Date: November 22nd, 2007 2:59 PM Author: trip point
upstate NY is not a 'fly-over state' douche. And no, there is no difference between Alabama and Nebraska, aside from their college football teams. Both states are totally insignificant.
I know the feeling well. You should see the dirty looks I get as I cruise around in my shiny foreign car while sipping a latte. You can see the hate in their eyes.
Date: November 22nd, 2007 3:06 PM Author: mischievous theater
I guess the only way to fit in at a town like that is to talk about high school football. "how 'bout them [insert local hs football team] this season!"
Date: November 22nd, 2007 3:04 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
i know how to 'downshift' my diction and grammar to put poors at ease. you also have to feign enthusiasm toward the boring bullshit they like to talk about. no, garret, i don't fucking care that you figured out the guitar tabs for a nickelback song all by yourself. but so as not to seem like a dick, i'll tell you "shit dude, that's fuckin' awesome. nice work."
Date: November 24th, 2007 12:36 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
to be fair, several hours after i posted this, i enjoyed a gigantic and delicious thanksgiving feast with my relatives the poors. and in a startling display of self-restraint, almost everyone held back on getting drunk until after dinner.
i went to a local dive bar which people used to go to back in the day, and the clientele was no longer college aged people, it was poors. like serious poors man. the all have working class pride.
dudes with tats, bad rock and country classics on juke box. feeling that fight could break out any minutes. totally marginalized people - too dumb and too old to change.
Some of my high school friends who didn't attend college are slowly but surely heading down that road. They used to have vague plans about "going back to school" but now all they talk about is work, beer, and pussy. I guess that could be nice, but not if you're poor.
Date: November 22nd, 2007 2:59 PM Author: big hot nursing home laser beams
not exactly poortown, though when i got to penn station last night to take the train home and saw the crowds of 20-something guidos and guidettes leaving the station to go bar-hopping or whatever, i was reminded again of why i do not want to live on long island.
Date: November 22nd, 2007 3:18 PM Author: big hot nursing home laser beams
i don't even know if they were all (or mostly) italian). guys wearing torn up jeans with suit jackets and cigs behind their ears, hair gel everywhere, girls being shrill and obnoxious and wearing fuck-me skirts, etc. the reeked of a certain je ne sais quois that seems only to exist in NJ/LI.
Date: November 22nd, 2007 4:17 PM Author: Henna gunner
lol at all you faggot TTT's who grew up in poor areas, have TTT friends, went to public school and have to deal with this. Even bigger lolz at you thinking you are somehow above this now. You are TTT for life due to your garbage upbringing
Poorness must be washed away by generations of quality. The first has the hardest cross to bear, in that they will have the money but know that they never will have the prestige of their fellows. Ultimately, the "P" tat on their foreheads will be with them until death.
Date: November 24th, 2007 4:33 PM Author: Henna gunner
how poor are the people in these towns? Like normal middle class public school--->Mediocre UG kind of people or what? You make it sound like these people are GED having trash who work construction.
Date: November 24th, 2007 4:38 PM Author: Henna gunner
What are they like besides their disdain for non-work clothes and big words? My idea of poors are the type of people you see when you cross the bridge from PBI to West Palm and goto Blue Martini. I am curious to hear how real blue collar people in dying steel towns act.
it's fascinating dood. They have a disdain for education. they may to go the bar in their work clothes. there's two or three different classes - there's the real proletariat who still make OK money doing steel and auto stuff, then there's a middle poor class, which may be carpenters and electricians. then there's the bottom poor class who may just collect welfare or work odd constructions jobs. they are the most dangerous. there's always the feeling that they will fight, and they are very, very hateful. they've never left their poor towns and are not aware of any reality outside of their poortown, so any percieved difference is a cause for offense. they hate everyone except for other poors. they love nascar, the steelers, the dallas cowboys, they drive shitty pickup trucks, they go hunting, they are dirty.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:38 PM Author: big hot nursing home laser beams
after going through this post it seems like the places that i would have previously thought of as "poortown"--upstate ny (some areas outside of the catskills, towards centrl ny) and MN (really, really rural areas of the state) really aren't. the difference seems to be that the people in MN/upstate still seems to remain fundamentally wholesome. the area might be economically depressed and people still sort of accept their lot in life without really thinking about being a lawyer or a doctor, though they tend to mind their own business.
