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No matter how dismissive one is of the midwest, how could you be ignorant of the existence of a major metro area like Minneapolis-St. Paul? Per [0], it's the 16

No matter how dismissive one is of the midwest, how could you be ignorant of the existence of a major metro area like Minneapolis-St. Paul? Per [0], it's the 16th largest in the U.S. Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB). I dunno, I almost just don't believe the OP's anecdotes, unless they are talking to recent arrivals to the U.S. from other countries. I'm from a significantly smaller Midwestern city than Minneapolis, and I don't recall anyone ever saying "where's that" or "are there buildings there" when I say where I'm from. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area Edit: Based on comments it seems many do agree with OPs view. Maybe it's a California/SV thing, I've never lived there. But I've been in the south/east/mountain regions and never encountered this level of ignorance that civilization exists in the Midwest (whether real or feigned.)

aspaceman 5y ago
I grew up pretty close to Chicago and folks in California still call me "corn boy".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- almost_usual 5y ago
  Really? I grew up in literal cornfields and no one I know who grew up in California says stuff like this.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I bet you don't live in a large city though? This sounds like small town nickname games. Source: I grew up in a small town where everyone had to have a nickname.
pech0rin 5y ago
I am from Indianapolis and regularly have people not know anything about it so I dont find this to be an exaggeration. The anecdotes really ring true for me so sounds like you arent from the midwest.
- scruple 5y ago
  I'm from Ohio, by way of Pennsylvania, and have been living in SoCal since 2008. When I tell people out here that I'm from Ohio they reflexively think I'm talking about Iowa.
  - couchand 5y ago
    Then you might appreciate this line of shirts from Iowa's biggest little t-shirt company: https://www.raygunsite.com/products/ohio-1 https://www.raygunsite.com/products/ohio-1
    - scruple 5y ago
      That's extremely on point, I love it. edit/ These are so good, thanks for the link. https://www.raygunsite.com/collections/the-midwest/products/midwest-map-1 https://www.raygunsite.com/collections/the-midwest/products/...
  - Eiriksmal 5y ago
    That's hilarious. I recently moved to Idaho, the other I state. People occasionally call it Iowa multiple times in the same conversation! Similar to that Ohio/Iowa shirt, there's also an excellent one sold at the hipster grocery stores in Boise that has the outline of Idaho with some lovely drawings of a farmer working a field of (presumably) potatoes... IOWA is printed across it in huge, bold letters. The Idaho<>Iowa confusion must extend past my circle of friends and coworkers. That being said, I'll freely admit I don't know where Des Moines is inside Iowa's confines.
- jacob019 5y ago
  Greetings fellow Hoosier. It has been my experience as well at west coast conferences, some people think we are all from some redneck farm in the middle of nowhere. I think the close mindedness says more about them than us.
henriquez 5y ago
I’ve spent years doing engineering work in both Silicon Valley and the Twin Cities and the anecdotes are apt. This take on Minnesota life (and peoples’ reaction to it) is spot on. It was hard for me and my partner to get over the passive aggressiveness and silent racism so we left the Twin Cities but it still sure as hell beat living in Bay Area from a quality of life standpoint.
- satronaut 5y ago
  what silent racism?
  - ARandomerDude 5y ago
  - yourapostasy 5y ago
    Kind of like this [1] [2] [3]. In my personal anecdotal experience, I found the US Midwest culture's handling of conflict shares a lot in common with what I saw in Japan. It is not too surprising to me the homogeneity enforcement follows similar structures in both cultures. This has a good side to it, though. Once you the friendship of an individual deeply embedded into that culture, beyond that surface niceness, though it may take decades, it is a firm friendship, and they'll give you the benefit of the doubt to give you time to prove your point. [1] https://littlevillagemag.com/the-demure-white-supremacy-of-the-midwest/ https://littlevillagemag.com/the-demure-white-supremacy-of-t... [2] https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/wuwm-news/2019-11-14/some-of-the-worst-racial-disparities-between-blacks-whites-exist-in-midwest-report-says https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/wuwm-news/2019-11-14/some-of-th... [3] https://aninjusticemag.com/does-midwest-nice-breed-racism-b9c54aaf6cbf https://aninjusticemag.com/does-midwest-nice-breed-racism-b9...
    - bart_spoon 5y ago
      I’m sorry, but I read all 3 of those links and I didn’t find a single one convincing. They rely on largely anecdotal experiences which dont appear to be any different than many that come out of non-Midwestern states, and yet don’t get roped around the regions neck the same way. George Floyd dying in Minnesota is somehow a reflection of “Midwestern nice” gone wrong, but Trayvon Martin being killed in Florida, or Eric Garner strangled in NYC, or Rodney King being beaten on the streets of LA are only ever contextualized as “America’s racism problem” and not the problems of California, New York, or Florida. When these articles actually provided hard numbers, they only served to under,one their argument even more. The Midwest is decried as being overwhelmingly white at 81% of the population, compared to the nationwide average of… 76%? That hardly seems enough of a difference to have as monumental of an effect as claimed. What’s more, while the Midwest is decried as hostile to black Americans due to their overwhelming whiteness, in reality, most major Midwestern cities actually have far more black Americans than most West Coast and Northeast cities. One article cited that only 10% of the Midwest is black, compared to 13% nationally, but this ignores that the region that drags the average up is the equally pilloried South, not the “diverse” West or East Coasts, which are often have the same or less black representation in their population. For example the proportion of black people making up the population of Indianapolis is 3x as much as LA, and even more than places