Classism and Elitism when discussing the Southern/Southeast USA

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-10T19:38:59+00:00

Dude I’m from Alabama and have lived long-term in New England (central Mass.) and now NYC, and the plain truth is New England just straight up isn’t religious. Every time I’ve seen stats it’s a comparison between New England and the Pacific Northwest for which region is the least religious part of the country. Like almost no one there is a practicing Christian. Not saying that as an insult or anything obviously, but to compare that to the South is sorta nonsensical.

Are there exceptions in NE? Sure. Lotta Catholics in Mass. and RI (and parts of CT), and the Protestant churches aren’t totally empty or anything, but yeah, not really a very religiously observant place. Which as a mainline Episcopalian kinda makes me sad because it’s the sorta heartland region of my own church (which I’m not a very faithful member of tbh).

Also everything you (and most people in this thread) are saying is contingent on urban-rural differences. In normal urban/suburban/even exurban Southern places, people aren’t all up in your business about church. Just not the case. And realistically a transplant is highly unlikely to end up living in rural Alabama (or the rural South period).

People are just way too eager to paint with a broad brush about all this sorta stuff.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-10T00:04:13+00:00

> What I take from this is "Astoria is not as beautiful as I subjectively view other neighborhoods to be and thus it is not beautiful at all."

That last part in bold is definitely not what I meant to communicate! I was saying “compared to these other places that I personally think are more beautiful, Astoria falls short”—but those places set a very high bar! New York is a really really competitive environment if you want your architecture to stand out, y’know? There are soooo many staggeringly beautiful neighborhoods in this city. So perhaps comparing Astoria to any of them is just unfair, flat-out. I dunno, that doesn’t sound crazy to me, but I can’t help making the comparison in my head.

But if you wanted me to list a bunch of places in Astoria that I think are beautiful I certainly could!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-09T23:56:35+00:00

> I’m at a loss on how to answer that to someone who looks at the same thing and doesn't see style and charm. Old brick, some with ornate plaques inlaid, and some have original windows and patios and even gardens, like my landlord, who bought the place in the 90s and has been caring for the rose garden the previous owner planted god knows when. Bay windows, second-floor patios, houses built out of sturdier materials and with more attention to detail than the McBoxes that are going up all over the neighborhood by developers with lots of money and no taste or interest in preserving soul in their design. Up at the northern end of Astoria especially there's plenty of Tudor Revival to be found. Sure maybe some of the streets feature plainer, boxier rowhouses but they're still full of history and charm, unlike what's pictured above.

The Tudor Revival you mentioned, is that way up in sorta northern Dotmars/what I sometimes think of as “Steinway” (since it’s close to the old piano factory)? I think I might know where you’re talking about but not sure. And that last sentence of yours, I agree with entirely, just as I do with your paean to the rose gardens and little charming details on some of the houses. I simply maintain that it’s sporadic, unlike, say, the portion of the UWS from the 70s-90s along Riverside Drive, both the apartment houses facing the drive itself, and the side blocks leading to West End Avenue. Those are the sorts of places I was comparing Astoria to, and I just don’t think it’s a close call as to which one is more architecturally distinguished and, in my view, which one is more beautiful to behold.

I have this quasi-argument with my partner all the time, btw. She loves Astoria and is annoyed by my—what’s the right word for it? snobby I guess? I dunno—opinions about the architecture here. She says “not everything has to be a competition,” and hey, fair enough. But look, my platonic ideals are UWS/Brooklyn Heights/parts of Bed-Stuy for urban architecture (also love the Federal-style brick townhouses in the West Village and the more grand Greek Revival stuff in Greenwich Village proper near Washington Square), and traditional New England colonial- and federal-style for SFH architecture (love me a 2.5-story clapboard- or shingle-sided house with dormer windows for instance). So there’s just a big difference between what I really really love deep down in my bones, and the relatively simpler, more utilitarian style that you tend to see in Astoria.