Date: May 26th, 2008 9:59 PM Author: irradiated zombie-like step-uncle's house pistol
“The Road” began filming in late February, mostly in and around Pittsburgh, with a later stop in New Orleans and a postproduction visit planned to Mount St. Helens. The producers chose Pennsylvania, one of them, Nick Wechsler, explained, because it’s one of the many states that give tax breaks and rebates to film companies and, not incidentally, because it offered such a pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes. Chris Kennedy, the production designer, even discovered a burned-down amusement park in Lake Conneaut and an eight-mile stretch of abandoned freeway, complete with tunnel, ideal for filming the scene where the father and son who are the story’s main characters are stalked by a cannibalistic gang traveling by truck.
Date: November 24th, 2007 4:45 PM Author: Henna gunner
So the steel/auto workers are at the top of the ladder in poortown? There aren't any wealthy people? I admit my world is not a good representation of the world at large so i'm probably a bit disconnected from "reality" but i'm just having a hard time picturing a place like this. Someone should make a documentary or something.
the poors at the top are the auto and steel people except there aren't that many of them any more.
the professional classes (doctors, lawyers, school teachers) have abandoned the rural hamlets for suburbs. the poors that are left are uneducated, and angry.
Date: November 24th, 2007 5:04 PM Author: Henna gunner
so the strand that didn't move away = your parents? Post-school and don't have a job or you're switching jobs? Do you have to put on work clothes to go the bars? Do poors even bother to dream up an excuse to start a fight or do they just antagonize for no reason?
so the strand that didn't move away = your parents?
yes, - actually my mother. father is dead.
Post-school and don't have a job or you're switching jobs?
switching careers - looking for a short term gig in city to do in between attending a 16-30 LS. i lived in a major city after college, and then Socal and NYC. ran into a bind, and had to get out. came here - HUGE MISTAKE.
Do you have to put on work clothes to go the bars?
No, you don't have to put on work clothes, but you would be percieved if normal if you were wearing work clothes, and a "fag" or "prep" if you you weren't. I wear jeans and t-shirt, and decent wool coat, and this, somehow, is unacceptable.
Do poors even bother to dream up an excuse to start a fight or do they just antagonize for no reason?
some poors are nice. they understand you are not like them and they'll be really friend to you, and you can get some good convo. but always - you can bank on it - some poor is going to come up and ask if you are "faggit" or ask you "why you think you are cool" or something. often they will be interested in if you because you don't look the same. but real point is that there are lots of poors that are just really, really angry. its not uncommon for them to say that you are a "fag" or a "nigger lover" not sure where comes from. they have obsessions with black people and gay people. and when try drink it comes out for some reason.
you could fight the poor - but if it happens every time you go out for a drink, then you either don't got out or you get into a fight every time.
Date: November 24th, 2007 5:20 PM Author: Henna gunner
Their motivation for fighting is clear. They are horribly insecure about what abject failures they are. They keep this hidden deep down and when mixing with their own kind it has no reason to bubble to the surface. When someone else who isn't a poor failure is introduced, it makes them look that much worse by comparison and reminds them how bad they suck. They aren't so much mad at you, but you being there reminds them how much they hate themselves/their lives, and being poor and stupid their reaction to this bad feeling is to drink and fight, thinking this is a valid solution.
Question: Why not just leave and spend the few months somewhere else, this doesn't sound tolerable
leave poortown, temp or do some contract work in a real city before you go to LS. If you're this miserable before 1L year, you're going to have a tough time of it.
Date: February 21st, 2008 4:58 AM Author: Arousing jet-lagged macaca gaming laptop
that's a good movie. i'd say that is a poortown, but an appalacian poortown. rust belt poortowns are different, although there are people like that in poortowns.
Date: November 24th, 2007 4:32 PM Author: Claret Insecure Sound Barrier Indian Lodge
It's pretty sad some people can't get along with their families. I played Sheepshead and drank Bud Light and had a blast. Why act all pretentious toward the people you grew up with?
i came from a decent family - doctors, some phds, school teachers, so i didn't know it was poor town until i left and had to come back. when i came back, i couldn't go anywhere without being fucked with. stares, hate. also, it has significantly declined in the past 5-10 years. what was once mayberry, is now ghetto.
