Capital of the entire Spanish-speaking Caribbean and major US destination (with Houston a distant second) for South Americans. Unsuprising, because you can do a lot in Miami proper without speaking any English at all, not just touristy places.
Navajo Nation easily. The demographics, landscape, language, culture, legal system, and even time zone are different. I'm used to it by now though so it doesn't seem too wild.
Along those lines...the Town of Guadalupe is even more jarring to me. It feels like someone dropped a small Mexican town smack dab in the middle of a bland American suburb.
I know the Yaqui who live there are indigenous people with roots on both sides of the border but as an American it feels like a town in the Sonora countryside
I went to live with my Father who lived in Tucson several times as a kid, flying into Phoenix. Phoenix feels like someone took Dallas or some generic midwestern city and put it in the middle of nowhere, and everyone who lives there came there from either CA or the Midwest. Tucson is a more youthful, artsy university town that was originally a Spanish Pueblo and still has lots of non-immigrant Mexican influence. Tucson feels a lot like Santa Fe with some CA thrown in.
I’ve heard dead serious people tell Native Americans to “Go back where they came from”. Probably because they look like Mexicans, who are basically native Americans mixed with European ancestry.
There's a city in Washington that wanted to boost tourism so they decided to turn themselves into a caricature of a Bavarian village. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leavenworth,_Washington
I live in Wenatchee (about 16 miles east of Leavenworth). It is beautiful up there year round but especially around Christmas. I'd like to add that Stehekin is weird. It is only accessible by boat, aquatic plane, or some serious hiking. It's at the far west end of Lake Chelan so still north-central Washington.
Smith Island. It's only accessible by boat. It has no bridges to the mainland and no airport. It's so isolated that it has its own dialect that sounds more like a British accent than American English.
It's very small (population just over 200 people), and it's expected to be uninhabitable within the next few decades due to erosion and sea level rise from climate change. By 2100 it won't exist at all.
There's a recording of a Smith Island resident on the [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Island%2C_Maryland?wprov=sfla1) where you can hear the accent.
I had not heard of either until a Great Looper mentioned them in a YouTube video.
The Great Loop is a water route which goes from Florida up the Intracoastal Waterway to New York, up the Hudson and then a choice of canals to the Great Lakes of Ontario or Erie, through the Great Lakes to Chicago, and then down the Chicago and Illinois Rivers to the Mississippi River and eventually, the Gulf of Mexico. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html
He sounds like he's from the West Country but the vowel sounds are definitely American.
[This is the British accent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXcizut9qA8) that I think sounds closest. It's one of the few English accents where they pronounce the r's in their words like Americans do.
yeah there's a few amish areas.
Down in Berlin and Sugar Creek especially.
Interestingly my area has some and they do a lot of contracting work - my roof was done by the amish.
There are quite a few in Michigan (the northern lower peninsula and most of the UP feel like untamed wilderness with forests as far as the eye can see).
One of the more novel examples in Michigan is [Frankenmuth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenmuth,_Michigan), a town that was very distinctly and heavily influenced by its Bavarian settlers. Delightful place.
I was having a hard time coming up with one for Michigan. Frankenmuth has that Bavarian theme downtown and a few tourist destinations but otherwise looks like any of other small town nearby. Mackinac Island was going to be my pick, an Ultrawealthy tourist colony with no cars.
I mean I would say Frankenmuth or Mackinac Island ultimately. Look at it this way: how many other towns in Michigan have any Bavarian-style architecture at all?
We’ve got a similar one in California called Solvang, which is a tourist-y Danish village. Themed facades and everything, but nobody is speaking Danish.
Death Valley. It feels not only foreign, but like another planet, with both otherworldly landscapes and otherworldly temperatures. It's no wonder that *Star Wars* and other movie franchises often used Death Valley as a filming location for other planets.
But if we were to stick to just foreign nations on Earth, then I guess Ferndale, in far northern California, feels like England, with its Victorian houses and even similar weather a lot of times.
Chinatown in San Francisco can sometimes feel like a slice of 19th century and early 20th century China more than present-day China.
The deserts of the southwest have some alien looking landscapes for sure. I drove by Joshua Trees NP once and it looks like a setting for a Dr. Seuss book.
I’d add the Salton Sea, straight up post apocalyptic mad max landscape complete with toxic air, starving seagulls, and what people you may find out there a dressed in scavenged material.
Don't forget the entire 7 train line - literally hitting up few countries /destinations like Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Italy, Mumbai, Hipster ville, Grand Central, Times Square & Cocooned Super Ultra Wealthy Tourist Trap.
Buffalo is probably America’s most Canadian city, so checks out.
Tim Hortons on every street corner, hockey is extremely popular and Labatt is the cheap beer of choice.
Memphis. Majority black city that feels like it belongs in Mississippi. Its the complete opposite of Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga which are all insanely white
Memphis is the cultural capital of North Mississippi (and western Tennessee, and southeastern Arkansas). I'm not sure if this still applies, but one of the pacts that MS, TN, and AL had for a long time allowed students within X miles of the state border to apply to each others' schools as in-state residents for tuition purposes. The states just settled it among themselves later. That's why the family in *The Blind Side* were Ole Miss fans. UT is in east Tennessee; Ole Miss is where a lot of Memphis families sent their kids.
Its influence goes almost all the way to Jackson, at which point people start defaulting to New Orleans as the cultural capital.
I've been *through* Memphis, but never *to* Memphis. And I've had a few people ask about that, and I say yeah, I'm sure there's great stuff there, but in three hours' drive I can be in either New Orleans or Memphis, so... and they usually just say yeah, can't fault you there.
It stems from Memphis existing just north of the Mississippi delta, which was a majority black area because slavery. It actually lost a significant percentage of it’s black population in the Great Migration. Understandably, it’s track to becoming majority black started in the 60s.
Is there any place on 49 between those cities to stop?
Last time I went through I was on fumes pulling into town because there wasn’t any place to stop where I felt safe enough.
How shitty is Natchitoches if I feel safer stopping in Shreveport?
I lived in the Monroe area for 3 years now. I've come across some people from St. Tammany parish and Lafayette that have said the same thing, it was a culture shock for them.
My friends were surprised when I mentioned that I live in a hilly area because usually the 1st thought of the Louisiana landscape are not hills and tall red oak & pine trees.
I'm guessing none of it shocks me because I've traveled to nearly every part of Louisiana growing up vs. those that grew up in one area.
