So. This is one hell of a return, but I have to vent somewhere and the one thing I've always kept in mind about hubski is that I can have a goddamn intelligent conversation.
For those who don't know, I moved the summer of 2013 to Ohio because in doing so my parents were able to get me in to a better school for cheaper. I thought to myself, sure, it'll be a change, but I'll get to meet new people, I'll get to see a new part of American culture, whatever. Then my penis said that there would be ladies there looking for a man. Hey, whatever, it's free school I can internally justify it how I want.
I've now lived here for over 6 months. Maybe over 7. And you know what? Fuck it. Fuck the whole state, fuck the region I'm in, fuck everyone here, fuck the shitty roads and the asshole cops and the shitty suburban malls, fuck the chain fastfood joints and the soccer moms and the cookie cutter neighborhoods, fuck the family values, fuck your shitty movie theater, fuck your universities, fuck your sports teams, fuck your shitty off brand "Naty" beer, fuck your flannel jackets, fuck the midwest.
I can't stand it. I set foot on the goddamn ground and my body shriveled in disgust. Oh, this isn't a revelation to me, this is just all the built up shit in my veins from MONTHS of tolerating this garbage, but I knew, oh god I knew. I walked off the plane, luggage in hand, and on the wall the advertisement was for a military weapons research program. Defense contractors. Shit, when I left Philly's airport I got advertisements for art museums, opera houses, theater productions. So I knew from the goddamn minute that I set foot on the flattest fucking place on earth that all of the joy I got out of everyday life was dead, but I didn't know how thoroughly that would happen.
I took a semester off school, and got my bearings while working at Starbucks. That's when I started to realize.
Coworkers are special creatures. Very special. They're canaries in a coal mine for the community, especially when you're new to the area. Back at my old store, the people were nice. Loud, but polite enough and kept the bullshit off the floor. If there was a fight, it happened in the back. It was loud there, but it happened in the back. Jokes were off color and we would've been fucking fired from any other company and any other store, especially since after an especially rough day we could just pop over to the bar and just get pissed as all hell before heading home.
Here? Shit. Everyone is "nice." Everyone is kind. And polite. And agreeable. And fucking, utterly, boring. I can't even give examples. The conversations are just so goddamn forgettable, the jokes that were made were just...there. They had set ups and punchlines but nothing sharp, no spark, no edge.
And that's the whole goddamn area. There's no edge to all of this shit. It's flat. Flattest fucking place on the planet, flattest fucking people on the planet. I see all of these goddamn conversations around me and I've already established them in to three groups, and it all fits there. You either talk about Television, Relationships, or the Weather, and when you're talking about Television you say how great/bad the sports game was or how hilarious that one show is. Fuck. TELL ME WHY. TELL ME YOUR GODDAMN OPINION BEYOND THE SURFACE.
No, I promise, I get that people have interests that are different than mine, I really do. Sports I'm sure are incredibly complicated, but for the love of god not every conversation needs to be about it. Conversations can be wonderful, beautiful creatures, full of depth and insight even about the most banal shit in the world. I have great memories of those shitty conversations about nothing. Or just getting way to drunk and watching "The Thing" and having to explain to my friend that it's not a fucking yeti. Here? Nothing.
And I absolutely can't stand it. But I can't scream at them because if I did they'd either lynch me or start crying. So hubski gets to hear me yell tonight.
Fuck.
Also the food is fucking dogshit.
