Interesting. Another factor in the 20th century was air conditioning. In the 19th century and before, New Orleans was the big southern city because, as somebody else said, you just need a big city there. Other than that, the south was largely agricultural and there weren't other really big cities because nobody wanted to live there. Once air conditioning was introduced and the region became more habitable, Atlanta, Miami and Houston really took off. Houston became the center of the oil industry, Miami took over as the gateway to Central and South America. No new industries moved into NOLA, and now it struggles to be seen as "major league." And then the population growth all over the south helped lead to the homogenization you refer to. It's still sort of under the radar, but NOLA is starting to do pretty well in that regard. It's attractive to educated 20-somethings, so it is now a popular location for startup companies. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232360 http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orleans-Magazine/January-2013/Startups-Flourish-in-New-Orleans/ Young professionals also seem to like the city. http://www.504ward.com/ So if you are young, single and (dare I say it?) hip, or if you are a highly paid professional who can afford to send his kids to a private school (plenty of good ones) and live in a nice neighborhood, NOLA is a desirable place to live right now. If you have a "working class" job and want to send your kids to public schools, well, NOLA just isn't the place for you to move to right now.
The main reason the south didn't have large cities is because it didn't industrialize until after WWII. Agrarian economies tend not to grow large cities. The cities in the south were typically commercial hubs and ports that serviced the agricultural economy, but cities like that tend to stay relatively small. Good point about air conditioning.
Let's hope that should you ever, through some terrible happenstance, find yourself in the South, the residents' natural Southern hospitality and graciousness would stay them from beating the living shit out of you - and then offering you a glass of sweet tea.
Sure it is. Them's the holes in your skin that makes you sweat. People in Nawrlens know all about that. asitis
Again, 'generally' and 'comparably.' I'm sure many Southerners are quite delightful. It doesn't change the fact that what I said was accurate in each case again generally and comparably- since not everyone is obese, and not everyone dropped out of high school and not everyone is a climate change denier or creationist etc. Also, the whole 'Southern Hospitality' thing is a stereotype in it's own right. People are pleasant and unpleasant everywhere.
Are "climate change questioners" more socially acceptable? Or are those people just called skeptics? Is that better than being a denier? I don't keep up on these things. And what is a creationist anyway? You say it like it's a bad thing.
That was just a statement of 'not everyone is X or Y given their region of living.' Not everyone in the South loves Nascar, and not everyone in California is a surfer hippy. Whether or not they are socially acceptable or not wasn't the point there
I know what your are saying, because I have this stereotype of northerners being curt and abrasive. But yes, not all of them all of the time. And I have this stereotype of certain westerners in the ranching and extractive industries as railing against the federal government while prospering by using federal lands for their purposes at well-below-market rates. And so on.... But one regional difference I will defend unto death is the superiority of Southern cooking; particularly as practiced in places like Charleston, Savanna, New Orleans, et. al.. Arrayed against the "cuisine" of the American Heartland is not a fair fight.
Everyone everywhere loves NASCAR. It's like soccer that way I read your posts and all I can think of is Ohio and Idaho, which looking at a map aren't very southern, but exhibit all the same stereotypes (except people there are not at all hospitable). Hospitable people in the South have developed a phrase for folks who talk like you ..... Bless your heart.
I only skimmed the New Orleans stuff, but I gathered that the Army Corps of Engineers is building DCU an underwater stadium.
Resolutely sticking to the subject is so....unimaginative, don't you think? Surreal flights of fancy should be encouraged, the better to untether our minds from the shackles of the everyday, banal conventions of discourse.
Um, no my point is that you threw a quote out there that completely ignored its well known context. Tennessee Williams was gay, NY/SF/NO were the only cities truly open to allowing his sexuality at the time, and he made a statement that showed his appreciation of them for it. It had nothing to do with the relative merits of the cities on any other front.
takes a humble man to put words in T. Williams's mouth. "It was really all about the butt sex ... the city itself was actually a total shit hole"
Yes. No. He did have a solid group of gay friends in NYC and NO (especially NYC), but that's a long way from the cities' "being truly open to allowing his sexuality". The Stonewall Riots were a couple of decades after his main time in NYC; not that things changed immediately after, but the point is that there were still decades of strong and institutionalized anti-gay discrimination to go. No. Williams adored New Orleans across the board, referring to it as his spiritual home. He wrote letters to his mother about how enraptured he was with the city's look and feel, describing hours he spent just walking around and looking at/listening to what he found in the city.
They are entering the preliminary stages of wondering whether or not a preliminary deal will be drafted for evaluation in the preliminary stages of preliminary prelimination etc.