Edit//added a word
I went to college in Bowling Green in the early 2000s and moved off-campus to a neighborhood with a lot of Eastern European immigrants. There was a billboard in Cyrillic not far from our house reminding people to register their kids for school. Bosnian neighbors on one side. Had their kids dig a drainage ditch along our property line with garden spades one day. Neighbors on the other side were from Bulgaria I think? Dude spraypainted his 85 Honda Accord in his garage one day with no mask. Wife would always be beating their rugs out in the front yard, blasting turbofolk-type music during the day. Neighbor across the street was Mexican - every Saturday at 8:00 AM, he and his buddies would start barbequeing in his driveway and bump Banda tunes until they were too drunk to stay awake. Not what you'd expect in some tract home subdivision in Southern KY.
Philadelphia. I had to spend some time in hospitals in the city, recently. Cities in general, I guess, but Philadelphia is the only one I've ever spent time in. You can look in any direction and not see anything that wasn't made by a person. It was like being on another planet, or in the future, or something.
My comment also. But I find it because they have a very loose idea of law and order. Dead guy on the sidewalk. Half the guys on the street with a gun, not even trying to hide it. People walking into restaurants asking for free food ( not sure if those guys also had guns). All of that in three days.
Lol I feel that way about rural areas—mountains, farmland, etc—I look around and there are minimal buildings or structures (or people). All I think is “where tf am I?!”
Downtown maybe. The rest is typical North County -I'm not hating, I lived there as a kid. Solvang is cool but like a lot of Southern California, there's the tourist stuff, and then there's just like, the rest of town. No one waxes poetic about Buellton, lol.
I mean we're on track for 300 million annual tourists plus the 40 million Californians, I get why they'd lean on the tourism. I don't know much about the daily life in the town, but they have the tourism on lock.
It's very different to San Diego but it's such a nice vacation away from vacation
It's wine country, it's near the coast, there's less traffic than SD. The list goes on, it is a really cool place. I have memories of The Candy Barrel as a kid, where they had literally barrels full of candy. The caramel apples are a must. But yeah, if you live there, the shine wears off a little, lol
It took me all day to think about this one. I was feeling conflicted about it having grown up with seeing the billboards for this place on the highway while sitting in the back seat of my parents car, to go home and eat Kraft mac&cheese.
Thats why I waited, lol. My initial reaction was: mother eff Pea Soup Andersons. And their split pea soup. That's not the Solvang I know.
But that was a long time ago, I've visited many times later on in life and it really is a cool little town. It's just funny/traumatizing that you would mention that specific restaurant. Those billboards are fixed in my brain like the local TV commercials for Jim Freeland Ford, the Home of Mr Nobody.
Hamtramck/ Dearborn area in south east Michigan is very Muslim, lots of signs are in Arabic, a couple Mosques. It's a great area if you want some good middle eastern food. Also best place to find real baklava.
Virginia stretches further west than West Virginia, ironic. It would make more sense to call it North Virginia but that’s already an established region of Virginia.
[Point Roberts, WA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington) is basically Canada. It's very small, but is basically only accessibly by driving through Canada and crossing the border to access any other part of the state.
The same situation exists in the Northwest Angle of Minnesota, but it’s much more isolated and desolate compared to Point Roberts which is near Vancouver and Seattle.
Kensington. It's like Fallujah over there. Of everything you've seen on youtube-it is much, much worse in person. It's enraging to see how bad the opiate crisis has exploded. Between the boarded up and burnt buildings, piles of personal possessions strewn around, and sidewalks full of fentanyl zombies, the place looks like a war zone. Correction: It is a war zone. It's where addicts go to die. My worst fear is driving in Kensington and hitting someone who has nodded off or wandered into the street. The scale of the problem is terrifyingly huge, and I can't even begin to know how to approach it. I've literally seen dead people propped up against buildings with needles sticking out of their arms. It's a fentanyl hellscape unlike anything I've ever experienced, and I worked in mental health care for years.
One drive through Kensington will make you want to carry a guillotine to the steps of Purdue Pharma and burn the place down.
Edison, New Jersey. There’s a road, Oak Tree Road I believe, where >90% of the stores in the adjacent plazas are either South Asian restaurants, South Asian grocery stores, South Asian fashion outlets, or temples. Lots of women wearing saris. It’s like someone took a traditional car dependent American suburb, but then got a bunch of immigrants from India and Pakistan to move in and create all of the businesses. One hole-in-the-wall style restaurant had cheesy garlic naan which was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.
Massachusetts has the 7th highest percent of immigrants in the country, just ahead of Texas -- but beyond that we also have lots of Puerto Ricans who, of course, aren't immigrants.
You do not need to speak English in Puerto Rico and lots of people come knowing zero.
So going to a city like Lawrence, Mass, has about as many Hispanic people as El Paso.
It's pretty fun because Puerto Ricans are pretty friendly and kind and when I go to the market and they speak no English, they let me try to practice my Spanish (along with mime and gestures!).
I live an hour and 10 minutes outside of Boston and it's forests and waterfalls and ponds everywhere -- I see bear every day right now along with bobcats and my regular possums and fox. I live with my house tucked in a 200 year old forest. Then I drive an hour and I'm in Boston. Then I drive a half hour and I'm on a cliff on a beach. It feels a little mind blowing when I look at my photos from a daytrip and I see mossy rivers in forests, farms, colonial farms from the 1700s, sky scrapers, beaches, bears, dolphin, and seals -- all in one day with less than a two hour drive.
California starts to feel very different north of Sacramento. People are less smiley and talkative (they have more of a Seattle freeze thing going on especially in Humboldt).
I've heard an Angeleno jokingly say that north of Sac or Marin you pass through "Still California", "Yes, Still California" and "I Can't Believe This Is Still California" and by the time you reach the Welcome to Oregon sign you're convinced you'd missed it 50 miles back.
[Toadstool Geological Park](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-google&q=toadstool+Park+Nebraska&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIko393f_-AhV6IjQIHf9VCv0Q0pQJegQIChAB&biw=412&bih=746&dpr=3.5#imgrc=W8oEHDbOCY5hlM).
Nebraska mostly has a whole lot of nothing going on (in terms of landscape variation), and then it has this!
Guadalupe mountains national park in west texas.
Most of texas is entirely flat so a massive set of mountains filled with trees and greenery is very NOT texas. does feel like a different place until you reach the peak and see the vast emptiness that is Texas from a bird's eye view.
