What makes your city unique?greenspun.com : LUSENET : Jan : One Thread |
Everybody's city has quirks. For example, my hometown, Zanesville, OH, is the home of the world-famous Y-Bridge, and also is the hometown of both Zane Grey (a famous writer of westerns) and the guy who played Tackleberry in the Police Academy movies.So what makes your city unique?
-- Anonymous, January 19, 2000
New Hope, Minnesota?uh...
ok, it is Steve Zahn's hometown, (he went to my high school) you know, that gay guy in Reality Bites, the stupid one who got married in Las Vegas in That Thing You Do, the brother of the gay guy in the Object of My Affection, one of the gay guys in Happy Texas, (hrm, is there a theme here?) and the bookstore clerk in You've Got Mail. I think there's more, but I forget.New Hope is the home of Duk Duk Daze, a local carnival, but thats not unique because every city around here has local carnivals. I guess all in all, my city is overly NOT-unique.
-- Anonymous, January 19, 2000
I'm not even going to try and pretend that Sunnyvale is unique. Anyone who's ever been to Silicon Valley knows that it's just one big urban sprawl, and the division into "cities" is more political than anything else. So I'll talk about what makes Silicon Valley as a whole unique.Silicon Valley is the only place in the known universe where:
- You cannot find a national pizza chain open past 10pm.
- There are more jobs than people.
- You're a social outcast if you *don't* have a time-consuming, brain-sucking, anti-social job that involves staring at a computer screen all day.
- You can take a train to another city more easily than you can take a bus crosstown.
- There are no cops with radar on the shoulders of the freeways.
- There are no exit numbers on freeway exits (this is actually a CA thing, not just Silicon Valley)
- There are more SUVs than cars, despite everything within 100 miles being comletely paved
- You measure everything you buy as a percentage of what you pay for rent
- Rent is completely disproportionate to the standard of living for the area
- If you go home for dinner, you're teased for leaving work early
- No one blinks an eye if your normal work hours are 2pm - 4am
- People are known to quit their jobs because their employers don't stock the right juice/soda in the employee fridge
- The above is considered a valid reason for quitting
- You have to drive 30 miles to San Francisco for any semblance of real culture or clubbing, despite living in an urban area
- Everyone talks in TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms). Real conversations sound like: "So I took my SUV to the DMV after I couldn't work because TCP/IP on our LAN was down...it must have been the stupid NFS being incompatible with the new PCs, oh, have you seen the IR USB on Joe's G4?"
- It's perfectly acceptable for employers to offer a new employee obscene amounts of stock in exchange for a lower salary
- An idea of a romantic date with your significant other is installing MySQL on your shared server
- A place like Fry's Electronics can survive, much less thrive.
I'll probably think of more later. ;)
-- Anonymous, January 19, 2000
Some people's jaws drop when I tell them that my hometown of Bridger, Montana only has a 600 population, and I'm quite used to that reaction. It's the biggest town in a 25 mile radius, surrounded by itty bitty 100-300 population villes whose citizens sometimes drive up to 100 miles for groceries or gas. The name of the town comes from the not-quite-legendary Jim Bridger, the lead (white) scout for the Lewis and Clark expedition. Apparently back in the 1800's (when my little hometown was named Stringtown), ol' Jim Bridger crossed the Clark's Fork River 6 miles south of it. The people cried Hallelujah and spontaneously renamed the town after him. My town also has more bars than gas stations.
-- Anonymous, January 19, 2000
For those of you who thought I was kidding about the "TLA conversations" in my above post, I offer you this transcript of an actual conversation between Peter and I last night:Setting: my car, driving between his house and my apartment. 10:30pm.
Me: So, I was talking to Kim about cell phones yesterday, and I was asking if she knew whether GTE supported the Nokia 6190 yet, cuz I knew you were wondering.
Peter: Yeah, and?
Me: Well, she said that GTE is only supporting CDMA, and the 6190 is GSM, so I think you're out of luck.
Peter: Yeah, but I think that Nokia is making a CDMA of the 6190, for exactly that reason, that GTE is only GSM.
Me: OK, that makes sense, because my 5190 is GSM, so I just assumed that the 6190 would be GSM, and GTE only has the CDMA, and....*starts laughing*
Peter: What?
Me: We're doing it.
Peter: What are we doing?
Me: We're going the TLA conversation thing. I posted about this to Jan's journal forum today. *explains Jan's 'what makes your city unique question, and my response*
Peter: Yeah, we are doing that.
*Both laugh* Peter: We're freaks.
That's just so y'all don't think I'm making this shit up. ;)
-- Anonymous, January 20, 2000
What Makes Niagara Falls unique?well maybe, just maybe it's that whole NIAGARA FALLS thing? that, and the rats behind every single building.. and the cheesy heart shaped jacuzzi's that everyone seems to think are really romantic.. but i'm sorry, they are tacky. it's neat how the mist from the falls causes a whole 2km square part of town to be covered in ice. that's unique. people in our casino pee on their seats to save their spots. i'd say that demands attention.
i should work for the tourism board.
-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000