What states do you consider to be part of the Midwest?

Please list the states that you consider to be part of the Midwest.

gosh i never know. like i would be too embarrassed to answer.

haha, dude, i've gotten in so many arguments w/ native missourians about whether or not MO is in the midwest

(i consider it to be)

ohio
indiana
michigan
wisconsin
illinois
minnesota
north dakota
south dakota
iowa
kansas
nebraska
missouri

http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/terrestrial/amphibians/armi/images/armi_midwest_420-360.gif

kentucky? no. someone told me a few weeks ago she doesn't consider ohio to be part of the midwest. then where is it?

native missourians SWEAR that missouri is not part of the midwest

well i guess kentucky has to be if IN, IL, and MO are

i wasn't going to put MO on my list but it seemed like a hole in the map then

If Ohio isn't part of the midwest, then the midwest doesn't exist.

But, yeah, the plains states plus MO plus KY are really debatable

Don't worry Surm, I don't there is any definition that everyone agrees on. This question was prompted by a conversation I had the other day with a co-worker who kept saying that the Midwest ended at Illinois. And went as far east as like West Virginia. This blew my mind because my working definition was something close to what harbl posted (i'd include Arkansas and remove the Dakotas). He categorized Missouri and Kansas as Plains States. I protested that I clearly remember Fox Sports MIDWEST as covering Cardinal games, but it didn't help.

oh yeah you could leave off the plains states no prob. i love maps btw

(xpost) MO is a plains state?

That's right, I DON'T include the Dakotas. And I'm so confident about Missouri's inclusion that it's not even up for debate. LOCK THREAD

xpost to harbl

Yeah, that's what this jerk said. I mentioned Great Mount Tom Sauk, tallest peak in the country imo, and the Ozarks, but this guy refused to listen

WV is a weird case too, I don't think of it as the midwest, but I'm not really sure what region you could put it in. According to wikipedia it's in the mid-atlantic, which seems wrong.

i don't really want the dakotas to be there but i always think of them as part of the upper midwest with MN and WI

i think of WV and KY as appalachian states. is that a category?

Appalachia isn't really a category like "midwest" or "new england" becaause, with the exception of wv, only portions of states can be said to be in it e.g. western north carolina

yeah, it's more just how i place them in my brain

askance ur map seems OTM to me w/ exception of kentucky. people who say OH isn't midwest are usually from plains states ime (and are totally and completely wrong)

fuck yes MO is midwest

I consider Kentucky as part of the South.

yea me too

side question:

what are the plains states?

(we will keep going in this manner until we get to island states)

the plains states are ND, SD, NE, and KS. what's OK though?

def plains

those are the quintessential plains states imo, even tho the plains overlap onto other midwest & western states

yeah that's why it's hard to categorize like that, same as using appalachian like i do. they should have a different name like "the middle"

like you could include montana and wyoming and colorado but i don't want to. those are "rocky mountain states"

http://www.unl.edu/plains/CGPS_images/main/egpmap2.gif

btw i'd just like to add that st louis is fucking rad, one of my fav cities for sure

saskatchewan and alberta are canada states

Kentucky is like another country compared to the Midwest. And I say this as a fan.

cross-examination

harbl,

you listed the ND and SD as part of the Midwest. Minutes later, you stated that the plains states are ND, SD...

Is there overlap between the Midwest and the Plains states? or are you LYING?!?!

yes

ohio
indiana
michigan
wisconsin
illinois
minnesota
iowa
missouri

From Newshour:

http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/images/convention/plains.gif

RONG

the great plains are a helpful contributor to everything between chicago and the west coast being pretty boring imo.

newshour claims those as plains states, btw

that drive is just....damn.

no i think "the midwest" you hear about in the news as a broad general category includes the plains states xposst

parts of KY are distinctively southern but then you have to realize that Cincinatti is less than a 90 minute drive from either Louisville or Lexington....

I think the same dual-identity could be applied to Missouri. KC vs. STL vs Springfield... all radically different cities and culture.

every non-coastal state that is not part of the South or Southwest

ohio
indiana
illinois
missouri
kansas
nebraska
wisconsin
michigan
minnesota
wyoming
iowa
colorado
n dakota
s dakota
idaho
montana

yeah ohio has like 4 different types of states within it too

yea midwest encompasses the plains states. u can be a midwestern state but not a plains state, but all plains states are midwest (i'm not counting western states that have plains as 'plains states' tho)

great lakes is a region too - minnesota, wisconsin, illinois, indiana, michigan, ohio, PA, western NY

sarahel you cannot be serious with that

wherever R. Kelly and Nelly be at

i've heard buffalo lumped in as a midwestern city which is totally ??? except for the accent.

sarahel's definition actually seems kind of rational and consistent, but I'm not sure that such things have much to do with how regions are perceived.

ohio and indiana are wild cards -- they're not not midwestern but i tend to lump them in with the rust belt northeast.

yeah, I've heard Pittsburgh referred to as a midwestern state, which kind of makes sense...Buffalo and Pittsburgh might have more in common with e.g. Cleveland than they do with Philly or NYC

(xpost) same with buffalo really -- it's rust belt northeast but the case for spiritual midwesternness could be made.

xp harbl: yeah, you're right, i'm kidding. Maybe I should've been more obvious about it and said, "The Midwest is everything east of I5 until you hit the East Coast."

http://www.overmorgen.com/weblog/files/2009/01/09/nine_nations_of_north_america.gif

the only midwest states are the states with big ten schools. shit, except for pennsylvania.

western 2/3 of penn are basically midwest imo

clinging to their guns and religion

core states are: indiana, michigan, ohio, wisconsin, illinois, minnesota

iowa is a toss up b/w midwest & plains (mostly plains)

missouri is a weird mutant hybrid of midwest, plains & south

This is blowing my mind. To me, Iowa was always the very definition of Midwest.

indiana, michigan, ohio, wisconsin, illinois, minnesota, iowa.

The rule: Midwestern states are the ones which were free states during the Civil War and which don't have a border with the Atlantic or Pacific. Except Vermont, which is obviously not Midwestern (but which is, I would say the most Midwestern of the NE states.)

And except Kansas. But again, I'd say Kansas is MORE Midwestern than Missouri, Kentucky, Nebraska....

J0rdan, where do native Missourians categorize mo?

I lived there from age 3-22, and I always thought of it as midwest.

a co-worker who kept saying that the Midwest ended at Illinois

the correct response to this assertion is WISCONSIN

I mean, how are you gonna draw a line on that one

I guess I think The Midwest as that aggregate of states which are (A) east of the Mississippi (Minnesota excepted); (B) north of the Mason-Dixon; (C) composed of a diversity of geological features: lakes, forests, plains, hills, wetlands etc.; & (D) straddled economically b/w industry & agriculture.

yea seriously xp - there are a few states that are no-bullshit midwestern states. imo these are: wisconsin, minnesota, illinois, iowa, indiana (have any deniers ever been to bloomington ffs?), ohio, and michigan. i'd even throw in missouri into that

not saying that is the correct definition, mind - just the way I've always personally sorted them.

As an Oregonian, I have given the matter very little thought. To a native of the west coast, large tracts of the country are simply "back east".

I would obviously exclude all the eastern seaboard states, new england, the old south and the border south states like kentucky and tennessee. The west proper starts with any state containing the continental divide.

