The five most stuck up states that aren’t all that:
5. Maryland – “Ooooh, look at us, we ‘educate’ our ‘children’ with the best schools in the country!” Oh yeah, THE WIRE! So there.
4. Rhode Island – “Ooooh, look at us, we’re a state and everything!” At least the sparsely-populated western states can point to geography as a rationale for its existence. Rhode Island is smaller than my county. Besides, any state with the word “Plantation” in its official name should be more humble.
3. Oregon – “Ooooh, look at us, we recycle. We’re so hip!” Have you ever been to Baker City? Go there and check back with me.
2. Massachusetts – “Ooooh, we deliver health care to our citizenry!” Oh yeah? Well your taxes are high, Taxachusetts!
1. California. Need I say more?
The five coolest states you’ve never heard of:
5. Colorado – Well, maybe you’ve heard of Denver or Boulder, but there is a whole other state out there. Greeley is the cattle-kill capital of the world and who doesn’t want the lofty smell of dead cow in the morning? Right-thinking people pronounce it Call-oh-raw-do, but the locals pronounce it Call-oh-rad-oh. It’s like they have bones in their noses. Very exotic!
4. Oklahoma – Pronounced Oh-claw-home-ah. The cock-fighting capital of the country! Nothing says “cool” like roosters pecking one another to death. Also, they locals are big into “noodling” which is the catching of fish with your bare hands. It’s like crocodile hunter, without the crocodiles!
3. Idaho – Pronounced Eye-dah-hoe. Idaho is one of the most diverse states in the country. In the eastern part, you have white-bread Mormons. In the northern part, you have white-bread paranoids. In the southeastern part, you have the most bland, white-bread mid-sized city in the country. In Blackfoot is the World Potato Museum, which has to be seen to be believed. Mormons don’t drink, but that Eastern Idaho makes some of the best potato-based vodka in the country is of great, great comfort to its minority non-Mormon population.
2. Utah – Pronounced You-Taw. This isn’t known by many, but Utah has the most impressive intelligence community in the country. They walk the streets in white shirts with black name tags. Also, they ride bikes. If you stay there for any prolonged period of time, their allies in the neighborhood will let them know who you are and that you need to be saved. With Utah, it’s like you are leaving the USA, and you don’t even need a passport!
1. Montana – Cows outnumber people in Montana by about a two-to-one ratio. A visit to Helena will display a bunch of animal rights advocates from Missoula demanding this majority-population be given the right to vote. Montana is a competitive state between Republicans and Democrats and the legislature meets only every other year, so don’t expect action on this until they figure out whether the cows would vote Republican or Democrat. Montana is known for not having speed limits, and you can meet the local law enforcement officers, help fund the state government and its cow-vote discussion, and find out that there are in fact speed limits all at the same time!
THIS POST WAS O.G., DUDE!Report
DC doesn’t even want to be a state. We’re so over it, yo.Report
I concur RE MD, but DC is even worse. At least it’s not “technically” a state.Report
hey idiot- not only heard of all five iv’e been to nearly half of them also – look at that graphic you used this is supposed to be about states but you put pr virgin islands and hawaii on it -dummyReport
{{golf claps}}Report
Please remove Colorado from this list. There are too many people coming here. Please replace it with one of the other 48 states that no one has ever heard of.
Why not Michigan? Detroit could use some Californians.Report
Hmm… I think I may move to Colorado. Can you get breakfast tacos there?Report
Yeah, they’re called “tacos”.Report
No, no, no, no, no! No! Damnit, no!
Breakfast tacos are only loosely related to their dinner cousins. For one, there’s no such thing as a hard breakfast taco. And they have eggs.
My personal favorite.Report
You mean migas, yes? Then no.Report
That’s migas in the picture, but there are many kind of breakfast tacos. I generally get migas with avocado, potato egg and cheese with avocado, or chorizo… with avocado.Report
This is like that time that I heard about blood orange martinis.
It’s like “that’s not what those words were intended to mean by their creators.”Report
If you are so lacking in creativity that you can’t come up with a name for your concoction that isn’t just “[non-juniper-flavored] martini,” why would I trust you with my cocktail?Report
This whole (something else entirely)-tini craze is ruining a perfectly decent vice.Report
Oh, I don’t know. I’m still finding ways of making it work for me.Report
Soylent Orange Martini….is that better?Report
It had vodka in it.