like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Boston. In one of the articles, it states that in the Midwest, the median income for black Americans is $36,000 or lower, compared to $38,000 nationally. Not only is this difference minimal, but it ignores that the median wage for all people, regardless of race, is less in the Midwest than it is nationally. Another article says Midwestern states have noticeable differences in employment and other outcomes between black and white Americans, as if this is some differentiating feature of the region and not true of literally every single state in the nation. Here’s the reality. Systemic racism pervades this country. However certain areas of the country (the coasts) have an outsized voice on national discourse, and therefore depict their ills as everyone’s ills, and the ills of the rest of the nation as unique to them and evidence of their inferiority. Therefore, it seems to me less like there is lots of evidence Midwest is genuinely, uniquely backwards and racist, and more that our society has decided that the Midwest is backwards and racist from the get go, and then works backwards finding whatever evidence is available to support that claim.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I guess I'll volunteer to be the sacrificial ... thing. I have no idea where Minneapolis is. In fact, I know you just said the state, but I already forgot. (I'm going out of my way not to read it while typing.) Okay, I remembered it was in Indiana. And Indiana is to the right of Illinois. That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Minneapolis. I live in Missouri. </shame> Oh god, I had this nagging feeling before posting this comment, so I went and looked it up. Not only did you not say the state (it was the article), but Minneapolis is in Minnesota, not Indiana. ... And I don't know where Minnesota is. At all. The final nail in my coffin is that apparently the article starts with an image of precisely where Minneapolis is. I didn't consciously recognize it. Okay, I figured out why I thought it was Indiana. My knowledge of U.S. Geography comes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvJ9SN8THE&ab_channel=BillSelak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvJ9SN8THE&ab_channel=BillS... and "Indianapolis" rhymes with "Minneapolis". I'm not sure whether to feel better or worse.
- rectang 5y ago
  You must be good to work with. Not knowing everything is normal, but not every team can take that to heart. I can picture Minnesota to the west of Wisconsin, but I can't pinpoint Minneapolis on the map in my head. (I went to college in the Chicago area.)
- gmu3 5y ago
  Well you probably wouldn't have done well on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader
  - satronaut 5y ago
    probably not. But they also probably think that they know more than everyone who lives between the sierra nevada and appalachia mountains
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      OP identified themselves as "from Missouri". Last time I checked, Missouri lies almost exactly smack dab at the midpoint between the sierra nevada and the (eastern reaches of the) appalachia mountains. But that's not even really the important point. The attitude that the Midwest is full of humble salt of the earth types and the coasts are full of arrogant elites is itself... well, astoundingly arrogant. Believe it or not, the midwest has plenty of arrogant folks and many of the nicest and most humble people in the world happen to live on the coasts. Just think about what you're saying here. How is it any different than the ostensible coastal attitude you are critiquing here? "I value X and people from those other places don't have X." Pot, meet kettle. In a thread where you're attacking someone for being geographically arrogant (incorrectly, no less!!!), you could at least refrain from being geographically arrogant... To be quite blunt, I meet WAY more Midwesterners who make asinine and negative assertions about people on "the coast" than coastal folks who have any strong feels at all about the interior. Being a dick about where you live is, increasingly, a distinctly Midwestern thing.
syshum 5y ago
The stereo type of "Coastal Elite" did not materialize from no where. Personally my impression is this narrative has gotten worse not better of the last few decades as the political divide between "red states" and "blue states" have deepen, even if you live in a midwest "blue state". Also by "are there buildings there" I would assume that a person on the east coast would be referring to Skyscrapers not just generalized building, which are quite rare in the mid-west. My encounters with Coastal people generally result in them believing that the midwest is just farming and retail, Tech Jobs or other high income white collar jobs like Finance are not associated with the mid-west region...
- ericmay 5y ago
  > Skyscrapers not just generalized building, which are quite rare in the mid-west. If you ignore cities like: Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc. So no not really quite rare by any measure. And if you want to take a look at economic output as well, Illinois (5) and Ohio(7) are heavy-hitters, with states like Michigan(14) and Indiana(17) rounding out the top 20 and Minnesota(19), Missouri(22), and Wisconsin(21) not far behind. As an aside (not targeted toward you) we gotta stop the “Midwest” as a geographic representation. It makes no sense. Make it Great Plains and Great Lakes after the major geographic features of the regions and what uniquely define them.
  - syshum 5y ago
    When ever possible I try to ignore cities... I firmly believe high population density is the root of most societal problems. That aside, I never said there were no skyscrpers I said they were rare compared to area's like NYC... Chicago is probably the closest, but a skyscraper is generally defined as building over 100m, indy has like 9 of them over a pretty large foot print, so ...
    - ericmay 5y ago