Missouri is an odd duck that is very hard to place. Pennsylvania is equally an odd duck, but is too far east for me to feel comfortable tagging it midewestern. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin try to set themselves apart as the old Northwest, but I'm not fooled a bit. They are middle west by affinity as well as by geography.

OTH, Oklahoma doesn't fit at all with the likes of Iowa, Kansas or Nebraska, so it absolutely cannot be midwestern for that reason alone.

you guys, regions aren't mutually exclusive, and regional boundaries can overlap state boundaries ok. life is too short for your rigid geographical constructs, free ur minds~

Yeah... maybe... but answer the question, yuh big galoot. We'll all judge just how free ur mind really is when we see what it produces.

As a native Missourian (lived in St. Louis the first 18 years of my life), I can definitely say Missouri is the midwest.

This is blowing my mind. To me, Iowa was always the very definition of Midwest.

Yes. It is the belly of the Midwest. Even other Midwestern states look at it and go "whoa y'all are some bland fat corn eating motherfuckers".

Here is how this shit breaks down in my mind:

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/5561/unitedstatesmapq.gif

native missourians SWEAR that missouri is not part of the midwest

are these bootheelers or something? i mean, basically everyone in my family is a native missourian, and they'd think this assertion was pretty weird.

imo:
ohio
indiana
michigan
illinois
wisconsin
missouri
iowa
minnesota
kansas
nebraska
south dakota
sort of unsure about north dakota, but i guess i'd include it too

midwestern also works as a regional designation like appalachian rather than a group of states. sort of like the more or less flatlands west of the appalachians that were settled by people moving west from new england/hudson valley via the erie canal corridor and by people from the mid atlantic going through pennsylvania.

made yall a map

http://i35.tinypic.com/2wcg0tc.gif

Growing up in Kentucky it was quite apparent that it had an identity crisis about whether or not it was Southern or Midwestern. My Alabama cousins always called me a Yankee for coming from Kentucky, but the difference culturally between KY and Ohio seemed pretty apparent too. We got our own thang.

Oh, and MD is not whatever so fuck you. Baltimore pwns.

its just like get an identity is all

these maps are hilar but new york is not new england!!

new york fits well enough in new england - its delaware and maryland where the problem is

European over here so take with pinch of salt but in my mind I'd always had it down as something like

Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Michigan
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Iowa
The Dakotas
Nebraska
Kansas
Missouri

and the great plains and great lakes regions as somehow 2 constituent parts of the midwest (and western rustbelt as maybe a 3rd subpart of it). But somehow I think of the western parts of the dakotas and kansas and I guess Nebraska as sorta different again but can't articulate why. Western Pennsylvania I can't decide about

uh that was a mistake there about "western" rustbelt - I meant the Cleveland/Pittsburgh/Youngstown(?) kind of area (So i guess western PA)

Separating Pittsburgh and Buffalo from Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee seems wrong somehow. Ever notice that the Buffalo accent is almost the exact same as a Chicago one?

a lot of upstate new york accents are like that -- big polish/german influence.

western pennsylvania is not the midwest

ohio and indiana are wild cards -- they're not not midwestern but i tend to lump them in with the rust belt northeast.

JBR, I don't understand this???? How are they NOT Midwestern? If rustbelt-ness takes precedence over Midwesterness, then half of Michigan is gone that way too!

chicago accent is similar to new yorker accent but with an "oh hey dere" nordic upper midwest influence.

when I moved to Wisconsin my mom the native Minnesotan was so delighted about my decision to relocate to the midwest that she got me a subscription to Midwest Living magazine. and, every month, packed in there with the hottest new casserole recipes and discounts on the trendiest bed and breakfasts is a DEFINITIVE LIST of the states the magazine covers. they are: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

Oh sorry, JB, I missed a "not" there while skimming thread. We are in agreement.

i wish my mom would send me casserole recipes

i mean isn't that what moms DO?

The only good one is the pork chops cooked in the dish with the rice, so all the pork fat soaks into the rice and makes it tasty. Cream of chicken with celery and peas and with French onions on top: ew. Camper stew aka goulash: ew because frozen green beans? should not be there. I can't think of any others.

holy shit some of u are retardo

NB: in parts of the Midwest, casseroles are referred to as "hot dish"

Welcome to ILX, is this your first time here?

xpost

casseroles are some dope shit imo

Kentucky is the South, by the way.

like how on earth could you exclude the dakotas from the "midwest"?? SoDak, in particular, is, like Iowa, a prototypically midwestern state to me.

seems like the european guy is most otm:

and the great plains and great lakes regions as somehow 2 constituent parts of the midwest (and western rustbelt as maybe a 3rd subpart of it). But somehow I think of the western parts of the dakotas and kansas and I guess Nebraska as sorta different again but can't articulate why. Western Pennsylvania I can't decide about

― äüßerst delikate angelegenheit, Thursday, October 22, 2009 1:52 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

MY MIDWEST:
Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan

I've never been to a Dakota, gbx. I think of them as having mountains, but then I guess they're pretty big so probably the eastern side is hardly in the same state as the western side.

i grew up on the east coast so the western plains states feel like foreign countries to me still.

casseroles: terrible, awful, gay, midwestern, food
ND & SD: midwest

afaik the dakotas are totally mountain free (except for the black hills?)

but i always forget that the dakotas are not as far west as i think they are.

I've never been to a Dakota, gbx. I think of them as having mountains

hoo boy xpost

i've only been to michigan once, and all the cool parts are at least as far as colorado!

nodak: no mountains
sodak: black hills along the western edge, otherwise just farmin' that looks exactly like southern minnesota and parts of iowa

holy shit some of u are retardo

― how rad bandit (gbx), Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:39 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM

Yeah the western half of S Dakota (which I'd describe as hilly rather than mountainous, though you do get up to, what, near 7000ft elevation?) seems too frontiersy to be part of the Midwest. A place like Deadwood is the antithesis of Midwesternness, even back then.

Interestingly, I think I agree most with the two other people on this thread who are native Illinoisans:

ohio
indiana
michigan
wisconsin
illinois
minnesota
iowa
missouri

― access flap (omar little), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(I'm not sure I'd include Missouri myself, but it's the first state I add if I expanded my list.)

the only midwest states are the states with big ten schools. shit, except for pennsylvania.

― t0dd swiss, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(Had this exact same thought.)

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/04/electoral-history-charts.html

MIDWEST =

"rust belt"
IN, MI, OH, PA

"north central"
IL, IA, MN, WI

"prairie"
KS, NE, ND, SD

yeah PA doesn't really fit in the midwest, but it's def rust belt and the rest of the rust belt is midwest so

(xpost: That is, the two other native Illinoisans before Granny Dainger posted.)

Missouri is 100% midwest, no contest

the rust belt isn't all in the midwest. western NY is in the rust belt, too.

ok srsly laurel no offense but thinking that the dakotas have mountains is totally blowing my mind! i mean, i've driven all the way across sodak maybe a dozen times (at least), and it is, in my brain, basically shorthand for "the flat expanse of the middle western states"

but i guess some of you just think "plains states"??

many xposts

jaymc otm + would also accept the dakotas east of the missouri r. + missouri north of the missouri r.

south dakota is just like nebraska but about four hundred degrees colder in the winter

also, btw, you know that trope about the midwestern/alaskan "connection"? like, that got thrown around a bit during the elections w/r/t palin's accent and support, etc.?

they were not talking about illinois, indiana, ohio, or pennsylvania.