Date: November 24th, 2007 4:47 PM Author: Henna gunner
If you came from a decent family, why wouldn't they move out of poortown? I imagine if it's that bad they also get hate for having education and professions
Date: November 24th, 2007 5:24 PM Author: aqua pit associate
Yeah, if you're referring to me, the fag comment was in jest and there is no bitterness or jealousy. In fact, we did all the normal family stuff (football, games, etc.).
It's just that I dress a little differently than them and talk a little differently.
Date: November 24th, 2007 4:48 PM Author: Lilac Galvanic Forum
This is actually not entirely accurate. The only MAJOR airport, with direct flights to and from, is 2 1/2 hours away. I believe there are a few landing strips in some of the "major towns" around there.
Date: November 24th, 2007 5:46 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
some of you are honestly ignorant of poors and how they behave? what kind of sheltered upbringing did you have? i grew up in 'real america,' the kind where poors predominate. others have pointed out the hatred of 'fags.' it is ferocious, but you have to remember that 'fag' is not really a reference to gays at all, but rather, to outsiders who don't conform to local poortown norms.
let me tell you a few things about poortown:
-poortown's laundromat is always busy after dinner, and it is a dank, depressing place with filthy water pooling around at least a couple of machines.
-men in poortown drive older manual trucks, and most of them have been modded to fit big swamper tires. a gun rack is obligatory. men who drive cars rather than trucks are immediately identified as faggots, unless the car is being used for street racing.
-men in poortown fight because even if you lose, it's manly to stand your ground and take your beating. fighting distinguishes fags from nonfags, because faggots cower from fights, while nonfags will fight when called upon to fight, even if there is no 'reason,' as such, to fight.
-tats are a near-mandatory way of showing your allegiance to the ethos of poortown. your tats will probably NOT be directly related to the town itself, but the fact that you have tats is important. it is today's tribal scarification. tatless men are goddamn faggots in the metaphysics of poortown.
-poortown never really scrubs off, no matter how hard you want it to scrub off. of course, those of us with intelligence, who escape poortown for better things, can hide our background from others. but poortown is branded to the soul. i am a male from poortown. i will never be anything else, no matter what else i become aside from that. but this is not a bad thing. it's simply my identity.
-at the same time, i am no longer OF my poortown. poortown is not like a metropolitan city that can be alienated then embraced again at will. a new yorker can leave NYC and come back to NYC and be a 'new yorker' again. this is not how poortown works.
poortown is a small, continuous, shared experience, and when you leave, it's like cutting your patch from poortown's quiltwork. poortowners continue living without you, updating each other daily on their doings, fucking each other, marrying, divorcing, having families. a year of absence may as well be a decade. once you pluck yourself from this continuity of poortown experience, you by necessity become an outsider, moreso as time goes on.
now, if you move back permanently, you will eventually get filled back in on the transpirings of those lost years. but poortown cannot be taken on and off like a jacket. you're either in it or you begin to become an outsider.
i hope this helps you understand, a bit, the psychology of poortown, which is where i grew up.
Date: November 24th, 2007 5:57 PM Author: Henna gunner
Interesting. How big/small are these poortowns (population wise), what is the "town" itself like (size, types of establishments,etc...)? What was high school like in poortown? As I admitted, my upbringing was very sheltered and my idea of "poor people" is quite divorced from the reality of what actual poverty is.
Date: November 24th, 2007 6:40 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
my poortown had about 4,500 people, which is not unusual. poortowns are both much smaller (there was a poortown near ours with 400 people - it had less 'stuff', but the fundamental psychology was similar), and larger (i would argue that there are poortowns of more than 50,000, though some might consider that too 'urban').
my particular poortown was in long-term decline. that means it used to have things, like a movie theater, that it no longer has. it has some restaurants, a couple gas stations, a school system with one high school of about 400 students, a grocery store, a handful of small industrial facilities, and a few poor people stores (pawn shop, check cashing place, secondhand store, used clothes shop). there are also some churches. nothing pretentious like a 'synagogue' or 'unitarian chapel.' nope. just regular protestant churches. people wish our town had a wal-mart, but there is none. you drive 15 miles down the road to the nearest wal-mart. and of course, we have about six bars.