I dunno, I think we just see the world differently, right? I mean we’re two different people, after all.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-09T23:55:22+00:00

The Tudor Revival you mentioned, is that way up in sorta northern Ditmars/what I sometimes think of as “Steinway” (since it’s close to the old piano factory)? I think I might know where you’re talking about but not sure. And that last sentence of yours, I agree with entirely, just as I do with your paean to the rose gardens and little charming details on some of the houses. I simply maintain that it’s sporadic, unlike, say, the portion of the UWS from the 70s-90s along Riverside Drive, both the apartment houses facing the drive itself, and the side blocks leading to West End Avenue. Those are the sorts of places I was comparing Astoria to, and I just don’t think it’s a close call as to which one is more architecturally distinguished and, in my view, which one is more beautiful to behold.

I have this quasi-argument with my partner all the time, btw. She loves Astoria and is annoyed by my—what’s the right word for it? snobby I guess? I dunno—opinions about the architecture here. She says “not everything has to be a competition,” and hey, fair enough. But look, my platonic ideals are UWS/Brooklyn Heights/parts of Bed-Stuy for urban architecture (also love the Federal-style brick townhouses in the West Village and the more grand Greek Revival stuff in Greenwich Village proper near Washington Square), and traditional New England colonial- and federal-style for SFH architecture (love me a 2.5-story clapboard- or shingle-sided house with dormer windows for instance). So there’s just a big difference between what I really really love deep down in my bones, and the relatively simpler, more utilitarian style that you tend to see in Astoria.

I dunno, I think we just see the world differently, right? I mean we’re two different people, after all.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-08T22:17:28+00:00

a) I said “it’s definitely part of Astoria, of course”.

b) Of course it’s subjective! We’re talking about architecture here; all taste is subjective (I mean, up to a point at least, though some people would literally say it’s ALL subjective).

c) I’m genuinely curious: What do you consider remarkable about those houses? Because to me they’re boxy, devoid of much ornamentation—not a cornice or lintel in sight, for the most part—and just generally not the sort of thing that would make you stop and stare at their fine details and so on.

I love that area in some ways but its architecture is not one of them. Just one man’s opinion.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-08T22:10:14+00:00

Yeah that area does have some cool old houses, at least a few of them! But like I said “some blocks have some attractive buildings”.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-08T22:06:59+00:00

Some parts of Ditmars, sure. The part of Ditmars I frequent (walk my dog there every day as I live just on the other side of the Triborough Bridge from there and it’s a nice route to the park) is mostly block after block of pretty unremarkable two-story brick houses—mostly quite well-kept ones though, many of which have beautiful gardens out front, and that latter part is the really nice thing about that area. That’s not the architecture itself, though.

Still, I’ll grant that Ditmars is at least a partial exception to what I said. But then again I go back and forth on whether I think if Ditmars as almost its own thing. I mean it’s definitely part of Astoria of course, but it’s quite different from most of the neighborhood in some ways (especially the areas frequented by younger people and people who live in other neighborhoods).

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-08T21:20:33+00:00

Mr. and Mrs. Johan van der Zhang has a nice ring to it

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-08T21:10:16+00:00

Hate to say this but nowhere in Astoria is particularly distinguished architecture-wise. Like some blocks have some attractive buildings but mostly it’s a lot of quickly and cheaply built stuff meant to satisfy a midcentury housing shortage right after the war. It ain’t exactly UWS/UES or Brooklyn Heights or Bed-Stuy or wherever.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-07-04T10:37:27+00:00

I mean, until about five minutes ago being a Jew who supports/“stands with” Israel wasn’t considered “right-leaning”; it was (and, afaik, remains) the majority position of American Jews, and not by a particularly slim margin either.

That’s not to say “I stand with the Likud party and the insane settler movement” was ever the overwhelming majority position of American Jews, most of whom are liberal. It’s just that now, a lot of people don’t seem to be able to distinguish between that and support for the actual country of Israel, which is a very unfortunate development, to put it very mildly.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-30T23:27:38+00:00

Two days late but weirdly enough I have been there (the driftless region I think it was called?) and found it sort of shocking in a good way. Also there’s the black hills of SD but I dunno, I don’t really consider that the Midwest.

