Comments on: East Coast v. West Coast / one love

By: Gina

Gina — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:14:57 +0000

The East Cost is friendly, have values, morals and warm, better people and cultural understanding of events, offers alot of variety. The west coast esp. Idaho has no values, morals, people are rude, unaccepting. Has no cultural understanding, rude drivers that cut you off ir pull out in front of you and shows no hospitality unlike the East Coast. Never move to Idaho its the worst place.

By: keke

keke — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:12:04 +0000

the east coast has more class we aren’t snobby and we don’t stand for any bull crap and the west coast is like ohh watever dude in the east coast we cut you weel that’s what we do where im frm

By: Haley

Haley — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:53:00 +0000

New York rules,
the west coast is full of hippies, airheads, and people that walk so effing slow I want to shoot them with a machine gun.
atleast here on the east coast we know what we want, how to do things, and most of all, dress!

By: alex

alex — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:55:39 +0000

All of those places are interesting places to live, though I doubt you would actually be living in SF or NYC for any of them! As an example, living in Princeton or in New Haven places you close enough to Manhattan that you might make the occasional trip, but far enough that it probably wouldn’t be that frequent. Stanford and Berkeley are each a bit closer to San Francisco proper, and I think there is more of a unitary “Bay Area,” in some ways. If you are planning on spending several years in one of these places, I would strongly recommend you spend a few days in each. The culture in New Haven is very different from that of Berkeley, for example, although all of these are college towns, and share some similar feeling because of it.

If you are accustomed to living in a large city, you may find the pace in New Haven, for example, to be a significant shift.

By: anna

anna — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:39:57 +0000

it was interesting to read your post actually. I just came back from a trip to California, where I visited San Francisco & LA (and some other towns on route). I really enjoyed myself in San Francisco, the people there were great.

is there a significant difference between the culture in the east s& west side? I’ve heard that they’re really different, but i think that those views are stereotyped. i’m deciding whether to go to San Francisco or New York to study in their universities. i’m undecided between Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton or Yale, because both states seem like wonderful places to live in.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:57:39 +0000

I was born and raised in various beach towns in central New Jersey. I lived in north carolina for 3 years and south carolina for 1.5 years. I’ve been in Philadelphia for the last 8 years. Thanks to this I’ve come to realize that I also rarely say “your welcome.” I can see how people might be bothered by it but i really think that, here, it’s reserved for more formal situations or informally when someone is going out of their way to show their appreciation. The best way I can explain it is that what you associate with brevity is probably just modesty. It’s their way of saying “hey, no big deal, i’m just doing what i’m supposed to.”

In general i think Philadelphians have the same stereotypes of New Yorkers that everyone else does and, given the proximity, a few extras. People who are native to the NY metro or who have lived there for a long time have a very low opinion of Philly (but most have never been) and can be incredibly condescending in conversation. I’ve actually stopped people and said “it’s philadelphia, not peoria.” With the subtext being ‘i don’t own a car either, i also ride the subway to work, i also enjoy the variety of ethnic foods my city has to offer, get over yourself.’ I guess that gives me away as being from the east coast. Self-respecting southerners will also let you know when you’re being condescending. Although the upper-class folk do it in such a subtle way you almost don’t notice but it’s wry and sarcastic nonetheless. I love it.

By: alex

alex — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:38:08 +0000

Hi, Pati.

Funny you should say. Just last weekend we were waited on by someone from PA here in NYC. After she came to our table a couple of times, she said “You’re not from NY are you?” We admitted to being from SoCal, and she said she could tell because we were nice. She said she had been in NYC for the last few months and everyone she met was rude.

I suspect it’s not a matter of being rude or not, but just differences in culture. I had Latin American colleagues back in Buffalo who absolutely hated it when people responded to “Thank you” with “no problem.” I don’t think I say “you’re welcome” very often. I might say “sure thing” or “no problem.” I’m not trying to be rude, it’s just what I’m used to…

By: Pati

Pati — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:29:08 +0000

I moved to Northcentral PA from Northridge, CA in September of 2005. I cannot express to you the shock that I think I’m still suffering… The biggest is of-course the weather. It really sucks; the people are rude, when you say Thank you, mostly everyone says ahuh. (what happened to you’re welcome). I’ve counted the times that I’ve heard it in one year now and it is exactly three. Three times in one year!!!! Maybe my comment doesn’t count because I haven’t been to NYC. Are people the same as in PA?

By: Alex Halavais » Best lived cities

Alex Halavais » Best lived cities — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 04:12:08 +0000

[…] Following on my earlier West Coast / East Coast post, I was interested to see Mercer’s Quality-of-Living Report for global cities. Setting New York as 100.0 (Center of the Universe, remember?), it ranks a few US cities as better, including Honolulu (103.3), San Francisco (103.2), Boston (101.9), DC (100.4), Chicago (100.4), and Portland (100.3). Vancouver (107.7) ranked third worldwide, after Zurich and Geneva. Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Calgary all ranked above the highest-ranked US cities. […]

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:40:20 +0000

I’ll look for those traits when I travel. I guess for me it’s either San Francisco or NYC. :)

By: dianeg

dianeg — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:18:14 +0000

As a native Californian myself (SD), I am suprised that you think people are friendly in Socal, I’ve never thought so. I always attributed the lack of friendliness to the “car culture”. Less social interaction in public transportation and open areas. People aren’t forced to share space together. But, I’ve never lived in an area with public transportation…Buffalo doesn’t count.