed the same thing 30 years ago!</p>

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<p>There are barbeque places in California of various varieties. Grits are easy to find in the grocery stores’ hot cereal sections.</p>

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<p>I think it is because our state is so huge, and yours are much smaller. It seems like many East Coasters live in one state and work in another, like NJ-NY-CT or MD-DC-VA, which is relatively rare in CA. So sometimes I don’t always see a big distinction among the people and use East Coaster to encompass it all. I have lived in NJ and VA and visited NY, MA, CT, PA, RI, for work or pleasure, so I am not totally unfamiliar with it.</p>

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I see what you are saying, sort of, but the commuters are just the people on the very edge of a state. Every person, in every state wants to feel that their state and their area is unique so I think it’s a sort of slam when we’re all lumped together as East Coasters - and not in a good way. Just as I would guess Californians don’t like to be thought of as airhead hippies, east coasters do not like to thought of as aggressive snobs.</p>

<p>mathmom: Hmmm . . . pretty good or adequate BBQ? That just won’t do for me. I am picky about which BBQ I eat - each region of the South has its own distinct sauce. Not only can’t I stand mustard-based sauces, I have grown to love the BBQ served in my area (by both AA and White chefs - frankly, I can’t tell the difference by who makes it.) </p>

<p>When I lived in Boston my (then) H and I tried some BBQ. We laughed because it was basically ketchup poured over the meat. When H’s brother came to visit he brought some BBQ from home in an insulated container. As soon as my brother-in-law walked in the door, H and I grabbed the bag and tore into the BBQ with barely so much as a “How was your trip?” lol</p>

<p>When DD and I traveled to Virginia a few years ago, we tried BBQ and realized very quickly that “this just doesn’t taste right!” I think I am a BBQ snob. </p>

<p>Good to know about the grits, though.</p>

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<p>That is interesting; I’ve never hear that before and will try to be more sensitive. Those feelings are consistent with the “need to know where you are from,” that we were talking about, in the sense that the precise place from whence you originate must mean something important to East Coast people. </p>

<p>I refer to myself as a “West Coast” person frequently, and would not at all be offended if others mistook me for an Oregonian or Washingtonian.</p>

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<p>Heck, here in San Diego people pride themselves in being Not Los Angeles. The two cities are a hundred miles apart and also have different values, etc. But my guess that most people from the any region of the east coast would lump the residents of those two cities into the same bucket. And don’t even get the San Franciscans started on how different they are from LA (or San Diego).</p>

<p>I grew up in Western New York, where people are decent and friendly and down to earth (it’s hard to be snobby when you might need someone to dig you out of a snowy ditch). My brother lives in the midwest – he says people are the same there – they would never think to boast about how much money they have or name drop. When I started working in NYC, it floored me how rude some people are. They’d ask a question, you’d pause, thinking, and if you didn’t come back with a response asap, they’d say “hello? did I wake you up?”</p>

<p>When I told D down to college in Georgia, we stopped at CVS. The girl behind the counter smiled and said “hello ma’am can I help you?” Of course I turned around to see who she was talking to :)</p>

<p>^^^^Talk about sterotypes^^^^ that post is ridiculous…</p>

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…but better the clam boils</p>

<p>sorry dog – I guess one person’s true life experience is another person’s ridiculous stereotype. Nice to see you’re in the friendly part of the country.</p>

<p>colmom, I promise no ketchup! The problem with the more upscale BBQ places is that they often feel obliged to prepare different styles, so you’ll get both NC styled pulled pork with a vinegar based sauce and Texas beef ribs with a great rub. Not every place will do everything equally well, and we find that some days the ribs will be great and the next time it’s the brisket. But the meat is smoked and the sauces are good. The AA places tend to be smaller, more take-out based, with just one style that they do well.</p>

<p>I do think the “where are you from” question is much more important in the East (and I mean mainly the Northeast) than in the West, but it’s a question that operates on many levels. I’ve been in small towns in rural New England where someone moving in from the outside would be seen as an outsider even after 20 years of residency. In Manhattan, on the other hand, most people you meet in professional settings are from somewhere else; but I’ve still felt there was a certain tendency to try to pigeonhole people by region of origin, by ethnicity, by educational background, and so on. “Where did you go to school?” (meaning college) and even, in certain circles, “Where did you prep?” are questions you’ll hear frequently in the Northeast; much less so in other parts of the country. </p>