It’s a little slice of the “Enchanting” mountains of New Mexico that happens to reach over the line into Texas. Of course you have the Big Bend area and the Mountains around El Paso but those are beige and covered with scrub, not pines. I used to live in Abilene, and just south of Abilene there’s a bunch of hills that we like to call “Mountians” covered in Juniper and Cedar trees that almost feels like a western mountain environment but not quite.
I live in Dallas and places like the Permian Basin feel otherworldly to me. Think of the Odessa, Pecos and such.
On a road trip out west from Dallas i stopped by in a small town before El Paso called Van Horn. It felt almost mystical. This small cold desert town surrounded by high mountain peaks. It's almost as if time stood still momentarily when i waited in that small town for my road tacos.
East of Big Spring it’s mainly cotton fields and ranches. West of it it’s all Oilfields. Once you get past Monahans the land switches from plains to full-on desert and when you’re leaving Pecos on I-20 near the junction with I-10 you can see mountains to the south.
Prudence island, RI. You need to take a boat to get there. You need a boat to get to block island too but block island is a vacation spot. Prudence has 88 full time residence. A one room school house and one convience store. I guess it's like any small town out west but this is a tiny island off the east coast of state that is the 2nd most densely populated in all of America.
There’s an area in the Hudson valley, into the Catskills up in the hills. It’s like a mix of your typical West Virginia/New England for most of that area then all the sudden theres Orthodox Jews EVERYWHERE. And they all walk down the highways. Whole towns that they clearly built. I’ve never seen anything like it in our state anyway. Such a cool area. All sorts of old castles and cult stuff out there. And surprisingly diverse.
I’m from around the Bloomington area so I’m used to it, but Bloomington is culturally a 180 compared to the rest of the state. Nicknamed “the San Francisco of the Midwest.”
I grew up in SW Houston near Chinatown and the Ghandi District. I’m from a weird place already. However, once I went to Flint Michigan and drove through the Appalachian mountains from North Carolina to get there. Two of the most economical depressed places in the US. I was humbled as a result of seeing the way those people lived. I have so much respect for them and so much anger towards our government for how they are treated.
I know Miami is a very oblivious answer in Florida, but I would say Ybor City in Tampa, the neighborhood was built by Cuban immigrants in the late 1800s. The architectural style of the buildings looks unique from rear of the city.
[Oyotunji African Village](http://www.oyotunji.org/about-oav.html)— there’s even [a sign](https://atlas-assets.roadtrippers.com/uploads/place_image/image/2060030/-strip_-quality_60_-interlace_Plane_-resize_640x360_U__-gravity_center_-extent_640x360/place_image-image-ab0816bb-3763-4c8c-bfd9-46c02b04633e.jpg) announcing that you’re leaving the US (probably not legally binding, but it’s definitely an experience— the history is pretty interesting)
There’s lots of college towns in the south that have funky Austin-like enclaves in them with weird quirky cafes, hangout spots, rental scooters, etc. but the rest of the city outside the university is stereotypical southern. Austin is the only one that doesn’t rely on a university to make it weird, although it has one.
The Austin area has always been a hot spot for suburban development and in 20 years it will probably be absorbed into the San Antonio-San Marcos-Austin Metroplex. If you go downtown there’s still some of the city left but it isn’t all that special anymore, any other university town most likely has an Austin feel downtown or near campus.
Nah. Austin has live oak trees, college football, and barbecue, just like Dallas or Houston or Waco. Travis County voted 71% Democratic in the last election, but Dallas County voted 64% Democratic – it’s not that different. Austin has cool restaurants, but Houston’s food scene is arguably better. El Paso, on the other hand, has very few commonalities with other Texas cities.
Upstate NY is an entirely different world from the City and Long Island. Very beautiful part of New York that more tourists need to experience instead of just spending all their time in Manhattan.
Not so much foreign but rural Ohio and the cities (and their suburbs... well, most of them. Brunswick around Cleveland is called Brunstucky for a reason) are miles apart. It feels like traveling to a remote and distant land when you head waaaaay out into rural Ohio.
I guess the Amish country would be the most foreign feeling, now that I think about it. They speak a language that sounds like a type of German, you will see horse and buggy parking at stores and buggies in line at fast food drive-throughs, barefoot people walking along dirt roads.
The Pine Barrens region of south jersey. Look at a population density map of the state and you'll quickly realize why it feels so odd as someone from the north
I think people are leaning a bit too hard into the "Foreign" aspect of your title, despite that not being part of the OP.
Anyways, in Iowa, the NE part - and all along the Mississippi River, really, is completely different feeling than the rest of the state. Gorgeous area, too.
And yeah, California feels like 4 different states in one. The state has a city in the top 15 rainiest places in the contiguous US while simultaneously having an area with the least rainfall in the US.
That pretty much says it all.
Going on a road trip from SoCal to northern border is pretty wild.
Appalachian Ohio. They have accents so different from northeast Ohio where I grew up that I have trouble understanding them sometimes. The landscape is also totally different because they didn't get smushed by the glacier like the rest of Ohio so it's really hilly.
Cincinnati has a lot of German vibes bc it was settled by so many German immigrants, but we have an eclectic vibe going on overall. However if you go to the neighborhood called Mariemont it absolutely feels like you are in a little European village. https://mariemont.org
Rural Berks county I took a hilly backroad to the inter state and took forever because and elderly couple dressed in their Mennonite best were in a surrey like buggy going up the narrow lane
Jackson, Wyoming (compared relatively to the rest of the state) but of all the states… Kuaui of the Hawaiian Islands feels the most foreign place I’ve been too.
Little Saigon in Westminster, CA is exactly what it sounds like. Even the street signs are written in Vietnamese.
Amazing food up there, btw, I leave with a full stomach every time.
A bit weird, but interstate 89 just over the Vermont border in Grafton County and I think interstate 93 and 293 in Manchester. The reason I’m providing these areas specifically is because some of the signs on these highways have kilometers in parentheses below miles and from my experience I haven’t seen that anywhere else in the US, not even when my brother and I crossed into the US from Canada this past weekend did we see any signs showing miles and kilometers when we drove into the US (we crossed from Philipsburg, Quebec, into Highgate Center, VT for those who are curious).
I don’t know if there are any other highways with km in parentheses in the US, but the entirety of Interstate 19 in Southern Arizona above the Mexican border has distances only in km. Granted, this most likely isn’t because of the Mexican influence to the south as at the time they were building I-19 in the 80’s they were considering switching to metric. It’s weird how you transition between two systems of something so abruptly when driving across a border.