MIDWEST =

"rust belt"
IN, MI, OH, PA

"north central"
IL, IA, MN, WI

"prairie"
KS, NE, ND, SD

this sounds about right, with the "rust belt" provisos posted above.

mookie otm!

yes cosign

btw for those of you that are defining the midwest as vast expanses of agri flatland, you should prob tweak that definition a little bit, given northern mn, western SD, and pretty much most of WI.

No it's okay! I mean obv I'm totally clueless about the Dakotas. And I really can't recall why I thought they had mountains. I'm trying to think of a book or a toy or a map or something but no good.

mount rushmore?

insidious north dakota tourism propaganda

My Midwest
ND SD NE KS MN IA MO WI IL MI IN OH

I love how emotional people are getting about this!

I've driven across Nebraska on the way to Colorado, but no further north than that.

btw for those of you that are defining the midwest as vast expanses of agri flatland, you should prob tweak that definition a little bit, given northern mn, western SD, and pretty much most of WI.

― Don Quishote (jjjusten), Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:53 AM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, see, i tend to think of Midwestern as more of a cultural thing, which is why western sodak and s missouri and parts of the rust belt and like all of KY doesn't ring right to me

what is oklahoma, btw? just north texas?

ND SD NE KS MN IA MO WI IL MI IN OH

― Mr. Que, Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:54 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is otm

OK=Texas's trucker hat

wisconsin is such an attractive state

it's an area of the map, not whether a place has the characteristic of midwesternness. imo.

some parts of the rust belt, like pittsburgh and buffalo, are not in it. and some parts that are not flat are in it.

yes, you are correct, not a single part of penn or fucking NY is in the midwest, who on earth would even suggest that

also i can categorically say that there are no mountains in the midwest

our state boundaries were drawn by slavers and plutocrats and paid for in blood anyway, fwiw

^^ i mean, just the midwest's

u_u

waht is the mesabi range a range of

holes, now

tru

I really do think being a Chicagoan has a great deal to do with my conception of the Midwest. In some ways, the states that I consider "Midwestern" are ones that don't feel that far away, and that I've been to more than a couple of times. So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and (obviously) Illinois all fit -- and as I said earlier, I'd be willing to accept Missouri, too (especially since St. Louis is only 4.5 hours away, and I've visited there no fewer than four times).

Whereas the Dakotas and Nebraska and Kansas just feel instinctively wrong to me -- but maybe that's because I've never been to North Dakota or Kansas, and have only been to South Dakota and Nebraska on a big family road-trip vacation to Yellowstone and back when I was nine years old.

Oh wait, my band played a show in Omaha once. But still, that's like 7 or 8 hours away.

Like Iowa, Kansas is quintessentially Midwest to me. We're not in Kansas anymore etc etc.

a graphical delineation needs to be made for the boundaries of 1) the cultural midwest 2) the environmental midwest and 3) the political/economic midwest. then, using GIS spatial analyst tools, the boundaries of these three concurrent regions can be extrapolated and a generalized midwestern boundary that accounts for all geographic aspects of the region can be decided upon. and it won't include kentucky

Kansas is Middle America to me, but not Midwest.

oh brother

or pennsylvania

have you met a person from kansas?? if you ask them the question:

"are you from the midwest?" they will answer YES

yes^^^ same with Nebraska

i mean i realize we all love to have our own personal definitions of the Midwest, and that's fine, too

if you wanna be rong

jaymc where does "Middle America" end and the Midwest begin?

at the edges of a John Cougar Mellencamp video

Missouri is 100% midwest, no contest

― Mr. Que, Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:48 AM (26 minutes ago)

y'all ever been to Springfield? (3rd largest city in MO)

cuz i have and it is way more Southern than Midwestern.

Quick wiki browse: Sits in the Ozarks, Confederate stronghold from 1861-1865, site of the first recorded shoot-out, birthplace/terminus of "SOUTHERN" intercontinental Route 66, etc.

iiiijjjj, you been to Springfield right?

jaymc where does "Middle America" end and the Midwest begin?

The Midwest is part of Middle America.

i dunno there's burbs up here that are pretty "southern" imo

Isn't the Midwest meant to be neutral, "accentless", Mom's Apple Pie America? If so, no way the Dakotas are in it, that's witch country.

lol

just because MO has a "southern" city doesn't mean it is not, as a whole, "midwestern" imo

yep, I canvassed for Obama there and I would say that based on the lay of the land, including plenty of creeks and hollows, the per-capita frequency of churches and Waffle Houses, not to mention the physical size of the numerous churches, that it felt distinctly more southern than midwestern to me at least. all this could be said about Branson and the Ozarks in general too. also, I drove past Roy Blunt on I-44.

accentless lol

i have been to Springfield twice. seemed Midwestern to me.

PARRk THE CARRR

i thought that was for the Bahstin accent.

Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd.

BRRATS

Dialect Survey Maps and Results

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html

Delaware and Maryland are mid-Atlantic.

Also, Laurel, can I get that porkchop and rice casserole recipe? Thx.

xp

I'll ask about it, J. Or check at home and try to remember to bring it to work.

btw most chicagoans don't speak with a "chicago" accent. accentless as in 95% of midwesterners sound like your typical CNN newscaster, hollywood actor, etc.

that is not actually true in mn

that's 4% right there.

yeah that's not true of 95% of northern ohioans, michigan people, or wisconsin, etc. people i have met either.

95% accentless. 1% Chicago accent. 4% hockey accent.

btw most chicagoans don't speak with a "chicago" accent. accentless as in 95% of midwesterners sound like your typical CNN newscaster, hollywood actor, etc.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:50 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Could have fooled me on that. Unless they are transplants. Pretty much everybody I know has one.

Missouri is 100% midwest, no contest

definitely. If Kansas and Illinois are Midwest, but Missouri isn't, then is Missouri the extended middle finger of the south?

That's cause you socialize exclusively at the Pipefitters Union hall, Bill.

Yeah, even people who aren't running around talking about "da Bears" still say "Oh my Gaaaahd" and "Chicaaaahgo." I am mostly aware of this because of the extent to which I've started doing it myself, which kind of bums me out.

i've heard buffalo lumped in as a midwestern city which is totally ??? except for the accent.

― harbl, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this seems right to me + i grew up in buffalo and live here now. it's the rust belt imo.

% of people in Chicago with "Chicago" accent=% of people in NYC with "New York" accent. I've come across thousands of people born and raised in the area and only a handful have had that thick "hey dere my friend whaddaya say we get some brats and watch da bears" accent. Wish it was more prevalent tbh, cause it's pretty hilarious.

It is totally hilarious.

lol

I listen the Steve Dahl Show podcasts, right, and he plays voicemails from listeners. I'd say 1 out of 20 have a Chicago accent. Which he of course then usually mocks, awesomely.

I'm probably don't pick up on the more subtle versions of the accent, though.

Hello there, my friend. What do you say we purchase some bratwursts, and then watch the Chicago Bears football game?