Welcome back, brosif. Missed you, dawg. Feel better? Ready to listen? 'k - 1) You can do a limited deployment anywhere for any amount of time so long as it's limited. Got an email today from a guy who just finished 37 months in a federal pen. You're doing better than that. You've got your sunset - buy a goddamn calendar and start marking off numbers. It's power. 2) They don't all suck. Four of my best friends are all Ohio refugees. One of them's from Dayton. Three are from Cleveland. This implies that prior to their escape, they were awesome people in Ohio. Now - I don't know anybody there currently and as I said, the people I like rarely go back to visit, but they gotta exist. 3) Channel your inner anthropologist. There will come a time when Ohio has been in your rearview for many years. You will meet someone at a party who shall say something disparaging about Ohio. In order to bond with them, you must be educated about specific, terrible things about Ohio. Take notes. Write your diatribes down. Internalize them. Know the reasons why you hate Ohio and be ready to count them off. I once wrote bad stream-of-consciousness poetry about how much Las Vegas sucks. I still have it. It has made Vegas a tolerable thing for me, for I know its transgressions. 4) Enjoy the simple things. No matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, there's some aspect of it that is not completely terrible. The car museum at the top of the Imperial Palace, for example (before they sold it off). there's an incredible gem store in Albuquerque. The best stuffed sopaipilla I've ever had was in Show Low, AZ. I do not know what it is, but i know for a certainty there is a business, a meal, a park, a something wherever you are that isn't unredeemably bad. Find it. Cultivate it. Cherish it. Take pleasure in that one thing that isn't horrible about where you are. It will give you something to miss. For you will leave. And your life will roll on. And this chapter shall close, and another shall open, and listen close here son because I'm talking right the fuck to you: When I finally made it out of New Mexico after five years of trying, I spent a good year and a half occasionally weeping out loud at the incredible fortune of NOT BEING THERE. I knew what song I would play when I arrived, I knew what food I would eat, I knew which sunset I would watch. And I'm here to tell you - there is no exhultance like the exhultance of ESCAPE. Keep calm, carry on. This too shall pass.
an excerpt from The Book of 'bl00, part of the apocrypha P.S. I pronounce it like "blow," although I think it's a reference to a certain specific color of blue, (right?) but the pronunciation makes it funnier in this context.
A young KB discovers modern art: http://hubski.com/pub?id=48292
The point about the inner anthropologist rocks. Thanks!
Middle America: Everyone knows it but nobody thinks it. At least, that's what we'd like to say while ranting. Good on you, my pres, but I doubt they still lynch in Cleveland. Wish I could help, but I've never been to that part of the country.You either talk about Television, Relationships, or the Weather, and when you're talking about Television you say how great/bad the sports game was or how hilarious that one show is. Fuck.
Cincinnati, not cleveland. And no, I doubt I'd be lynch but still. I guess I'm just also super not used to just casual racism thrown down in the middle of a conversation either? I was just talking to a person one time and the discussion got on to crime rates and I brought up how new game consoles would get stolen at launch events. And the one person NOT INVOLVED was like "well that's just their culture, you know, the blacks." And I just stopped. I don't understand this fucking country.
Damn, my geography's all off. Allow me to drop a book-bomb here: [http://www.amazon.com/Blues-People-Negro-Music-America/dp/068818474X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394349000&sr=8-1&keywords=blues+people](Blues People), because it is one of the best books that tracks African heritage in American music. Also, I meant to edit the syntax above because my "help[ing]" is ambiguous; gave a second thought about it and I thought I wrote I was going lynching. Hell no! I'm... not black; but, my Mexican co-workers call me a "wigger" all the time and it's super uncomfortable. They call me over when there's extra cheese to eat, (I work at a greek place, so feta abounds), and I don't know, sometimes I don't know what to say so I just start speaking Spanish.
That's racist as shit. Also I should be clear, I'm white, which I'm sure is why they say it, but it's still racist and super uncomfortable that they think I'd be okay with it. Also I do fit the white stereotype of loving cheese, so you can give me all your extra cheese.
