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How is the political climate currently in the state and city that you live in? I live in Reno, NV. Nevada is interesting because our two main cities (Reno and Las Vegas) are heavily tied to population centers to the west in California (Sacramento and the San Francisco bay area for Reno, Los Angeles for Las Vegas). This has created two fairly distinct cultures in northern and southern Nevada. Las Vegas has been pretty liberal for as long as I've lived here, but Reno is much more mixed. Guns are a big deal in Reno. Lots of people own guns, of them, a lot of them own a LOT of guns, and especially on the weekends, shooting ranges do some really brisk business. For example, there is an outdoor shooting range near Carson City (the state capital, which is about a 20 minute drive south of Reno) that I've given up going to because there are never open lanes, even when I've tried to be clever and go in the middle of the work day! So gun control isn't super popular here. Other than that, I think we're pretty politically mild here. We just legalized marijuana in the last election, there are legal brothels in parts of the state, and because a big part of our economy here is outdoors focused tourism, nature conservation is really popular as well. I'd say we're more libertarian here than anything really, with both the good and bad that entails. What kind of food culture does your local area have? if you're into cooking, or simply know of some local delicacy, please share a specific dish, with a recipe if you have one, of something that you enjoy making or buying yourself that would be representative of your local food culture. There is a surprising amount of good stuff here! The first thing I have to mention is casino food. While Reno doesn't have the kind of casinos Las Vegas has (out nicest ones would probably be average at best in Vegas), gaming is still a big part of the economy here and downtown Reno is dominated by some of our larger casinos. I don't know many locals who gamble regularly, but the food in casinos can be excellent, and better yet, cheap. Most larger casinos will have multiple restaurants in them, ranging from cafeteria-style food to high-end steakhouses and whatnot. Unlike a normal resteraunt, the main purpose of most of these places are either to draw people to the casino to gamble or to keep gamblers fed so that they keep gambling (on a side note, there is a whole science to casino management that tries to maximize the amount of time that a gambler stays in the casino. This can range from mundane stuff like serving free drinks to the players to things like really heavy tinting on windows and no visible clocks to make it difficult to tell what time it is. It's pretty fascinating stuff). Because of this, these places tend to be high quality and fairly cheap as well. Our real unique cusine here is Basque food. Way back in the day we had a fairly large Basque sheep herding population here, and while there aren't a ton of sheep (or Basque people for that matter), their food has stuck around. Unsurprisingly, most of it is what you could generally describe as Spanish-French fusion, but their big claim to fame here is chorizo sausage and is probably what most people here think of when you talk about the food. A chorizo burrito is one of the most delicious things you'll ever eat, and perhaps the worst thing to have for lunch if you want to get any work done for the rest of the day. Vietnamese food is also really big here, owing to them making up most of our (admittedly small) Asian population. Sushi is surprisingly popular in Reno, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we have more sushi places per capita here than in Tokyo. For being in the desert, it's really high quality too, probably owing to the fact that we're not that far from San Francisco. Something that's ubiquitous with sushi here that I'm told (I don't know if this is true or not) is not common elsewhere in the US is the idea of all-you-can-eat sushi. It's exactly what it sounds like, a flat price for all the sushi you care to order. It's pretty expensive (most places charge about $20-25), and the worst part is that most places price their a la carte rolls at like $5 each, making that a less than ideal option. I know one place that actually has a reasonable sushi lunch special, and that's where I've been getting most of my sushi lately. Finally, Mexican food is everywhere here and is for the most part outstanding. We're starting to see a lot of other Latin American places pop up too, especially Peruvian and Ecuadorian. How is religious life and worship for you in the states? As an outsider, it appears as if religious life might vary pretty wildly from state to state, with some US areas having markedly different religious demographics than others. I'd be especially interested in whether people experience any prejudice or bias against their religious practice, or lack thereof, in their home states, or from US society at large. I'd guess we're about average? None of my friends go to church regularly, and the only people I can think of who do are a few of the people I volunteer with. We're next to Utah so there are a fair number of Mormons here, there's at least one Buddhist temple here, and from what I understand we have a fairly large Jewish community as well. Sharing what you work with or study for, or if you have any specialized knowledge, would imo also be interesting, because it would allow follow-up questions for specific fields, like, imo someone working with law or healthcare would probably have interesting insights on those areas. I'm a project manager for a financial services company that has an office here in town. That's boring, but I used to work for IGT which is the biggest slot machine manufacturer in the world. If you belong to a minority group, do you experience harassment? If you do and you are willing to share personal anecdotes, and thoughts about how your state or city might differ from other areas in the US, then please do. I'm white, not much to share there. One thing I have witnessed though is a lot of discrimination against Mexicans by working class white people. I've spent a lot of time working in manufacturing where you have a lot of Mexicans in shop floor positions. For the most part there aren't any problems, but you always have at least one jackass who turns it into an us vs. them thing and creates a lot of problems. How familiar are you with other US states than the one you live in? Like, how many different ones have you lived in, or visited for a shorter or longer period of time. Are some states essentially as foreign to you, or even more, than some foreign countries might be? Do you feel as if there is animosity between your home state and other states? I was born and spent a good chunk of my childhood in the San Francisco bay area and still consider it home. I've actually spent about half my life living overseas. As for other states feeling like foreign countries, not really. Different regions in the US can have some fairly large differences in what people generally hold to be important, but I think people make them out to be more than they really are. have you experience bias or hostility as an American when travelling abroad? Sure, but it's always been from people who were assholes and would have found something different to be assholes about if I wasn't American. For the most part, people are just curious about a place and culture they haven't experienced, just like the OP. Once they got past that, I found I was treated basically like everybody else. If someone was to visit the US for the first time, or your state or city in particular, what sights would you recommend? If you're going to come to Nevada, come to Reno if you like outdoors stuff like skiing, hiking, fishing, etc, go to Vegas if you want to party and see a place that's really unlike anything else in the world. The problem with visiting the US in general is that it's so big and there's so much to see. I can think of two really good plans if you visit West Coast: Visit California. I can't think of any place in the US that has as much diversity of things to see as California. If you had a couple of weeks, you could do the following: Start in San Francisco, see the sights there, then do the drive down Highway 1 to Los Angeles. It's one of the best drives on earth, with stunning scenery, beaches full of elephant seals and some really nice stops such as Hearst Castle. Once you've seen what you want to see in LA, you can either go check out Las Vegas (which is about a 4 hour drive from LA) or loop back a bit, driving up along the eastern Sierras (the mountain range that runs down the eastern edge of California). This would take you through the Mojave desert which is spectacular just for how vast it is and up towards Yosemite which is arguably our best national park. You can see the giant redwoods in that area as well, then keep heading north to Reno to check out Lake Tahoe / go skiing / etc. From Reno, it's about a four hour drive back through California to where you started in San Francisco. East Coast: Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. I don't know the east coast as well as the west coast, but if you really want to see our culture and history, it's hard to beat these four cities.
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Feb 11, 2017 22:06
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 05:23 |
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