For example, I’m in Texas, and people typically joke that Dallas and Austin don’t belong in the state because they’re so different from the rest of Texas. What’s your state’s version of that?

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  1. Go to Buffalo, New York and then New York City. You’ll feel like you’re not even in the same country anymore….

  2. Baltimore. It’s a third world country in the middle of a first world country.

  3. All our cities are different than the rest of the state. The rest of the state is counties.

  4. Any city in Eastern Washington. Its so dramatically different from Western Washington. The west is like a giant evergreen forest with cities cut out of it while the east is dry and brown.

  5. Texas is huge.

    Austin, Houston, Amarillo, Dallas and San Antonio are all very different from one another.

    So, it’s not so much which city feels different.

  6. My city is not even in a state! There’s a big divide between the District and surrounding VA and MD. Crossing the river to VA feels like you might as well be crossing an ocean. People get upset that those who live in the District won’t come out to VA or MD, we always want them to come to us. The city is tiny and really well-connected by metro, and we have building height limits. As soon as you get out you start seeing skyscrapers, and then suburbs, and lots of people driving everywhere. It just feels like you’re very obviously in a different place.

  7. All the 351 cities and towns sort of exist on a gradient. Sure, places like Nantucket or Fall River are towards the ends of that gradient, but it’s not like they’re extreme outliers.

  8. Baltimore is pretty different from other parts of Maryland culturally, the accent is very “yankee” or northern sounding, almost identical to Philadelphia’s accent. The lifestyle is very fast paced like most other major east coast cities.

  9. Probably the largest city in any state feels different than the rest of the state, especially in rural places like Chicago/Illinois, Des Moines/Iowa, or Omaha/Nebraska.

  10. Vancouver, WA. Everyone in Washington, whether Eastern (Conservative) or Western (Seattle / Liberal) knows that Clark County is basically suburban Portland with no income tax.

  11. Las Vegas is what people think of when they hear Nevada, but it’s a small geographic part of the whole state.

    Other than Reno, the rest of the state is a bunch of desert, open range, and small towns.

  12. Denver/Boulder is the liberal bubble

    Colorado Springs is the conservative one.

    Pueblo is it own little world.

    Everything east of the Denver Metro is basically just Kansas.

    Vail, Aspen, Telluride are the bougie ski towns, while most of the other mountain towns are pretty chill.

    Then there’s Greeley…

  13. Ha those are the only 2 places I’ve been in TX so I’m dying to see the rural TX at some point. I’ll venture off on a few states here ….
    Madison WI
    Chicago IL (and all the suburbs)
    Louisville KY
    Vegas NV

  14. Camden. A literal post apocalyptic wasteland. Even the bad areas of Newark are better

  15. Well – classically, yes, if you took LA and SF ‘out’ of CA it would be different

    but I think CA overall is just stupid diverse, and even then what you call “SF” and “LA” varies.

    Like – I in my head include Orange County in LA , but don’t include San Jose in SF

  16. This is a hard one. In terms of demographics and politics it’s obviously either Louisville or Lexington, but you have to rule both those out because of how much of Kentucky’s identity as a state involves those two cities. You can’t have Kentucky without basketball and horse racing.

    So I guess that makes it have to be somewhere like NKY. Pretty much just a big suburb of Cincinnati whereas the rest of Kentucky isn’t very suburban. Also just feels way more northern than the rest of the state.

  17. Provincetown. Cape Cod already feels different from the rest of the state, but P-Town is something completely different.

  18. Madison (WI). It’s also pretty much the only place in this state I’d consider living because of that.

  19. Oklahoma City. Like 80% of the Oklahoman Democrats live there and it’s fairly modern with far less crackheads than every other city/town.

  20. Hobbs. And the rest of southeastern New Mexico.

    It’s arch-conservative MAGA country where the economy is based largely on oil and gas. That part of the country is more white, redneckish, and Southern Baptist. The rest of NM is mostly Democratic, Hispanic, and Roman Catholic.

  21. **Literally any city in Georgia**

    I know that most (if not all) states have an urban-rural divide, but my god, Atlanta or Savannah versus any rural town is just like night and day.

  22. Sedona fs. It’s all the most Arizona parts of Arizona, just turned up to 11

  23. I’m going to say…. the southeast part of Ohio. In the northeast, you have Cleveland. In the northwest, you have Toledo. In the southwest, you have Cincinnati. But there are no well known cities in southeast Ohio. Plus, that’s part of Appalachia.

  24. Detroit. Once met a guy from Detroit who didn’t know what the Mackinac bridge was.

  25. Iowa City.

    Ames and Cedar Falls also have big colleges, and Des Moines and Davenport are larger metros. But Iowa City is like a chunk of San Francisco was plopped in the middle of Iowa.

  26. I’m from Arkansas, which is a deep red state, but Pine Bluff and Little Rock are pretty left leaning. They are also one of the biggest cities in the state, whereas many people here live in small rural towns and are likely involved in agriculture.

  27. Birmingham.

    A little fun, funky, admittedly occasionally dangerous, post-industrial culinary wonderland blue dot in a deep, deep red state where the purple fades really fast as you head into the burbs.

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