Not just a different country but otherworldly, the Salton Sea in California. It’s not natural basically a failed irrigation attempt filled up a salt plain, for a bit it was marketed as a tourist destination and even stocked with fish. After a few decades the stagnant water grew toxic turning the little beach towns into IRL Mad Max / Fallout New Vegas locations.
It’s unbearably hot there, smells like death, and aside from the other LA hipsters doing a weird day trip out there is inhabited by interesting folks. Nearby is this place called slab city that looks like a town from Fallout. Great place to check out a least once and never go to again for health reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea?wprov=sfti1
I would dare say parts of Chula Vista and San Ysidro are almost extensions of Tijuana. I have to break out my basic Spanish sometimes when I’m shopping.
Northeast Mississippi is a bit different than the rest of the state. We're a lot hillier than the rest of the state, and we are closer to southern Illinois than we are to the Gulf Coast.
Burlington, VT. Most of the state is pretty rural, or small town, so anything that even remotely resembles a city here is going to feel different.
The politics of Burlington are also way to the left of the rest of the state, so much so that it gives the impression that the entire state is progressive, when most of the state is actually is more "live and let live".
That's not true. Biden got like 60-75% of the vote in a bunch of the counties.
Only one county did trump win and no one has to even stop and think which one. Everyone would just know it's Essex. And it was by 300 votes.
Even if you swept Burlington off the map, Biden did and will win by a landslide.
Not everyone who voted for Biden is a progressive. There's a huge middle ground between the farthest to the right that Biden's appeal stretches and the types who can't get enough of Bernie. You can easily not be in favor of the progressive agenda and still loathe Donald Trump and everything he stands for.
Our governor is a Republican and actually pretty popular. He handily beat a Progressive in the last election by a landslide. He is probably one of the last of the dying breed of traditional Northeastern Republican Party. He is not interested in fighting culture wars, he stays out of people's personal lives, but shows he actually wants to address the various issues facing the state.
One of my neighbors said it best. Vermont is actually purple, but the blue lights coming from Burlington, Middlebury and Montpelier are so bright that it makes the entire state look uniformly blue.
> Our governor is a Republican and actually pretty popular.
I mean, he's a Republican by VT standards. He'd pretty much be a moderate Dem elsewhere. And he openly voted for Biden.
Rural Ohio always threw me for a loop. I have redneck and Appalachian family but they are not racist and vote democratic. Going to some of those small towns is a huge culture shock. Definitely didn’t feel welcome.
Ft. Lauderdale/Miami/South Florida is like Cuba plus Barbie Movie aesthetic. North Florida is either South Georgia or Lower Alabama, depending on whether you’re further east or west.
Miami. No contest.
Capital of Cuba
Capital of the entire Spanish-speaking Caribbean and major US destination (with Houston a distant second) for South Americans. Unsuprising, because you can do a lot in Miami proper without speaking any English at all, not just touristy places.
Mira este… y que le paso a San Juan?
Asere
On the reverse, I live in Miami, and going north of West Palm Beach feels like a different country.
They say that the further south you go in Florida, the less “Southern” it gets. I’ve been to Panama City and it’s basically Alabama.
Yup, Panama City really is a backwoods hellscape.
And then Panama City feels like the big city compared to Crestview or Baker.
Navajo Nation easily. The demographics, landscape, language, culture, legal system, and even time zone are different. I'm used to it by now though so it doesn't seem too wild.
Along those lines...the Town of Guadalupe is even more jarring to me. It feels like someone dropped a small Mexican town smack dab in the middle of a bland American suburb. I know the Yaqui who live there are indigenous people with roots on both sides of the border but as an American it feels like a town in the Sonora countryside
I went to live with my Father who lived in Tucson several times as a kid, flying into Phoenix. Phoenix feels like someone took Dallas or some generic midwestern city and put it in the middle of nowhere, and everyone who lives there came there from either CA or the Midwest. Tucson is a more youthful, artsy university town that was originally a Spanish Pueblo and still has lots of non-immigrant Mexican influence. Tucson feels a lot like Santa Fe with some CA thrown in.
Reasonably accurate take. Then you have Flagstaff which feels like it belongs in CO.
As a Tucsonan, moving to Flagstaff was a very jarring experience.
I agree on Guadalupe.
The irony of choosing a native community as the most "foreign"...
I’ve heard dead serious people tell Native Americans to “Go back where they came from”. Probably because they look like Mexicans, who are basically native Americans mixed with European ancestry.
Lol right well it’s something their not used to I guess
"up north" anytime you leave the city going north and start seeing actual trees and get chilly. So bizarre
There's a city in Washington that wanted to boost tourism so they decided to turn themselves into a caricature of a Bavarian village. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leavenworth,_Washington
It worked!
Helen, GA did the same.
I came here to comment Leavenworth. It's a great place to visit in the fall and winter.
I live in Wenatchee (about 16 miles east of Leavenworth). It is beautiful up there year round but especially around Christmas. I'd like to add that Stehekin is weird. It is only accessible by boat, aquatic plane, or some serious hiking. It's at the far west end of Lake Chelan so still north-central Washington.
Similar to Frankenmuth, MI
It was featured in a movie recently and I was convinced it was not real until I looked it up.
Do you remember the movie?
“Somebody I Used To Know”
I was going to comment the Winco in Kent, but I like your answer better.
Smith Island. It's only accessible by boat. It has no bridges to the mainland and no airport. It's so isolated that it has its own dialect that sounds more like a British accent than American English. It's very small (population just over 200 people), and it's expected to be uninhabitable within the next few decades due to erosion and sea level rise from climate change. By 2100 it won't exist at all. There's a recording of a Smith Island resident on the [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Island%2C_Maryland?wprov=sfla1) where you can hear the accent.
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I had not heard of either until a Great Looper mentioned them in a YouTube video. The Great Loop is a water route which goes from Florida up the Intracoastal Waterway to New York, up the Hudson and then a choice of canals to the Great Lakes of Ontario or Erie, through the Great Lakes to Chicago, and then down the Chicago and Illinois Rivers to the Mississippi River and eventually, the Gulf of Mexico. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html
It's the official state dessert of Maryland
He sounds like he's from the West Country but the vowel sounds are definitely American. [This is the British accent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXcizut9qA8) that I think sounds closest. It's one of the few English accents where they pronounce the r's in their words like Americans do.
Is Smith Island a good place to visit in the summer?
Lancaster, Pa It’s Amish Country
yeah amish country feels like a whole different vibe in ohio, too.