there is little of interest to draw the outsider. sure, we have a local 'fair' that does a bit of statewide advertising, but no one from outside our poortown would really care to attend the meager festivities that are really just a local social occasion anyhow.
high school was, fundamentally, tremendous fun. however, i made a point of fitting in. i joined the football team and worked out and kept my studying to myself. i drank and smoked pot along with everyone else. no one at school ever saw me poring over joyce's short stories, or the latest issue of scientific american. my awareness of the social order was keen enough for me to hide these things. i got excellent grades, but i rarely volunteered answers in class. scholasticism is not a traditional value in poortown.
however, rifts became inevitable after people learned that i would be attending college hundreds of miles away and out of state. they realized at some level that i was not 'one of them' in certain foundational ways. i would not go cap-in-hand after graduation to the asphalt plant, wrangling for a job. many of my friends did. i would not be joining the military. i would not be renting a house with my senior year girlfriend and starting a family. i would not be drinking with the guys for long after graduation.
i was, at first, apologetic, as though leaving was a transgression. i apologized for not 'being there' anymore. one thing that poortowns do, as a result of their incestuous insularity, is develop a strong communitarianism whose rejection is felt by all as an insult. imagine the poortown as an organism of residents who were born nearby and who will probably die nearby. when that order is forcefully rejected through something like 'going far away to college,' the organism is aggrieved. after all, it RAISED you. and it raised you as a component. for a town in decline, losing its top students simply highlights what everyone already knows - the organism is slipping into necrosis. things are not healthy there.
and so those who remain become a community exclusive to you, because your values no longer sync up. don't mistake this for internal unity WITHIN the various castes of poortown - as has been pointed out, those who have real jobs with benefits are in quite a lot better shape than the unemployed. those in real houses are better off than those in the trailer parks. and there is real animosity between classes. but they are all poortowners who share the same poortowner DNA. they are familiar to one another.
something like college is a mutation. when i look at myself in relation to the poortown i left behind, i am a disfigured mutant. but the alternative is to stay eternally in poortown.
Date: November 24th, 2007 6:49 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
well, how expansively are we defining 'college?' does community college count? how about the beauty academy, or the trade school where you learn how to weld? if we include all these things, by the broadest definition of 'postsecondary,' probably about 1/4th, maybe rising to 1/3rd if we count kids who later get some college-style training through their work.
if we limit it to four-year college programs that end with traditional bachelor's degrees, then about 10%. if we limit it to colleges outside the local state system, then just me and a handful of other kids. it's really not common to do that.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:03 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
you go to high school for the bonding social experience and the athletics, not as a springboard to greater things. as has been noted, people in poortowns are galvanized by their high school experience. it's something they talk about forever.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:10 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
i know it's trendy to think of america in terms of connectivity, internet access, 'knowledge economies,' and other forward-oriented terms. but a poortown is an archipelago. if people on your island harvest coconuts and fish from canoes, then that is what you think life is all about. even if you have arcane TV images of something different. in a poortown, people are not stock brokers or corporate lawyers or endocrinologists. poortowners don't think of those things at all, let alone as potential outcomes in life.
so, you see, they are not 'giving up' on anything, since they never expected any different.
i think central PA or somewhere in Mass would offer you some Poortowns. Kerouac was from Lowell, Massachusetts. Town and the City is a classic read on this topic.
i'd say your safest bet, though, is anywhere 30 miles outside of Pittsburgh.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:41 PM Author: big hot nursing home laser beams
that area is still pretty yuppified though--it's always been a summer destination for rich bostonians and it's always had some cultural elements as well as skiing, etc. pittsfield may be a poortown candidate though, i ate at a friendly's there once and the people seemed pretty sketchy.