      I agree with you w.r.t density. Skyscrapers are on the opposite end of the spectrum from suburbs. Probably better overall, but not great. Medium-density, mixed-use development is the sweet spot and how farming humans eventually lived.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> No matter how dismissive one is of the midwest, how could you be ignorant of the existence of a major metro area like Minneapolis-St. Paul? Per [0], it's the 16th largest in the U.S. Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB). Idk how you could not know it exists, but i can imagine people not knowing much about it. > I'm from a significantly smaller Midwestern city than Minneapolis, and I don't recall anyone ever saying "where's that" or "are there buildings there" when I say where I'm from. The buildings thing is probably a bit of a joke, but i found that some people have cultural references to things and Minneapolis has less cultural touch points for people to identify with. Obviously LA and NYC have tons of visibility in movies and pop culture, and places like detroit are well known in news due to visible industries (and their problems lately)... but mid western cities? less so. I lived in CLE and i always joked about how cleveland has buildings but no people. I was not alone in such jokes. I can only imagine what people in detroit experience, especially since cleveland's unofficial slogan is "at least we're not Detroit". Aside, but according to your link cleveland area is supposedly bigger than silicon valley, which is surprising.. > Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB). Plenty of people don't care about this, and wouldn't recognize this from it. Santa Clara county in california has offices or HQs of the top 5-10 largest companies in america (apple, msft, goog, amzn, fb, etc). For some, this is more recognizable than a big sports team. Despite being smaller, Boston has many of the top universities in america (Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, etc), again, some may identify with this metric better. This is especially true in tech.
- vgeek 5y ago
  The two best things denigrating Cleveland: Balloonfest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw) & your already mentioned Mike Polk Jr's tourism videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM). If you can get past the dreary gray skies for 8 months of the year, Cleveland is cheap (even the nicer suburbs like Solon or Aurora) and has easy access to scenic western PA & upstate NY.
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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mikebonnell 5y ago
They also have a MLS team - Minnesota United so 5/5 for professional sports teams that are televised as soccer is now more popular than ice hockey. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10253507/Soccer-overtaken-ice-hockey-fourth-popular-sport-US.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-1025350...
- jameshart 5y ago
  But like all the other Minneapolis-St Paul teams, it’s named after Minnesota, not Minneapolis or St Paul. I guess the Minnesota Twins kind of technically are, but.. it’s not great from a metropolitan branding perspective.
outside1234 5y ago
My home state of Michigan is frequently mistaken for Minnesota by Californians — so I totally believe it when west coasters ask if it ever gets above freezing in Minnesota.
duxup 5y ago
I worked for a company in the Twin Cities. We were acquired by a valley company. I traveled to meet my new colleagues. I was asked several times by coworkers: “What do people there do for work?” They seemed genuinely surprised that we did the same work they did. Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did.
- jlbang 5y ago
  > Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did. Having lived most of my life in the Midwest, and about six years in Silicon Valley, I had to agree with this. There are smart people everywhere, but I've found above-average intelligence is somehow common in the Twin Cities area. (I know that's mathematically problematic.) There are a lot of unusually smart people living in the Twin Cities. I didn't know that was weird until I lived elsewhere. EDIT: A source with some imperfect data: https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-by-state-most-recent https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-by-state-mos... And this, which puts Minnesota's average IQ at #5 and North Dakota at #3 among the 50 states: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-iq-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-iq-...
BobbyJo 5y ago
I feel like the major reason people don't know where things are in the mid west is because it's a 2D position. Coastal cities have the benefit of only requiring you to remember a single dimension. I know where San Diego, Los Angeles, SV, Portland, Seattle, NYC, and Washington DC all are because I really only need to memorize about where they are along some coast and go inwards until things look right. Midwestern cities like St Louis, Minneapolis, Omaha, etc. and even the midwestern states themselves require a lot more spatial awareness and memory, especially if you aren't from a midwestern city and don't have an anchor point already in memory somewhere nearby.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Rather than a coast line, you could just follow the Mississippi River to find most of those cities. Concept is the same, people like to build cities near sources of water and easy transportation.
syntheweave 5y ago
Once I travelled in Asia and met someone from Taiwan in a hostel, and there were two things I noticed about him: 1. How much in kind he was with the culture of the Taiwanese immigrants I knew as a white kid going through a diverse school system - all the same little mannerisms and phrases. 2. That he thought it was oddly particular that I specified San Francisco when we discussed our places of origin. But then recalled it as "Old Gold Mountain", the term used by the Chinese who joined in the gold rush. (New Gold Mountain is Melbourne, Australia. Which as it happens is also a gold rush city that turned into a tech center.) I feel like our ignorance is rather set by preexisting connections or lack thereof, bits of history learned here and there and how our local society positions itself relative to others: surprise at that idea that if people live in a place, it might have the trappings of civilization. On HN it would be strange to be unaware of San Francisco. Someone picked at random from the East Coast cities might think of it as irrelevant(compared to New York, which is actually a surprisingly common comparison). Likewise it doesn't surprise me that some city dwellers see the Midwest as somehow equivalent to the Siberian wilderness.
jvanderbot 5y ago
I'm from Minnesota. I could have written this post, it's exactly my experience.
acchow 5y ago
What if one doesn't watch any sports?

