Perceptions of the Midwest

[chrizow]

i would even say that STL feels more "southern" to me than KC for whatever reason.

St. Louis is weird, it could be the "river city" feel. I mean the northern midwest doesn't have any real river cities - maybe St. Paul - to compare to. KC feels like it has threads of southern/or more accurately rural southernish plains to me, interestingly - when I talk to people on the phone in our KC office some of the people have a very light twang. On the other hand, around st. louis the nothern vowel shift mixes with a bit of a drawl in some places (say the more southern part of the metro) in a weird way too, and kind of a light "riverboat southern" thing in some places maybe (vs more "cowboy" for kc). I could be really reaching here, I don't know. But I do feel like St. Louis is an outlier of an (for lack of a better term) "urban great lakes" feel in places as well.

i agree with your observations of STL. i do think it's more of the "riverboat" thing, like i want to lump it in with memphis or louisville or cincy in the "river towns" category.

i was talking to a friend recently (who grew up in south City) about south city and near south county, which feels like new jersey or something to me, esp. nearer to the river. and not just new jersey, but a very specific, bruce springsteen-esque vision of new jersey: tightly-packed homes, american flags, baseball diamonds, and smokestacks on the horizon. where old-school union men begrudgingly rub elbows with immigrants. northeast KC is the closest analogue in this area, but i feel like south city is less stabby than northeast. south broadway is a fairly amazing tableau of brick buildings, faded Budweiser signs, and earnest, hardworking folks.

STL is old enough that it really is its own thing. i don't get a "great lakes" feel from it at all, other than the industrial feel - which again i would put more in the category of baltimore or NJ or "mid-east" river towns than anything else. the "vowel shift" speech island thing is interesting, and noticeable among longtime families from the interior STL area, but it seems like the center of gravity has shifted enough in that metro area that you're just as likely to run into generically-midwestern st. charles folks vs. old-line, blue-blood nasally folks.

i don't think KC has a single "southern" strand in its DNA, but it is inextricably bound with "rural plains" dialects and mannerisms. i feel like every year i notice more and more how KC "looks west" rather than north, south, or east.

[warwickland]

i never really bring up the comparison anymore because it's hard to explain to other midwestern people how a "mid atlantic feel" translates to a midwestern city, but yep, i feel it.

[chingon]

northeast KC is the closest analogue in this area, but i feel like south city is less stabby than northeast.

One of the things I always loved about Northeast is how its the one neighborhood in metro KC that metro StL has no analogue for. There are quite a few neighborhoods in StL that just don't have comparables in KC (due to age, demographics, prominence, etc.) but in my mind NE is the only part of KC that just doesn't exist in StL.

[warwickland]

northeast KC is the closest analogue in this area, but i feel like south city is less stabby than northeast.

One of the things I always loved about Northeast is how its the one neighborhood in metro KC that metro StL has no analogue for. There are quite a few neighborhoods in StL that just don't have comparables in KC (due to age, demographics, prominence, etc.) but in my mind NE is the only part of KC that just doesn't exist in StL.

I kind of feel like the northeast kind of feels like the fox park area of stl, but i havent been in that area for years (northeast).

also, i'll say that since i've moved from south city back up into the urban central corridor (but west/sw of forest park), there's a distinctive break there and that area kind of reminds me more of (lake michigan) great lakes urbanism, sort of...thinking of like evanston a bit here, or like parts of middle class inner suburban milwaukee north along the lake. parkways with bike lanes, big park (instead of the shore/parks), college kids using busses, gobs of leafy 1920s stuff.

[chingon]

(but west/sw of forest park), there's a distinctive break there and that area kind of reminds me more of (lake michigan) great lakes urbanism, sort of...thinking of like evanston a bit here, or like parts of middle class inner suburban milwaukee north along the lake. parkways with bike lanes, big park (instead of the shore/parks), college kids using busses, gobs of leafy 1920s stuff.

It's also the part of StL that is most like urban KC...physically (maybe in some other ways).

