Strange questions about your town

[Grnidwitch]

Is Chicago really that windy?

You bet it is. There have been times that guide ropes are put up to help get you around certain corners in the city.

And yes, the St. Valentines Day Massacre site is haunted.

 

[Paisley]

Denver--that's in the mountains! (No, it's actually on the plains. But you can see the Rocky Mountains from Denver.)

It snows a lot there! (We get 13" of precipitation a year. So, not really.)

 

[Amy Jeanne]

My husband is from London, England and he has this conversation all the time:

"You're not from around here! Where are you from?"
"London."
"Why did you move here??"
"Because my wife is from here."
"But why would you want to leave Australia?" :eusa_doh:

As for the people who actually know where London is, he gets the obligatory "You must like The Beatles/Monty Python/Coldplay" questions. He doesn't care for any of them. To his dismay, he gets lots of Beatles questions. As you know, they're the only thing to EVER come out of England and everyone there just loves them!!!! lol

 

[Kim_B]

People often ask if there really is more than corn in Indiana...I'm tempted to break into song, singing the advertisement from the Indiana Beach commercials. As I was vacationing with my parents once when I was young and wearing a t-shirt from said amusement park, I heard some one say "There ain't no beach in Indiana!"

(For any one curious as to what exactly Indiana Beach is, this is a pretty neat history of the amusement park founded in 1926 http://www.indianabeach.com/information/about/history.htm)

 

[beaucaillou]

I haven't lived here long enough to get the silly questions.

But when I speak of my hometown, Chicago, the first thing people inevitably ask is:

"Is it really that windy?"

And then I explain that it "didn't get the name because of the weather, but because of pomposity arrogance... you simpleton." (No. I don't really add that last bit, but I've considered it.)

Or, if you say 'Chicago' they immediately say, "Michael Jordan! Al Capone!" Yep. Throw in Oprah and you've said everything there is to say about Chicago.

 

[RedPop4]

Madill is rolling over in his grave, along with Potter Palmer.

For whatever reason , Hollywood seems to think we talk lahk we'uh raid necks heeyah in Nyeeeeeeew ORLEENZ. When, because of immigration through the port of New Orleans over the years, we sound more like Hoboken or Brooklyn. Although TV is breaking the accent, we're slowly becoming like the rest of the nation.

 

[beaucaillou]

Madill is rolling over in his grave, along with Potter Palmer.

Exactly. and don't forget Long John Wentworth & Mr. Burnham!

You mean those from NOLA don't spend their days eating Beignets and standing on the streets listening to musicians?!? Surprising.

 

[dhermann1]

I was on the subway the other day (I seem to spend half my life on the subway) and overheard a group of French tourists trying to explain to each other the exact definition of the term "Yankee". I'll leave it to LizzieMaine to precisely clarificate that. Needless to say, they had some odd ideas.

 

[fourstarbanner]

My hometown is in Iowa, and I moved to South Dakota to go to college. One question I get asked both places is, "Do you have cell phones there?"

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was on the subway the other day (I seem to spend half my life on the subway) and overheard a group of French tourists trying to explain to each other the exact definition of the term "Yankee". I'll leave it to LizzieMaine to precisely clarificate that. Needless to say, they had some odd ideas.

We don't use it much here, actually, at least not in conversation with each other -- perhaps due to the unfortunate baseball connotations. You find it most often in the names of cutesy shops that cater to the tourist trade: Ye Olde Yankee Gifte Shoppe, The Old Yankee Trader, Salty Yankee Seadog's B&B. Basically, we think of the whole Yankee thing as a way of exploiting the New England stereotype for fun and profit.

We call ourselves "Mainahs." And if you can't pronounce it right, you ain't one.

 

[Grace]

I once got asked if I rode a dog-sled to school:eusa_doh: (I was travelling at the time)
I responded with 'normally yes, but we had to eat the dogs to survive the winter, so now I walk' the look was priceless!lol

lol!!!

That is priceless!


On the outskirts of my small, slightly backwoodsy 50k town on one of the old highways is a large sign which reads:
Warning to Tourists: Do Not Laugh at the Natives.

(I'm not native to the area, don't worry)

I live in Idaho, so of course it's the inevitable "Do you eat alot of potatoes??"

Strangely, most the potatoes here in the stores are from Maine.

 

[pigeon toe]

Some kid from the east coast once asked me if I surfed to school. First of all, this was when I lived in Northern California where the water is shark-infested (well kind of at least) and FREEZING!