Or, if you prefer, the Chicago Bulls basketball match. I believe they are competing against the Spurs of San Antonio this evening.

yew tak funny, meh friend, but yea i could gofer sem saaaasages.

- The midwest is a feeling.

- Arguments about Missouri and the south are somewhat compelling to me, actually, because there is a difference -- there are certainly places west of it that have way more in common with the core midwest than it does. Places like Lincoln or Omaha or Lawrence KS are way more, umm, spiritually contiguous with the idea of the "midwest" than a lot of Missouri. Haha Missouri is the gateway, the crossroads.

- I don't count the Dakotas; apart from a few far-eastern spots like Fargo or Sioux Falls or whatever they're just different, much more part of that whole northern-Rockies group.

- I can go either way on how far people want to extend the idea out onto the plains. You sorta just pick it up from context, really, whether someone's "midwest" is more Great-Lakesy or more Great-Plainsy. The only thing that bugs me is east-coasters whose idea of "midwest" is totally undifferentiated and encompasses most of the country. Or -- and I'm sorry if this is anyone here -- people who toss out Iowa as this quintessential midwestern flat grain-filled flyover spot, because if you've spent any time whatsoever near the midwest you know very well that Iowa is not the "center" of anything. Like any notion of a cultural or geographic category that thinks Iowa is right in the middle of it is just flat wrong.

Yeah, what most people consider the "Chicago accent" is largely a white working-class thing.

I move that it be renamed the Berwyn accent.

so can we agree that the Idea of the Midwest needs to be first broken up into cultural, physical, etc. separate contingencies and then depicted with individual raster map overlays that can show the degree of Midwesternness at any particular coordinate, as opposed to vector maps with a hard-and-fast line-in-the-sand boundary that says "this is the Midwest, this is not?"

Modern Geography was invented at the University of Chicago in the sixties by the way. I learned that in a History of Geography class.

we are all midwesterners now

except me, coz i'm from pittsburgh

I srsly think of western PA as being midwest.

it's definitely in the graying-out zone

i thought california was part of the midwest till i lived in LA, now i think the midwest is everything that isnt los angeles, new york, new jersey, or philadelphia

nabisco no it is not, wtf

no ocean coastline? no mountains? wasn't in the confederacy? yup, that's midwest.

is it boring? that's a better yardstick maybe

Like any notion of a cultural or geographic category that thinks Iowa is right in the middle of it is just flat wrong.

http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/terrestrial/amphibians/armi/images/armi_midwest_420-360.gif

Sure looks like Iowa is near the center of that area.

yeah um, i was gonna say. i can't think of a more central Midwestern geographic category than Iowa. Alton IL? Maybe? Central Illinois?

has anyone said NORTHERN CITIES VOWEL SHIFT yet?

northern cities vowel shift
look it up
labov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UoJ1-ZGb1w

Oooh, what is that from? I would watch that whole show. (PBS, I'm guessing, if that's Robert MacNeil.)

i thought california was part of the midwest till i lived in LA, now i think the midwest is everything that isnt los angeles, new york, new jersey, or philadelphia

here is the average californian's map...new jersey and philadelphia don't make the cut

(california) -- ??????? midwest??????????? - (new york city!!!)

It's called Do You Speak American?
I use it in my classes when we do our pronunciation section to show the variety of dialects in the US.

Thanks!

Also:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~chiang/images/newyorker1.png

labov is a God

I use it in my classes when we do our pronunciation section to show the variety of dialects in the US.

In elementary and high school is it required to speak without an accent? In my school it was strictly forbidding to speak in dialect. (Less strict in the second high school I attended, but it was still not allowed in class itself.)

I'm not sure, but I doubt it. Anyway, I teach ESL classes. Also it's impossible to speak without an accent.

(adult esl, i should clarify)

I went to school in the NW and we would get scolded for sounding "too Californian"

If you're speaking with an accent, chances are your teacher is, too.

Also it's impossible to speak without an accent.

Well, yeah, you'd need tons of speech classes, but if they overheard you speaking with a clear accent or dialect, you were reprimanded. Once two girls were allowed to come in front of the class and speak in Bruges dialect in our class. How exciting! Let's have a freakshow! (I am being sarcastic.)

Californian sounds niiiiice! I've been checking the Youtube american accents clips.The chigago dialect sounds.... very strange (to me).

xp
that may be true, but i doubt it was an institutionalized rule to scold students for sounding different. could it have been an individual teacher's bias?

This is a pretty good example of the Chicago accent:
http://web.ku.edu/~idea/northamerica/usa/illinois/illinois10.mp3

xp yeah there is (or was) an anti-California bias in the NW, similar to the anti-NY bias in the Midwest.

nabisco no it is not, wtf

gbx if you consider Ohio to be in the Midwest (and I think that's a majority opinion here) then how is western PA not kinda near the fade zone?

Haha my mother has a poster in her kitchen that says "I don't CARE how they do it in New York."

there's no fade zone when it comes to geography. a state is either Midwestern or not. just like how Shasta thinks Springfield MO makes MO southern instead of Midwestern. i mean i've been to both Western PA and Southern MO, and i can see why people would come up with both theories. i cannot, hoewever, support them.

laurel i love your mother's way of thinking

That Northern Cities vowel shift is what I consider the native Cleveland accent, with a little bit of Pittsburgh. Chicago, to my ears, has even broader vowels. "Block" doesn't just become "black," it becomes "blaaaaahk."

Chicago is a discrete dialect from the Great Lakes NCVS area, (flaps prevail over interdental fricatives, for instance) but it's related phonologically.

btw re: Iowa I am talking about on-the-ground people-and-geography stuff -- even if you count the Dakotas and say it's like spatially central, it's still Iowa. The well-populated Great-Lakesy stuff is on one side. The super-plainsy stuff is on another. You get more Rockies action to the northwest. Iowa itself doesn't really have the gravity of being central -- it's not like some center point that represents or averages out all the stuff around it. It'd be like saying the real core bit of the united Kingdom is in the water just east of the Isle of Man, because that's sorta in the center.

the presence of mountains in western pennsylvania disqualifies it from midwestern status.

also use of the word yinz

Ohio itself isn't monocultural either -- just listen to someone who grew up near the Ohio river but not in Cincinnati.

like that vowel shift clip above, i think the midwest begins in syracuse, fuiud

how about kind of between the Missouri and Ohio rivers?

RE: Missouri - I'd say anything north of St. Louis feels like the mid-west and anything south feels like the south.

Jeff City is south of St Louis and feels Midwestern

I live in NYC and my in-laws are Midwestern ... hot combo

hot combo

another word for cassarole

lol

Well Que, the poster is a joke, because the little girl in the poster is wearing overalls and chewing on a piece of hay or something, so it pretty much reinforces uh some stereotypes all by itself.

i still like it

I live in NYC and my in-laws are Midwestern

Haha, my dad is from Brooklyn, and my mom was born in West Va. but grew up in NE Ohio. Definitely a hot combo.

there's no fade zone when it comes to geography. a state is either Midwestern or not. just like how Shasta thinks Springfield MO makes MO southern instead of Midwestern

Of course there's "fade zones" in geography! Maybe not so much when dealing with discreet variables like States, but certainly with continuous data like % of landuse devoted to farming corn, for example. After all, the first law of geography is that everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. I don't think he's saying it makes Missouri southern, only that it makes Springfield more southern than, say, St. Louis. The use of states as the political jurisdiction for this survey is arbitrary anyway - we could use counties to be more accurate if we cared to.

xxxxxxpost

Isn't Jefferson City just west of St. Louis? I don't think it's much further south, if at all.

