Regional Idiosyncrasies

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Kansas City, Missouri and it's 'burbs

We like dead animals, slow-cooked in Barbecue sauce, dry rub, or anything else that tastes good to a carnivore.
Seriously. Kansas City = Barbecue. One of the Editors of Rolling Stone Magazine believes that Arthur Bryant's is the greatest restaurant on the planet. He could very well be right. Most average people that have spent any length of time know how to do ribs, and do them right. Whether one prefers getting yelled at upon entering by a young black woman at Gates, "CAN AH TAKE YO ORDER!?" or prefers the country diner feel but great taste of Stilwell Smokehouse, or argues over which Fiorella brother runs a better restaurant(but eats at both anyway) or thinks that Hayward Spears is the man, Barbecue lives in Kansas City.
Rush Limbaugh's favorite place to dine was a fried chicken joint in a decrepit, eighty year old "shanty" on the side of a road under a bridge. Sadly, the original Stroud's was torn down last year, to widen 85th street. That probably sent Rush on another one of his diatribes..

Buck O'Neil!!!!!! Royals? Who are they again?
Kansas City is home to the Negro League Baseball Museum and hall of fame. Buck was a beacon of how a person should be. Caring, humble, patient, Buck was all of those, and the first person of color to coach a Major League Baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, in 1962. He managed the Kansas Cit Monarchs for two years, and lated helped found the Negro League Musum. Buck was up to be in the hall of fame, but was not nominated a little over a year ago. But he took it in stride, saying "If I'm a Hall of Famer for you, that's all right with me. Just keep loving old Buck. Don't weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful." Buck passed away last year, after enduring some medical difficulties for several weeks. Mr. O'Neal, you will be missed.
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Heh, my surname is Stilwell. :)
 
In california we tax the hell out of everyone to fund misguided social programs and then complain that we don't have enough tax revenue.

Oh and we ban things. It's like living in a state run by the FIA.
 
Gotta say it doesn't sound as bad as the UK taxing everything to do with cars and driving them though. :scared:
 
I'm originally from New Hampshire and was surprised that some of the food that I enjoy is either not in Florida (where I'm stuck now, obviously), or is called something different.

Fish is not exactly my favorite thing to eat, but when it comes time to eat fish, Haddock is the only thing I enjoy eating. Unfortunately, Haddock is a northern fish, so when I asked my friends if they had ever had it, they had no clue what I was talking about.

One of my favorite meals of all time is American chop suey. All it is is ziti with fried hamburg, mixed together in a pot with tomato sauce. You probably know this dish as Goulash. After many explanations as to what the hell I was talking about to my friends, I searched on google only to find that the name originated in Boston. Now that I look at the name from a different perspective, it makes no sense at all, but calling it that and seeing it on lunch menu's for so many years tricked me I guess. I will still forever call it American chop suey though, Goulash just makes it sound like an unappetizing meal.
 
philly cheese
And if you want to blend in, don't bother with an umbrella. Bring a raincoat and suck it up like the rest of us.:sly:
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That's right. Despite being notoriously soggy, umbrellas are verboten in Western Washington. I think it's because it really doesn't rain very hard here, so you can walk through it for a couple minutes without actually getting wet.

Another thing about this part of the country that disturbs me is that many, many people don't seem to care about their appearance. Go to the airport and find a flight to Seattle. You'll see some pretty fat and ugly people, probably wearing socks with sandals. Maybe because its so dark and gloomy for six months of the year, we just assume that we can't see each other.
 
South Florida doesn't have a dress code; 99% of the time, you can wear whatever you want, whenever you want. Nobody really cares, unless it's a fancy restaurant or a too-hip nightclub, or if you wear a fur coat to the beach. People from "up north" always remark that's odd.

///M-Spec
Funnily enough, you can chart the progress of southern culture while driving south along the Florida coast. In North Florida and Georgia (not Atlanta), tea is sweet by default (though at restaurants, they may ask if you like sweet or unsweet). Once you hit the Orlando area, sweet tea becomes more rare. By the time you hit Broward and Dade County (Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area), the waitress will tell you there's sugar on the table if you want sweet tea :lol:
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A well-explained description of the state of iced tea in Florida. I've been accused of being from Georgia when I ordered tea at a restaurant in Ocala.
 
Danoff
In california we tax the hell out of everyone to fund misguided social programs and then complain that we don't have enough tax revenue.

Oh and we ban things. It's like living in a state run by the FIA.
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Why don't you get outta there?


I've really enjoyed reading these, by the way. 👍
 
Danoff
Same reason everyone stays... work. I like my job, strike that, I love my job. Don't know where else I could go that I would like it so much.
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This is what I don't understand about your plea, or the one of everyone else who doesn't stop complaining about their governments. You obviously don't like the way things are being governed, so why don't you do something to change it?

Since you probably have tried and maybe still are, you have to face the fact that the majority of the population disagrees with you. That's nobody's fault but your own that you live in the minority demographic. Since you won't leave the state because "I don't wanna" kind of removes your right to whine about the way the majority of the population feels in your democracy.

Since you no doubt are going to grill me for this, I'm going to sit back. It just irks me when you keep complaining about this.
 
exigeracer
Since you probably have tried and maybe still are, you have to face the fact that the majority of the population disagrees with you. That's nobody's fault but your own that you live in the minority demographic.
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I'll save him the trouble of quoting his own sig, which was right in front of you.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). - Ayn Rand


And the great thing about American politics is that you can change things for the better. Imagine if our founding fathers had said, "You know what, I don't like how the King is treating us. Let's go see what the French colonies are like instead."

Who is more respectable, the man that stays to fight for change for what he believes is morally correct and are principals his government was founded on or the man who says, "Screw you guys, I'm going home?"
 