Yep. I recently went on a cruise, which I'd like to think represents a fairly unbiased, randomized cross-section of middle America. Only once did I hear a conversation that I would consider not to be a total waste of breath. Goddamnit it, if OP's rant doesn't sum up my own feelings about my own locale. No idea why this has stuck with me... but when I was 10 years old, one of my teachers had a poster on the wall that claimed "Small minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about ideas." From the moment I first read it, I knew it to be true, and time has certainly verified it further. JTHipster, it sounds like you're an idea man, 6 months isn't enough time to really lay down roots, find like-minded people, and build fulfilling relationships. Most "thinkers" are shy and hesitant to open up out in the real world, because they can't connect when they don't watch sports, sitcoms, listen to radio, or buy into whatever bullshit pop culture fad is current. You could even run into one and never know, because it's much less risky if everyone sticks to their little scripts. Anyway, hang in there, hubski is rooting for you. :)
Sometimes I feel the same way where I live. My genuine interests are simply not on the same wave as most people around me. The methods of education and understanding that I have connected with are foreign to my environment. Ultimately I ground myself on my inner values.... which I have learned a lot about since entering a world so different from where my values first developed. You don't truly know how much you love something until it is gone and I feel like my soul is being sucked out of me at times. Sometimes it is all I can do to put one foot in front of the other, but this mental strife has forced me to learn more about myself in ways that may not have occurred if I had stayed in my bubble of comfort. The social structure that supported my interests and education have basically vanished, exposing my values like never before. This has led to a certain understanding: Without limitations, there wouldn't be any need for creativity. You may not have been dealt the perfect hand. But do not forget: we are masters at manipulating the environment around us to suit our needs... that or just god damn determined to make sense of our observations. But do continue telling us what you see, I enjoy reading it =)
Here's the thing about the midwest. All the people seem nice on the outside. On the inside they are the most vile example of demons walking the earth in human form you could ever hope to never encounter. Every Midwestern person that is not living in a metropolitan area like Chicago or Indianapolis is basically a soulless sack of rotting shit wrapped in a burlap sack painted gold. Being two faced is the norm for these people. Especially in small towns. They will know your business, and any business of yours they don't know they will fucking make up, and then tell everyone that isn't you. Mrs. Magillicutty down the street will eventually become comfortable enough in your presence to include you in this little game of thrones, and tell you all about how George her neighbor is an Alcoholic welfare king that can't keep his hands off the girl at the photomat, and Jane Siemore says he might be a pedophile because he never leaves his house. Meanwhile, two days later she'll be at George's house sipping an iced tea conversing about how she smelled pot in your living room. Was there pot in your living room? WHO GIVES A FUCK I NEED SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT. Welcome to the midwest.
Woah! Talk about generalizing. I've lived in the Midwest my whole life, and I've traveled a bit around the world (Not to Asia, but extensively in Europe and a little bit of Latin America; not an expert, but enough experience to make a judgment). What I've found is that people are people pretty much everywhere. I live in the ghetto right now, and there's a lot of crime. I don't think it would be fair to say that "Blacks will beat you up, steal your wallet and then shoot you just because they have nothing better to do." I think most reasonable people would be offended by that statement. I would be.
I had the same problem with Dayton when I first arrived here; there's even less culture than there is in Cincinnati, and the City of Dayton is pretty poor. Then I spent some time here and starting figuring out what Dayton has going for it. It's honestly not bad if you like biking and community stuff. ActiveDayton.com has a lot of social events, Xenia has great Community resources, and Yellow Springs is a straight-up hippie town with fantastic coffee. Most people enjoy checking it out for a day. We have a ton of well-developed metro parks (hiking, rock climbing, and mountain biking). Cincinnati honestly seems like a more interesting city, but I rarely finding myself wanting to drive an hour each way to spend time down there. Columbus is great, too, but I don't go there very often for the same reasons. If you ever wanted to spend a weekend in Dayton, let me know and you can stay at my place.
Thank you so much for your post!! This and all the responses made my night! I moved back here to Cincinnati (where I grew up) from San Francisco and feel your pain. It is a daily struggle to deal with this. However, I would never have moved here if I hadn't found the nice liberal/progressive area of Ludlow Ave. near Clifton Ave. Sitwells coffee house has all the kinds of (philosophical/political/creative, etc.) conversation you speak of. So does Rohs St. Cafe and probably Highland Cafe. The in food in Cincy generally sucks and is terribly unhealthy, but on Ludlow it is not so bad. Northside has some good restaurants too. I have found some good people too at the Goth club, even though I am not really a Goth. The person who commented on Dayton hit the nail on the head: Dayton is definitely better. And Yellow Springs is wonderful! The one nice thing about Cincinnati that I did not find as prevalent elsewhere: Once you make friends here--which is pretty easy--they will generally be your friend for life! There is a certain loyalty and commitment to other people here that is quite amazing. Being exciting, stimulating, fun, etc. is not a requirement. People in SF are more transient and hoping from one cool event, experience and group of people to another is far more important than meeting up with a new friend at some fixed location, like a person's home, where you might feel trapped and bored, because the new person does not have any deep insight into the nature of reality, art, politics, etc. that might bring you to the next level! The fact that you come from another town is super exciting to the typical Cincinnatian, who knows that Cincinnati is deadly boring. Most have no idea what going to the next level means--as I am sure you are well aware :-). Well, we do have Camp Washington and Skyline at least! Greaters and LaRosas are awful but most people in Cincinnati did not notice the switch to the mass production that makes them no better than any other chain.
