Tell us A Bit About Where You're From

[harte.beest]

I'm from tartarus

[Ali]

I'm from tartarus

Tartarus is the lowest region of the world, as far below earth as earth is from heaven.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tartarus.html

Sooo....Australia?

[Anti-antidisestablishmentarianism]

 I just remembered a fun fact. If you google Joan Allen you will find out that she was "Bourne" in the town that I grew up in!

[markmcdaniel]

I live in the Twin Cities Of Minneapolis and St. Paul in the State of Minnesota. This is a good place to live. The cities are clean and well run with good public transit. The theater scene if not quite London or New York but is world class with anybody who is anybody coming here to perform. We have lots of fine dining and a shopping mall with an amusement park and a good aquarium buried in it. We also have sports teams in all the major sports. There are also world class museums. When all of this pales there is hunting, fishing, and a host of year round outdoor activities.

[Anne D.]

I live in the Twin Cities Of Minneapolis and St. Paul in the State of Minnesota. This is a good place to live. The cities are clean and well run with good public transit. The theater scene if not quite London or New York but is world class with anybody who is anybody coming here to perform. We have lots of fine dining and a shopping mall with an amusement park and a good aquarium buried in it. We also have sports teams in all the major sports. There are also world class museums. When all of this pales there is hunting, fishing, and a host of year round outdoor activities.

Totally love Minneapolis and St. Paul. You're a lucky duck.

[TheWalkingContradiction]

Loved this thread!

Wow...  Brazil, Fiji, Australia...  So many interesting places here.  

A shout out to the folks from the Netherlands.  Although I am not Dutch and have never been to the Netherlands (even though I have been to Belgium three times and Luxembourg twice), I am from...  Brooklyn, New York.  That's Breuckelen -- broken land -- as the original Dutch settlers called an area of present-day Brooklyn to the north of my part of Brooklyn.  Later English settlers could not say Breuckelen in a Dutch accent and thus said Brooklyn.  As late as the American Revolution, only Dutch was spoken in the future Bay Ridge, the southwest Brooklyn neighborhood in which I live.  Popular legend has it that George Washington spoke to the local schoolchildren about America and democracy during the war, but I doubt that ever happened since he did not speak Dutch.

Bay Ridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Ridge,_Brooklyn

If you have ever seen Saturday Night Fever, you know my neighborhood.  Practically every venue in the movie is a place I can walk to in a few minutes.  The house John Travolta's character lived in is one block from my apartment.  Since the movie was supposed to take place in a neighboring neighborhood, Bensonhurst, it is very funny for Brooklynites to see Bay Ridge pass for Bensonhurst.  You may know the name Bensonhurst, as is the location of The Honeymooners.  You can see it in the original Welcome Back, Kotter opening credits.

The original Dutch name for Bay Ridge translates as Yellow Hook. (Older Dutch hoek means hook, spit of land, or inlet).  However, the name was quickly changed after the 1853 yellow fever epidemic.  Brooklyn still retains its more famous Red Hook, though--infamous in old novels for crime, prostitutes, street gangs, and the stereotypical Brooklyn accent.  And before you ask, yes, I can speak in both a neutral American accent and a modern Brooklyn/New York accent.  I can fake the old stereotypical accent.

Brooklyn was an independent city until 1898 and is now one of the five boroughs of New York City.  If it were still an independent city, Brooklyn would be America's fourth city (after New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago).

New York City has over eight million people--and that's only the city proper, not the metro area.  Two and a half million of them live in Brooklyn, and close to 79,000 people live in Bay Ridge (my Brooklyn neighborhood).  

Here is a map of the five boroughs of New York City.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:5_Boroughs_Labels_New_York_City_Map_Julius_Schorzman.png

Brooklyn is the yellow landmass (#2).  The more famous Manhattan is the blue one (#1).  I live in the part of Brooklyn closest to Staten Island (purple - #5).  Only The Bronx (red - #4) is on the North American continent.  The rest of the city is located on islands.  Brooklyn and Queens (orange - #3) join Nassau and Suffolk counties to form Long Island.    

