I'm a New Yorker who visited the Midwest for the first time. Here are 15 things that surprised me.

His Twitter account is verified and has only 253 followers. I think that must be a record low.

Imagine this dumbass traveling abroad? OMG! They have these “toilets” that spray water up your ass!!! ZOMG!!!

It kind of reads like a fifth-grader's "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" report.

R3 that’s what 99% of “journalists” sound like these days.

Gen Z travels.

Love the photo of Steamworks with the "Chicago Proudest Neighborhood" banner flying from the street pole.

Dumb ass

He straight up ignored Detroit.

His mother must be so proud

You lost me at "I'm a New Yorker"

He needs to get out more often.

“Mom, it’s really nice here. They even have electricity and drive cars!” 📞

Water is still wet ... and the sun shines! Who knew

Does this kid have a father in high places calling shots? His article about eating at an Italian restaurant during covid sounds exactly as R3 describes.

He is very wide-eyed and earnest, though!

R2 ha!

"And then there was this one time! At band camp!"

Did I miss it, is he Gay or not? It makes more sense if he’s a clueless straight idiot, and he proves that you can be from NY and lack basic sophistication.

[quote]he proves that you can be from NY and lack basic sophistication.

Have you ever been to the outer boroughs dear? They're basically feral.

A: Insider? Is that a thing?

B: I know more than a few New Yorkers who do not think a kid from Long Island is a New Yorker, even after six years. A resident of New York State, sure.

C: "Everyone" was nice, "unlike some" in New York. What the hell does that mean?

D: "Cheers" as a thank you is more British than American. I can't believe this isn't said more in New York but I could be wrong.

Overall, the piece is as inane as anything I've read about an untraveled and unsophisticated person. You don't have to be from backwoods Alabama to be a rube.

He's gay, R17.

You guys didn’t disappoint. I knew you guys would make all kinds of fun of him. Very sad, actually.

[quote]You don't have to be from backwoods Alabama to be a rube.

Again, have you ever been to the outer boroughs?

Ha ha ha ha ha!

He sounds like a complete idiot.

R13- and Dwarfs are short and Lemons are sour.

What a dumbass. Chicago is no more representative of the Midwest than NYC is of the Northeast. His comments really are dumb---I mean of course Lake Michigan is important---he probably didn't talk to anyone who lived more than a couple miles away from it. When I lived in Chicago, being within walking distance of the lake was an imperative---I'd been landlocked for10 years having grown-up within walking distance ofanother graet lake ad I knew the lake would moderate summer heat.

He’s not from the outer boroughs. He’s from Long Island.

But the posters were surprised that New Yorkers could be unsophisticated r27. Just go to the outer boroughs to see how unsophisticated native New Yorkers can be.

Meh, the only part that achieves so-stupid-it's-funny is the section about how "proud" we are in the Midwest, illustrated by an obvious Pride flag in the gayberhood.

How do you know, R20?

I mean, just how dumb is he to not know that it gets hot in the Midwest? In a way, he reminds me of idiotic American tourists in Canada during the summer, "it gets hot here? You guys have summer?" Just an example of the "ugly" American stereotype. Not all Americans are so stupid though, of course, but it sure seems as though there's a loud-mouthed contingent of them.

If you guys thought this read was inane, take a look at the article about the Congress Hotel in Chicago from Insider.. It must've been written by a 14 year old girl.

R30, his Insider profile says that he covers the "LGBTQ community".

R26, people in Chicago are more obsessed with the lake than other people living near water. Even you say it was imperative to live near the lake. I have never heard that about any other place.

I have lived by the ocean and large rivers. In no place did people know the water temperature or much detail about them. But in Chicago, it really is a thing.

*I went somewhere a bit far away from where I live and things are slightly different *

If he was blown away by Chicago and Detroit, just wait until he sees Kansas City!

Frankie's a basic bitch.

As a born and raised Midwesterner who went to college and lived in Chicago for ten years, I’m not sure about the friendliness. There is often a certain degree of first-contact friendliness/niceness - whether genuine or superficial - that is a good thing.

But dig deeper and I don’t think Midwesterners are genuinely nicer, better people on average. Some are genuinely nice of course. But many are just raised to be fake nice and are judgmental and shitty underneath the facade.

I guess if it’s in the context of service it doesn’t really matter if the niceness is fake, but still.

I also find New Yorkers to be much nicer on the street than people in other American cities. Ask them for directions they will usually help--or apologize profusely if they cannot.

Chicago, Boston....not as consistent.

Which are the outer boroughs?