There seems to be a few people from the city here! And sorry for the hugely delayed response. Been a busy week right before spring break. And from all I've heard of the West Coast I wouldn't fit in well there at all. I prefer the Philly style of getting a small group of really good friends, and while you can sort of hang with everyone else, it's that small group for a long, long time. I also heard Yellow Springs was nice and odd, but I never got a chance to go. Maybe over the break.
This keeps coming up on my feed and I just have to comment. From someone who grew up in a very small town in Michigan, I feel you. But as someone who grew up and was able to move out of that small town, I've got to tell you that it gets better when you decide it gets better. That's it, you can take @kleinbl00 's advice to heart or not. But it's eventually going to be your choice to make it better. Good luck out there, it's hard but if you can keep away the monsters of cynicism you'll do fine and eventually get what you want. Because this has me thinking about small towns, here is Lou Reed and John Cale's "Smalltown" which, in my opinion, perfectly describes what it's like to be weird in a small town.
You're right: it sucks. You'll come back from the suck. Why? Because you won't develop any receptors to the suck. You'll have to float for a while, but eventually there will be positive rewards. I grew up in Utica, NY. That place messed me up badly. I'm grateful it wasn't Midwestern -- just gnarled out to heck and full of judgmental mofos. Also: you're young. Everything sucks when you are pupating: you're not in control of anything, but there are new and crazy demands on you. However this could have happened to you by winding up anywhere, because this is an emotional rather than logical part of your life. You could be in Tittyfuqtopia and you'd still find welling hatred for the place, because no place is your place. You can't do what adults do to get over what adults do to you: drink the good stuff, take off for a few days, buy something you can get hung up on for a while. No, no, seriously: buying your own drinks instead of hiding from cops about it changes things. You can drink IPAs when you're buying -- skip the beer until you can get the stuff with actual flavors and brewing in it. Beer should not be carbonated malt liquor: it should taste like hard work and as-yet-unclassified wild yeast. You'll be welling up a lot of hard emotions until you get started at college. Then you'll have a couple years of being lost. Then they hand you a degree and you realize you didn't get it. Then you'll watch a lot of Columbo and Highlander reruns... oh wait, that was me. You're totally and empirically correct about Ohio. So yeah, go ahead and hate the ever-living jeebus outta it. Get your Hate Week on! However, just understand that hatred isn't the opposite of love: it's the result of love spurned. You wanted to give it a chance and it's just sitting on the couch of life. Understand that it can't give you what you want, so use the time to find what you like about the world. The schmuck picks a fight with the mass of Ohio State fans by wearing a Michigan hat. The dude that wears a Parramatta Eels hat because that's his damn team or cuz the name and hat rock -- that's a personality. You are becoming a character. Characters have interesting lives. We also get lots of stuff we weren't looking for because we went out looking and stuff found us. Ohio has a lot of roads out of it. Once you have your own car, even the crappiest one, make it a point to try as many of those escape roots as possible. I understand that most only go to Indiana or Kentucky, but they're at least elsewhere. Louisville has food! Indiana has... ummm... Li'l Bub.
