Describe your city/state/nation/whatever

[downzorz]

So I read this thread about Australia. And I loved it. See, I like to do a lot of adventures set in roughly modern day, but I don't travel all that much and don't really talk much with people who don't live in my city. So really if anyone here lives in a city or country that is interesting in any way, I would love to hear about it. My personal desire is to here more about big cities (like Tokyo, Rome, London, whatever) or countries (asides the US, I live there) as a whole, but really anything would be interesting. Describing gaming applications would be a big plus.

I could do a good writeup of Kansas City if anyone wants. I can't promise anyone would find it all that interesting, but I can do it pretty well, having lived there for 18 years and having a dad who lived there for ~60.

[Koumei]

My town: full of old people, and it was only recently that it fell below the 50% Christian rate. I think there's one church per person. Likely to be infested with the undead.

My state: see PL's review. I bounce back and forth a fair bit, and my favourite is Victoria, but at the moment I'm in South Ausfailia.

My country: see above.

[Parthenon]

One thing we're weirdly proud of in this city is that at one point we had more than 365 pubs and 57 churches- a church for every week of the year and a pub for every day. And I'm not talking about a huge area, I'm talking an area of less than 15 square miles at the time.

Over time lots of those have closed leaving only 31, and fewer people go to churches. By 2011 it had the greatest proportion of atheists in England, something it could boast for almost a decade at least. But there is still a drinking culture. A lot of the clubs and a lot of pubs are on one road: Prince of Wales Road. And it's a dangerous and violent place. Just over 24 hours ago there was a large brawl at 3 in the morning with about 150 drunk people fighting.

In fact over the last few months there have been a lot of fights and mass brawling along Prince of Wales Road. Noone knows why.

This was a walled city- the walls and the river surrounded an area larger than London at the time. We've still got the most surviving city walls possibly in the world. From about mid 17th to the 18th we were the second biggest city in England.

And to be honest, all we really have to say is that Stephen Fry studied at City College here. Which means we win.

[downzorz]

I guess I'll ramble a bit about Kansas City.

The City(s)

The first thing to understand is that Kansas City sits right on the border between Kansas and Missouri, and the bigger part of the city (by population if not geographical size) is Kansas City, Missouri, hereafter referred to as KCMO. This is the official city that most people think of as "Kansas City." But there are many cities that fall under the banner of the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
Kansas City, Kansas is a separate city, about a quarter of the size of KCMO. There is also a North Kansas City, which is in Missouri, but a separate city north of the Missouri River. This is not to be confused with "Kansas City North," which is the part of KCMO that is north of the river. Then there are a number of suburbs in the Metro Area in Kansas, all of which are fairly small compared to KCMO. The largest is still less than half the size.
Overall, people anywhere in the Kansas City area refer to themselves as being from "Kansas City." But only a little over a quarter of the residents of "Kansas City" live in any city called "Kansas City," and under a fifth of them actually live in KCMO.

Things to Care About: What's What in KC

I'm mostly going to be covering KCMO here, because it is my home area and I don't have as much experience elsewhere.

Kansas City holds the claim to the second-most fountains and second-most boulevards in the world, next to Rome and Paris respectively. We have a fairly small "downtown" area as big cities go; the skyline is, at least to me, not all that interesting. The hip-and-happening district is the Power and Light District; it is pretty much where all the cool kids hang out. The P&L District is at the core of our "downtown," and we have some older buildings around it and some ghetto to the west of it. Downtown also contains a bunch of historic buildings and the Sprint Center, the big indoor stadium-arena where the big concerts and shit tend to happen.

South of downtown is Crown Center and Union Station, which are both quite touristy areas. Union Station isn't really all about the trains anymore, though they still run through there; it is kind of hooked up with Crown Center as the upscale tourist district. Inside Union Station is a magical place called Science City, a really kick-ass interactive museum designed to get kids excited about science. Still impressive as a teenager though. Just south of these areas is the Liberty Memorial, home to a cool WWII museum and a big-ass tower that has a top constantly on fire. Also home to a big outdoor music festival, Rockfest.

Going further south and to the west some is Westport, which was once its own town that got absorbed. It is a pretty hipsterish district, but it has a few of good restaurants and stuff. South of Westport is the Plaza, which is a big outdoor shopping district where cool people hang out. It's very close to where I live. It has good food (The Melting Pot is a fantastic restaurant, a deluxe fondue place; Jack Stack is one of the trio that all have claim to be KC's best barbaque) and good shopping, though not the cheapest. Also the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a pretty cool, pretty big art museum. All through the Plaza you have a high population of beggars and buskers; they are beaten out of Downtown in large part but hang around the Plaza like crazy.

