Archived comment by Anonymous Modestan:
Nobody calls Los Angeles 'the city.' If she'd said 'Oh, I always mean the real city, New York,' I might have forgiven her for being a provincial Easterner instead of an empty-headed Angeleno.

Archived comment by Arlene:
I don't like narrow ankle-length dresses. I like the loose floaty ones. At that point, you do need to be concerned about stairs, but just hike the skirts up & no problem. Think broomstick & gauze skirts. As for high heels, I knew a girl who could run in all but her highest ones. It's a matter of practice, after all you run on your toes anyway, right?

Archived comment by Saint:
I always cried when I had to wear a dress. By the end of grade school, my parents gave up.

I've always considered ankle-length dresses to fall into the same category as high heel shoes or foot bindings: things men make women wear so they can't run away. But I guess that's just me.

Archived comment by Arlene:
I don't know. those long dresses always make me feel very feminine. I love the swish around my ankles. (this from someone whose mother had to lie to her to get her into a dress - she told me it was just like one Wonder Woman wore).

Archived comment by Saint:
I would have guessed the tomboy part, just from the fact you were at an SCA event. Don't see many cheerleaders there. (Not to say all non-tomboy girls are cheerleaders, of course.)

Archived comment by Arlene:
My face is fairly androgynous & until I grew a woman's body (ie chest & hips), with my short hair & I always wore jeans, tshirt & tennies, I looked like a feminine guy. The guy in my freshman year couldn't tell because I was at an SCA event wearing a wool tunic that hung very straight & concealed my curves completely. Add straight leggings (not the leg hugging kind) & short boots & you get very androgynous. Plus, I am/was a tomboy.

Archived comment by Saint:
Yeah, he's in the right thread. He posted his joke, regarding what people in San Fran don't go for, without leaving a name. So someone else dubbed him "Wally." (Liked the joke, by the way.)

I have long hair and fairly sizable breasts, but I dress dyke, and also have rather broad shoulders (200 push-ups a day will do that), so, from the back...

Archived comment by Arlene:
umrguy,

Did you post that to the right thread? I can't find any reference to Wally in this thread. Am I being clueless again?

Archived comment by umrguy:
Hey, I'm still here!

(Oh, and I have a confession to make - I'm "Wally", I just wasn't originally sure how the joke would go over....)

Archived comment by Arlene:
*chortle* a friend & I were just comparing at what age people stopped mistaking us for boys, on looks even (at least here I was just going by your name & making a link in my own head). Thanks to her build she was mistaken for a boy longer than I was. My freshman year of college was the last time that I definitely know that it happened (unrelated about that time I grew my hair long). Coincidently, she also hasn't been mistaken for a boy since she grew her hair long.

Archived comment by Saint:
"Strip" club, I mean. I don't know what a "stip" club would be, but it doesn't sound good.

Archived comment by Saint:
That's okay--everybody thinks that. One time in a strip club, this dancer started rubbing my back getting ready for her lap-dance sales pitch. When I turned to look at her, she blushed and said, "Oh, I thought you were a guy!" And she moved on before I could tell her I wanted the lap dance. Guy or girl, why else would someone be in a stip club?

Archived comment by Arlene:
*giggle* I thought you were a guy. I was thinking like the guy in the spy/thief books. 8-}

Archived comment by Saint:
Seems like it.

BTW, thanks for talking to me. Makes a girl feel welcome. :)

Archived comment by Arlene:
Thank you. Are we the only ones?

Archived comment by Saint:
No, you're not.

Archived comment by Arlene:
Am I the only one still looking at these months later?

Oh well.
I'm in NC & nothing is 'the city'. The state capital is either 'into Raleigh', 'to the capital' or 'into town', or if you're feeling generous 'the nearest city'.

Archived comment by Miss Wonderland:
I am currently in a one-stoplight college campus in Ohio. We call everything here that IS NOT college related "The Village." Makes sense.
If we're going to a place with grocery/video stores, we're going "Into Town." And if we're going to the part of Cleveland that's on the lake, well, we're going "Downtown."

But it's never The City.

Archived comment by Larry C.:
In the movie "The Maltese Falcon", Bogart's character, Sam Spade, addresses a letter that will stay within the San Francisco city limits with just "City" for the name of the town. So, maybe the local's nickname of "The City" for San Francisco comes from some long-ago local postal addressing convention.