IF ONLY WE HAD A NAME FOR A DRINK WITH ORANGE JUICE AND VODKA THAT WE COULD APPROPRIATEReport
a real vice would be something like a Taco-tini.Report
Dude, it was a blood orange. What are you going to call that, a bloody screwdriver? That just seems really macabre.
Wait, it’s actually kind of cool. I am copyrighting that, mother fishers!Report
I would totally order a Bloody Screwdriver.Report
Russel, I hope you do, because I’ll be gettin’ paper.Report
I’m not a believer, but if there were something in this world that would lead me to believe, it would probably be either the music of Bach or breakfast tacos.Report
Taco Bell will gladly sell you a breakfast taco in a Frito shell. What other kind of taco is there?Report
Why not Michigan? Detroit could use some Californians.
Or Wyoming. If you think you live in the windiest place in the world, and you’re not in Casper, Wyoming, you’re wrong about the wind.Report
What did Delaware? Idaho, Alaska.Report
She wore a New JerseyReport
What did Iowa? A Washington.Report
What did Mississipp? A Minnesota.
(I blame my primary school teacher — these things go through my mind every time I drive cross-country…)Report
To pass 5th grade here, you’ve got to be able to spell Mooselookmaguntic.Report
First!Report
And every bit as accurate as the other claimants to that title.Report
Re #6: As the great philosopher once said, “Thinging, things are things.” I don’t think I need to say any more. I’d link to the quote, but naming, comments are spam.Report
Damnit, wrong thread. I’m reposting!Report
Awesome post!
I’ve been to all five of your coolest states, and four of the overrated ones. Guess I need to put “visit Rhode Island” on my bucket list.Report
I’ve actually been to all ten. Although I only ended up in Rhode Island because the guy driving the rental car made a wrong turn in Massachusetts. And I think we cut across the corner of Connecticut while getting back on track. Which struck me as somehow being very wrong; but I’m more used to states where you can drive at speed for eight or ten hours and still be in the same state.Report
Let someone else do the driving. Rhode Island: come for the clam chowder, stay because some idiot backed out of his driveway into the “expressway” without looking and snapped your axle in half!Report
I can’t believe that my states’ not on the cool list.
1. While we haven’t legalized it yet, we’ve some of the best medical laws and ess then 2.5 oz. is a misdemeanor.
2. My brother and his partner legally wed here after 25 years.
3. Crime. Not much. I can safely go out and walk around my town (unarmed) by myself at midnight. And most other towns here, too. I think there were 23 murders here last year, and that was up from the year before.
4. Education. We’ve one of the highest HS graduation rates in the nation; some of the nations leading private Academies, Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, and U ME. Our public schools are also improving year by year.
5. Clean; our pollution is non-point, from the mid-west mostly. There’s a serious attempt to move environmental regulation from being adversarial to cooperative; an effort to protect resources while fostering healthy business. And that forest up north? It absorbs more carbon each day then the Eastern seaboard of the US produces.
6. Water. We’ve got it. Fresh, clean, pure; and we protect it.
7. Food. Awesome farms, restaurants. Lobsters. Maple syrup. blueberries. Game.
8. It’s beautiful here; mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, coast line. Recreation abounds. Winter sports — mountain sports, nordic, snowmobiling, ice fishing. Summer sports. swimming, hiking, fishing (includes lake, deep sea, and fly), hunting, foraging, canoe/kayaking. biking and mountain biking. Great summer camps for kids. Long tradition of Maine Guides to help people get the most out of their time visiting. And most important, a long tradition of public access to private land through most of the state (ocean frontage is the exception above the high-tide line, that’s rich folk from away posting their property no trespassing.) But the northern half of the state? That giant working forest up there? It’s mostly open, and you are free to wander to your hearts content, so long as you treat it with respect.
9. traffic. We don’t really have much, except for Rt. 1 in Bath at the drawbridge near the Ironworks during shift change in the summer tourist season.
10. Russel Saunders.Report
We’d really prefer it if folk went to vacation in New Hampshire or VT, and stopped coming up and mucking things up here.Report
If it makes you feel any better, when Clancy and I were talking about where to go from here, your home state came up and we discussed it favorably. Can’t say that about too many states on the eastern seaboard.Report
I did put in a strong plug.