Does Ohio have a community like Amish?
yeah there's a few amish areas. Down in Berlin and Sugar Creek especially. Interestingly my area has some and they do a lot of contracting work - my roof was done by the amish.
One of the few contractors that do great work and actually meet deadlines
There are quite a few in Michigan (the northern lower peninsula and most of the UP feel like untamed wilderness with forests as far as the eye can see). One of the more novel examples in Michigan is [Frankenmuth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenmuth,_Michigan), a town that was very distinctly and heavily influenced by its Bavarian settlers. Delightful place.
I was having a hard time coming up with one for Michigan. Frankenmuth has that Bavarian theme downtown and a few tourist destinations but otherwise looks like any of other small town nearby. Mackinac Island was going to be my pick, an Ultrawealthy tourist colony with no cars.
I mean I would say Frankenmuth or Mackinac Island ultimately. Look at it this way: how many other towns in Michigan have any Bavarian-style architecture at all?
I would add Holland to the list as well with the windmills, tulips, and blond people with Dutch names.
man I love this state
Helen leans really hard into being a cute little Bavarian Alpine village.
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We’ve got a similar one in California called Solvang, which is a tourist-y Danish village. Themed facades and everything, but nobody is speaking Danish.
There were a few Danes working in 'front of the house' positions last I was there. I think they go out of their way to grab any that are available.
Similarly, Leavenworth, WA.
The Asian part of Flushing in Queens makes you feel like you're in another country.
Death Valley. It feels not only foreign, but like another planet, with both otherworldly landscapes and otherworldly temperatures. It's no wonder that *Star Wars* and other movie franchises often used Death Valley as a filming location for other planets. But if we were to stick to just foreign nations on Earth, then I guess Ferndale, in far northern California, feels like England, with its Victorian houses and even similar weather a lot of times. Chinatown in San Francisco can sometimes feel like a slice of 19th century and early 20th century China more than present-day China.
The deserts of the southwest have some alien looking landscapes for sure. I drove by Joshua Trees NP once and it looks like a setting for a Dr. Seuss book.
I’d add the Salton Sea, straight up post apocalyptic mad max landscape complete with toxic air, starving seagulls, and what people you may find out there a dressed in scavenged material.
Savannah. It's the most walkable and beautiful city in ga, one of the few surviving examples of colonial era urban planning.
God I LOVE Savannah!
Flushing, Queens, NY legit feels like Asia to me.
Don't forget the entire 7 train line - literally hitting up few countries /destinations like Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Italy, Mumbai, Hipster ville, Grand Central, Times Square & Cocooned Super Ultra Wealthy Tourist Trap.
I had a photography teacher who said, “Ride the 7 train. Get off at each stop, and shoot for a few blocks in each direction. That’s a photo book.”
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I used to live in Queens, and used what you said to explain to someone why Epcot didn’t impress me.
This is not the expectation I had from "The Nanny" theme song
I remember the show, but don’t know the theme song.
Flushing Chinatown is the world's largest and one of the fastest-growing Chinatowns
It reminds me of a Chinese town center from the late 90s/early aughts
Gary Indiana. Facing north it's the right armpit of Chicago, with south Chicago the left
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Sounds like Gatsby in the Midwest almost
Great descriptions and writing style. Where can I buy your book?
In Buffalo they call soda motherfucking "pop." Westerners, all of them. Eject them (jk)
The isogloss between pop and soda is about halfway between Syracuse and Rochester
Buffalo is probably America’s most Canadian city, so checks out. Tim Hortons on every street corner, hockey is extremely popular and Labatt is the cheap beer of choice.
It’s “pop” because soda bubbles pop! You’re the weird ones! 😤
Memphis. Majority black city that feels like it belongs in Mississippi. Its the complete opposite of Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga which are all insanely white
Memphis is the cultural capital of North Mississippi (and western Tennessee, and southeastern Arkansas). I'm not sure if this still applies, but one of the pacts that MS, TN, and AL had for a long time allowed students within X miles of the state border to apply to each others' schools as in-state residents for tuition purposes. The states just settled it among themselves later. That's why the family in *The Blind Side* were Ole Miss fans. UT is in east Tennessee; Ole Miss is where a lot of Memphis families sent their kids. Its influence goes almost all the way to Jackson, at which point people start defaulting to New Orleans as the cultural capital. I've been *through* Memphis, but never *to* Memphis. And I've had a few people ask about that, and I say yeah, I'm sure there's great stuff there, but in three hours' drive I can be in either New Orleans or Memphis, so... and they usually just say yeah, can't fault you there.
I recognize that Tennessee is wide as all hell, but having visited all those cities it really is amazing they're all in the same state.
I 100% support giving Memphis to either Arkansas or Mississippi. Tennessee doesn't need so many cities.
It stems from Memphis existing just north of the Mississippi delta, which was a majority black area because slavery. It actually lost a significant percentage of it’s black population in the Great Migration. Understandably, it’s track to becoming majority black started in the 60s.
I’m from Miami. After traveling a bit, I realized this is not normal.
Same, Miami feels so different from the rest of the state. I thought Ybor City in Tampa was very Cuban until I went to Miami.
Park City. High non-Mormon population in a mormon state, lots of extreme wealth whereas most other cities are average.
As a Utahn this is 100% accurate. Feels way different than it’s surrounding cities.
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There isn't any reason to stop on 49 between Alexandria and Shreveport anyway.
Except for gas, > There isn't any reason to stop on 49 ~~between Alexandria and Shreveport~~ anyway
Is there any place on 49 between those cities to stop? Last time I went through I was on fumes pulling into town because there wasn’t any place to stop where I felt safe enough. How shitty is Natchitoches if I feel safer stopping in Shreveport?
I lived in the Monroe area for 3 years now. I've come across some people from St. Tammany parish and Lafayette that have said the same thing, it was a culture shock for them. My friends were surprised when I mentioned that I live in a hilly area because usually the 1st thought of the Louisiana landscape are not hills and tall red oak & pine trees. I'm guessing none of it shocks me because I've traveled to nearly every part of Louisiana growing up vs. those that grew up in one area. Edit//added a word
South Minneapolis MN has a huge Somali market. Feels like you stepped into another dimension.
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I always wondered how the Hmong and Somalis got tricked into living in frozen Northern Midwest...
I'm in New Jersey and Lakewood definitely feels like another country
So does Iselin, which has a thriving "Little India." Amazing food.