aspaceman 5y ago

I grew up pretty close to Chicago and folks in California still call me "corn boy".

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
almost_usual 5y ago
Really? I grew up in literal cornfields and no one I know who grew up in California says stuff like this.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I bet you don't live in a large city though? This sounds like small town nickname games. Source: I grew up in a small town where everyone had to have a nickname.

pech0rin 5y ago

I am from Indianapolis and regularly have people not know anything about it so I dont find this to be an exaggeration. The anecdotes really ring true for me so sounds like you arent from the midwest.

scruple 5y ago
I'm from Ohio, by way of Pennsylvania, and have been living in SoCal since 2008. When I tell people out here that I'm from Ohio they reflexively think I'm talking about Iowa.
- couchand 5y ago
  Then you might appreciate this line of shirts from Iowa's biggest little t-shirt company: https://www.raygunsite.com/products/ohio-1 https://www.raygunsite.com/products/ohio-1
  - scruple 5y ago
    That's extremely on point, I love it. edit/ These are so good, thanks for the link. https://www.raygunsite.com/collections/the-midwest/products/midwest-map-1 https://www.raygunsite.com/collections/the-midwest/products/...
- Eiriksmal 5y ago
  That's hilarious. I recently moved to Idaho, the other I state. People occasionally call it Iowa multiple times in the same conversation! Similar to that Ohio/Iowa shirt, there's also an excellent one sold at the hipster grocery stores in Boise that has the outline of Idaho with some lovely drawings of a farmer working a field of (presumably) potatoes... IOWA is printed across it in huge, bold letters. The Idaho<>Iowa confusion must extend past my circle of friends and coworkers. That being said, I'll freely admit I don't know where Des Moines is inside Iowa's confines.
jacob019 5y ago
Greetings fellow Hoosier. It has been my experience as well at west coast conferences, some people think we are all from some redneck farm in the middle of nowhere. I think the close mindedness says more about them than us.