Date: July 31st, 2008 12:32 PM Author: excitant brethren
he's not talking about places like northampton, but something like worcester or springfield, although most of the poors here are just the generic immigrant/black people types
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:01 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
girls are naive and credulous. sex, for the average poortown male, is not all that difficult to get, unless he is either brutally ugly or shy to the point of terminal awkwardness. maybe now and then there is something like a religious barrier to sex in the girl's head (very rarely the guy), but it crumbles with pressure.
the first girl i had sex with was reluctant at first. but she was barely out of the trailer parks (she had lived there until middle school, before her dad finally got a raise at the truck washing place). i told her that i felt bad, because we were not 'sharing ourselves and our love' in all the possible ways, and that even though i was with her, it made me feel 'lonely.' this actually worked.
this is fine in high school. but be warned - if you knock a girl up, there is a high chance she'll keep it. not because abortion is such a terrible prospect, but because teenage pregnancy is nothing unusual, and she might just figure it's 'time to start a family.'
also, once high school is over, dating a poortown female who still lives in poortown can be a shitty experience. for one thing, you'll be dealing with her poortown male relatives who want to know who the fuck you are, and where you come from.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:05 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
i have read your posts in this thread. we're poortown brothers, even though we probably grew up in different poortowns. but poortown america is a shared experience. every now and then a family from another poortown would move into our poortown, and though they were outsiders at first, their poortown values quickly eased them into the thrum of daily poortown life.
Date: November 25th, 2007 10:03 AM Author: Arousing jet-lagged macaca gaming laptop
to further the mutation theme - think about it a minute. Kerouac = poortown; andy warhol = poortown; bill clinton = poortown; bob dylan = poortown. every once in a while, there is a problem with the code. Warhol became Warhol. Warhol's brother ran a junkyard. imagine those thanksgivings.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:08 PM Author: saffron karate temple
My condolences. But honestly many people from where I'm from, a rich area, never seem to leave town either and just go to the community college as well.
Is even going to an SEC school looked down in your area? Because if so, that is really a hellhole.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:14 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
an SEC school would be a big deal. that's a big thing that not many people in my poortown can snag. same deal with a big 10 school, or any school that you can see playing football on the TV.
it would be a hellhole to be stuck there, or to grow up gay/noncomformist in my poortown. but if you approximate a 'normal' american kid, and have the wherewithal to educate yourself at times, growing up in a poortown can be one hell of a fun time.
SEC school would be a HUGE accomplishment to a poortowner who went there, and it would cause you to be ostracized for the reasons burlinggame mentioned.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:19 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
we need to draw a sharp distinction between "small" towns, many of which can be downright pastoral and charming, and poortowns, which are harder-edged places where people live for lack of better options, or through heredity. small towns can be welcoming and easygoing. lovely little idylls. a true poortown will be distrustful and standoffish until it is confirmed that you ain't no fag.
a small - not poortown - is more like you'd imagine a small town to be like in new england - full of professionals, old but immaculate homes, and a quaint, pleasant vibe. but right outside of these oases, the poors, like Romero's zombies, are lurking and waiting.
Date: November 24th, 2007 7:44 PM Author: 180 shrine patrolman
sure. it had a small fourth-tier college. but the existence of that institution was enough to make it a very pleasant little town with stately manors and quaint bed-and-breakfasts.
Date: November 24th, 2007 10:54 PM Author: hateful laughsome house
yes. about a quarter of my graduating class is going to college, and only about 20% of those who are in college don't go to the local community college or to some christian college no one's ever heard of. the rest are either incarcerated, in the military, working at blue collar jobs, or are paying child support/trying to get their baby daddys to pay child support.
though they're not nearly as pugnacious as the other ones described in this thread. at least not that i've noticed. maybe they're too listless to care about fags and other outsiders.
Date: November 24th, 2007 11:14 PM Author: aqua pit associate
Hey burl, could you describe as far as you can tell the difference in opinion of poortown towards different tiers of colleges?
like say you're in a Pittsburgh area poortown, what would you imagine they think of the local community college compared to some smallish crappy college to Penn State to U penn to harvard?
like do they route for penn state football and identify with the local college teams or just think they're all fags.
do they ever respect intellect, like maybe they think some are typical poser college boys, but are grudgingly impressed by the truly impressive, say kid that goes to MIT form comp stuff, or harvard.
Any thoughts on poortowns thoughts about prestige in general would be pretty awesome.
Date: November 25th, 2007 10:28 AM Author: Arousing jet-lagged macaca gaming laptop
i can't bring burlingames poetic style to this issue, but i can speak from experience.