R40, the ones that are not Manhattan.

I grew up in the Midwest and we never said cheers!

OMG guys, it is click bait, which I fell for and read on Yahoo, before OP posted this thread. He is a genius, play the rube and get people to read your articles. It won't win a Pulitzer but it got him noticed.

Getting off the plane at O’Hare totally triggered my anxiety because the gate numbers were different and I didn’t recognize the configuration of the terminal at all. I’m still really confused by this?

When I finally managed to get outside, I waited and waited for my Uber. That’s when I encountered the most surprising thing of all.

I was looking for a car with the license-plate “123-ABCD," but as a New Yorker, I was expecting a New York plate. There was a car with that number, but the plate said something like “Illinois.”

I was scared to approach the driver because he looked super toxic and the terminal anxiety had already pushed my social anxiety into overdrive. Bering forced into a face-to-face conversation to ask if he was my Uber was WAY outside my comfort zone. What I needed in that moment was self care.

Luckily, he drove away while I was trying to calm myself with some alternate-nostril breathing. As it turns out, most cars in Chicago have those Illinois plates. IDK? Your guess is as good as mine.

I knew a man who danced with his own wife.

I'm betting he wrote this from his apartment in NYC. Nearly every "discovery" has been commented on before and is widely known and would hardly require a visit -- the Midwest is slower than NYC, imagine that. And the "cheers" thing he probably got from a movie because I'm not aware of anywhere in the Midwest where people say "cheers" all the time.

I say cheers but it’s a British thing.

I can't wait to read his article about visiting Paris.

Did you know they have cars there, R48? Cars!!! Can you believe it?!

have him visit the wealthy suburbs north of chicago (i.e. drive up sheridan road) and see how genuine, friendly and down to earth everyone is! (sarcasm)..

Chicago! Chicago!

God damn, talk about country bumpkin

You can come from Brooklyn but you’re still an inbred hick in my mind if you come of with this ridiculous list (the Midwest is hot! They have restaurants like us!)

This is what happens when you fire all the editors and let journalists publish their first drafts.

[quote] Overall, the piece is as inane as anything I've read about an untraveled and unsophisticated person. You don't have to be from backwoods Alabama to be a rube.

We can't all be as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as you are, Noel Coward.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

He's a actual journalist/reporter? Whose been hired by a major newspaper? And gets paid????!!!

Damn, where and when do I get hired? Maybe just maybe my Associates degree from a junior college in Journalism will pay off after all?!

Someone in the article at R55 makes a good point. How can you be a journalist that has never travelled?

This guy is such a rube.

The least aware person (of the whole wide world) I ever met was raised in Soho. Didn't feel the need to learn about any place, culture, history, etc. because he believed he was born at the center of the world -- and what else outside of his world could possibly matter.

I would be surprised if this poor guy made more than like $500 for this.

R58 Can you believe they eat lots of baguettes!

Hard-hitting journalism at its finest.

Another anthropological journalist is sent to something called a “Kenosha” and is shocked by waves.

[quote]It was cruelly cold the night I got to Wisconsin, but I’d been expecting that. It was the sound of the lake that surprised me. From blocks away, you could hear waves thudding against the crags of ice that limned the shore—partly a function of the total silence that had descended on the streets of Kenosha that evening. I took this at first for the silence of desolation, which I’d also been expecting, but it turned out to be only the mundane quiet of a city whose residents had someplace indoors to be after dark.

[quote]The city of Kenosha is a gray, exurban strip of Lake Michigan frontage with barely a hundred thousand residents. Until this magazine offered to send me there, I had never heard of it.

Isn’t Chicago where the blacks kill people?

I am shocked that the author didn't have a point about how surprising it is that Midwest is not really in the middle west of the United States. Moron.

Having spent 5 years of my childhood living withing walking distance of Lake Michigan, it's hard to explain to people how you can hear the water when you go to sleep.

Today's travelog: Here's why people love living by Chicago's lakefront. It's a 19 mile stretch of greenspace with bike and running paths. Most photos of Chicago normally show just the downtown area around Oak Street (28-31 minute mark). This video starts at Foster Avenue beach, just south of the gay beach at Hollywood. Boystown, where I live, is roughly between the 13-15 minute mark.

CHICAGO has the most stunning skyline of any major city, when you drive up upon it and look to your left as you drive first on I-55 interstate and then when you start on Lake Shore Drive....beautiful city, but of course very expensive and "cliquish"....

Chicago is not expensive at all compared to NY / SF / LA. - but the gay community is pretty small, and thus cliquish but not as bad as Boston.