South of the Plaza is the two college campuses, University of Missouri Kansas-City (Go Roos!) and Rockhurst University, our resident Jesuit college. Also, just plugging the best restaurant ever here, Kin Lin is a Chinese joint on UMKC campus that is just wonderful. Just wonderful. To the west of the colleges is Loose Park, a four-block-wide park that generally has packs of wild hippies roaming (well, sitting) and smoking their weed. And south of all that is pretty much nothing of interest, except for my house, but I'd imagine that is not of interest to all of you (if it was, I'd be worried).

Pretty much all of the area directly to the East from Crown Center on south for quite a ways is the ghetto. Eventually you pass through and get to some suburbs on the other side, but it's mostly residential. Just south and a bit east of the colleges is Swope Park and the Kansas City Zoo. Swope Park is pretty big and is mostly forested, but it's got a few trails and small lakes and things in it. While Kansas City is suburban enough that if you looked at a satellite image the park wouldn't even stick out that much, if you look at Google Maps it's the biggest chunk of park in the area. And that's pretty much everything South of Downtown.

North of Downtown is Zona Rosa, which is the other, newer big outdoor shopping district of KC. While the Plaza has a distinct architectural style characterized by heavy Spanish influence, Zona Rosa is pretty much standard shopping district fare. I can't speak for the style because I never get out there, but it's much newer than the Plaza but a bit less upscale. Also north of the river are the two major airports; Kansas City International is the big one, and the smaller Charles B. Wheeler Airport mostly handles freight flights and stuff. Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun, an amusement park and water park, are also up there. Really, the area north of the river is (to my understanding) characterized by a few attractions and a lot of suburb in between. There's also a lot of casinos, most of them on the riverfront to take advantage of laws that required gambling to be done on riverboats (this led casinos to dig a moat around the building, connecting to the river, hire a captain, and declare themselves a "riverboat" despite not being a "boat" in any sense).

State Line Road divides Kansas and Missouri. West of it is divided basically into two areas: Wyandotte County and Johnson County. Wyandotte has Kansas City Kansas and most of the urban stuff, while Johnson has mostly suburbs. Wyandotte has the Kansas Speedway, our local attraction for the "fast cars go fast!" crowd. Somewhere in Johnson is the Legends, a third outdoor shopping mall and probably the only one in Kansas that is actually well-known outside of the immediate area. Kansas City Kansas has at least one Native American casino.

Next on the list:
Culture of Kansas City
Historical Shit (this is where most of the RPG hooks come in)

[Grek]

Frank already did a great review of Huston for After Sundown, so I'll do a writeup for my birthplace: Fort Hood, Texas.

Fort Hood is a US Army base right in the middle of Texas, between highways 190 and 84. (Which I suppose is a Texas thing you have to get used to - locations in the state are described by what highway you get on to go there, since getting pretty much anywhere in Texas involves going on the highway, even places that are nominally in the same city as you are. Things are very spread out in Texas, because the land is shitty and cheap.) For those not familiar with Texas, that's half way between the state capital (Austin) and the place where the Branch Davidians have their shootout with the FBI (Waco).

Fort Hood started out in the 1940s when the Federal Government bought up a bunch of land from local cotton farmers in order to build a tank training area to train World War II tank commanders. And I mean a LOT of land. Which they promptly named after a confederate general because Texas. In addition to having tank training, it was also a military prison, having something like a combined ten thousand soldiers and prisoners of wars being held there.

Fort Hood's big claim to fame is that at about 150000 acres of land, it is the largest US military base in terms of area. Almost all of this is undeveloped bush that the Army drives tanks through and shoots up with artillery as training exercises, but even the actual paved-road part of the Fort is pretty huge. Fort Hood's other claim to fame is that in 2009, Major Nidal Hasan shot like 45 people at the Fort before being brought down by armed soldiers. He's currently facing trial for that and is making a huge scandal out of it because everyone agrees that he is guilty (himself included), but due to military regulations, he is required to plead "Not Guilty" and try to mount some sort of legal defense for his actions before the Government can have him sentenced to execution. And I guess Elvis was stationed there that one time, if you care about that sort of thing.