I'm starting to suspect that Ohio and the Midwest are just way to big. It's all spread out so much that nothing is really within arms reach. It's one of the more recent things I've learned about myself, and I could only learn it by moving to a place where it wasn't an option, but I am happiest when I have lots of information or activities within reach. Hell, if it's real slow I'll even take novelty for novelties sake, I don't care if it's cheap, it's something new. New art thing? How much is it? 4 dollar admission? Sure, awesome, let's go. If I get there and the art is shit I get to talk about how shit the art was. If it's great, I get to see great art. Weird arcade thing in Jersey? Awesome. Let's go play Japanese rhythm games. Of-map performance event? I love it. I absolutely goddamn love it. At some point, when I was like 13 or 14, I thought I was 100% born in the wrong era, but I was lying to myself super hard. I love it. I love having a smart phone that can just deliver me a new podcast. I love spotify. 10 dollars a month and I can just try all of the music that gets put up there outside of really, really small local scenes? Sure. For something like 40 dollars a month plus plan costs I can get so much information and choice that most people will drown in it, but not me. I love it. That one guy you know who just wants three choices for peanut butter? I'm not that guy. I was 72 choices, I want them clearly labelled, because you know what? Maybe I want extra extra medium chunky today. And here, oh god. It's just so empty. There's fun stuff maybe but it's so buried and when you get there it's just so underwhelming half the time. The best example I can give is when I first walked in to the comic shop here. It's a chain called Epic Games. Terrible name, but that's the point of a comic shop. If the name isn't terrible, you aren't any good. Anyway, I walk it and ask if they have any Scarlet Spider since I'm trying to fill out the gaps in that. Dude says no, looks it up and says that he can have it in for me in a few days. I ask him if he's read it. Nope. I ask him what his favorite comic is, and he says iron man. I'm like "oh coo!, what'd you think of Iron Man 3?" "It was pretty good." Fuck. I mean it's an answer sure but it's just so boring. Shit, that's my experience with almost everyone. I tried to have a conversation with a person in my programming class, and her response to me trying to figure out here interests were "I like T.V. I guess." What am I supposed to do with that? Man, I used to think that people were shitty for trying to have interests that they clearly had not been involved in - the whole "fake gamer gurl" thing was a bit of a sore spot for me in high school - but shit, they're trying. If you are attempting something I can guide you in to stuff that you're unfamiliar with, but attempt something more than "T.V. I guess."
I went through something similar last year, had to work in Erie, PA for about 5 months and that place sucked. Hard. It's like a mini-version of every city in the Midwest with an awful lake and even worse people. Don't forget about the part where you try to have deeper conversations with people or explain why their vanilla culture is just that, vanilla and boring as all hell. Then you just get blank looks and a short sentence answer because it doesn't matter to them. You'll get through this and at least you might get a different perspective out of it or a fuller understanding of the Midwest. Also, JTHipster I'm not sure if this is your thing or not but BRKfest is happening in Cincy in July and should be a lot of fun.
That's the worst. Absolute worst moment. I dunno, I guess at this point I just look at what I had before moving here and realize that I was intellectually goddamn spoiled. Even the shitty community college I went to while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do was totally fine. One day after class, one or two of my friends took me to a new restaurant (well, new to me), and we ended up having a discussion - read argument - about the inevitability of technological innovation. They might have been dead fucking wrong but when I made a point they would argue against it if they disagreed. And I'll be sure to give BRKfest a look over. I'm hoping that I meet other people who are similarly sick of this area while in college, but so far nothing. People will openly admit that there's nothing to do, and then when I try and make something to do, they just go "ehhhhh."Don't forget about the part where you try to have deeper conversations with people or explain why their vanilla culture is just that, vanilla and boring as all hell. Then you just get blank looks and a short sentence answer because it doesn't matter to them.
It sounds shit - I guess it's why they call them the 'flyover states'. Good luck with the degree, man. What year are you in? Don't despair - this place might seem dull but I'm sure there are interesting people at university, even if it takes a while to find them and the popular culture (this can be said of most popular culture in a lot of places) is not your cup of shit-beer-with-ice.
Oh, no I made that up. I thought that people from America who drink cheap lager put ice in it but it turns out that only Michael Bloomberg does that. So that part of my comment was a bit of a misunderstanding on my part.
Well the good news is you know that you don't want to live in an area that is like the one you described. It definitely sounds like you're happier in a more progressive area with people who's interests are a bit more diverse and are more than surface deep. Hang in there and get out of there asap! Do you have any plans to move away?
Finishing my degree and then leaving immediately. If I'm dating someone I will drag them the hell away from there. I will carry their entire life's possessions if it can get me back to a state where I can get up, get in my car and drive to an event where I can talk philosophy with a stranger I meet at a goddamn bar.
WARNING: Country girls love to latch onto hipster types like yourself who come through their local university in the hopes the hipster will take them away to the city, where within a few months they bail for some guy they met in their new busy city life. Been there, done that, seen it a bunch of times, too, watch for it.
I'd be worried, but my personality is so intolerable to most people that if you don't actually like me, you find me so terrible there's no way you could possibly spend more time with me then you have too. Plus, I have too much of a soft spot for jersey girls.
Yea, I'm generally the same way and, in my experience, that just attracts them even more. The less you care, the courser and less PC you are, the less you get all chivalrous, the more determined they get. If you wanna chase them away, be a gentleman.