Archived comment by steff:
i'm not that old dave... i don't think i'm responsible for australia. hell, i'm not realy responsible for anything. eew. now i'm gonna be checking my thigh for little people and world-famous opera houses. and marsupials.

Archived comment by dave:
I've been sick and maybe its the delusional affects of the flu, but I just had this weird picture that my reality is in fact just Steff's birthmark.

Does Australia really exist or are we just a happenstance of Steff's birth?

Archived comment by Z:
sorry, I know everyone dropped the subject a while a go, but whenever I think of "The City" I think of London....

See ya Americans ;)

Archived comment by Mike:
"Y'know what? I hate Alabama. I've never been there, but I know I'd hate it. I don't even like the name. Al-a-bam-a!"

---a nearby freshman in the cafeteria

That's what I meant by "provincial" in my earlier comment. It's perfectly fine to be proud of your hometown, but the people I hear talking about these things always seem to be more concerned with contempt for other places than with pride for their own homes.

Okay, that was my point. I can drop it now.

Like the rest of you did about three days ago. :^P

Archived comment by steff:
i have a birthmark on my leg that looks like
australia. but i've never been stabbed there.


and it's not a city.

Archived comment by Matt:
Or, Ben, if you were a Militant Grammarian, "In which city were you stabbed?" ;-)

Archived comment by Ben:
Isn't Minneapolis / St. Paul called the Twin Cities? Sure if you're around there I could see it shortened... as in: "Which one of the cities were you stabbed in?"

Archived comment by D*:
Minneapolis/St. Paul = The Cities. Plural.

Archived comment by Jon:
Plastic surgery + Hollywood

Archived comment by Oedalis:
People keep mentioning the fakeness of LA. I have my own opinions on the matter (and I love LA anyway) but why do /you/ guys think it's fakey?

Archived comment by Ben:
Space ghost already had Banjo taken.

Archived comment by umrguy:
Hey Ben, why did you pick "Wally", anyway?

Archived comment by Montygirl:
Oh My God ... Passerby Wally, that was THE best comment, and only two words. amazing.

Steff, please learn from my mistakes: As I too must surf at work, do NOT drink while reading these comments, you computer will end up covered in beverage.

Archived comment by umrguy:
In fact, I was thinking that, but I wasn't going to mention it....

Archived comment by umrguy:
You're right Ben, that was really funny.

*Joins Ben and "Wally" in wearing asbestos suits...*

Archived comment by Ben:
Passerby, that was a short but amazingly funny comment... if only there were a name to attribute it to... I know, we'll call you Wally. :)

Archived comment by steff:
montygirl! i'm at work, don't SAY stuff like that!! *gah* it's terribly funny in itself, and there's an inside llama joke that i won't go into, and... just terribly funny. we used to have raves in kirksville, mo, only we dressed almost exclusively in just jeans and black concert t-shirts. and a kegger is just an outdoor rave, sometimes with corn. =) sometimes with llamas, apparently. *giggle* ah, that's going to keep me going all day. thanks! ppl always used to tell me i'd make a good new yorker. i wonder what they meant by that?

Archived comment by Passerby:
Straight sex?

Archived comment by Michael Burton:
I'm curious.

What is it she's looking for? What sort of thing don't most people in San Francisco go for?

Famous footprints in cement? Stars inlaid in the sidewalks? What? What?!!?

Archived comment by Heather:
Funny that she calls LA the REAL city, when LA is about the most FAKE city that i can think of!

Archived comment by triticale:
Suplexia's namelink proves that we moved out of Chicago just in time. However, Chicago's neighborhoods _do_not_ correspond in any way to New York's buroughs, which are semi-autonomous cities. They are simply neighborhoods such as many cities have, but with amorphous boundries and with status linked to their names.

As for me, what I mean by "the city" depends on where I am. If I'm in Milwaukee's suburbs, I probably mean Milwaukee, but if I'm in Milwaukee, I could mean Chicago.

Archived comment by Julee:
I guess I'm not as superficial as these "city namers" you guys know. If I say, "I'm from so-and-so, it's right by Chicago," it's to give the person an idea of where my little town they've never heard of is at.
Suplexia, you're right. Chicago is very confusing like that. I never bother with that crap, though. I establish the fact that I'm going to "the city" and then say the actual name of the place I'm headed to. Not the region, because that causes way too much controversy.