<p>I had a roommate in grad school who was very proudly working class Irish Catholic, born-and-bred in Queens, son of a NYC cop, who insisted Manhattanites as a whole were"not real New Yorkers" because they “were all from someplace else.” On the other hand, many people I knew in Manhattan regarded Manhattanites as the only “true New Yorkers,” unlike the “borough people” who were just that, not really of or from “the City,” a less cosmopolitan (and implicitly less worthy) lot.</p>

<p>In contrast, one becomes accepted as a Californian almost instantly. Well, perhaps upon acquiring a California driver’s license, but that can happen pretty fast. No one much cares where you came from, where you went to school, or who your people are. Everyone came from somewhere else, in many cases in part to get away from confining structures of class, ethnicity, neighborhood, religion, educational pedigree, and such. Those structures tend to be much looser in the West; in the East, they still operate as an important part of the social fabric, a big part of how people are organized and how many people make sense of their own world and their place in it, and how they perceive others. The pigeonholing that goes on isn’t necessarily closed-minded or mean-spirited; it’s just a handy heuristic, though like any heuristic it’s only so accurate and it may result in a lot of inappropriate stereotyping.</p>

<p>That said, business and professional circles in places like Manhattan and Washington, DC are much more of a meritocracy, open to new entrants so long as they come with the right educational credentials and professional chops. That’s also true to a considerable degree at elite colleges and universities. Yet I think a certain amount of pigeonholing still goes on. I’m sorry to report that my D1, who has actually lived more of her life in the Northeast than in the Midwest (with a year in California sandwiched in between), faced a certain amount of it upon her arrival at her Northeastern LAC. Naturally she was asked “Where are you from?” She would explain that she mostly grew up in New York City but was now living in Minnesota, but the only part of that answer the other students would hear was “Minnesota,” whereupon someone would invariably fall into an exaggerated version of the already-exaggerated Minnesota/North Dakota accent used by the characters in the movie “Fargo” (produced and directed by native Minnesotans Joel and Ethan Coen who knew how to overplay the accent of some, especially rural, Minnesotans to comic effect). They’d then ask my daughter to “speak Minnesotan” and express amazement and disappointment that she didn’t sound at all like they expected. In other words, that she didn’t conform to their cultural stereotype. It wasn’t intended to be demeaning or hurtful, though at some level it was; and at some level it was a statement that the stereotype was more important to them than getting to know the person. Interestingly, though, stuff like that has actually driven my D into being more of a Midwesterner and a Minnesotan than she was when she left for college. She had always considered herself a displaced New Yorker, until she went back to the Northeast where she felt she wasn’t really fully accepted, stereotyped as an outsider. Now she’s much more inclined to come back to Minnesota whenever she can, she more thoroughly embraces it as “home,” and is starting to think about how she could make a life here after college.</p>

<p>Classof2015</p>

<p>I seriously doubt you have ever met a person who boasted how much money they make…and by just observing how they dress or what car they drive is no indication of their wealth or lack of it…</p>

<p>On the fat vs thin thing - I think that’s partly due to city/suburban living. Folks in the city that do a lot more walking are probably thinner. I see a lot of bigger people in Southern NH where it is more like suburban living because everyone travels in cars.</p>

<p>When I first came east, it was annoying that New Yorkers invariably meant ‘California’ when they used the term ‘west coast.’ And Lord, they had no earthly idea were Seattle was located, AND…when they pronounced the name of the state north of California as ‘Oh-ree-GONE’ I would grit my teeth. Ugh!!! And why do eastern greenhorns say ‘Wursh-ing-ton State’ but also 'George WASH-ing-ton. Ugh, ugh!!! Now back to your regularly scheduled program.</p>

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<p>A sedentary lifestyle may well be a contributing factor, but in my observation there ARE regional differences that go beyond that. </p>

<p>I live in the suburbs of San Diego. Everyone drives everywhere, and here we have some skinny people, some normal weight, and some who are overweight. A few years ago I was visiting a medium-large city in the midwest and went shopping while I was there. At one point as I was walking around the mall I looked around and realized I was the only skinny or normal weight person in sight. I said to myself “Wow, I have never seen so many fat-a$$ed white people in all my life.” It was remarkable. I don’t know what their diet is like in that town, but whatever it was I do not recommend it for anyone looking to maintain a normal weight.</p>