[SpawnOfVulcan]

Originally Posted by Yorkie

A New Yorker in the making.....Impressive, nice tour...I can hook you up with some gay clutter too take back home with you..

Hahaha, too bad I'm no longer up there.

Originally Posted by Chicago103

Glad you had a good time on your first visit to NYC. You said you had been to Los Angeles before and found it quite different, not surprising but I am also wondering have you ever been to Chicago and how from your perspective is it similar or different from what you experienced in NYC? I guess what I am trying to get at is Chicago seen as less intimidating to a typical southerner than NYC or are both cities so different from the sunbelt that both are seen as super urban and different?

I've not yet been to Chicago. I'll put it this way, I guess... before visiting New York, I was less intimidated by Chicago than NYC. To me, I think that has more to do with the difference in population than anything. I was definitely intimidated by New York on the way up there, very nervous about how I was going to do by myself as far as getting around and not looking like an oblivious tourist.

To the typical Southerner, I think those cities do seem really, really different. For the typical, insulated Southerner (not being one, I can only guess), I'd say it's the "legend" of the cities. Kind of like the cities are so much larger than life that there's no way the city could possibly be anything like what we have down here. The degree to which that is true is entirely open to interpretation; personally, however, I didn't see the cities (LA and NYC) as being so different.

That being said, I think it's important to note that the varying lifestyles of a Southerner is probably a huge factor. If you're a person living in the middle of urban Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Nashville, etc... NYC, Chicago, and LA probably don't seem so foreign. The way my grandfather put it, where he grew up in Gadsden, AL (which at that time wasn't all that small of a city for the South) back in the 1920s and 30s, "New York was just somewhere you heard about." Even traveling the 50 miles to Birmingham, back then, was seen as a grand adventure that I would probably compare to visiting DC.

I must say, though, I could see myself living in New York. LA? Nope.