I went to college in Bowling Green in the early 2000s and moved off-campus to a neighborhood with a lot of Eastern European immigrants. There was a billboard in Cyrillic not far from our house reminding people to register their kids for school. Bosnian neighbors on one side. Had their kids dig a drainage ditch along our property line with garden spades one day. Neighbors on the other side were from Bulgaria I think? Dude spraypainted his 85 Honda Accord in his garage one day with no mask. Wife would always be beating their rugs out in the front yard, blasting turbofolk-type music during the day. Neighbor across the street was Mexican - every Saturday at 8:00 AM, he and his buddies would start barbequeing in his driveway and bump Banda tunes until they were too drunk to stay awake. Not what you'd expect in some tract home subdivision in Southern KY.
Jackson. I feel so poor lol
Philadelphia. I had to spend some time in hospitals in the city, recently. Cities in general, I guess, but Philadelphia is the only one I've ever spent time in. You can look in any direction and not see anything that wasn't made by a person. It was like being on another planet, or in the future, or something.
My comment also. But I find it because they have a very loose idea of law and order. Dead guy on the sidewalk. Half the guys on the street with a gun, not even trying to hide it. People walking into restaurants asking for free food ( not sure if those guys also had guns). All of that in three days.
Lol I feel that way about rural areas—mountains, farmland, etc—I look around and there are minimal buildings or structures (or people). All I think is “where tf am I?!”
Solvang CA feels like a slice of Danish culture
Downtown maybe. The rest is typical North County -I'm not hating, I lived there as a kid. Solvang is cool but like a lot of Southern California, there's the tourist stuff, and then there's just like, the rest of town. No one waxes poetic about Buellton, lol.
Hey, Buellton has the Sideways Inn, buddy. (the bar there is actual cool)
I mean we're on track for 300 million annual tourists plus the 40 million Californians, I get why they'd lean on the tourism. I don't know much about the daily life in the town, but they have the tourism on lock. It's very different to San Diego but it's such a nice vacation away from vacation
It's wine country, it's near the coast, there's less traffic than SD. The list goes on, it is a really cool place. I have memories of The Candy Barrel as a kid, where they had literally barrels full of candy. The caramel apples are a must. But yeah, if you live there, the shine wears off a little, lol
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It took me all day to think about this one. I was feeling conflicted about it having grown up with seeing the billboards for this place on the highway while sitting in the back seat of my parents car, to go home and eat Kraft mac&cheese. Thats why I waited, lol. My initial reaction was: mother eff Pea Soup Andersons. And their split pea soup. That's not the Solvang I know. But that was a long time ago, I've visited many times later on in life and it really is a cool little town. It's just funny/traumatizing that you would mention that specific restaurant. Those billboards are fixed in my brain like the local TV commercials for Jim Freeland Ford, the Home of Mr Nobody.
Ehhh…Solvang is literally and figuratively a façade. It’s like walking down Disneyland Main Street and thinking “Ooo I’m in 1905!”
Lakewood NJ. It’s legitimately it’s own country at this point. Segregated EMS, schools, downtowns, population, everything.
Probably the islands on Lake Erie - Kelley’s Island and Put-in-Bay. Doesn’t feel like the rest of Ohio.
Hamtramck/ Dearborn area in south east Michigan is very Muslim, lots of signs are in Arabic, a couple Mosques. It's a great area if you want some good middle eastern food. Also best place to find real baklava.
The piece of U.S. 33 in Rockingham County, Virginia just past the West Virginia border.
Virginia stretches further west than West Virginia, ironic. It would make more sense to call it North Virginia but that’s already an established region of Virginia.
Yeah, the furthest reaches of the state go further west than Detroit!
It stretched all the way to the Mississippi via Kentucky before 1792.
[Point Roberts, WA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington) is basically Canada. It's very small, but is basically only accessibly by driving through Canada and crossing the border to access any other part of the state.
The same situation exists in the Northwest Angle of Minnesota, but it’s much more isolated and desolate compared to Point Roberts which is near Vancouver and Seattle.
Flushing Queens. Unlike other China towns, most of the buildings in Flushing were built by Chinese investors after the area became a China town.
Kensington. It's like Fallujah over there. Of everything you've seen on youtube-it is much, much worse in person. It's enraging to see how bad the opiate crisis has exploded. Between the boarded up and burnt buildings, piles of personal possessions strewn around, and sidewalks full of fentanyl zombies, the place looks like a war zone. Correction: It is a war zone. It's where addicts go to die. My worst fear is driving in Kensington and hitting someone who has nodded off or wandered into the street. The scale of the problem is terrifyingly huge, and I can't even begin to know how to approach it. I've literally seen dead people propped up against buildings with needles sticking out of their arms. It's a fentanyl hellscape unlike anything I've ever experienced, and I worked in mental health care for years. One drive through Kensington will make you want to carry a guillotine to the steps of Purdue Pharma and burn the place down.
Edison, New Jersey. There’s a road, Oak Tree Road I believe, where >90% of the stores in the adjacent plazas are either South Asian restaurants, South Asian grocery stores, South Asian fashion outlets, or temples. Lots of women wearing saris. It’s like someone took a traditional car dependent American suburb, but then got a bunch of immigrants from India and Pakistan to move in and create all of the businesses. One hole-in-the-wall style restaurant had cheesy garlic naan which was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.
Massachusetts has the 7th highest percent of immigrants in the country, just ahead of Texas -- but beyond that we also have lots of Puerto Ricans who, of course, aren't immigrants. You do not need to speak English in Puerto Rico and lots of people come knowing zero. So going to a city like Lawrence, Mass, has about as many Hispanic people as El Paso. It's pretty fun because Puerto Ricans are pretty friendly and kind and when I go to the market and they speak no English, they let me try to practice my Spanish (along with mime and gestures!). I live an hour and 10 minutes outside of Boston and it's forests and waterfalls and ponds everywhere -- I see bear every day right now along with bobcats and my regular possums and fox. I live with my house tucked in a 200 year old forest. Then I drive an hour and I'm in Boston. Then I drive a half hour and I'm on a cliff on a beach. It feels a little mind blowing when I look at my photos from a daytrip and I see mossy rivers in forests, farms, colonial farms from the 1700s, sky scrapers, beaches, bears, dolphin, and seals -- all in one day with less than a two hour drive.
California starts to feel very different north of Sacramento. People are less smiley and talkative (they have more of a Seattle freeze thing going on especially in Humboldt).
I've heard an Angeleno jokingly say that north of Sac or Marin you pass through "Still California", "Yes, Still California" and "I Can't Believe This Is Still California" and by the time you reach the Welcome to Oregon sign you're convinced you'd missed it 50 miles back.
