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In Defense of the Midwest

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Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#131

Post by pacmon »

pacmon wrote: post #107
L_Rahman wrote: post #21

I used to believe in the Midwest. Graduated in 2014, moved to Detroit to work for a hardware startup. Live and work downtown, and the professional experience has been phenomenal. However, the issue that's so frequently left out when discussing the palatability of the Midwest is what it's like to be an Asian American here when you've grown up in a major city on the East or West coast. And the reality is that it's real…

I happen to live in the (Northern) Midwest and I think you're just not in the right area. My city is ethnically and culturally diverse and I never encounter open racism. There are some of the more rural areas where that might be present. However, without statistics to back up any density of racism that may or may not be present it's hard to say whether race might be more of a factor here than anywhere else in the US.

Downvoting for no reason. Not worth trying to converse with who ever is responsible.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#132

Post by DanBC »

hueving wrote: post #128
ggreer wrote: post #44

I think the main reason the author prefers the midwest is because he was raised there. Property values and migration flows attest to people generally preferring the coasts. I've lived in a lot of places: The UK, Alabama, Illinois (for a short time), Guam, Washington, New York, and California. Not having a home town, I think I'm better positioned to evaluate these places. My least favorite region is the south, followe…

Europe in general is pretty bad for bigotry along different divisions. The stuff people in the UK could get away with saying about immigrants and people in other countries was pretty disgusting. Every country I've spent time in over there (France, UK, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany) seems to have a culture that accepts making blanket offensive statements about people from other countries (or religions in the case of…

I agree that there are some really unpleasant openly racist people in England.

Is it as bad as the US? Black americans make up half the US prison population; they're six times more likely to be imprisoned; as of 2001 one in six black men had been incarcerated;

http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

Laws are unjustly applied, one example is the rates that black Americans or white Americans are arrested for cannabis drug crime. http://nytimes.com/2014/07/29/opinion/high-time-the-injustic...

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#133

Post by STRML »

Ollinson wrote: post #125
STRML wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been to other cities with underground metro lines? The NYC subway is the dirtiest, noisiest, most claustrophobic metro system I've ever used; it even gives London a run for its money. There are other great cities out there. Many of them do things differently, and do quite well at it. Try Hong Kong or Singapore's underground, or in Europe, Vienna's - even the ones in China are cleaner and easier to navigate.…

Notice how I qualified my statement by saying in the US . I'm perfectly open to criticism of the subway compared to other countries more modern systems. As it stands though, for a person with only a US passport, the NYC subway is in a class of its own. On a global scale it is still one of the largest underground systems. I was born in NYC and have also traveled extensively internationally. Foreigners and transplants…

Hell, the DC metro, for all its faults, is quite a bit nicer than NYC, but granted, it doesn't go as far.

Even for outer residents it is not great. My wife's family lives in Queens and it is inconvenient as all hell; there is a good reason people pay to live in Manhattan. NYC is bizarrely centered around Manhattan as its central hub, and all of the other boroughs are subservient to it; in a way they are deserts, devoid of all but the most basic businesses and services, as the arts/culture/jobs/education are in Manhattan.

To get to Manhattan takes 20 minutes by bus just to get to the L or M train, then another hour (or often more) to get to the outskirts. If you miss the bus, enjoy a 45 minute walk - the bus only comes every half hour, but is hardly regular, as it goes down the area's only main thoroughfare that is absolutely choked with cars, too many streetlights, and parking.

Maybe for some an 1:30-2:00hr commute daily is normal; at the best of times, in Spring/Fall, it's bearable but annoying. In the hot summer or cold winter, it's awful. I think, why go through all that - is the area really all that spectular? Can't you have 10x more (land,time,sanity) living in the Midwest or the South? Why even bother living in New York, if you're not going to live in Manhattan?

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#134

Post by lmm »

wwweston wrote: post #130
jessedhillon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...though sometimes they strangely don't all want to invest in a slick social deals pyramid or revenue-free chat app or whatever else is hot at the moment... You can't argue with returns, and "slick" VC returns trump Smallville's every day of the week.

One "smallville" startup I worked for turned about $2M in investment into a $60M sale. How'd Groupon's investors make out on their returns?

