Sophie Gunn, Toni Blake, Ellen Hartman, Kristan Higgins and a bunch of other talented people made a “small town authors in the big city” video.
See if you can spot my mother in law, Charlene. She’s in there. Twice!
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Hahahaha!
And Julie James seemed like such a shy sweet type @ Book Sellers last month….
Really, New Yorkers have nothing on Chicago girls when it comes to in your face.
Awesome video. I could have used some of that training when I moved to Chicago from Michigan 20 years ago. I still don’t swear in public but I no longer say “um excuse me” when some one tries to steal my cab or cut in line.
@ Donna – I’m not sure about that. When I first moved here, I couldn’t get over how in your face and down right rude everyone was. But everyone I met who was originally from the East Coast kept going on and on about how friendly and nice Chicagoans were, blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t believe we were talking about the same city. And then I realized that their point of comparison was New York and apparently Chicagoans ARE nice compared to New Yorkers (but definitely not compared to Michiganians).
Hmmm. The only place I’ve experienced down-right rude was in DC. I found all of the people that I met in New York to be friendly and helpful. Same in Chicago. In DC, however, I suspected that they wouldn’t throw water at me if I were on fire. (But they’d probably get annoyed that I was blocking the sidewalk.)
Very cute and your mom-in-law, the Mets fan, was great (and Derek Jeter’s butt would win anybody over)!
I’ve lived and travelled to numerous places (graduated from college in Michigan, lived in Chicago and LA, visited NYC and Paris) and really haven’t found a pervasive sense of rudeness anywhere (not even in Paris where my one semester of college French was probably more of a hindrance than a help). But my personality can be a bit abrupt-get-to-the-point-no-time-for-chit-chat so maybe I just don’t recognize it as rudeness. My current Southern neighbors probably find me rude because of my abrupt-get-to-the-point-no-time-for-chit-chat approach! But that’s not my intent!
I had to take a deep breath and pause before answering some of the comments above…..The video is funny. “Why is there no picturesque lake?!?” Cultural differences ARE funny.
But why, after 100+ comments on Sarah’s excellent guide to NYC for RWA, when any number of people wrote about their favorite restaurants, museums, etc. and were anxious to show friendliness, do we STILL go back to the automatic “New Yorkers are rude” stereotype, and think that it’s funny?
If the situations were reversed, and people from large cities were to post a bunch of “humorous” comments about how people from small towns are narrow-minded and intolerant and without culture they would correctly be seen as arrogant and insulting. Why is it ok to make broad generalizations about a place where eight million people live? Many of us live here by choice, and others of us were raised here. We raise families here, because we think it’s a great place for children (who learn about the value of diversity and not being disrespectful of other people’s cultures, among other things). It’s our home and we love it and are proud of it. Please be a little mindful of this since in OUR culture it’s considered (gasp) rude to blithely look down on those who are different.
I hope this doesn’t come across as “in your face and downright rude.” Take good care and have a nice day etc. etc.
I think its funny because it makes fun of those stereotypes. (On both sides, the small town nice girl, and the big city New York minute girl).
I’m from a small southern town, and I’ve been to New York (among other place more and less cosmopolitan than either). My mom is a died in the wool Yankee, the friends I grew up with are as southern as grits.
The video definitely made fun of more than just “New Yorker’s are rude”. New York is set at an entirely different pace of life than a small town, which does lead to the cultural differences the video pointed out. I don’t think of New Yorker’s as rude, or pushy, rather they move at a pace set to the tempo of the city. A reverse of this video could just as easily be done showing a group of big city girls in say St. Augustine, Florida getting used to the more relaxed pace that everything happens at.
It is entirely okay to laugh at ourselves every now and then, it keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously.
Not to say that it’s okay, but it is what it is. When I was in the military, I found that one of the very first thing that anyone asks anyone is where they are from. Often the second thing said is some form of joking put-down about that place. In fact, there’s probably some goat herder on the top of some mountain lamenting the rudeness of joking about how inbred those people are a couple of villages over while commiserating with his fellow herdsmen about the rudeness of the people in the city who buy his goat milk. I think it’s human nature to put down or make jokes about the supposed deficiencies of THAT place to their own. That say, I really don’t think anyone here is saying that they think that every single one of the 8 million people in NYC are rude. I’ll even go out on a limb and qualify my statement about people in Washington, D.C.— I’m sure the homeless guy who was so nice (no, really!) would be happy to throw his water on me if I were on fire—and only that one particularly rude store clerk and those two guys who about knocked me off of the subway platform would complain about me blocking the sidewalk if I happened to be on fire.
Ironically, my word below is “southern72”. I had a whole section on how my part of the country is talked about, but decided that it wasn’t on point. (I do have this theory about “Southern polite” versus “Northern polite”, though, and how it’s basically two very different ideas of what exactly constitutes “polite” colliding that is the problem, but that’s a much longer post.)
LOL. So much fun and I’m crazy for your MIL!
I like my MIL, too.
@Rebecca: I totally see your point. But what I thought was hilarious was not only the NYC big city part but also the mocking of small town stereotypes, especially those pervasive in small-town-set romances – The lake! The knitting! The knitting by the lake! It was, I think, making fun of both parts equally.
Derek Jeter? What year is Derek Jeter’s rookie year/season? I know he was drafted in 1992, but when is his acutal rookie year as in baseball card collecting.
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