Remember, let's say 10 percent of poortowners go to real four year schools and graduate. most of the other poors will do a semester or two of community college or a local four year school and drop out. to these poors "college is college" even if it's community college - so, from the beginning, their efforts are misguided.
the 10% of four year school going poortowners, have, really, one hand tied behind their back - they might not understand rankings/prestige until it's too late, so they don't prep for sat/act the way they should. also, in terms of pure geography, to a local pittsburgh area poortowner, a school like Upitt or Penn State is "good enough" - and really, if you think about it, it is for their purposes.
these are not people who are going to be running goldman or trying to get to into national politics. they want to be school teachers, or accountants, or study engineering. So Penn State or Pitt can give them middle class opps - and that's good. very good.
re prestige awareness: a poortown prole is generally prestige aware, but only in how it would function to pwn someone else. example: if you told a poortown relative, that you were going to say Hastings law school, he'd ask you why you wouldn't go to harvard (he knows it's famous). if you said you "didn't get in", then he'd use that as evidence against you that you "weren't so smart after all". So the prestige issue is just to keep you honest. If you really were a Harvard or MIT guy, i'm not sure they would understand the implications.
re sports: they will cheer for the local team whether it is PSU or Pitt or Notre Dame or whatever. as an outside observer, you can see this when you are in poortown, but noting the coats they wear - a 40 year old man will wear a Pitt starter jacket as he does his sunday errands. like all other things relating to violence - football is OK, and not faggy although, they hate black people. it's really ironic, because they hate blacks, but spend a significant portion of their free time watching rich or soon to be rich blacks play sports.
they never respect intellect. intellect is something the "man" has - for lack of a better description. a poortowner sees intellect as a sign of domination, and a poortowner does not like to feel as if he's dominated (because deep down, on an animal level, he understands that he is marginalized and powerless). So a poortowner, will dislike doctors and lawyers. a poortowner will think a scientist is "probably a fag." Management at his company is a evil.
Date: November 25th, 2007 11:35 AM Author: Fishy floppy azn
"also, in terms of pure geography, to a local pittsburgh area poortowner, a school like Upitt or Penn State is "good enough" - and really, if you think about it, it is for their purposes.
these are not people who are going to be running goldman or trying to get to into national politics. they want to be school teachers, or accountants, or study engineering. So Penn State or Pitt can give them middle class opps - and that's good. very good."
To some extent, this describes the attitude of my parents. They're not poors, but a middle class household in decline: whitecollardownsizingpwn3d. For their six children (yes, self-pwnage) their aspirations are state university ----> engineering (especially defense contractors) or medical school. Other universities and other professions are simply not on the radar.
For marginal middle class households, the general condition is fear: fear of financial ruin and being thrust into the ranks of the poors.
Date: November 26th, 2007 11:30 AM Author: aromatic frisky place of business site
I lived in a couple small poortowns for a while, but they valued education. (About 3/4 went to a 4-year college after HS.) Maybe that disqualifies them as poortowns.
Date: November 26th, 2007 12:30 PM Author: painfully honest business firm
Poortown alum here, representing.
I remember being criticized by poors for participating in "honors" or "AP" courses. In my entire class-keep in mind the class went from 500 to 300 over 4 years because of people dropping out to work on the farm, or to become mechanics or wives, etc-there were probably a total of 50-75 students who participated in what would be properly considered college prepwork.
We were the chosen few, shoved onto a limited number of life-rafts from a sinking poorTTTownTTTitanic. The teachers stood by, watching 70 percent of the class drown, happy to see a few groups of students escape their fate.
Even amongst these groups, the one guy I know who applied to HYP was considered a rarity. I was unaware of the real meaning of prestige until I graduated from a TTT state school.
Date: February 21st, 2008 2:01 AM Author: mind-boggling shaky garrison
the way poors ( even more so those form poortowns) think about college is truly strange.
for them college is for :
1. rich kids ( not them obviously) or
2. kids on sports scholarships. AND THAT'S IT.
so they stress Sports OVER academics. It is quite stupefying to witness.
case in point : my uncle in law. ( strangely he comes from a middle class family full of M.D's engineers veterinarians etc, but he is dumb as a brick his IQ is probably in the 80's i think he burned out his brain on coke/amphetamine when he was a disco duck back in the late 70's but i digress)
this guy moved his family to a deep south poortown because h couldn't afford the rent in the " big city" ( note the big city was Baton Rouge, LA pre-katrina, so you can imagine how low his income was if he could not afford THAT)
now my cousin ( his son) is mad smart. but my uncle keeps stressing sports over academics. ask my cousin what his deream job is , his answer is cardio-thoracic surgeon. Ask my uncle what his dream job for his son is and his answer is MaJor League Pitcher.
whenever he talks about his son he takes outpicture of his baseball team. The kid and my aunt ( who is inexplicably married to this retard) talk about his grades.
once i told my uncle his son provided he doesn't slack off will easily win a full scholarship to the SEC flagship state. my uncle-in law, in an awed and proud whisper replied.you really thin he is that good a pitcher?"