If travel down to the "boot heel" it feels WAY southern.

The same can be said about southern Illinois, tbh.

Also, I always thought states had to be west of the Mississippi to be considered "mid-west".

the midwest is wherever a shoneys is

f course there's "fade zones" in geography! Maybe not so much when dealing with discreet variables like States,

well, yeah, okay, when we start talking about landuse and stuff, sure. . .but this thread is about States

nm I just looked at a shoneys map wtvr

our state boundaries were drawn by slavers and plutocrats and paid for in blood anyway, fwiw

― cialis morissette (goole), Thursday, October 22, 2009 11:01 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

ok and I can't even load the cracker barrel site to see if that's viable

I think there might be cracker barrel's in arizona tho so that'll rule that out

per this map, kentucky is definitely part of the south and MO probably is too.
http://www.verysmallarray.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/070605_uswafflehouse.gif

that waffle house map is almost exactly like the shoneys map

^^^^from the files of noted Emeritus Geographer, Dr. W. House

was gonna say Bill Knapps restaurant but there used to one in FLA

yeah let's rely on a fucking waffle to teach us about geography

makes sense, if any non-Dixie state is to be inducted into the Waffle Confederacy, it might as well be the one that doesn't recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day

http://www.superpoop.com/040209/how-far-away-is-ohio.jpg

lol iiiijjjj u r a gis stan

that map's treatment of Michigan as contiguous creates a weird error

I guess NY, too. Part of NY is really, really close to Ohio

more slave than stan, but yeah

I srsly think of western PA as being midwest.

― quincie, Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:00 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

madness

you could maybe make a case for erie, i guess. but yeah, pittsburgh is v. hilly and its accent is not midwestern

maybe it's different in upper st. clair tho

OH SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

mookie throwing down. also, check it out guys, #2 gis result, the zinesters agree with me

http://api.ning.com/files/IlN0UevPKmaGg*x8ULBu6VC4IyGWkDu3gW8Zyklx5rFXRZO47GrVVLykuG2kmKKq9FsOiFv5*78qiz2TKyZwPFgRbtQavwfX/midwest_map.jpg

ks, mo, ky and wv are border states

southern IL has more in common with Kentucky than it does the rest of IL, most def
do not know wtf nabisco is talking about w/r/t Iowa not being the center in any way. When I think of the Midwest I think of flat, nearly-featureless endless prairie, farms/dairy farms/cornfields, fat white people, conservative culture-wise, bland food, esteeming small town life over city life. That just screams "Iowa" to me.

the funny thing about putting the Dakotas in or out is ... well, no one much lives there, and those that do are all over on the east side toward the core midwest, so whether or not the states as a whole count is really just like asking whether the midwest's property line includes those little bumpy bits out back or not

xpost - haha I am telling you, if you wanna continue the house analogy Iowa is like the guest room nobody goes into; it makes such a poor heart

but w/r/t the rest of the country, the Midwest IS the guest room no one goes into!

there's no one right or wrong answer w/r/t the center of the Midwest, but i think lots of people would pick Iowa or certainly wouldn't be surprised if Iowa was considered the center

ohio is the heart of it all

summit county reprezent
http://www.pl8ster.net/OH/OH99_ABF2430.jpg

past Summit = Appalachia

endless prairie, farms/dairy farms/cornfields, fat white people, conservative culture-wise, bland food, esteeming small town life over city life

MN is totes the midwest but fails about half of your checklist

it should say the home of lebron xp

in the same font

ten years later it probably does

Pittsburgh *feels* more midwest than NE, mookie. WTF how did you get into dook being from the 'Burgh, anyway?

which half does it fail?
xp

gonna admit that this thread is making me a little homesick for the home of lebron

note: I haven't been to the Northwoods areas of WI and MN. That's Midwestern culturally and geographically but not typical of Midweatern ecology, imfo.

i think we can all agree that minneapolis is the cultural capitol of the midwest, surely

(discounting chicago because it is a thing unto itself)

xp granny but you're also missing michigan!

endless prairie - fail
farms/dairy farms/cornfields - pass
fat white people - well we have our share
conservative culture-wise - more so recently, but def a fail
bland food - prob in general
esteeming small town life over city life - more fail than pass, but sure, it exists

what about st olaf?

Patron Saint of the Midwest

http://6.media.tumblr.com/RDIzdsEnW5rdkj5czyfUoinn_500.jpg

endless prairie, farms/dairy farms/cornfields, fat white people, conservative culture-wise, bland food, esteeming small town life over city life

^^ haha I almost hope this starts a Front Range argument about whether most of Colorado lives in the midwest!

sounds like you're judging MN on Minneapolis area? Tons of prairie, conservative small towns in parts I've seen. Which parts are you thinking of? I think the southern half fits my checklist.

xp I wouldn't be opposed to lumping eastern CO in with the Midwest.

i almost brought up eastern colorado, but that seemed like pushing it

it's not really "half," though, is the thing.

esteeming small town life over city life - more fail than pass, but sure, it exists

kinda funny since our most famous esteemer has nice homes on crocus hill and uh the upper west side.

although, actually, what am i talking about: NW minnesota is farmy and conservative, isn't it

lol ques

Basically if I can imagine Footloose being filmed and set in a place, that place is in the Midwest.

if you wanna continue the house analogy Iowa is like the guest room nobody goes into; it makes such a poor heart

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:38 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

i heard a great line about iowa, "it's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there"

iowa:
whoa y'all are some bland fat corn eating motherfuckers
lmfao

ha, that sounds about right to me (xp). i grew up having a lol view of iowa as v v fat and white, but secretly the countryside in the eastern part of the state is super pretty

fwiw the Rockies can be seen when Chris Penn is on the plow. Ergo, Eastern CO counts.

I guess one way the populous bits of Colorado skirt by that definition is that they are also blessed with various sizes of chicano people and less-bland food (though this is increasingly true of a lot of the core midwest, too)

I have tried to introduce this term on ILX before without much success, but: "Front Range." Then Great Plains. Then Great Lakes. "Midwest" some imprecise context-based nexus of the latter two.

xpost Footloose was set in OKLAHOMA and filmed in UTAH

whether most of Colorado lives in the midwest!
Isn't Colorado the thinnest state in the union? (size of people, not size of state)

Colorado has too many mountains to be Midwest. Sure, you've got that hour just after you've left Kansas before you get to Colorado Springs and it's all grassy and stuff but. . no.

i like that scheme, nabs, but the Front Range (you mean eastern CO/WY/MT?) is too specifically Coloradoan.