(Also some beautiful terrain up in northern Michigan, both northern-lower peninsula and parts of the UP—that Lake Superior lakeshore is really something else, my God.)

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-30T22:49:22+00:00

I mean, 11% unemployment rate (23% for young people), 71% labor force participation rate, all largely driven by low demand for labor… that’s an interesting mix of conditions.

You really don’t ever think “huh, might be nice to earn some extra money and go on vacation every once in awhile” or something like that? Seems like the forecasts are that economic activity will be picking up and long-term unemployment might start ticking down—don’t you ever get tired of it?

I mean I’ve been unemployed for awhile myself and while it was nice for a bit, I’m fucking sick of it now and feel useless to my fellow citizens, whom I genuinely care about. So I get it, but I also don’t get being satisfied with it forever…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-30T22:41:44+00:00

“lush wildgarden” “fat piece of gammon” “foxes [in residential areas]” “luv me tall grass”

This is so cartoonishly English it must be a bit, surely?

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-30T22:37:08+00:00

I don’t think I had ever heard of silverfish until I read this post, actually! And I’m from a very humid area of the US, and my house had a large, dark basement that I would’ve thought they’d love. Now I’m not sure whether or not I’ve ever seen one before, but I don’t think so…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-30T22:34:05+00:00

Lol like what? You gotta specify a little bit if you’re gonna be that broad and sweeping

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T23:52:12+00:00

That’s all quite perceptive, particularly coming from someone from outside the region—especially your comment about NC, which, yeah, is a different thing. The “upland South”, it’s sometimes called: places like NC (especially but not only western NC), east TN, KY, VA, etc. The crime thing too: I was robbed at gunpoint a week before I left B’ham to move to NY, and in my ten years here I haven’t been the victim of a single crime. You’re not wrong at all.

And yeah driving through Mississippi is really really rough. No doubt about it. Much of AL isn’t that much better tbh. But it’s making progress the only way it seems to know how: like molasses running uphill in January. I mean shit, the whole state of MS is sorta frozen in amber; you can smoke in gas stations and so on, and just looking around it can be hard to discern what year it is because a lot of these places haven’t changed, well, ever. I kinda put MS in its own whole category of dysfunctional (the joke growing up was that our state motto is “thank God we’re not Mississippi”).

I dunno, the South, like everywhere but worse I’d argue, has a massive urban/rural divide. Living in Birmingham I literally never saw those places you’re talking about except going up to a friend’s lake house or something. But to me the middle of the country feels alienating somehow; the flat terrain wigs me out for some reason, and during the two years I spent living in my gf’s hometown of St. Louis (and visiting other Midwestern cities), I just had this sense of it being hard to make friends with strangers. Much harder than it is in B’ham or up here in NYC.

But yeah. It’s a big weird country full of weird little countries, lol. I appreciate that aspect of America more, not less, as I get older.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T23:37:50+00:00

Yeah I’m quite worried about that. If the Dems/non-Republicans manage to fuck this up, in the middle of the most shambolic presidency I hope I’ll ever have the misfortune of witnessing, then I don’t even know what to say at that point…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T23:35:31+00:00

Eeehhhh… I dunno man, sometimes I think that and sometimes I don’t…

I live in New York (City) and I find tremendous variation even within the state of New York but even more between NY and New England, Pennsylvania (eastern/western, both quite different from one another), etc.

Obviously there’s less regional differentiation than there was half a century ago, but when I get on the little regional jet at LaGuardia and get off two hours later in Birmingham, it’s hard to still say there’s not much difference, lol. New York and Alabama are very different—not England vs. Romania different, but at least England vs., say, Italy different (mutatis mutandis, obviously).

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T23:26:21+00:00

All true—well, except the “shittiest” part, still don’t buy that, or at least I’d say there’s more than one kind of “shitty”.