[chrizow]

northeast KC is the closest analogue in this area, but i feel like south city is less stabby than northeast.

One of the things I always loved about Northeast is how its the one neighborhood in metro KC that metro StL has no analogue for. There are quite a few neighborhoods in StL that just don't have comparables in KC (due to age, demographics, prominence, etc.) but in my mind NE is the only part of KC that just doesn't exist in StL.

this is an interesting idea and i agree with it. i would also submit the westside, though. the mashup of historic victorian architecture with newfangled "Dwell" architecture, the mix of a strong latino community and uppity bobo-hipsterdom feels more LA than STL. (for better or worse). those cube houses literally could not be built in STL, from what i understand.

[chingon]

I kind of feel like the northeast kind of feels like the fox park area of stl.

I don't know, maybe that's the closest. Population densities are about the same. But its still a pretty far cry from polyglot, mixed up Northeast. It's still just black/white StL demographically: what, 60-70 percent african-american, 30 percent white and 5 percent hispanic?

Northeast is a lot closer to being 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, with some tracts of hispanic majority with a lot more asians mixed in(5-10% as opposed to 1% or less in Fox Park). Plus its like 4 times as big, geographically and population-wise.

[warwickland]

(but west/sw of forest park), there's a distinctive break there and that area kind of reminds me more of (lake michigan) great lakes urbanism, sort of...thinking of like evanston a bit here, or like parts of middle class inner suburban milwaukee north along the lake. parkways with bike lanes, big park (instead of the shore/parks), college kids using busses, gobs of leafy 1920s stuff.

It's also the part of StL that is most like urban KC...physically (maybe in some other ways).

i've always thought that if you compiled st. louis county urbanism into a coherent mass it would look kind of like a kansas city. i live in the bungalow belt in a neighborhood of covered porches and six plexes, just NE of basically a hillier and curvier brookside (webster groves - webster has three seperate small downtown nodes instead of one larger one).

northeast KC is the closest analogue in this area, but i feel like south city is less stabby than northeast.

One of the things I always loved about Northeast is how its the one neighborhood in metro KC that metro StL has no analogue for. There are quite a few neighborhoods in StL that just don't have comparables in KC (due to age, demographics, prominence, etc.) but in my mind NE is the only part of KC that just doesn't exist in StL.

this is an interesting idea and i agree with it. i would also submit the westside, though. the mashup of historic victorian architecture with newfangled "Dwell" architecture, the mix of a strong latino community and uppity bobo-hipsterdom feels more LA than STL. (for better or worse). those cube houses literally could not be built in STL, from what i understand.

yeah, westside for sure. it really does feel weirdly like a prequel to a los angeles, or something.

[chrizow]

Plus its like 4 times as big, geographically and population-wise.

this is the most mind-blowing thing about NE for me: it's HUGE. it's the size of midtown, if not larger. just an enormous swath of the city that is very interesting and underrated. totally different feel regarding KC on a E-W axis vs. N-S. also cool the way it blends into and encompasses river bluffs and lonely railyards and industrial areas instead of, like, transitioning softly into prairie village. NE feels "wild" on many levels.

[chingon]

i've always thought that if you compiled st. louis county urbanism into a coherent mass it would look kind of like a kansas city. i live in the bungalow belt in a neighborhood of covered porches and six plexes, just NE of basically a hillier and curvier brookside (webster groves...

Yes, that's basically where I was thinking of: Richmond Heights, Maplewood, Webster Groves but also Dogtown, Franz Park, St Louis Hills, Princeton Heights. Big chunks of South City west of Kingshighway, and especially west of Hampton.

Unsurprisingly, those are my favorite parts of StL.

[warwickland]

yeah theres some crossover there - st. louis hills has more old school city influence and some of those other areas are more "subaru belt." theres a decent amount of gen-x aging gamer dude influence and grumpy old liberal faction there too. clayton is nice, very nice in places but also has loads of middle class multifamily - people put it in with ladue too much. u-city of course has it all.

for some reason i sont care for dogtown so much but love maplewood, right next door. st. louis hills can be a little uptight. maplewood is more laidback, people plant weird shit in their yards. theres swimming pools behind 6plexes.