Oklahoma is Midwest in my book.

no way.

i'm pretty comfortable actually with cutting nodak loose from the "midwest" and piling it in with eastern MT, most of Wyoming, and eastern CO as the High Plains or Cowboy Country

yeah granny, the SW and NW parts of minnesota kinda fit your list, but the eastern 2/3 def do not. iron range is far from a conservative flatland, for example, and has had a pretty radical political history for sure

actually ND is kind of the pinnacle of your checklist tbf

i have no concept of oklahoma

Oklahoma
endless prairie - PASS
farms/dairy farms/cornfields - PASS
fat white people - PASS, though meth use cuts into that number
conservative culture-wise - PASS
bland food - PASS
esteeming small town life over city life - PASS

oh right, yes, Colorado is too thin to count. and the non-bland Mexican food.

(Que keep in mind that most of the people in Colorado live on that plain, for obvious living-on-mountains-being-hard reasons. but yeah, you are taking the state-by-state rule, I guess.)

xpost - yeah, Front Range is kind Colorado-centric -- but a decent way of talking about where people live on that strip of plains that's not really Great Plains anymore. (and there's the actual population split that goes with it -- like eastern KS and NE are really in the orbit of the midwest, then there's a stretch of hardly anybody, and everything past that is more in the orbit of western states.)

i don't even think oklahoma is a thing

this shit is just The West.

doesn't get cold enough there imo

xp in OK

so would you say eastern MN is comparable to all points north, west and including Madison?

also, when i think of the "Greater Western States" (something that may exist only in my mind), they start directly west of MN, and include the Great Plains

also we are forgetting the North Woods, which, in addition to MN, WI and MI, includes upstate NY, parts of VT and NH, and all of inland Maine

q: are there cabins, and do people wear flannel and think about canoes and axes?

a: yes, you are in the north woods

avg low temp is below freezing in Tulsa in Dec, Jan, and Feb.

GD i think i am just being thick but i dont actually understand your question

i would say OK is a Western state

Q: Are there cottages and deer, and do people wear flannel and think about ice fishing?

A: Yes, you are in West Michigan.

think maybe he meant east instead of west

ok that would help a lot

u are all forgetting to factor in annual precipitation rates

gabbenb jr^^^

jj, is eastern MN comparable to the part of Wisconsin west of and north of Madison? hilly, liberal, etc.

do people ride in conestoga wagons? yes? you are in the western states.

also, not surprisingly, MN stops being similar to WI right about the point where the two states pull apart around L. Superior.

feel like the mn temperament is heavily underwritten by the fact that up north exists, and is cutting down a tree or mining something or portaging a canoe ~as we speak

while the middle band of MN/WI is small towns w/lakes that siphon their children to mpls/madison for university

GD i think that maybe answers your question?

MN = that part of WI + flat farmy NW and south + blonde giants from the north living in the woods and playing hockey

god you guys i am seriously excited about hockey this year for some reason

NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN

xps

gabbenb jr^^^

i do have a lot of fascinating opinions on places i havent been

speaking of: the only states in the midwest are kansas, north dakota, iowa and florida (for demographic if not geographic ones). also the canadian provinces of alberta and manitoba

http://www.rumormillnews.com/pix6/9RegionsOfNorthAmerica.GIF

like am considering buying tickets to basically most gopher home games, if i can

Q: are you seriously excited about hockey this year for some reason

A: you're in the Midwest

I haven't read the thread so probably this has been said, but, having lived in both Indiana and Kansas (among a bunch of other places) I'd consider Indiana regionally different from Kansas...Indiana is ICP country whereas KS is way more western-feeling...more like Texas (where I also lived for a number of years) than like Illinois (where I also lived for a number of years; fuck I've lived a lot of (both shitty and cool) places).

Empty Quarter

i've only recently embraced my MNan-ness, and have decided to just let it flow through me

i will go ice-fishing this year

i will learn to cross-country ski

gbx no joke x-country skiing is ultrarad

ST PAUL CURLING CLUB

wait only if they serve booze or let us bring it with us

Q: are you familiar with the term 'loppet'?
A: you are from the midwest

i know! i tried it for the first time last winter, and was like wait i used to think this was boring but secretly it's way fun and easy to do here

xp curling club!!!!

wait what the hell is a loppet

EVAN HOW HAVE YOU NOT XCOUNTRY SKIIED??

It's incredibly hard work but I predict u will like it.

xxxp

a loppet is a XC ski race!

My otherwise quite conservative family believes in global warming because you used to be able to reliably cross-country ski throughout most of the winter (thank u, lake effect snowfall!) and then suddenly you really couldn't anymore.

i used to xcountry ski, maybe if i quit smoking i will join u

there is one that starts RIGHT BEHIND MY HOUSE every winter, it's crazy

xp i have heard whispers of this lake snowfall effect, particularly as it pertains to ski areas further up the mitten, but have never investigated because fuck it's just as far to colorado

The ski areas all suck FYI. I have been to all of them, although not in okay like 15 years. But they're not mountains.

Um however many times they may use the word "mountain" in their literature and/or trademarked signage.

Although they're not gettin any lake effect, cos they too far inland anyway.

haaa i was getting bummed abt winter but now im excited abt winter sports i wont have the time or money to play

apparently there is a top-secret one i read about in powder magazine over ten years ago that is waaaaay up on the tip that just gets hammered w/snow, and has like A lift. ticket office is a card table in the parking lot or something

i need to hit my uncle up for hand-me-down XC ski stuff.

he owns a groomer

xp Oh yeah okay that might work.

it is Mount Bohemia!

...aaaaand it's in the UP, nm

http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr211/elikos91/usa3-1.jpg

discus

Technically true but it's not lived that way

I think the way Ohio is divvied up is pretty accurate.

Yeah but there are problems like this: most of the "Great Lakes Region" is really in the Midwest, but Western NY State is not Midwestern and so can't be in that subset. And it's silly to pretend that the GLR isn't mostly influenced by being surrounded by the Midwest, that is what it primarily IS.

northern and southern coastal california have a lot more in common than say, north carolina and central texas.

Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit have more in common with each other than they do with St. Louis, twin cities, Milwaukee. Maybe it needs an E. Great Lakes v. W. Great Lakes.

Exactly. Really, MI should be split down the middle with the UP going to the Western GLR and everything Detroit/Ann Arbor/Lansing-related going to the East.

"Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit have more in common with each other than they do with St. Louis, twin cities, Milwaukee."

I think I would put Milwaukee with Detroit and Buffalo. They have a ton in common, the inhabitants of all three even talk exactly the same.

Milwaukee, though (and to an extent even Chicago), just feel so much more midwestern to me, what with being perched out there on the edge of the prairie and all.

feels pretty great lakes to me, actually. no grain silos here, just factories and werehouses.

The only problem with turning into a Craftsman Bungalow during a full moon is rearranging all the built-ins afterward.

feels pretty great lakes to me, actually. no grain silos here, just factories and werehouses.

― iiiijjjj, Tuesday, March 16, 2010 12:52 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Totally, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo. They all have the same feel to me, I've had to good fortune to have spent a lot of time in all of them. Milwaukee is much more like Buffalo than it is like DesMoines or Omaha, trust me.

lol bootheel

http://www.commoncensus.org/maps/nfl_1280.gif

bit annoying that the squares for the cities are placed arbitrarily on the map instead of correct location but the influence shading is whats interesting of course

Iowans are a divided bunch when it comes to NFL! (as are Angelenos)

weird how coastal carolina is all skins fans. what a waste of their own perfectly awful franchise.

If you think that's bad, you should see our baseball allegiances.