Nearby are the towns of Killeen (named after a railroad tycoon), Harker Heights (named after a land developer) and Copperas Cove (named after the taste of the water). For the most part, you only get soldiers, families of soldiers and people trying to sell things to one of the above living here. Which, weirdly enough, results in a bizarre multicultural extravaganza where the German and Korean spouses of the soldiers restationed on the Fort make Korean-language baptist churches and some of the only German bakeries that serve reasonably edible German food in Texas outside of Fredericksburg.

[Josh_Kablack]

If Australia is a Horror Setting, then Pittsburgh is a Theatre of the Absurd Setting - it's full of contradictions which the inhabitants manage to both ignore and openly embrace.

"What sort of jagov don't know where the Isaly's used to be? Yinz must be new in tahn"

I. History:


Part of Pittsburgh's character is it's obsession with it's own historical background, so this part is going to be lengthy.

Pittsburgh has a history older than the United States. In colonial times, the French built Fort Duquesne at the intersection of navigable rivers. During the French and Indian war, General Braddock and his young lieutenant George Washington captured it and renamed the Fort after Lord William Pitt. A town grew up around the fort, then progressively absorbed the smaller settlements (Birmingham, Allegheny, etc) nearby into a city, at least until that tactic got cockblocked in perpetuity by politics around 1900.

During the early 1800s, Pittsburgh was briefly a frontier settlement and there are a number of "first <X> west of the Alleghenies" plaques around town. But it's the later half of the 1800s where things get interesting. The very first Republican Party convention was held in Pittsburgh in 1856 and despite being North of the Mason-Dixon line, there are a few claims of Underground Railroad hidey-holes about, but not many substantiated.

But after the Civil War is when Pittsburgh became the focal point of Andrew Carnegie's empire. With the navigable rives, railways and the abundance of coal and iron in nearby locations, Pittsburgh became the world leader of Steel Production. That in turn called for laborers and in the period between the Civil War and WWII, Pittsburgh attracted wave after wave of European immigrants to work in the mills and on the rivers and rails. The ethnic diversity and Catholic / Protestant split combined with local topography and geography to result in neighborhoods and suburbs that were (and in many cases still are) pretty ethnically and religiously homogeneous despite the overall metropolitan area being relatively diverse.

Of course, the working conditions were often dangerous, but industry only works when labor is cheap - so Pittsburgh is famous for labor history and the early formation of Unions.

Most notable is the Homestead Steel Strike - which was open war in the streets between striking workers and the hired-gun Pinkertons. Despite Carnegie's implicit orders to his hatchet-man Frick to bring in mercenaries to gun down workers in the street, both go down in local lore as great heroes to be lionized. In Carneige's case that has a lot to do with his philanthrophy and the founding of parks and a massive free library system. In Frick's case it's a bit more mystifying, but he was rich and famous, and Pittsburghers sure do love it when anybody with local connections makes it big.

Up until WWII, Pittsburgh was pretty much all about steel making, labor strife and hardworking immigrants and a couple nifty local customs and tidbits:

• The term "Pittsburgh Rare" for meat that is burnt on the outside but still rare on the inside supposedly originated from millworkers cooking their lunch on the exposed hot metal surfaces inside the steelworks.
• The incline as a form of transit was common. This is a combination of cablecar and track laid up a very steep hill, and we maintain two into the present day as a combination useful public transit and tourist attraction
• The Unitarians agitated for water filtration. link
• Someone famous described Pittsburgh of this era as "Hell with the lid off", which was promptly adopted as an unofficial motto for The Smoky City.

After WWII, David Lawrence was elected mayor and decided to do something about all this pollution and rebuild the city's image. He worked with Richard Mellon (founder of Supply Side economics and opponent of Income Tax) to implement an early an ambitious urban renewal project termed The Renaissance. This spate of smog control and new construction made David Lawrence so popular that anytime a mayor faces tough times, there's an almost knee-jerk reaction to launch a sequel Renaissance.


But the big changes to Pittsburgh were wrought by globalization and Reaganomics destroying our country's manufacturing base. Starting the the late 1970s and acceleration drastically during Regean's recession of 1981-1982, the Steel Mills closed down and much to everyone's surprise didn't come back. You see, up until then it was fairly common for mills to close down and jobs to end when a production run was over, but a new mill would come along and there would be openings for mill workers on new production runs inside a year. So as the main driver of the local economy was being pulled out from under us, most folks here were in denial that it was happening. There was a lot of grumbling as reality set in, the Mayor Launched Renaissance II to try to cheer folks up and some pissed off folks left dead fish in safety deposit boxes in (the Smellin' Mellon campaign) to protest bank involvement with people profiting from mill closings.

