Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekmdp!bronze!stevesu From: stevesu@bronze.UUCP (Steve Summit) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Back East vs. the Coast Message-ID: <802@bronze.UUCP> Date: Mon, 3-Oct-83 17:09:54 EDT Article-I.D.: bronze.802 Posted: Mon Oct 3 17:09:54 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 6-Oct-83 21:16:10 EDT References: dartvax.253 Lines: 74 "Who wants just one season all year long?" This is one of the most incredibly hypocritical statements ever made in any argument. It ALWAYS comes up in the east vs. west argument. "How could I possibly live in California? There's no weather!" I was born in California but lived in Boston for four years. Let me tell you, the easterners I have come in contact with do not, as a whole, like the weather there. I did far less complaining about the weather than the vast majority of the people who had been living there all their lives. Know something? When it snows in Boston, it makes all the headlines. It's a BIG DEAL. Get serious! It happens every winter! They don't know how to drive in it either. An inch of snow paralyzes Boston. dartvax!steve appears to be from Dartmouth, New Hampshire, so I guess he can say that summers are "delightful." Summers in Boston are not delightful. "As to winter, they're SUPPOSED to be cold, else what good are they?" But why bother? Why spend all that money to heat your house? Why catch cold all the time? Why bundle up to go outside, only to fry when you go into an overheated building? He's right in that you don't have to overdo the bundling up. But you can't go outside in a short sleeved shirt, either. But let's get back to the seasons. Let me describe the wonderfully variegated seasons, and peoples' response to them, in big cities in the east: Winter: Cold, snowy, and painful. The white fluffy stuff looks pretty for a day, then it turns into brown crusty or slushy stuff. If at all possible, people go to Florida. Eastern Airlines, true to their name, flies super savers to Florida all winter long. For some reason, Florida is acceptable to Easterners whereas California is not. Perhaps it's because it's nice and humid (yuck) and not on "the Coast." (In case you've never been back east, the term "the Coast" there refers to the west coast. Apparently "coast" implies distance, or periphery, and since easterners know they live in the center of the universe, they couldn't possibly live on a "coast," in spite of that Atlantic Ocean out there. That's why Boston is called the "hub," by the way: it's short for "hub of the universe.") Spring: It rains all the time. As soon as it gets warm and stops raining, it gets humid. Summer: Impossibly hot, humid, sticky, muggy, yucky. The only activities that are possible are those that do not involve going outside. On bad days, it's difficult to get up from wherever you've collapsed (chair, bed, floor, etc.) People get incensed when you say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" not because it isn't true, but because they're tired of hearing it, it's VERY true, and they don't want to admit it. California at 110 degrees is far more comfortable than the Eastern seabord at 90. If at all possible, people take vacations to somewhere else, like Maine, or own a cabin there. Fall: This is actually a beautiful time of year in New England. The temperatures are perfect, and Indian Summer sometimes lasts into November. What do people in Boston do in the fall? They go to NEW HAMPSHIRE to watch the leaves change! The state of New Hampshire actually has special toll-free numbers that you can call to find out when it'll look nicest. The roads leading north are parking lots on weekends. So there you have it. Easterners (at least Bostonians, and I suspect New Yorkers are the same way) love to brag about their "weather," but they avoid it at all costs. Actually, I'm glad they don't realize how nice it is here in the west, because I'd just as soon they stayed where they are. They're all obnoxious and they talk funny. Steve Summit