(It's mostly love the Cubs and hate the Cards, or vice versa.)

I used to live in Iowa: Bears, Chiefs, Vikings, Packers Country. No Rams, of course.

Actually there may be rams fans there now, post-Warner. I lived there pre-Warner.

here is one for baseball

http://www.commoncensus.org/maps/mlb_1280.gif

it actually has you a lot less divided w cubs being predominant

The Midwest is less a region and more a state of mind.

We of the midwest are more characterized by our differences than what we have in common. Because of this natural tendancy to try and find commonality in a seemingly arbitrarily assigned group, we thus ask eachother and often disagree on what exactly constitutes "The Midwest" in the first place. Anyone from our neck of the woods can tell you at least one diffence between two given states, but as we geographically narrow down, that same person may be able to give a dozen differences between one county and the next, and a veritable littany differences between one town and another not 7 seven miles away.

don't know where else to put this

http://fakeisthenewreal.org/img/reform/electoral10-1100.jpg

what's with all these hippy state names

tribute to steve shasta imo

i hope 'firelands' is a tribute to the flaming cuyahoga

"King" as in Creole, not MLK I'm guessing

This has probably been argued to death upthread, but as someone who grew up in SE Ohio, I have to say that part of OH is NOT midwestern. Appalachian all the way. And KY is Southern, don't be crazy ppl.

Love that Chicago is in the state of Gary.

actually i think chicago is its own thing, just surrounded by gary

The Firelands refers to an area of Ohio where people from Connecticut were resettled after their towns were burned by the British during the Revolutionary War.

that is kind of great

sad that their towns got burned and then they had to become browns fans tho

maybe THAT's why they're called the browns

yknow like they're charred from being burned

...

I'll leave

anyway Mendocino is lame I'd rather live in Shasta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_KeqmdiQoY

no wai

Salt Lake should really be a patchwork of odd principalities and city-states like Hapsburg Germany

it would be if not for the roman empire of exxon mobil uniting the peasants under common cause

it does nail down how a handful of ppl from shiprock/salt lake/ogalalla are sending a bunch of senators to dc

This has probably been argued to death upthread, but as someone who grew up in SE Ohio, I have to say that part of OH is NOT midwestern. Appalachian all the way. And KY is Southern, don't be crazy ppl.

pretty much agree, though cincinnati/SW ohio where i grew up is midwestern with strong appalachian influences. and despite being next to kentucky it's not southern at all. appalachian and southern aren't mutually exclusive, though they can be. fwiw appalachian refugees moved to detroit to work in the car factories too and michigan's as midwest as you can get. regional roots get twisted is all

my son reports that one of his hs classmates (in nyc) said this week "maryland's in the midwest right?" lol provincialism

Werethey talking about athletic.conferences? Because I could undersand some confusion on that point.

that would make sense but apparently this is a girl who also famously said "oh the yankees that's a football team right?"

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/

http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/hickey-map-midwest-1.png?w=610&h=569

do MN folks consider themselves midwesterners or Great Plainers?

having lived in both KS and IL recently, the places don't share a culture. KS is wild west, IL is calm farmland + urbanity. I think of the strip from ND down into TX as a single unit, the plains, maybe including MO and AR as part of that. Big 12 country, more or less, before things went bonkers.

every time i haved talked to minnesota folks about whether ohio (where i'm from) is part of the midwest they always say "no, that's east coast"

ha really? i would call it midwest for sure, def not east coast

i guess as mn dude i think of us as midwest, def dont think many people here consider themselves great plains

Great Lakes >>>> Great Plains

<iframe src="//instagram.com/p/nGaF2_Oh32/embed/" width="612" height="710" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>

Hm well that didn't work.

yeah i am down with the great lakes description for sure

Another map that fucks up upper michigan. Idiots.

Anyway no way Montana is part of the Midwest. I drive between WA and Michigan every summer or so and this map from last week of baseball team affiliation pretty much sums up my interpretation about the divide between the Midwest and Northwest in terms of terrain and general disposition - the Twins area is the Midwest, the Mariners area is Northwest, and central Montana is some sort of netherworld purgatory

http://i.imgur.com/ZmPJ0m0.png

does that map say no one is a fan of the mets

netherworld purgatory

see also Virginia and lol.

No love for the A's either. In no way shape or form is Pennsylvania part of the Midwest.

cubs/brewers/tigers/twins = def midwest

i guess when i think of Midwest what i'm really thinking of is Upper Midwest: eastern bits of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, maybe Iowa and northern Illinois (really just Chicagoland)

Missouri/Indiana/greater Illinois....that's like a whole other, distinct region to me

and Ohio has always seemed too far east to me to count and yet it seems the most quintessentially midwestern? i never know what to do with Ohio

i do agree with that 538 thing inasmuch as Iowa is The Midwestern State (more so than Illinois imo)

how could anyone be in any doubt that wisconsin is part of the midwest? have they BEEN here?

also who in hell thinks west virginia is the midwest? it was part of virginia, one of the original colonies, for chrissakes.

Southern Illinois is more of a border south area, as is true of southern Indiana. Calling Kentucky a Midwestern state is, as amply pointed out already, insane. Iowa is the very heart of the Midwest.

does that map say no one is a fan of the mets

― j., Tuesday, April 29, 2014 12:35 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think there were any districts in which the mets had a larger fanbase than the yankees, no. not even in the neighborhoods surrounding the mets ballpark.

yeah states should be evaluated by how similar they are to Iowa

doncha know

i guess when i think of Midwest what i'm really thinking of is Upper Midwest: eastern bits of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, maybe Iowa and northern Illinois (really just Chicagoland)

This is pretty much how I see it but only because I grew up in Michigan and basically everyone I know is there, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Chicago area. Iowa, southern Illinois, the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska - that's all like great plains or farmland and is of no concern to me. Ohio is a black hole that I know nothing about but a lot of people I know hate it. Missouri is definitely the south.

So basically if you aren't touching Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron GTFO.

see "great plains or farmland" pretty much equates to Midwest for me. If you're far from a coast, there's no mountains for hundreds of miles, it gets hot n humid in summer and pretty damn cold in winter, you're in Midwest.

Ohio is the heart of it all.

you've got a friend in non-midwestern pennsylvania

Granny Dainger otm. As someone who grew up in Chicago and took yearly car trips to Omaha, I consider both -- and everything in between -- to be equally midwest.

People have really strong feelings about this.

The US Census Bureau has an official answer to this, right?

(It seems more or less in line with what I thought, although I wasn't sure about KS and MO.)

https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/08/midwest_metros_map_hero/940.png

We surveyed more than 12,000 people (and counting) about the most contentious border question in the U.S. to reveal the true geography of America’s midsection.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/08/where-is-the-midwest-map-geography-great-lakes-rust-belt/597082

truth

there would be more green parts in nebraska but they don't have computers in that part of nebraska

wanna know what these people in amarillo and memphis and providence are thinking

I grew up in Southern Illinois. I'm a Midwest purest = OH, IN, MI, IN, IL, WI, MN, IA, MO.