The destruction of the primary economic driver of the city resulted in the collapse of most secondary economic drivers and Pittsburgh spent roughly two decades years in something a whole lot like a localized recession. This resulted in rapid acceleration of the population loss that had been happening since WWII, and currently there is an international Pittsburgher diaspora.

Well calling it a diaspora is a mild exaggeration, since over ten thousand teenagers graduate from local Universities every year, and most of them left for better job markets. However the point is that you can find people who self-identify as Pittsburghers in every other major US and Canadian city as well as a couple of South American and European Metropolia. This identity is held together by two main factors: an extensively studied local dialect and major-league sports fandom. The 1970s were a a decade where the Picksburgh Stillerz and the Buccos won a heap a championships an'at. So the former Pittsburghers who left in the 80s still tended to think of Pittsburgh by it's brief tenure as "The City of Champions", and thus you can head aht an probably find a Steelers bar in your tahn.

Since the collapse of American Manufacturing, Pittsburgh has tried a few things to jump start the local economy. Some of them were laughably bad;
For example: Mayor Murphy's tax giveaways to the Lazarus Department Store and Lord and Taylor - who moved in, razed local landmarks banked their tax credits, got to use their own accountants to prove that they weren't making any money and folded up shop before they would have had to pay back any of the seed money the taxpayer fronted them.
But some of them seem to have worked, and today Universities and Hospitals are the new cornerstones of our economy. We're also paradoxically a leader in environmentally friendly development - the tourism board will tell you about how we're ahead of everywhere in number of LEED certified buildings and how much less toxic things are today than they were even just a few decades back, let alone in the streetlights at noon days of the 40s. They'll also point out that we renamed a bridge after Rachel Carson (who wrote Silent Spring and awoke the world to the dangers of DDT) and who has local ties. Strangely, they won't really tout just how much actual greenery and green space the city has. Between Carnegie's parks, the landscaping of the University Campuses, a couple impressively large cemeteries and the amount of almost-impossible-to-build on hillsides left wild, there is a staggering amount of greenery in the city. Despite this spate of spinning our economic collapse as eco-friendly we still have a massive problem with overflows from our decrepit combined sewer system discharing raw sewage into the rivers during heavy rainfall. But hey, you can't have tax credits for corporations to locate here and the tax revenue to repair infrastructure at the same time.

Pittsburghers tend to be much more aware of the city's history than dwellers in other cities. It's common practice to give directions according to landmarks which no longer exist - "Turn Right where the Syria Mosque used to be", - and we think it's weird when the listener doesn't know where such landmarks were, because obviously everyone would know something that important. We had a local documentarian make a name for himself with his series on Things That Aren't There Anymore

II Geography.

Pittsburgh is a thoroughly three-dimensional city, made up of hills, rivers and bridges.

Inside city limits, elevation varies by 200 meters from highest point to lowest point. If you include the various other municipalities in the greater metro area, it's greater than that. Just to drive the hilliness home, local neighborhoods and boroughs include the South Hills, the North Hills, the East Hills, Squirrel Hill, The Hill District, Troy Hill, Spring Hill and Summer Hill. Don't confuse any of those with individually notable hills such as Flagstaff Hill, Negly Hill, Cardiac Hill and Pig's Hill. We have multiple streets where the sidewalk is instead a set of public steps. I've heard it claimed that we have more public stairs than any other city in the world. Thus most places to go are either "up" or "dahn" from the current location.

Inside city limits proper we have around a score of bridges that span our three rivers. We also purportedly have another couple hundred smaller bridges that span various gullies, creeks, railroad tracks, expressways an'at.

...

Administratively, the greater metro area so balkanized that we really ought to call the Balkans Pittsburghized instead. There is a county Chiefs of Police Association. Not mere a police association, but Allegheny County has so many separate police forces that their chiefs need their own association. Allegheny County has over 150 separate municipalities. People from any of these who are not upset over politics or taxes will generally self-identify as Pittsburghers, but they are not technically Pittsburghers in that they generally enjoy slightly higher incomes and notably lower local tax rates than those of us who actually live within the city.

[Ancient History]

Middle Georgia: If the Devil owned Middle Georgia and Hell, he'd rent out Middle Georgia and live in Hell. But then the real estate bubble would burst and housing prices would drop, and the Devil would be unable to find anyone to stay in his abandoned property as it became subject to acts of vandalism, and he'd rent to ever shadier and poorer tenants who would always fall behind on the rent, trash the place, and require costly eviction proceedings to oust. In time, the financial strain might even force him to sell Hell and try to move back in with God, because he can't afford to live on his own anymore.