henriquez 5y ago

I’ve spent years doing engineering work in both Silicon Valley and the Twin Cities and the anecdotes are apt. This take on Minnesota life (and peoples’ reaction to it) is spot on. It was hard for me and my partner to get over the passive aggressiveness and silent racism so we left the Twin Cities but it still sure as hell beat living in Bay Area from a quality of life standpoint.

satronaut 5y ago
what silent racism?
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
- yourapostasy 5y ago
  Kind of like this [1] [2] [3]. In my personal anecdotal experience, I found the US Midwest culture's handling of conflict shares a lot in common with what I saw in Japan. It is not too surprising to me the homogeneity enforcement follows similar structures in both cultures. This has a good side to it, though. Once you the friendship of an individual deeply embedded into that culture, beyond that surface niceness, though it may take decades, it is a firm friendship, and they'll give you the benefit of the doubt to give you time to prove your point. [1] https://littlevillagemag.com/the-demure-white-supremacy-of-the-midwest/ https://littlevillagemag.com/the-demure-white-supremacy-of-t... [2] https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/wuwm-news/2019-11-14/some-of-the-worst-racial-disparities-between-blacks-whites-exist-in-midwest-report-says https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/wuwm-news/2019-11-14/some-of-th... [3] https://aninjusticemag.com/does-midwest-nice-breed-racism-b9c54aaf6cbf https://aninjusticemag.com/does-midwest-nice-breed-racism-b9...
  - bart_spoon 5y ago
    I’m sorry, but I read all 3 of those links and I didn’t find a single one convincing. They rely on largely anecdotal experiences which dont appear to be any different than many that come out of non-Midwestern states, and yet don’t get roped around the regions neck the same way. George Floyd dying in Minnesota is somehow a reflection of “Midwestern nice” gone wrong, but Trayvon Martin being killed in Florida, or Eric Garner strangled in NYC, or Rodney King being beaten on the streets of LA are only ever contextualized as “America’s racism problem” and not the problems of California, New York, or Florida. When these articles actually provided hard numbers, they only served to under,one their argument even more. The Midwest is decried as being overwhelmingly white at 81% of the population, compared to the nationwide average of… 76%? That hardly seems enough of a difference to have as monumental of an effect as claimed. What’s more, while the Midwest is decried as hostile to black Americans due to their overwhelming whiteness, in reality, most major Midwestern cities actually have far more black Americans than most West Coast and Northeast cities. One article cited that only 10% of the Midwest is black, compared to 13% nationally, but this ignores that the region that drags the average up is the equally pilloried South, not the “diverse” West or East Coasts, which are often have the same or less black representation in their population. For example the proportion of black people making up the population of Indianapolis is 3x as much as LA, and even more than places like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Boston. In one of the articles, it states that in the Midwest, the median income for black Americans is $36,000 or lower, compared to $38,000 nationally. Not only is this difference minimal, but it ignores that the median wage for all people, regardless of race, is less in the Midwest than it is nationally. Another article says Midwestern states have noticeable differences in employment and other outcomes between black and white Americans, as if this is some differentiating feature of the region and not true of literally every single state in the nation. Here’s the reality. Systemic racism pervades this country. However certain areas of the country (the coasts) have an outsized voice on national discourse, and therefore depict their ills as everyone’s ills, and the ills of the rest of the nation as unique to them and evidence of their inferiority. Therefore, it seems to me less like there is lots of evidence Midwest is genuinely, uniquely backwards and racist, and more that our society has decided that the Midwest is backwards and racist from the get go, and then works backwards finding whatever evidence is available to support that claim.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I guess I'll volunteer to be the sacrificial ... thing. I have no idea where Minneapolis is. In fact, I know you just said the state, but I already forgot. (I'm going out of my way not to read it while typing.) Okay, I remembered it was in Indiana. And Indiana is to the right of Illinois. That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Minneapolis. I live in Missouri. </shame> Oh god, I had this nagging feeling before posting this comment, so I went and looked it up. Not only did you not say the state (it was the article), but Minneapolis is in Minnesota, not Indiana. ... And I don't know where Minnesota is. At all. The final nail in my coffin is that apparently the article starts with an image of precisely where Minneapolis is. I didn't consciously recognize it. Okay, I figured out why I thought it was Indiana. My knowledge of U.S. Geography comes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvJ9SN8THE&ab_channel=BillSelak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvJ9SN8THE&ab_channel=BillS... and "Indianapolis" rhymes with "Minneapolis". I'm not sure whether to feel better or worse.