If cincinatti is in the midwest, all of kentucky must be in.

nope, too far south

outside the ❤️

back to the core, the heart states. echo and the bunnymen

I feel like once you’re north of the twin cities a ways, Minnesota becomes something else. If you can see a moose, you’re not really in the midwest anymore maybe

eastern Nebraska definitely midwest, once you get past the Omaha/Lincoln corridor it turns into a plains state eventually

^ watch carefully as this deceptively mild-mannered hawkeye attempts to lock down a spurious authority to exclude his bemidjian compatriots from the promised land

i'm not saying it's not part of the midwest, at all, but my understanding of the upper peninsula is that it might actually be part of another world

I would throw Oklahoma into the midwest and maybe North Texas. They both have more in common with that than the south or southwest.

no big 10, no credibility

People, plains states are not the Midwest, they are a whole other thing.

Also, just because some cross border inbredness occurs in areas like Southern Illinois-Southern Indiana-Western Kentucky (or Southern OH/Northern KY) doesn't mean Western Kentucky is the Midwest, anymore than the fact that Eastern Kentucky is Appalachia transforms Indiana into Appalachia by virtue of their shared border.

I feel like a 250 mile radius surrounding the sears tower is the midwest.

Or maybe it is an ellipse with foci at the longitude of chicago and east chicago

*longitudes

thank you for not suggesting a radius around touchdown jesus

I grew up in the upper peninsula and it is definitely the Midwest but also indeed another world; northern Wisconsin and Minnesota are kind of in this realm too but the UP feels much more like Alaska or Canada in a lot of ways due to the isolation from the bulk of the states population. That map seems right to me with “Great Lakes” and “rust belt” and “great plains” being three distinct sub-regions.

The thing about eastern vs western Dakotas feels true to me also - I drove from MI to WA a lot and somewhere in the western third of the state it became “the west”.

Also looking at that made me realize I always think of KS, NE, IL, and IA as the Midwest but never Missouri for some arbitrary reason. I’ve never been to Missouri though.

Like Western NY has more in common with Northern OH than NYC, but now we are going to say that NY is in the Midwest? No.

joygoat, this whole general thang has a lot to do with it i think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise

grew up in western NY state which I thought of even as a kid as part of the midwest

i don't want to discount your lived experience out of hand, but also you are a literal madman

great lakes, yes. rust belt, yes. some shit about the erie canal, yes. midwest tho? c'mon

how many pronunciations of 'bagel' and 'Mario' can one midwest hold?

one

https://mario-lemieux.com/wp-content/uploads/Mario-Lemieux-2-04.jpg

Also looking at that made me realize I always think of KS, NE, IL, and IA as the Midwest but never Missouri for some arbitrary reason. I’ve never been to Missouri though.

in many ways, literal and psychedelic, but also anti-psychedelic, missouri is the combination of all those states

thank you for not suggesting a radius around touchdown jesus

― mookieproof

and thank you for mentioning touchdown jesus.

For some reason I think of Missouri more as “the south” than any of the places that surround it on three sides. Or at least more south than north and nothing that is the south can be the Midwest.

Missouri is Midwestern, but not 100% Midwest.

You can't ever have owned slaves or started a catfish farm in the Midwest. They just had a machine-gun shooting governor resign over a weird S&M episode – that ain't the Midwest I know!

But they do call Coke "Pop," so that kinda tips it back to Midwest.

Sorry I wasn't here originally, but my son was born the day before this thread was started.

They just had a machine-gun shooting governor resign over a weird S&M episode

too true -- that's more of a razorbacks ball coach thing

S&M governor seems like an incredibly midwestern thing to me - is it just that it went public and he resigned instead of just having a sex dungeon until he died?

Like it's on brand for Texas to have a governor talk about secession but if one resigned because of that, shit would be weird.

Dallas feels like the midwest

I lived in east central kansass for a number of years and I don’t think it is midwest. It definitely sucks though!

Maybe it is a Midwestern thing to resign over that. It'd be a southern governor who' d go, yeah I tied her up, took her picture and wore blackface throughout the whole thing. What you gonna do about it?

Every month, we publish this regular report from Creighton University, and every month, my editor and I just look at each other and go, Welp...

https://i.imgur.com/J4aeRxi.png

You can't ever have owned slaves or started a catfish farm in the Midwest. They just had a machine-gun shooting governor resign over a weird S&M episode – that ain't the Midwest I know!

― pplains

excuse me are you familiar with the political career of ex-cincinnati mayor jerry springer

also, sorry about your slower economic growth

Every month, we publish this regular report from Creighton University, and every month, my editor and I just look at each other and go, Welp...

― pplains, Saturday, August 31, 2019 9:03 AM (three hours ago)

I guess ND, SD, NE, KS, and OK are the pplains states.

https://i.imgur.com/Ekxncoy.png

Cool map, but I think using the label "Cultural Areas" shows a misunderstanding of what is required to make a distinct culture.

not quite sure how to break it up, but i don't think you can put new england all in one

also aimless otm

"Resides within Cultural Area #27" is pretty much all that a Las Vegas casino owner, a west Texas oil rig mechanic, a Scottsdale tax attorney, a Navajo sheep rancher, a Santa Fe pottery thrower, and a Yuma lettuce farmer have in common culturally except for the fact that they all smoke hella weed.

Deep South too big. You need some sort of Delta region in there too.

I get that this is a "Cultural" map, but c'mon. Sallisaw, Oklahoma, ain't the Deep South.

listen everybody, i did the best i could on this map

i'm open to feedback but let's keep it constructive

after 2 years, the washington post study we commissioned is finally done! here are the results:

https://i.imgur.com/tht9XVl.png

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/29/airbnb-the-most-midwestern-things/

additionally, the team at the post was able to come up with the definitive list, so there should be no need for any more disagreement on this subject until new states are added or subtracted to the united states

Note: The 12 Midwestern states are Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and South Dakota

Finally, all of these states have been ranked by midwesterness. sorry South Dakota, you have been relegated, and Ohio you are *this* close to getting the boot:

https://i.imgur.com/6h0NjG3.png

that's right

I question the methodology of that last list. Notice that it’s the states with bigger cities that place nearer the bottom of the list. Maybe if you’re listing an Airbnb in a place like Detroit or Chicago or Cleveland you don’t have to add the descriptor “Midwest” bc everyone knows what those places are like. Also the Midwesternness of those areas is not in question, whereas a more borderline case like some town in Iowa, which is not obviously Midwestern, would call for “Midwest” in the listing to sort of suggest to renters what they’re getting into.

You'll never convince me that Iowa's Midwestern status is a "borderline case."

https://i.imgur.com/FKkonnE.png

xp I would make the same case, Josefa. Nobody in even southern Minnesota is going to post about Midwestern ambience, it'll be about lakes, fishing, or proximity to Minneapolis. And the vast majority in Illinois are in Chicago and they'd mention local amenities

also Iowa is insanely midwestern, what are you talking about

I've previously mentioned my corn index for Midwesterness (you can argue historical standards and the midwesterness of the rust belt as alternatives) but imo the more corn planted, the more midwestern. So you get Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, eastern Nebraska, etc etc

not-xp: corn sweat is real, 38% humidity today and 100 degrees outside

Pretty sure these points are made in the article itself iirc

38% humidity today

OH POOR YOU.

In my state, the humidity is so high that the air smells like corn sweat ... and we don't have any corn.

More like soybean sweat.

the humidity wasn't terrible, the 100 degrees on top of it was a bit more irritating