[mean]

I'm not exactly sure how I'd characterize the "drawl" I've been encountering. Up until recently, I always perceived KC and the surrounding area to be relatively accent-free, but I've run into a large contingent of folks lately who live around here and have what seems to me to be a very distinct southern vibe to their speech. It's not really an accent thing, although there are some vowels pronounced oddly at times, so much as it seems to be a unique grammar. Examples:

Using, e.g., "we/they was/wasn't" instead of "we/they were/weren't".

Contracting "I was" to "I's" (this could be part of the "mushing things together" phenomenon described earlier).

Extensive, bordering on egregious, use of "ain't" in place of both "isn't" and "aren't" as well as contracting "am not" (e.g., "I/we/they/she ain't").

The word "that" being contracted to "at". For example, "We ain't doin'at" or "I'll take'at" (again, perhaps mushing things).

"If'n" used inexplicably in place of "if".

"Dropping the g" on every single -ing verb.

Use of "done" instead of "did" (e.g., "What they done"); and also use of "done" as an unnecessary interstitial (e.g., "We done did'at.")

Weird tensing. Not sure how to even explain this, but suffice to say it seems like verb tensing is very fluid in the local "hick-a-billy" vernacular.

On the vowel distortion tip, this doesn't come off as strictly southern, but what I'm encountering are things like "fish" being pronounced with long E as "feesh", and "for" (which to my mind should be pronounced as "four") pronounced as "fur". These are hardly the only examples, but they are the ones that come easily to mind.

The result might be a sentence like, "We wasn't feeshin' fur catfeesh, but boy I'll take it if'n I can get it!" or "If'n they was done with'at feeshin' spot, we done gonna took it from'em!"

[chaglang]

On the vowel distortion tip, this doesn't come off as strictly southern, but what I'm encountering are things like "fish" being pronounced with long E as "feesh", and "for" (which to my mind should be pronounced as "four") pronounced as "fur". These are hardly the only examples, but they are the ones that come easily to mind.

The result might be a sentence like, "We wasn't feeshin' fur catfeesh, but boy I'll take it if'n I can get it!" or "If'n they was done with'at feeshin' spot, we done gonna took it from'em!"

That's how I pronounce "fish", though it's not drawn out as FEEsh-ing. It's more fee-SHING. When it's pronounced that way the emphasis gets shifted to the second syllable, and the first syllable gets swallowed a bit.

My grandmother was a lifelong area resident who used to stick a very soft y in between a's and t's. Once I noticed her doing it, I noticed that I do it, and then started noticing it in other KCians speech. So "MAT-ter" became "MAyT-ter"

And then there's the famous "Kanscity" pronunciation.

The NC State dialect survey found that the most similar cities to KC are: Wichita, Indy, Lincoln, Omaha, and Tulsa. Jefferson City is very similar to KC.
http://spark.rstudio.com/jkatz/DialectMap/

[chrizow]

"subaru belt."

[warwickland]

something just occured to me. im working with drillers from lees summit and they are drawl-city. the drillers we use out of lawrence have non regional dialects, or so it sounds to me. i think the drillers out of lees summit are from all over that area beyond kcmo and east and on east. they probably hang out at whiskey tango.

[knucklehead]

People from central and western Missouri definately speak with a "Missouri Twang."

It isn't a southern drawl like Mississippi.

[warwickland]

i've run across a kind of old time denver accent, it sort of sounds like the way midtown old farts sound when they are day drinking at daves stagecoach, or whatever. also south denver reminded me a bit of parts of south st. louis as well. it was a little strange. an ambiance you would only come across at 1:47 PM on a monday in a corner dive in the inner part of a plains/midwestern city...didn't feel so "rocky mountain" at all.