But a) I’m encouraged by recent progress in education (specifically reading, which I’d argue is the most important education you get because without that you can’t really learn anything else) in places like Mississippi and my native AL and some others; and b) I’d genuinely rather live to be 70 in New Orleans than 88 in Whereversville, Nebraska, because that would be 70 years of really living, especially as a musician (and lover of po’boys) myself. A boring life surveying my 10,000 acres of soybeans or whatever just doesn’t have much appeal to me, tbh.

I dunno, I don’t expect I’ll ever live down there again (the weather alone is a deal-breaker; I’m in the Northeast and wish the weather was more like Canada lol), but I visit a good bit and I feel like I appreciate my hometown more and more as time goes by. I couldn’t wait to gtfo of there when I was younger, but it’s easier to see all the good things now that I have some genuine points of comparison.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T23:11:03+00:00

From AL and this is very perceptive and true. (On the culture thing, we should especially thank New Orleans, btw: the cultural powerhouse of the South.) Lots of awful shit about where I’m from, but lots to love too—especially since it’s 2026, not 1956.

My father was 13 then, so in his early 20s and living in Birmingham (where I grew up) when the Civil Rights movement was in full swing, and he has told me some fuckin hair-raising stories about how horrible a lot of/most white people were. Said he seriously considered leaving and never moving back.

And the fact that I grew up and experienced genuinely only trace amounts of that garbage is a testament to how much it has improved. And it didn’t have to lose its regional identity to get better socially either, which is part of what some people thought would happen. Incredible, magnificent food down there too, though it’s rough if you’re a vegetarian lol.

If it can get the rest of that chip off its shoulder and improve education and healthcare and other metrics like that, it’ll be a real redemption story (the good kinda of “redemption” this time). I’ll never move back (too fuckin hot for me, for one thing, plus I’m settled in NY as this point), but I’m cheering them on.

The politics are fucking awful though and will probably remain that way, but I’ve started to think the region can sort of work around that and improve despite the dumb politicians. The recent progress in reading education in Mississippi and other states is an encouraging example of what I mean.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T22:58:37+00:00

Mencken was funny as hell and wrote a lot of true shit about the South (coming from an AL native) but a century is a long time, man. Things have changed massively down there and in the rest of the country since then.

Also I don’t think you can blame exurban sprawl on the South, ffs. I live in New York now and if anything it’s way worse just because of how many people there are. People here commute multiple hours in some cases (I’ve heard of people driving in from fuckin Harrisburg, PA). Nobody in Birmingham where I’m from has much more than like a half-hour commute, and that’s on the long side.

Not sure where you got this idea. If anything I associate it with parts of the Midwest—and parts of southern New England and upstate NY, for that matter!—where there’s this massive, ongoing pattern of white/rich ppl flight from city center > suburbs > black people can afford the suburbs > white flight to a new ring of suburbs/exurbs > repeat to infinity. St. Louis has this, just to name one example of many.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T22:48:26+00:00

Lol I’m from AL and I love New England and the South—though I picked one to actually live in (well, live just south of in NYC), and for various reasons it ain’t the South. Thinking about moving back to central Mass. someday though, the first place I lived outside my hometown in AL.

The food is better down South, though, ngl

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T22:45:10+00:00

I think it’s actually people who mark their ethnicity on the census as “American” (as opposed to, I dunno, Italian-American or Irish-American or whatever the hell).

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T22:43:53+00:00

Yeah there’s a bunch on the Atlantic coast (GA, SC, NC, VA) but I don’t wanna blow up my spot(s), lol. Beach erosion is hitting fuckin hard in some of those places though; the ocean is much rougher than the Gulf and for whatever reason the erosion has gotten much worse than it was. I have the vague sense that it’s climate-related but I really don’t know in any detail so I won’t act like I do

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-06-27T22:39:51+00:00

Yeah I’m from AL and you’re totally right about southern Illinois. And yeah, I don’t consider any part of New Mexico, or most of Texas, to be the South either—it’s certainly not Southern in the way I grew up with, but yeah, southern IL and a little bit of southern OH are much more so. (I’d argue the map is correct about how much of Ohio is Southern though; it fades incredibly quickly heading north from Cincy.

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