I just arrived back at my desk from 10 days of visiting various family in rural New York and Maine. It’s a different culture up there than I’m used to in PDX. The souvenir store also sells guns, pork sausage featured prominently in the majority of dishes at the small town potluck (I’ve never seen “macaroni and cheese and bacon” in real life before) and events like the slow and sociable after-church coffee hour are the highlight of the day. After I mentioned to one suspender-wearing old-timer that everyone in town seemed to be related, he quipped, “Yeeep. We’re really testin’ the theory of relativity here.”

But the best contrast came in the form of a road sign outside Clayton, NY:

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Where even grandmas ride ATVs.

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

13 replies on “Sharing the Road in Upstate NY”

  1. ATTENTION Portlanders: The vast majority of land between you and New York contains things like ‘guns’ ‘churches’ and ‘hotdish’
    Your city is a bubble of its’ own reality to the diverse world outside.

    And how did they ‘seem’ to be related?

  2. “I’ve never seen “macaroni and cheese and bacon” in real life before”

    I didn’t know you grew up in Afghanistan. You should blog about that, I bet you have other interesting stories like this one.

  3. D – you’re confusing ‘world’ with ‘America’. Portland might not have much in common with a lot of places in the US (thank god), but it’s got far more in common with the rest of the world than those places do.

  4. I don’t care what they say, ATV’s are safer than snowmobiles because after you go bar-hopping out on the frozen lakes, it’s hard to see the chain across the boat ramp under all that snow. You’re left with a bad neck-ache because that hidden chain has just decapitated you. Ah, the memories.

  6. Portland, Oregon, USA, has more in common with the ‘rest of the world’ than ‘those places?’
    Like what? English speaking, unemployed hipsters? Ballparks, breweries, car dealerships and Whole Foods?
    Please explain your vague wisdom o worldly one.

  9. I was wondering why the general level of writing had raised to a mediocre level. Smirk was in a different time zone. Can we get some more amazement at fly-over states and general Americana in these posts, please?

  10. D – let’s start with public transit, people not wanting to just drive everywhere, lower number of strip malls, lower proportion of religious folk, lower gun ownership, interest in the world outside US borders, hatred of neo-conservative warmongering, tolerance, and refusal to care about baseball…

    Not all of those things are present in every other country, but they’re far more prevalent outside the US than in the flyover states.

  11. Based on exactly what Stu, because you say so while looking out of your inner SE Portland window?
    Get in your public transit and take a trip out to 82nd and Foster someday.
    Come back when you can craft and argument based on statistics or what we here like to call ‘facts’

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