Southern Hospitality

As we started our trip in the South, I was curious as to whether or not we would encounter this phenomenon known as "southern hospitality." Though southwest Florida is just about as south as you can get in the states, I always felt that the more north you go in Florida and eventually out of Florida into the other states in the South, the more "southern" the people get. I guess what I mean by this is that the people fulfill the stereotypes of the South and seem to have a regional identity that I don't think Florida, at least southern Florida, identifies with. What I have found, after having left the South and treked through other parts of the country, is that there is something called southern hospitality, a sort of kindness and openess that permeates throughout the South.

Now that we are in northern New York, close to Canada, I feel that it is appropriate to discuss southern hospitality, as now I can compare the South to the other regions of the U.S. Our first destination outside of southwest Florida was Ocala, FL to visit my grandmother. Ocala is in nothern Florida and seemed to fit the southern stereotypes far better than where I live. There, cows and American flags abound and it also didn't hurt that we visited a mobile home park. However, it wasn't until we got out of Florida that we started to see what southern hospitality is all about. In Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas, Alex and I met the kindest and most open people. We rarely got denied an interview in these states. People were friendly and seemed approachable. They agreed to be interviewed with a smile on their face and a willingness to share. We didn't know that this was probably what people called southern hospitality until we reached the west and saw that not all people are like this.

We didn't really pursue any people to interview in New Mexico or Arizona as we were in more secluded areas and trying to see some touristy things. We got a couple interviews in Las Vegas, but we also got turned down as many times as we got interviews. Finally, we got to California. I thought that I would feel at home on the west coast. I was born in Los Angeles, CA and had visited San Diego, CA once and I just thought that this was the place for me. I wanted to move to the west coast because, foolishly, I always felt like I belonged there as it was more exciting than where I live and would be filled with like-minded people. In California we interviewed some people on Venice Beach, one of whom was very angry and spiteful because of a bad experience she had protesting the new immigration legislation in Arizona--what many consider to be legal racial profiling. In San Francisco, we met a pushy homeless man that completely negated all of the kind homeless people we had met in the South. Then we passed through what seemed to be an environmentally-conscious Oregon into Seattle, WA. Before we got to Seattle we received our welcome to Washington from an extremely rude waitress at a restaurant called "Shari's." Some of the people that we met in Seattle agreed to do the interview, but didn't seem to be very happy about it. Just talking to some people that we did not interview I found that the people tended to hold themselves above the rest of America in that they knew something the rest of us didn't. They drove hybrids and recycled and seemed to be the only ones who didn't buy into advertising (though they obviously did if so many of them were driving a Prius and wearing Northface, though that's a whole other blog post).

This is not to say that we did not have fun on the west coast. We met some really genuine people, though they were few and far between. There are a lot of neat things to see in California and Eugene, OR was extremely vegetarian friendly, which was nice after having to scrounge for meatless things to eat in the South. Seattle seemed to be a fun place to live, filled with things to do, not to mention we had a more than fabulous host. I was just really turned off by the people we met in this area. They seemed to be cold and above it all. Jehn, our host in Seattle, explained that a lot of the restaurants and shops in that area are not corporate chains, but rather independently owned, so there is no standard of service they are held up to. She also said that people in that area were slow to trust, and therefore not as open.

I understand that we only saw a few cities in this region, and that we only met a handful of people who cannot possibly represent the whole of the west coast, however my first impression of this area was not so great. The South, however, seemed to welcome Alex and I with open arms and give us all it had to offer. A trend that we found from the interviewees in the West is that they did not identify with a greater American identity, but rather a regional identity. As I reflect more and more on the idea of southern hospitality, I think that many of us have a sort of regional identity, that we might not be able to articulate without having experienced other regions in the U.S.

(Sarah)