(And thanks, Zic. You sweetheart.)Report
Texas doesn’t need your validation, Will. Harumph!Report
Rhode Island’s a strangely underachieving state. It’s always been definite notch below its neighbors on most socioeconomic standards and its unemployment rate is generally among the country’s highest. Newport is nice, as are parts of Providence, and Rhode Island lacks the hardcore ghettos that Connecticut and Massachusetts are full of, yet the Ocean State is the perennial doormat of southern New England.Report
Will this “You-Taw” of which you speak — I’ve heard tale of a place called “You-Tahr” and wonder if it is the same. To hear tell, there is even an NBA team there.Report
Don’t give me that jazz.Report
I hear that’s a place where they send old worn-out Rockets.
Must be a missile base out there or something . . .Report
Ha!, someone recently told me they want to take a vacation in Baker City, OR. My only thought “Why?!?!?!”Report
Minnesota, or Little Canada as I affectionately call it, remains the best kept secret in the country.Report
The 19 months of winter each year will probably keep it that way.Report
Pah! Minnesotan winters are snuggle-bears, I love em! Sure they’re cold but at least they’re dry. In Nova Fishing Scotia the cold is damp, it crawls in through the window, up under your sweater and nestles in your lungs. Ice freezes over every surface and the living envy the dead. Minnesotan winters are like spearmint, clear, cold and refreshing. Three minutes in the warm and the Minnesotan cold outside is just a memory. Three minutes in the warm in NS and the prospect of actually getting warm is only a dim flickering hope.Report
It’s not the quality of it that gets me, it’s the duration.
I visited Minneapolis for spring break once (yeah, I know) and I had an absolute blast. Didn’t bother driving anywhere, just parked the rental and walked and took the bus everywhere. My wife is from MN and sometimes we talk about moving there (her brother is still in Mpls).
But someone once told me that you can get snow in any month with an “R” in it. I did the math and – “WHAT THE HELL?! EIGHT MONTHS?!” I’ll go as high as half the year; but more than that just seems bonkers.Report
It’s not the quality of it that gets me, it’s the duration.
Give them marks for consistency, though. While I’m generally very fond of the weather in Front Range Colorado (it appears that I was born to live in a high semi-arid climate), it took some time to get used to the fact that “What season are we supposed to have today?” is a reasonable thing to ask for much of the year. Even within a day, 35-40 degree swings from low to high are pretty normal. And it’s a given that, no matter what clothes/coat you put on in the morning, at some point you’ll be either over-dressed or under-dressed for the weather.Report
Also, we went here..
From these reviews, it appears little has changed:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/red-dragon-minneapolisReport
Ironically I live about five-six blocks from that place.Report
My wife’s brother is right around the corner then. If you ever see a banjo-playing dude walking down the sidewalk, it might be him.Report
Oddly enough that doesn’t narrow it down much.Report
Drove into Eagan from Louisiana. Pushed off the interstate by a sliding truck which piled up 20 meters ahead of me, killing the driver. The maniacs who I’d told to winterise the engine clearly didn’t: the block froze no sooner than I’d pulled into the hotel. Trapped in Eagan, slipping down Yankee Doodle to work, getting the head reworked.
If I ever spend another winter in Minnesota it will be too soon. I can deal with the cold. Driving in that bullshit, never again. Ever. Driving I-94 in the winter through St Paul to Minneapolis, well, any time of year it’s bad. But in winter, it’s just hell to drive.
And everyone’s so full of false cheer about it, fake as a three dollar bill. “Brrrr! It’s just great!” Ya buddy, you betcha, you and the minks might find some joy in chewing the guts out of some starved deer’s frozen carcase in those hellish wastelands. Three minutes in the warm, heh. Three hours in a meter of snow, illuminated by the red and blue lights of a state trooper’s cruiser, will cure even the most enthusiastic of any delusions on this subject.Report
I said I enjoy living here BP.. I said nothing about driving here. Do you think I’m insane? No one in their right mind drives in Little Canada, the drivers are out of their minds*.
*That includes my husband. Mad as a earwig hopped up on cough syrup when they’re behind the wheel, the whole lot of them.Report
My sister has lived in Minnesota for something like 20 years now, first in Minneapolis, now in Northfield. She loves it there.
As near as I can tell, the only thing worse than Minnesota winters are Minnesota summers. Hot, excessively humid, and swarms of big-ass mosquitoes. Fall, however, is lovely.Report
That sounds plausible. I live in the urban core so no bugs here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bugs in the country are vile. Coming from NS of course bugs are par for the course.
But yes the summers can sometimes be brutal hot and humid.. the thing I love is that sweet pelasant spring weather can last from April to mid July and exquisite falls from early September to like, December…
But in the city, always in the city.. country living is for.. well.. animals and people who like living in the country.. *shudders*Report