[downzorz]

Kansas City, Cont.

Culture

Kansas City has an interesting culture. Well, the interesting to me.

Note that the culture, like everything else, it is split across county and state lines. Jackson County has Kansas City, Missouri; Wyandotte County has Kansas City, Kansas; and Johnson County has most of the smaller Kansas-side suburbs.

Universal to Kansas City is a love of barbecue, lots of Roman Catholicism, and strong Irish heritage (the last two are connected). We have three restaurants that all hold the claim to "best barbecue in Kansas City:" Jack Stack, Oklahoma Joe's, and (trailing a bit behind the other two) Gates (I still claim the winner to be "my house"). My dad, a ~40 year veteran of restaurant business, claims Jack Stack to have the best meat, Gates to have the best sauce, and Oklahoma Joe's to be in third. This is a topic that you can get long-yet-lighthearted debates about if you mention it near any two locals with dissenting views. We also have an Irish Fest that is pretty kick-ass, and a huge St. Patrick's day parade.

Kansas City occupies a weird place between "small town" and "big city." We're the biggest city in the immediate area, so we have the arrogance to laugh at anyone who lives in other, smaller places. On the other hand, we still have a strangely small-town feel, and you get the impression that everyone knows everyone. While that's not really true, you can walk around dense areas for a day and run into a dozen or so people that you know. And that's me, and I'm not a big "make friends with everyone" guy.

And past that point things start to break down. See, Johnson County is almost universally middle- or upper-middle-class. I mean, there are nice neighborhoods in KCMO, but the really rich ones are in Johnson County. I went to school at a Catholic school in Kansas that other Catholic schools in Kansas looked down on as ghetto, and there were seriously the kids of millionaires in my class. In Jackson County, however, we have a claim to all the ghetto. See, public school in Johnson is comparable to some of the Catholic schools for education (and that's not just a rip on religious education). Public schools in Jackson County aren't even accredited anymore. The one closest to me, where I would be going if we didn't have money, had somewhere in the realm of seven or eight attempts to burn it down last year. The cops showed up there literally dozens of times. That is the KCMO public school system. Even are charter schools are unbelievably ghetto by Kansas standards. And this is pretty much the disparity between the Jackson and Johnson Counties. (My dad always joked that Jackson County guys give their girls fake pearls and real orgasms)

Wyandotte County, home of some things people actually care about, is doing as well as or slightly better than Jackson County. It used to be doing shitty, but then somebody smart upstairs basically incorporated the whole area, suburbs and city, into one economic entity. That, combined with having important things up there, means it is recovering pretty fast.

The economic disparity is mostly because Johnson County is all suburb. There is also, however, the tax issue. See, some things are funded by a bi-state tax. But most of them aren't. So when KCMO uses taxpayer dollars to build important shit, Missouri pays for that. Not Kansas. But Kansas gets a lot of the same benefits from the economic growth and increased tourism.

Now, don't get me wrong and assume that KCMO is some shithole that is all ghettoized. I live there and right now I am writing this from a deluxe suite in a five-star resort at West Palm Beach. But while we had to pull all sorts of shenanigans (like my mom attending a big conference) to get here, there are many people in Johnson County who could seriously take that kind of vacation out of pocket.

The Kansas-Missouri rivalry is strong, but generally doesn't make it past the realm of pointed jokes. Most tourists wouldn't even notice. But people on both sides of State Line feel proud to live there, as opposed to on the other side.

[Koumei]

For those not familiar with Texas, that's half way between the state capital (Austin) and the place where the Branch Davidians have their shootout with the FBI (Waco).

What, as a regular thing?

[Grek]

Whoops.

[PhoneLobster]

OK so this thread inspired me to getting around to some sort of "How Do Maltas fucking work" type thread I'd at some point intermittently been meaning to.

I mean it WAS going to just be a post on this thread...
But then it grew into a monster too large to be contained

[Koumei]

So because there's a national election coming up, all those annoying posters are appearing. Anyway, it turns out that the district of which my town is a part is... Mayo. It's called Mayo. Presumably, it's thick, white, rich and oily. And smells slightly of egg.

There are all these posters saying "_____ for Mayo" or "Briggs, Liberal Mayo!"