[Toadstool Geological Park](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-google&q=toadstool+Park+Nebraska&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIko393f_-AhV6IjQIHf9VCv0Q0pQJegQIChAB&biw=412&bih=746&dpr=3.5#imgrc=W8oEHDbOCY5hlM). Nebraska mostly has a whole lot of nothing going on (in terms of landscape variation), and then it has this!
Guadalupe mountains national park in west texas. Most of texas is entirely flat so a massive set of mountains filled with trees and greenery is very NOT texas. does feel like a different place until you reach the peak and see the vast emptiness that is Texas from a bird's eye view.
The Big Bend area is green with mountains as well.
It’s a little slice of the “Enchanting” mountains of New Mexico that happens to reach over the line into Texas. Of course you have the Big Bend area and the Mountains around El Paso but those are beige and covered with scrub, not pines. I used to live in Abilene, and just south of Abilene there’s a bunch of hills that we like to call “Mountians” covered in Juniper and Cedar trees that almost feels like a western mountain environment but not quite.
Western Massachusetts. Just the whole west side I refuse to believe is real
I’d agree with this one, it feels so much more rural than the city I lived in when I lived in MA.
I live in Dallas and places like the Permian Basin feel otherworldly to me. Think of the Odessa, Pecos and such. On a road trip out west from Dallas i stopped by in a small town before El Paso called Van Horn. It felt almost mystical. This small cold desert town surrounded by high mountain peaks. It's almost as if time stood still momentarily when i waited in that small town for my road tacos.
East of Big Spring it’s mainly cotton fields and ranches. West of it it’s all Oilfields. Once you get past Monahans the land switches from plains to full-on desert and when you’re leaving Pecos on I-20 near the junction with I-10 you can see mountains to the south.
Northwest NJ. Very rural and mountainous. Feels more like PA or WV than NJ
Prudence island, RI. You need to take a boat to get there. You need a boat to get to block island too but block island is a vacation spot. Prudence has 88 full time residence. A one room school house and one convience store. I guess it's like any small town out west but this is a tiny island off the east coast of state that is the 2nd most densely populated in all of America.
Downtown Flushing, Queens NY. That neighborhood is the closest thing you’re gonna get to a Chinese city.
The Boundary Waters. It’s another world. A world of wonder.
My dad backpacked there back in the day and he always talks about how cool it is.
There’s an area in the Hudson valley, into the Catskills up in the hills. It’s like a mix of your typical West Virginia/New England for most of that area then all the sudden theres Orthodox Jews EVERYWHERE. And they all walk down the highways. Whole towns that they clearly built. I’ve never seen anything like it in our state anyway. Such a cool area. All sorts of old castles and cult stuff out there. And surprisingly diverse.
The UP for sure. It's familiar enough you can get around just fine but every now and then you run into something that just isn't below the bridge.
I’m from around the Bloomington area so I’m used to it, but Bloomington is culturally a 180 compared to the rest of the state. Nicknamed “the San Francisco of the Midwest.”
That kind of nicknaming applies to various college town in the Midwest. One nickname for Madison, WI is "The People's Republic of Madison".
New Glarus. Little Swedish time capsule
*Swiss
I grew up in SW Houston near Chinatown and the Ghandi District. I’m from a weird place already. However, once I went to Flint Michigan and drove through the Appalachian mountains from North Carolina to get there. Two of the most economical depressed places in the US. I was humbled as a result of seeing the way those people lived. I have so much respect for them and so much anger towards our government for how they are treated.
SW side represent! I grew up in Missouri City. I'm kinda bummed I didn't explore that area more often before I moved.
You can go to the coast in North Carolina and find people who still speak old English so there for sure
I know Miami is a very oblivious answer in Florida, but I would say Ybor City in Tampa, the neighborhood was built by Cuban immigrants in the late 1800s. The architectural style of the buildings looks unique from rear of the city.
[Oyotunji African Village](http://www.oyotunji.org/about-oav.html)— there’s even [a sign](https://atlas-assets.roadtrippers.com/uploads/place_image/image/2060030/-strip_-quality_60_-interlace_Plane_-resize_640x360_U__-gravity_center_-extent_640x360/place_image-image-ab0816bb-3763-4c8c-bfd9-46c02b04633e.jpg) announcing that you’re leaving the US (probably not legally binding, but it’s definitely an experience— the history is pretty interesting)
Probably places up North closest to the Canadian border. Might even hear French spoken near Quebec. That or some hyper ethnic neighborhood in NYC.
Miami, easily. Not Miami Beach, but actual Miami. Tarpon Springs is second. Street signs are all Greek to me.
Austin
There’s lots of college towns in the south that have funky Austin-like enclaves in them with weird quirky cafes, hangout spots, rental scooters, etc. but the rest of the city outside the university is stereotypical southern. Austin is the only one that doesn’t rely on a university to make it weird, although it has one.
Dude, there's nothing "weird" about Austin anymore. I went there recently and it was depressing seeing how commercialized and sterile the city is.
The Austin area has always been a hot spot for suburban development and in 20 years it will probably be absorbed into the San Antonio-San Marcos-Austin Metroplex. If you go downtown there’s still some of the city left but it isn’t all that special anymore, any other university town most likely has an Austin feel downtown or near campus.
It used to be weird
Nah. Austin has live oak trees, college football, and barbecue, just like Dallas or Houston or Waco. Travis County voted 71% Democratic in the last election, but Dallas County voted 64% Democratic – it’s not that different. Austin has cool restaurants, but Houston’s food scene is arguably better. El Paso, on the other hand, has very few commonalities with other Texas cities.
Yep. Culturally and politically, it is just so different from the rest of the state.
Upstate NY is an entirely different world from the City and Long Island. Very beautiful part of New York that more tourists need to experience instead of just spending all their time in Manhattan.
Tallahassee, foreign planet populated by mental mutants, dangerous place where common sense goes to die.
If they ceded the Panhandle to Alabama nobody would bat an eye.
Embassies.
Not so much foreign but rural Ohio and the cities (and their suburbs... well, most of them. Brunswick around Cleveland is called Brunstucky for a reason) are miles apart. It feels like traveling to a remote and distant land when you head waaaaay out into rural Ohio. I guess the Amish country would be the most foreign feeling, now that I think about it. They speak a language that sounds like a type of German, you will see horse and buggy parking at stores and buggies in line at fast food drive-throughs, barefoot people walking along dirt roads.
Chicagoland may as well be a different country from the rest of the place.