rectang 5y ago
You must be good to work with. Not knowing everything is normal, but not every team can take that to heart. I can picture Minnesota to the west of Wisconsin, but I can't pinpoint Minneapolis on the map in my head. (I went to college in the Chicago area.)
gmu3 5y ago
Well you probably wouldn't have done well on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader
- satronaut 5y ago
  probably not. But they also probably think that they know more than everyone who lives between the sierra nevada and appalachia mountains
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    OP identified themselves as "from Missouri". Last time I checked, Missouri lies almost exactly smack dab at the midpoint between the sierra nevada and the (eastern reaches of the) appalachia mountains. But that's not even really the important point. The attitude that the Midwest is full of humble salt of the earth types and the coasts are full of arrogant elites is itself... well, astoundingly arrogant. Believe it or not, the midwest has plenty of arrogant folks and many of the nicest and most humble people in the world happen to live on the coasts. Just think about what you're saying here. How is it any different than the ostensible coastal attitude you are critiquing here? "I value X and people from those other places don't have X." Pot, meet kettle. In a thread where you're attacking someone for being geographically arrogant (incorrectly, no less!!!), you could at least refrain from being geographically arrogant... To be quite blunt, I meet WAY more Midwesterners who make asinine and negative assertions about people on "the coast" than coastal folks who have any strong feels at all about the interior. Being a dick about where you live is, increasingly, a distinctly Midwestern thing.

syshum 5y ago

The stereo type of "Coastal Elite" did not materialize from no where. Personally my impression is this narrative has gotten worse not better of the last few decades as the political divide between "red states" and "blue states" have deepen, even if you live in a midwest "blue state". Also by "are there buildings there" I would assume that a person on the east coast would be referring to Skyscrapers not just generalized building, which are quite rare in the mid-west. My encounters with Coastal people generally result in them believing that the midwest is just farming and retail, Tech Jobs or other high income white collar jobs like Finance are not associated with the mid-west region...

ericmay 5y ago
> Skyscrapers not just generalized building, which are quite rare in the mid-west. If you ignore cities like: Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc. So no not really quite rare by any measure. And if you want to take a look at economic output as well, Illinois (5) and Ohio(7) are heavy-hitters, with states like Michigan(14) and Indiana(17) rounding out the top 20 and Minnesota(19), Missouri(22), and Wisconsin(21) not far behind. As an aside (not targeted toward you) we gotta stop the “Midwest” as a geographic representation. It makes no sense. Make it Great Plains and Great Lakes after the major geographic features of the regions and what uniquely define them.
- syshum 5y ago
  When ever possible I try to ignore cities... I firmly believe high population density is the root of most societal problems. That aside, I never said there were no skyscrpers I said they were rare compared to area's like NYC... Chicago is probably the closest, but a skyscraper is generally defined as building over 100m, indy has like 9 of them over a pretty large foot print, so ...
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I agree with you w.r.t density. Skyscrapers are on the opposite end of the spectrum from suburbs. Probably better overall, but not great. Medium-density, mixed-use development is the sweet spot and how farming humans eventually lived.

vineyardmike 5y ago

> No matter how dismissive one is of the midwest, how could you be ignorant of the existence of a major metro area like Minneapolis-St. Paul? Per [0], it's the 16th largest in the U.S. Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB). Idk how you could not know it exists, but i can imagine people not knowing much about it. > I'm from a significantly smaller Midwestern city than Minneapolis, and I don't recall anyone ever saying "where's that" or "are there buildings there" when I say where I'm from. The buildings thing is probably a bit of a joke, but i found that some people have cultural references to things and Minneapolis has less cultural touch points for people to identify with. Obviously LA and NYC have tons of visibility in movies and pop culture, and places like detroit are well known in news due to visible industries (and their problems lately)... but mid western cities? less so. I lived in CLE and i always joked about how cleveland has buildings but no people. I was not alone in such jokes. I can only imagine what people in detroit experience, especially since cleveland's unofficial slogan is "at least we're not Detroit". Aside, but according to your link cleveland area is supposedly bigger than silicon valley, which is surprising.. > Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB). Plenty of people don't care about this, and wouldn't recognize this from it. Santa Clara county in california has offices or HQs of the top 5-10 largest companies in america (apple, msft, goog, amzn, fb, etc). For some, this is more recognizable than a big sports team. Despite being smaller, Boston has many of the top universities in america (Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, etc), again, some may identify with this metric better. This is especially true in tech.