Archived comment by brainwane:
Suplexia's comment reminds me of Stockton, Calif., which is where I used to live. There's a somewhat ritzy suburb called "Morada" (although the proto-Neal-Stephensonian gated communities rapidly usurp Morada's role as "the *nice* part of Stockton). It even monopolizes the 931 prefix in phone numbers. In any case, there's a grand series of estates in Morada West, another lovely group in Morada East, and then a rather gritty bunch of streets in between, where lower-middle-class families free-ride on the 931 association of class.

Archived comment by Montygirl:
Ok, I'm in a mood most foul today, and Ben's comment just made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. I was imagining an actual rave in Wild Horse Creek, Kansas...

"And I thought it was just one of Mabel's city-friends in a fur coat and bad hair-do. No sir, that was one of Jesse Bob's llamas that he trained to walk around on its hind legs. I wouldn't have known if cousin Arvil hadn't ta asked her to dance."

(please, no flames from Kansas natives and/or residents -- I'm an equal opportuniy offender. But Ben mentioned Kansas, so I just went with it.)

That made my day.

Archived comment by Suplexia:
What cracks me up about Chicago is that it tries so hard to have boroughs like NYC. Problem is, there's way too many of them. Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, Gold Coast, The Loop, Streeterville, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Ravenswood, Old Town, DePaul, River North, River West, and on and on and on.

People really get fired up about it, too.

"Oh, so you live in Bucktown?"
"NO, I live in WICKER PARK. I would NEVER live in BUCKTOWN."


I guess everybody needs to identify themselves somehow...

(for those of you from the Chicago area, check out the namelink!).

Archived comment by Passerby:
"The City" used to be Seattle. Now "The City" is San Francisco. 'Cause usually people talk about "going into the city" and they mean "going to the place that has big buildings and strange people and the largest concentration of both within driving distance."

To Me:
"The Big City" is New York.
"The Beat City" is Chicago ('cause of Ferris, ya know)
The Emerald City" is Seattle (Awwww Yeah).

Archived comment by datick:
all i know is that the tick protects the city...

see above...this is just the new one, not the classic

Archived comment by Ben:
"In my experience, people most likely to use such a phrase are provincial freshmen piggybacking on their city's reputation to boost their own social standing."

Eh, I know the people you are talking about (and somedays I qualify - but somedays probably you do too). However, in my experience saying it, geography dictates a portion of your environmental personality. If you grew up in Boisie, Idaho you may have grown up in a city, bu it is a far cry difference in lifestyle from 99.99999% of the people in New York City, NY. I figure if you were one of those 0.00001%ers people will note certain obvious things about your personality.

Knowing the geographic location of someone's hometown gives you a small insight into what they might have and have not done for fun. Raves, I hear, are not real big near Wild Horse Creek, Kansas, while I hear that they are pretty big in LA. Its a conversation starter. Its common ground with someone else. Its a way to narrow down a little bit of yourself. Yes, that relies on people making assumtions about you (and all the stereotypes that incurs), but its a reality. If someone turns it into a pissing match (oh yeah, well I grew up in the East Village!) then they are the lamers... but sometimes its just real good to get a base idea of what someone is about.

Then there is an amount of cultural heritage which comes from living in a location for years, and really identifying yoursel as being from somewhere... Do Europeans find that a location reflects a larger cultural heritage (or something like that - work with me folks... my writing is total crap today...)?

Archived comment by David:
Los Angeles is not a city. Los Angeles is a mass delusion.

I also can't quite figure out why anyone outside of LA would want anything that could only be found in LA.

Archived comment by Mike:
"The city... of Townsville."

Maybe years of college have soured me on the whole "city" thing. In my experience, people most likely to use such a phrase are provincial freshmen piggybacking on their city's reputation to boost their own social standing. "Oh I'm from [town name here] and it's so great"; it's like they're on the Board of Tourism and get a nickel for every mention.

It's kinda funny to say "Have you traveled much?" and watch the momentary panic cross their faces.

Eh, most people grow out of it.
Or maybe they flunk out and go back to their precious hometowns.
Whatever.

Archived comment by Julee:
Yep. Gonna' have to agree here. I live near Chicago, and it's usually referred to as "the city." 'Round these parts, if you're going to NYC or some other big city, that's where you say you're going to ease confusion. I don't think I've ever heard anybody in my region refer to any other city besides Chicago as THE city. Unless I just misunderstood them and thought they were going to Chicago and actually went to, I dunno', Baltimore or something.