Parts of Brooklyn have barely changed in more than a hundred years, and you can still find many ethnic enclaves.  You will see a little of that in some of my photos.

Here is the Verrazano Bridge, which links Brooklyn and Staten Island and thus makes driving through the Northeast USA more efficient.  I live about ten blocks (streets) from it and often take a walk along this shore:





A Chinese restaurant in Bay Ridge that serves Halal food (food religious Muslims can eat).  This is a spin on the New York City Chinese restautants that have historically served Kosher food (food religious Jews can eat).  Notice that the writing is in English, Arabic, and Chinese since there is a large Chinese enclave and a large Arabic enclave.



A separate entrance for women at the local mosque:



One of many stores for Orthodox Jews and the Hasidim in a nearby neighborhood, Boro Park, that is largely populated by those communities.  I like the advertisement for a music CD that is probably in Yiddish: "Set your soul on fire."



The blizzard of 2010 from my first floor apartment.  I had to call my sister to come over and dig me out so that I could open the door!



Brooklyn-sized icicles:



Typical mid-20th-century attached brick houses in my neighborhood.  These houses are one block from me, and I live in the downstairs apartment of such a building:



Typical 19th-century brownstones of northern Brooklyn.  I took this photo in a neighborhood called Park Slope, which is basically the Greenwich Village of Brooklyn in terms of its many gay homeowners and renters, its many eclectic shops, and its uber liberal politics.  One can easily pay a million for one of these fashionable attached brownstones, which is waaaaaaay out of my price range (although typical of New York City prices) and why I can never afford to live there.  

They are really gorgeous and snug inside, with large rooms and high ceilings.



The Georgian architecture of my alma mater, Brooklyn College:



An on-campus reproduction of an ancient Greek code of laws that has always caused much hilarity among the students.  I mean, what does it look like to you?

[Buddy]

Very nice! Such beautiful pictures too.

[xSilverPhinx]

Very cool post, WalkingContradiction. 

That's Breuckelen -- broken land -- as the original Dutch settlers called an area of present-day Brooklyn to the north of my part of Brooklyn.  Later English settlers could not say Breuckelen in a Dutch accent and thus said Brooklyn.

Well, you learn something knew everyday

[Asmodean]

An on-campus reproduction of an ancient Greek code of laws that has always caused much hilarity among the students.  I mean, what does it look like to you?

That there..? A slab of stone, really. I suppose one could say it sort of looks like a house a little...  ???

[TheWalkingContradiction]

Thank you all for the replies!

An on-campus reproduction of an ancient Greek code of laws that has always caused much hilarity among the students.  I mean, what does it look like to you?

That there..? A slab of stone, really. I suppose one could say it sort of looks like a house a little...  ???

Um...  Think of how HARD it was for the ancient Greeks to ERECT this COLOSSUS so that people would not SHAFT the SEMINAL laws.  

[TheWalkingContradiction]

Thank you all for the replies!

[Asmodean]

Um...  Think of how HARD it was for the ancient Greeks to ERECT this SEMINAL COLOSSUS so that people would not SHAFT the law.  

A penis..? That's quite a stretch, really. I, for one, have never seen one quite as pointy or with a head that tiny compared to the shaft. Limited sample, to be sure, but still...

[TheWalkingContradiction]

Um...  Think of how HARD it was for the ancient Greeks to ERECT this SEMINAL COLOSSUS so that people would not SHAFT the law.  

A penis..? That's quite a stretch, really. I, for one, have never seen one quite as pointy or with a head that tiny compared to the shaft. Limited sample, to be sure, but still...

Just saying what all the students say...

[Asmodean]

Tell them that if their dicks look like that, than maybe they ought to pay a visit to their friendly neighbourhood urologist... Or some such. 

[The Magic Pudding]

Thanks for the NY tour, well done TheWalkingContradiction Twaco.
Oh, twaco already means something, shame 'cause it had ring to it.