vgeek 5y ago
The two best things denigrating Cleveland: Balloonfest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw) & your already mentioned Mike Polk Jr's tourism videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM). If you can get past the dreary gray skies for 8 months of the year, Cleveland is cheap (even the nicer suburbs like Solon or Aurora) and has easy access to scenic western PA & upstate NY.
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mikebonnell 5y ago

They also have a MLS team - Minnesota United so 5/5 for professional sports teams that are televised as soccer is now more popular than ice hockey. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10253507/Soccer-overtaken-ice-hockey-fourth-popular-sport-US.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-1025350...

jameshart 5y ago
But like all the other Minneapolis-St Paul teams, it’s named after Minnesota, not Minneapolis or St Paul. I guess the Minnesota Twins kind of technically are, but.. it’s not great from a metropolitan branding perspective.

outside1234 5y ago

My home state of Michigan is frequently mistaken for Minnesota by Californians — so I totally believe it when west coasters ask if it ever gets above freezing in Minnesota.

duxup 5y ago

I worked for a company in the Twin Cities. We were acquired by a valley company. I traveled to meet my new colleagues. I was asked several times by coworkers: “What do people there do for work?” They seemed genuinely surprised that we did the same work they did. Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did.

jlbang 5y ago
> Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did. Having lived most of my life in the Midwest, and about six years in Silicon Valley, I had to agree with this. There are smart people everywhere, but I've found above-average intelligence is somehow common in the Twin Cities area. (I know that's mathematically problematic.) There are a lot of unusually smart people living in the Twin Cities. I didn't know that was weird until I lived elsewhere. EDIT: A source with some imperfect data: https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-by-state-most-recent https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-by-state-mos... And this, which puts Minnesota's average IQ at #5 and North Dakota at #3 among the 50 states: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-iq-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-iq-...

BobbyJo 5y ago

I feel like the major reason people don't know where things are in the mid west is because it's a 2D position. Coastal cities have the benefit of only requiring you to remember a single dimension. I know where San Diego, Los Angeles, SV, Portland, Seattle, NYC, and Washington DC all are because I really only need to memorize about where they are along some coast and go inwards until things look right. Midwestern cities like St Louis, Minneapolis, Omaha, etc. and even the midwestern states themselves require a lot more spatial awareness and memory, especially if you aren't from a midwestern city and don't have an anchor point already in memory somewhere nearby.

dylan604 5y ago
Rather than a coast line, you could just follow the Mississippi River to find most of those cities. Concept is the same, people like to build cities near sources of water and easy transportation.

syntheweave 5y ago

Once I travelled in Asia and met someone from Taiwan in a hostel, and there were two things I noticed about him: 1. How much in kind he was with the culture of the Taiwanese immigrants I knew as a white kid going through a diverse school system - all the same little mannerisms and phrases. 2. That he thought it was oddly particular that I specified San Francisco when we discussed our places of origin. But then recalled it as "Old Gold Mountain", the term used by the Chinese who joined in the gold rush. (New Gold Mountain is Melbourne, Australia. Which as it happens is also a gold rush city that turned into a tech center.) I feel like our ignorance is rather set by preexisting connections or lack thereof, bits of history learned here and there and how our local society positions itself relative to others: surprise at that idea that if people live in a place, it might have the trappings of civilization. On HN it would be strange to be unaware of San Francisco. Someone picked at random from the East Coast cities might think of it as irrelevant(compared to New York, which is actually a surprisingly common comparison). Likewise it doesn't surprise me that some city dwellers see the Midwest as somehow equivalent to the Siberian wilderness.

jvanderbot 5y ago

I'm from Minnesota. I could have written this post, it's exactly my experience.

acchow 5y ago

What if one doesn't watch any sports?