Anecdote != data. Look at the overall stats.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#135

Post by gowan »

As a californian who recently moved to the midwest (IA) the only thing I really miss is the mountain biking.

On the other hand I love the road biking scene in IA.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#136

Post by nebos0 »

Throwaway account,

New Englander here and quite frankly I think the Midwest is politically and socially backwards and I do not want anything to do with your part of the country. I have the same feelings about the South.

Politically you're still debating the merits of gay marriage in many of your states and thankfully only because of the courts are you being forced to accept it as a legitimate thing.

Too much religion and not enough education.

Too conservative. Especially your desperate need to cling to gun-ownership as some sort of ultimate freedom.

If i'm picking petty things to dislike... we'll you're also boring. You don't export any interesting cultural artifacts you just soak up whatever the coasts have to offer. That's not much of a reason though and as I said, it's petty.

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#137

Post by robotkilla »

analog31 wrote: post #75
msutherl wrote: post #24

(1) Cleveland gets all the Broadway shows once they go off Broadway, but at about half the cost, (2) We have great music here, including the world-renowned Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and tons of bands come through, (3) We have some great sports teams (hi, OSU) and a ton of great sports fans (hi, Browns fans), (4) We have great food at very affordable prices Yes, exactly. As someone who lives in New York, this is the v…

I've thought a lot about this myself, as a musician and lover of art and music. I live in a mid-sized Midwestern town, where even Chicago would be a step up culturally. But I've thought about what it would be like for me to live in "Chicago" with a spouse and family. It would probably mean living in a suburb, spending a great deal of time in a car, and having neither the time nor the energy to go into the city for a…

I've lived in Chicago (not burbs) for 9 years with my daughter (her mother lives in another part of the city).

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#138

Post by ChainsawSurgery »

hueving wrote: post #126
ChainsawSurgery wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that's heavily biased by the fact that Chappelle spent lots of time growing up in Ohio (and specifically Yellow Springs). Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns - not quite the same as randomly stumbling upon OKC and deciding it's what you've wanted all along, you know? And Chappelle's probably not the greatest example, since he very famously got fed up with his celeb…

>Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns Nobody with a modicum of intelligence thinks that is irrational. Of course people are going to have strong attachments to a place where they spent a major portion of their childhood making memories and relationships. The only seemingly irrational thing would be indifference. You don't spend 18 years in a place and not have any emotional…

I thought it was pretty clear that the implied irrational part of it is the opportunity cost of choosing your hometown, not the actual attachment itself.

If I'm a brilliant mathematician or a world-class athlete and I choose Kansas over Cambridge/Boston, then yeah, plenty of people are going to think that my attachment to Kansas is making me act irrationally. I don't think they lack a "modicum of intelligence" because of that thought.

There are obviously exceptions where your choice of location doesn't matter, but if you're a high performer then it frequently does (with the obvious notable exceptions e.g. Prince).

[EDIT: I originally just had a quip about not being a sports fan, but I thought you deserved a real reply.]

Re: In Defense of the Midwest

#139

Post by dustin1114 »

Disclaimer: I'm a son of the Midwest :-)

This article hit home for me. Though I technically now live in a medium-sized mid-Atlantic city, the culture here is more like the Midwest. I'm not against the Bay area or NYC, but for me, I couldn't imagine living in those places: congestion, price of living, and their lacking of the "down-home" feeling.

I believe it would be more difficult to found a technology-centric company where I live, though. As an example, the company I work for, though very large, is based in a small city. For years, there was not much of an issue attracting new talent. The problem is that our IT organization has grown immensely recently, and attracting new "hacker" talent into the middle of the country is a huge obstacle. One of the solutions was opening another IT office in New Jersey, just a few miles from NYC. Problem solved.

But then there's those of us who grew up in the Midwest. I love being able to buy and own a nice home for under $200K. I enjoy being able to drive to work with minimal traffic. I even like reading about living in the Bay area on HN and laughing at the things so many have to deal with! But the truth is, tech people thrive in the Bay area. And I'd say that the Bay thrives on them. But there will always be a few of us engineers who live in "flyover" country :-)

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