Info on American States?

[Aeson]

Texans? Drinking lots of beer? What are the odds?

I dunno, but in my mind, the idea of a group of guys getting a pick-up truck, loading the back with coolers of beer and either a) fishing rods or b) rifles just screams "Texas."

I think you might find that in almost any rural area not just Texas.

 

[Desdichado]

You do realize that something like 8% of all people in the US live in Texas, right? Texans would have to drink much more than average for this to be true...

About 7.5% according to 2003 Census data.

That's still significantly higher than average alcohol consumption, though.

And I don't know that Texas is highly rural compared to other states -- most of the poulation is clustered in some of the largest metropolitan sprawls in the nation -- Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin/San Antonio, etc.

 

[The_Universe]

Texans? Drinking lots of beer? What are the odds?

I dunno, but in my mind, the idea of a group of guys getting a pick-up truck, loading the back with coolers of beer and either a) fishing rods or b) rifles just screams "Texas."

This is the problem with defining things in terms of stereotypes, and not facts. Many texans might be willing participants in the stereotype, but it deosn't make it any more a universality than the fact that 1) Yes, I'm from South Dakota and 2) Yes, I *did* grow up on a farm. Despite that, even in a place like SD, a plurality of the population is in non-rural areas.

 

[Shemeska]

Get thee behind me, Gehenna-boy! SotB is indeed a tourist trap, but most of the people paying money to see it are from North Carolina.

... *stammer* Only because they sold decent fireworks! I have horror stories of that place from nearly every time my parents stopped there for gas on the way down to Myrtle beach when I was a kid.

South Carolina is separated into three geographic regions - Low country (along the coast) where the original crops were indigo and rice (more tobacco and cotton now, I believe), the piedmont (literally, foothills, which is heavily dependent on textile industry and is horribly suffering right now because of the drop in the textile industry, and the Up Country (higher elevated reaches, some lump the piedmont region in with the Up country).

You know, a point of similarity between N and S Carolina: you could just change South to North in what you said above, and it would still entirely apply

I of course grew up within a smaller seperate area of NC that's really a region of its own: The Sandhills. Exclusively longleaf pine forest in the middle of an otherwise deciduous region that was full of ritzy horse farms, golf courses, and retired yankees. Heck, my hometown actually held a fox hunt every year because of the horse enthusiasts and the nearly monolithic scotch/irish immigration into our particular region.

 

[MaxKaladin]

and using the "Confederacy" definition, Texas is "south" since it was part of the CSA.

Well, I've always thought Texas can be divided into at least two regions, the western part that's more like "Western" states and the eastern part that's more like "Southern" states.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I know you said this was sterotyped. The airport is THE busiest in the country. Charlotte is wishing they could be the most prominent but they have no hope.

There maybe redneck here but they are some of the nicest and most helpful people. If you meet a rude person here chances are their from some place else. We have a wide variety of ethnic groups here.

Better than some of the jerks we have here... I think we got transplanted yankees here.... (not to mention lots of mexicans)

Don't forget we have Dragoncon, Coca Cola,

Kewl!

Atlanta Falcons and Braves.

Feh and feh.

I'm a Panthers/Cowboys fan and don't watch baseball.

 

[der_kluge]

A while back when I was job hunting seriously, I'd occasionally get job offers for places out of the blue - like Pierre, South Dakota, or Boise Idaho. I mean, talk about some cities totally not on my radar scope.

While I'm sure those are fine cities (aside from being too blasted cold in the winter time), I had no desire to work in either one.

And then it occurred to me, that this was an area in which an Indian consultant was probably more valuable than I was as an American. We're probably the only citizens of a country simply unwilling to relocate to certain parts of the country. For example, you'd have to pay me craploads of money to work in Pierre, SD; Fargo ND; Boise, ID, or Biloxi, MS, to name a few. But someone from another country wouldn't have those reservations; even any preconceived notions about those places. That's probably appealing to recruiters.

I used to work for Wal-Mart in Bentonville, AR. B'ville is a great town, it's always growing, the schools are really nice, and the people are really friendly, and the area is really pretty. But someone in HR admitted to me once that they have an extremely hard time hiring people simply because most people wouldn't think of living there. They even had a guy drive down from St. Louis for an interview, and then turn around and drive back once he made it to the city, and didn't even bother with the interview, because he knew he wouldn't be happy there.

Funny.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

And when the weather man says "chance of flurries" there is a run on milk and bread in the stores, for some strange reason. One time it really did snow, the Blizzard of 93 dropped about a foot of snow in Birmigham, shut the city down for a bout a week. We just don't deal with that often enough to have the resources on hand to adress it.

It seems that's true of any state in the south. People do that here in North Carolina as well... And our "snow budget" is gone after one or two good snows (meaning those where you actually have to pull out the salt trucks and maybe, just maybe, the plows).

Oh, one more thing about regions in the US: "Delaware ain't the South!" North Carolina is only vaguely the South. When someone around here says "South" they mean "Deep South." If you refer to it as a "Pea-Con" Pie you are from the south, if you say "Pe-cAn" you might be a Yankee trying to pass.

The south stops at the Mason-Dixon Line.

Florida isn't "the South" either. It just happens to live down here.

Considering just how many "transplanted" yankees there are in Florida...

 

[Warehouse23]

It has been said that Florida is a large chunk of Long Island that broke off, floated south, and got snagged on a southern coral reef...

(for our non-US friends, Long Island is an affluent area outside of New York City, an island, from which many people have retired to Florida from)

 

[RandomPrecision]

I was going for the McDonald's we all loath and hate today. I'm think the restaurant started by the brothers was different.

It's both. Ray Kroc heard about the McDonald's hambuger stand in California and opened a restaurant in Des Plaines. Kroc sold a milkshake-making-machine called the Mulitixer, I believe, and the McDonalds had eight of them, so Kroc figured he'd be able to sell just as many in the subsequent restaurants.