Of course I said, "Yeah, you didn't know that? Everyone surfs to school in California!"

 

[Cacklewack]

Regarding my hometown of Soldotna, Alaska:

• "Did you live in an igloo?"

• "Are there any women there?"

Regarding Portland, Oregon:

• "Oreegone?"

• "Are there protests every day?"

Matt

 

[WH1]

One of my all time favorites, my mother a native oregonian was at a party in NYC in 1962 and a very earnest, nice lady asked her if there had been any recent indian attacks.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

When I lived in New York City in the 70's and early 80's, my mother came to visit, looked up and down a subway tunnel and said, "Where's all the violence?" I told her to keep her eyes pealed on the tunnel and soon McCloud would come galloping by on a horse chasing a junkie.

In San Diego, people always assumed I lived on or near the beach. There is a "beach mentality" in San Diego, but most people live inland and may only see the ocean a couple times a year.

In Iowa, not just Des Moines (pronounced Desss Moynes, Dez Monez, Dee Moynes, etc.), people ask me if it is flat here. Most people have only flown over Iowa and, looking down at what looks like a large patchwork quilt, assume it is flat. No, I say, some parts are fairly flat, but mostly it is rolling river hills, fields and woods and quaint small towns. Some parts of the state have cliffs and mini mountains, too, and north western part reminds me more of Minnesota with its many lakes and piney woods.

karol

 

[Novella]

How about strange questions about your country?

I've been asked if football quarterbacks are as respected in real life as they are on TV shows/movies.

I've also been asked, "Isn't it insulting to call an American a Yankee?" As a Californian, I could personally care less.

I occasionally have to defend my university from its party school reputation from other Californians. People actually learn there too?! :eusa_doh: But I'm used to that. In high school I went to my town's poorer, underdog, bad standarized test results high school so I sort of take it as a point of pride to prove people's misconceptions wrong.

 

[carebear]

Regarding my hometown of Soldotna, Alaska:

• "Did you live in an igloo?"

• "Are there any women there?"

Matt

Do you tell the truth when they ask when Slow-dotna got its first actual stop light?

I still get the "dogsled to school", the above mentioned "igloo" and "lack of women", and the "dark all the time" comments when travelling.

When traveling with my folks years ago I've had store clerks in Ohio call their manager to make sure they could take our "foreign" credit card and had a cabbie in Florida mention he collected foreign coins and did we have any coins from where we were from. My father quite congenially handed him a quarter.

We get the "You're from Alaska? Oh, you must know [blank]." pretty frequently as well. What's scary is that the 6 degrees of seperation rule actually seems to work well for folks who've lived here any length of time.

It isn't quite so bad nowadays, but in the '70's there were some odd ideas about Alaska floating around. It is flattering that people find the State so interesting. Most conversations end with "I've always wanted to travel up there."

 

[jamespowers]

It isn't quite so bad nowadays, but in the '70's there were some odd ideas about Alaska floating around. It is flattering that people find the State so interesting. Most conversations end with "I've always wanted to travel up there."

Well, there was that earthquake (8.4-8.6 second largest ever recorded)you had there in 1964 that made portions of the towns sink---such as this in Anchorage:

Then there was the resulting tsumani that hit Kodiak:

Is the area you are in still floating? Did the earthquake tear off a part and dump it into the ocean?


Regards,

J

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Another thing that used to bother me when I lived in New York City: Someone would say, "aren't you from Ohio?" No, Iowa. Someone else would say, "aren't you from Idaho?" No....

To them, Ohio was midwestern, to an Iowan, Ohio is east. And forget Idaho. No one knew where it was.

Or they would ask me to "say something Iowan," to which I assume they wanted me to say "Aww shucks!"

karol

 

[carebear]

Well, there was that earthquake (8.4-8.6 second largest ever recorded)you had there in 1964 that made portions of the towns sink---such as this in Anchorage:

Is the area you are in still floating? Did the earthquake tear off a part and dump it into the ocean?


Regards,

J

Recently upgraded to 9.2 actually. The house I grew up in was pre-earthquake. I used to play in what used to be the contiguous neighborhood that slid 100 feet down a cliff into the ocean, now called (cleverly) Earthquake Park. 15 years after the quake and bits of houses and stuff were still coming up out of the mud.

Now it's all green and you can't tell anything ever happened.