Aside from the obvious morality argument that Foolkiller has already done me the service of explaining....

exigeracer
It just irks me when you keep complaining about this.
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Imagine for a moment that there was one job that you loved. One career that above all else, you wanted to pursue. Now imagine that there is only one place in the world that does the work you want to do, and you get a job there. But it happens to be someplace you don't want to live.

Would you complain? Yes, I chose to live here. But it's really a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. I can complain about being damned right?
 
Out of curiosity, have you checked Houston, Huntsville, or Cape Canaveral?

I believe I heard once they had spacecraft related stuff. At least that's what they told me at Space Camp. All the rockets just lying around seemed to confirm it.
 
FoolKiller
Out of curiosity, have you checked Houston, Huntsville, or Cape Canaveral?

I believe I heard once they had spacecraft related stuff. At least that's what they told me at Space Camp. All the rockets just lying around seemed to confirm it.
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I'm familiar. I'll PM you to explain.
 
exigeracer
Since you won't leave the state because "I don't wanna" kind of removes your right to whine about the way the majority of the population feels in your democracy.
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Nothing removes that right.
 
exigeracer
Since you no doubt are going to grill me for this, I'm going to sit back. It just irks me when you keep complaining about this.
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You don't understand that California is run by idiots. Big idiots. And for whatever reason, everytime one idiot is voted out, he (or she) is replaced by an even bigger idiot with even more idiotic ideas. It's a very bizzare state.
 
Kylehnat
You don't understand that California is run by idiots. Big idiots. And for whatever reason, everytime one idiot is voted out, he (or she) is replaced by an even bigger idiot with even more idiotic ideas. It's a very bizzare state.
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So vote them out. Or change things. Nobody seems to be changing things if the same problems are recurring every time.

I guess if you are staying in the "damned" state, it can't be bothering you enough to completely uproot and go live somewhere else instead of giving away the money you earned to a government you don't support. Can the murderer, who knew his crime and that he was going to get caught, whine when his freedom is removed?

Call me ignorant, but I'm not going to waste time typing replies when, like I've said time and time again, everything political on this forum is divided liberal and conservative, and the big cats are all licking their paws in the same camp. PM me things instead of wasting someone else's thread.
 
exigeracer
I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is one of the oldest cities on the continent, so it has such a distinct culture than any other city I've been to in North America.
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I forget if it was that, or Québec City—one of them was chosen as a World Heritage site, being the only one in North America. I seem to recall reading that the Americans were super pissed off because Boston wasn't chosen, either.

I've been to Québec a couple times now, amazing city. I plan on going there this summer for the 2008 400th-year anniversary, which should be fun.

But it's funny. . . Québec is so different from most cities in Ontario. It may have been my glaringly obvious tourist-ness, or something else, but it seemed the people there all had a very insiders-only-like acceptance to people. There were certainly some interesting characters there—not like Toronto.

In Toronto, everyone is very impartial to your existence—not showing either glee or dissatisfaction at much of what you do. It's so metropolitan that not much phases the common citizen.

But in Quebec, at least in my experience at least, people are so reactionary. They either love you or hate you.

I was shopping in some nice outfitters in the old section of Upper Quebec, about 5 mins from the Chateau, and the employees in there were so nice and friendly it was a bit frightening. The waitresses (at chains*) were all so cheery and polite, it was like you were the only customers in all night.

The pubs, though, were quite different. My friend tried to get into an Irish (yes...Irish pub in French Canadia) and he almost thrown out for talking about the Queen! They all urged him to go yell "**** the Queen!" in the street if he wanted to stay (when he did, he got free beer[!!]).

I'll always remember the cabs/taxis in Quebec—insane. They are the craziest drivers I've ever encountered. Reversing down one-way streets the entire length, driving over curbs in front of valet sections, doing 100mph on the highway, getting into roadrage incidents in traffic. . .

Anyway, that's my bit about a different place. I might say something about Toronto/Cambridge/Guelph area later.
 
Year.Zero
I'll always remember the cabs/taxis in Quebec—insane. They are the craziest drivers I've ever encountered. Reversing down one-way streets the entire length, driving over curbs in front of valet sections, doing 100mph on the highway, getting into roadrage incidents in traffic. . .
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A big issue in Quebec is the language differences and "tension" between English and French. I've got French friends and English friends, but I do get "tête caré" every now and then though.

That said, the taxi cabs are nuts. They know the roads, like most taxi drivers, but these guys know circulation and exactly when to change lanes. Just follow a taxi off-fare for a while and you'll know traffic in no time.
 
Well I'm from Fairfax, Virginia and probably the most prominent custom of its inhabitants are being stupid drivers. This includes driving slow in the fast lane and fast in the slow lane, never using your turn signal, making illegal turns and cutting other people off. It's not the worst, but it's pretty bad.
Drivers here also have a grand tradition of slowing down to about 20 mph when it's precipitating. Another tradition, which I quite like, is that the school administrators freak out when they see a snowflake and consequently we have a lot of snow days. The snowplows/road sanders also have a tendency to take a REALLY long time to clear the roads. Other than this, we don't really have any city-wide traditions since we're close to DC and so there's a lot of different ethnicities here. But we do come up with EXTREMELY lame comebacks.

:-)
 
exigeracer
A big issue in Quebec is the language differences and "tension" between English and French. I've got French friends and English friends, but I do get "tête caré" every now and then though.

That said, the taxi cabs are nuts. They know the roads, like most taxi drivers, but these guys know circulation and exactly when to change lanes. Just follow a taxi off-fare for a while and you'll know traffic in no time.
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Is there as big an indie-kid culture in Montréal and Québec as there is in Toronto/Tri-City area?

I have a few friends who are pretty hardcore Indie that played at Pop Montréal this past year.
 

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