At first I thought it was a hilarious typo for Mayor that nobody noticed, but no, someone decided "Liberal Mayo" is a great thing to write.

[Stahlseele]

i am not nearly snarky enough to do something on PhoneLobster-Level i am afraid.

We are the 2nd largest City in Germany.
And the 7th largest City in the EU period.
We have the largest Rural Cemetary in the whole world
And the 2nd largest Cemetary in the world period.
We have the 2nd largest Harbor in all of Europe.
And the 10th largest Harbor in the world period.
We are both a City and a State in our own right.
We have the 2nd oldest Bank, Berenberg Bank, in the World.
We have more bridges crossing streams, rivers and canals than all of London, Amsterdam and Venice combined.
We have Europes biggest Red Light District.
We started the Beatles and we are richer than most of the other cities and states of Germany.
And we are more arrogant. Last time people had trouble with Flooding of the River Elbe, on which this nice and sprawling city-state is situated, questions were asked about how this would affect us up here.
The answer to reporters was verbatim this:"Our Dams are build to resist the north sea when it comes for a visit. That bit of river-flooding won't even be noticeable for most people here"
We built the Scharnhorst and the Seydlitz. We built the Bismarck
For that, we got Operation Gomorrah.
Our biggest cultural impact on the world however, was one of cuisine:
We invented the Hamburger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg


In terms of playability:
Fantasy/High-Fantasy/Steam-Punk/Sci-Fi/Evil Government

Pirates we had. And we had our own Supernatural Pirate err Privateer Story as well.
Störtebecker. He was one of the most successfull german pirates err Privateers operating on the north sea. When he was finally cought by the evil capitalistic Government he was sentenced to Death along with his crew. His last request was to let go as many of his men as he could walk by after having been beheaded. According to stories he managed to get up and walk by 11 men after his head had been severed. Then was was tripped by the executioner and the rest of his crew, including the 11 he walked by was executed as well. When the Executioner was asked if he was not tired after this ordeal, he answered that he was still going strong enough to execute the whole of the Hamburg Senate as well. For that he was sentenced to death and executed by the youngest member of the Senate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B6rtebecker

[name_here]

North Virginia:

Our main industry is government contracting. Office buildings with barbed-wire fences and armed guards can be seen from major roads, while a number of others are simply mysteriously unlabeled. GPS devices will steer drivers away from certain areas. There are radio job opening ads for positions requiring a Top Secrect/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance. The local government got irritated when congress declassified the NRO headquarters as revenge for it being built with funds to replace satellites that wound up operating for twice the expected lifetime. Once it was offically federal property, it stopped paying taxes.

The area has a disproportionately small portion of the state transportation funds, relative to population. People often have multi-hour commutes, and are somewhat angry about this. The DC metro is finally getting an extension built, one that was in the planning phases for at least a decade and a half. It's receiving joint funding from the federal government, the counties it is running through, the Dullas airport authority, and allegedly the state. But the state portion is being funded through the local toll road, which is now charging twenty bucks a trip and is very central to the transit network. The state government budget once got held hostage by the Northern Virginian delegates until they could ram through an amendment to increase taxes in Northern Virginia only to pay for more transit infrastructure. It was hard to convince the other delegates to go for this.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Well, there isn't much to say about the city I live in that Portlandia hasn't already said, and that show is basically a documentary. It lives up to its name of "Beervana", has a ridiculous per capita amount of stripclubs and karaoke bars (surprisingly few combine the two, oddly enough) and is a chill place to raise kids.

[Shrapnel]

I live in Roslindale (pronounced "Rozzy"), which is a small neighborhood in Boston ("Bahstahn"). There isn't a whole lot to do there. It has a large number of Greeks and gays.

In the eighties and nineties, it was a really rough place, like Dorchester ("Dot") and Mattapan ("Mattahpahn"), only closer to JP and Forest Hills. Then, in the early aughts, Mayor Menino ("Mumbles") began this great big yuppification "urban renewal" program, where lots of fancy stores and restaurants where brought in, and the poor people left and the rich people came in. So now Rozzy isn't so rough anymore, and Rozzy Square has been renamed into (ugh) Roslindale Village.

The most notable thing about Roslindale is that it's right next to the Orange Line, the Arnold Arboretum is a pigeon's throw away, it used to be really hilly before people mucked it up, and its named after some Scottish village called Roslin or some such, because South Street Crossing wasn't acceptable to City Hall.

Edit: We apparently have a Wikipedia page. Who knew.