Date: July 31st, 2008 7:32 PM Author: duck-like glittery selfie
Strangely enough, the story of suburban hell reads a lot like the renditions of poortown above, except for a lot more money and malls. They have the same vacuous demeanor about higher eduction, and the same blissful unawareness about the outside world at-large.
Date: July 31st, 2008 12:32 AM Author: vibrant primrose whorehouse water buffalo
Been going to a few bars that I (I guess obviously) never frequented during high school. (One of these "bars" is an Applebee's.) I completely feel this thread, although I think my town is maybe not quite so rough. Will be out of this place again in a month.
Date: July 31st, 2008 1:05 AM Author: Cordovan Round Eye
I grew up in a rich small town in Western Pennsylvania, right next to a Poortown.
My father was a doctor and had his office in poortown and dealt with poortown locals almost exclusively.
On many days I would walk or take the bus to the office when I was younger after school, and the imprint it left on my mind has stuck with me to this day.
Poortown is a wretched place. The ruins of old monuments to industrial labor still remain as tantamount to America's mechanical past. Old rusted cars and machinery lay waste as the heavy stench of pollution still sits in the air. Occasionally a train will roll by, the only sign of economic activity left.
My parents employed poortown locals to do the administrative work. They vacationed in trailer parks and had husbands in construction. Their sons were the lucky ones, as I know one who is a first baseman for one of the University of Pittsburgh's branch campuses.
Date: July 31st, 2008 1:37 AM Author: Cordovan Round Eye
Maybe so, my friend.
I think that Rust Belt poortowns are the most depressing, because there once was wealth there, there once were jobs, there once was hope.
That's all gone now, vanished like the dark satanic mills that once forged America into the nation she is today. Locals would often boast it was Pittsburgh, not Washington that won the war.
If you've ever taken the train from Philly to Pittsburgh it is absolutely maddening. You pass miles upon miles of dead, empty, torn up mills and factories before you arrive at Pittsburgh. It's a hauntingly beautiful landscape. Almost as if a great plague had taken to the city and no one had survived.
Date: July 31st, 2008 2:03 AM Author: Cordovan Round Eye
I love Pittsburgh, I love the people, I love the city. But like the poor mother of an ill child I cry to see her slowly being marginalized by the forces of modernity. Yet still something lives on. There is beauty here, beauty beyond the wildest dreams of those born and bred in their cultural isolation tanks in the East and West. Every day growing up I could hear the loud groans of society, the trains humming down the tracks, and a river that brought life to the region. I would fall asleep to their sounds, safe in the knowledge that society existed beyond my small line of sight.
People were friendly, it was safe, even within the city limits. Food, friends, and family were the top priorities. Every day I saw vistas that Hudson River artists scrambled to put down on canvas and show the world. I was lucky, so lucky to be born and live here.
I do have hope for the region, but there will be pain. Grafting a 21st century college town with focuses in Medicine and Technology on top of a 19th century industrial powerhouse will take time. I wouldn't be surprised if we lost a sports team or two. Or if the metro population shrinks below 2 million in 20 or 30 years.
Even if I move somewhere else, I will never forget where I came from. In a city struggling to move between the past and future, pain is the only guarantee.
Date: July 31st, 2008 4:19 PM Author: Cordovan Round Eye
It's weird going home, isn't it? Because of the relative wealth of my community most of my friends and I were sheltered from the poortown ethos, though it was still very much alive in all of the surrounding towns. The bars however, were the great meeting place. Local bars in my town were a mix of the descendants of wealthy old Pittsburgh money and true poors. An uneasy truce was usually brokered through shifting glances and subtle ostracization.