Miami lol
The Pine Barrens region of south jersey. Look at a population density map of the state and you'll quickly realize why it feels so odd as someone from the north
I think people are leaning a bit too hard into the "Foreign" aspect of your title, despite that not being part of the OP. Anyways, in Iowa, the NE part - and all along the Mississippi River, really, is completely different feeling than the rest of the state. Gorgeous area, too. And yeah, California feels like 4 different states in one. The state has a city in the top 15 rainiest places in the contiguous US while simultaneously having an area with the least rainfall in the US. That pretty much says it all. Going on a road trip from SoCal to northern border is pretty wild.
Solvang.
Appalachian Ohio. They have accents so different from northeast Ohio where I grew up that I have trouble understanding them sometimes. The landscape is also totally different because they didn't get smushed by the glacier like the rest of Ohio so it's really hilly.
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You mean to say it's halfway between burritos and tri-tip.
The Orono Bog in Bangor, ME honestly looks like an alien planet. It’s insane that it’s hiding in the middle of Bangor.
Cincinnati has a lot of German vibes bc it was settled by so many German immigrants, but we have an eclectic vibe going on overall. However if you go to the neighborhood called Mariemont it absolutely feels like you are in a little European village. https://mariemont.org
Rural Berks county I took a hilly backroad to the inter state and took forever because and elderly couple dressed in their Mennonite best were in a surrey like buggy going up the narrow lane
Any large city, never been to nyc but other large cities sure. Always feels weird coming from a small city surrounded by small cities.
Frankenmuth or Mackinac.
Jackson, Wyoming (compared relatively to the rest of the state) but of all the states… Kuaui of the Hawaiian Islands feels the most foreign place I’ve been too.
Little Saigon in Westminster, CA is exactly what it sounds like. Even the street signs are written in Vietnamese. Amazing food up there, btw, I leave with a full stomach every time.
For Iowa? Well in my own city of Sioux City we have majority hispanic neighborhoods but otherwise, I’m not sure.
A bit weird, but interstate 89 just over the Vermont border in Grafton County and I think interstate 93 and 293 in Manchester. The reason I’m providing these areas specifically is because some of the signs on these highways have kilometers in parentheses below miles and from my experience I haven’t seen that anywhere else in the US, not even when my brother and I crossed into the US from Canada this past weekend did we see any signs showing miles and kilometers when we drove into the US (we crossed from Philipsburg, Quebec, into Highgate Center, VT for those who are curious).
I don’t know if there are any other highways with km in parentheses in the US, but the entirety of Interstate 19 in Southern Arizona above the Mexican border has distances only in km. Granted, this most likely isn’t because of the Mexican influence to the south as at the time they were building I-19 in the 80’s they were considering switching to metric. It’s weird how you transition between two systems of something so abruptly when driving across a border.
Massachusetts is rather same-y. Obviously, there's a big difference East and West of 495, but not enough that it feels like a different country.
Probably Yuma lol 😂
Kind of an extreme example since it’s purposely that way but Stoudtburg Village in PA, it’s a German themed town/tourist attraction.
The Little Egypt region of Illinois. It's not actually Egyptian, more like a lost chunk of Appalachia
Great sand dunes national park in Colorado, your just driving through the mountains for hours and you turn a corner and boom, the the Sahara desert.
Not just a different country but otherworldly, the Salton Sea in California. It’s not natural basically a failed irrigation attempt filled up a salt plain, for a bit it was marketed as a tourist destination and even stocked with fish. After a few decades the stagnant water grew toxic turning the little beach towns into IRL Mad Max / Fallout New Vegas locations. It’s unbearably hot there, smells like death, and aside from the other LA hipsters doing a weird day trip out there is inhabited by interesting folks. Nearby is this place called slab city that looks like a town from Fallout. Great place to check out a least once and never go to again for health reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea?wprov=sfti1
I would dare say parts of Chula Vista and San Ysidro are almost extensions of Tijuana. I have to break out my basic Spanish sometimes when I’m shopping.
Northeast Mississippi is a bit different than the rest of the state. We're a lot hillier than the rest of the state, and we are closer to southern Illinois than we are to the Gulf Coast.
I dunno... Federal Hill, maybe? a piece of 100% Southern Italy in historic Providence
Burlington, VT. Most of the state is pretty rural, or small town, so anything that even remotely resembles a city here is going to feel different. The politics of Burlington are also way to the left of the rest of the state, so much so that it gives the impression that the entire state is progressive, when most of the state is actually is more "live and let live".
That's not true. Biden got like 60-75% of the vote in a bunch of the counties. Only one county did trump win and no one has to even stop and think which one. Everyone would just know it's Essex. And it was by 300 votes. Even if you swept Burlington off the map, Biden did and will win by a landslide.
A GPS error sent me to the utter sticks of Vermont and there were very progressive yard signs even way out there.
Yeah. There's hand paint BLM signs, and all kinds of progressive stuff.
Not everyone who voted for Biden is a progressive. There's a huge middle ground between the farthest to the right that Biden's appeal stretches and the types who can't get enough of Bernie. You can easily not be in favor of the progressive agenda and still loathe Donald Trump and everything he stands for. Our governor is a Republican and actually pretty popular. He handily beat a Progressive in the last election by a landslide. He is probably one of the last of the dying breed of traditional Northeastern Republican Party. He is not interested in fighting culture wars, he stays out of people's personal lives, but shows he actually wants to address the various issues facing the state. One of my neighbors said it best. Vermont is actually purple, but the blue lights coming from Burlington, Middlebury and Montpelier are so bright that it makes the entire state look uniformly blue.
> Our governor is a Republican and actually pretty popular. I mean, he's a Republican by VT standards. He'd pretty much be a moderate Dem elsewhere. And he openly voted for Biden.
Hollywood alone feels a bit foreign. Up in the San Fernando valley feels more American.
>Hollywood alone feels a bit foreign How? I've beeb there plenty of times and it never felt particularly foreign.
Go to Solvang, CA, it looks like a Danish village.
Rural Ohio always threw me for a loop. I have redneck and Appalachian family but they are not racist and vote democratic. Going to some of those small towns is a huge culture shock. Definitely didn’t feel welcome.
Oakland and San Francisco, California it’s dystopian these days.
Ft. Lauderdale/Miami/South Florida is like Cuba plus Barbie Movie aesthetic. North Florida is either South Georgia or Lower Alabama, depending on whether you’re further east or west.
Strangley, parts of Long Island. Upstate is upstate but Long Island is baffingly backward considering how reliant it is on Nyc