AP: 30 cities so recognizable, no state name needed in articles and writings

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Every millennial had a Charlotte Hornets nylon jacket in the 1990s... And no one knows why.

For most of us, it was the colorway. Teal and warm purple, accented with white and pinstripes. The Memphis School's design language realized perfectly in an unlined nylon shell for $120 at Foot Locker. Think of the iconic Jazz cup, but wearable!

(I just had a Hornets Starter fitted cap; you could only get away wearing one non-New England piece of kit before getting bullied).

But when I tell you that in 1992, you'd see more Charlotte Hornets gear on middle school kids in suburban Boston than you'd see Celtics or Sox gear, I'm not exaggerating. Phoenix Suns gear was also surprisingly popular. I think we all loved vivid purple.

All that being said . . . none of us knew where Charlotte was. Most of us still don't.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

I don't think younger people can possibly understand how cut-off you were from your hometown, even in the United States, after you moved. At least you had the national shows, though.

That depended on your hometown. Also, you say that like it was a bad thing. I thought it was awesome.

Well unfortunately very, very few regional shows were broadcast nationally and that caused a lot of resentment toward New York and especially LA/Hollywood because when/if they came to town, that was the entire impression that the rest of the country got until they came around again, which might be 20-30 years later.

Stop presenting your own subjective experience as objective. You resented coastal cities and people then, and you still do.

Yeah, there were a lot of negative portrayals of NYC and LA in shows and in the movies, but there were a lot more positive portrayals, plus many daily shows were filmed there.

Nah, that's not right. The overall vibe in the 1970s was very negative toward New York. LA was seen as a new city, so the vibe was better, but it was still very popular to treat LA as a joke, à la Johnny Carson's "beautiful downtown Burbank."

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Riverranchdrone

My grandparents in Wisconsin watched a lot of PBS back in the 80's early 90's. Thats how I knew of Austin City Limits..

I watched lots of PBS in the 80s and early 90s and that's exactly how I was introduced to Austin: Austin City Limits. Now, I never actually watched it, but like Masterpiece Theater, I saw countless promos for Austin City Limits between 3-2-1 Contact and Square One TV episodes.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I watched lots of PBS in the 80s and early 90s and that's exactly how I was introduced to Austin: Austin City Limits. Now, I never actually watched it, but like Masterpiece Theater, I saw countless promos for Austin City Limits between 3-2-1 Contact and Square One TV episodes.

I, too, encountered Austin City Limits on PBS, I think it was on Sundays? Most of the time I skipped the show, but not always.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by craigs

I, too, encountered Austin City Limits on PBS, I think it was on Sundays? Most of the time I skipped the show, but not always.

There was a whole PBS Sunday afternoon-evening lineup I usually skipped. Frugal Gourmet, The Victory Garden, Julia Child's show / Yan Can Cook once her show stopped its run, This Old House (usually did watch this one), Austin City Limits, Masterpiece Theater.

[Serenade]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I would actually take Washington off the list, since it shares a name with a state. It seems to me that "DC" always has to be added to qualify it, especially if you are talking about the state. For instance, if you had an article mentioning wildfires in Washington, and were reporting from all across the state, you could say you're reporting from "WASHINGTON", but not Washington DC.

The original name for Washington was supposed to be Columbia but Congress thought it might be confused with the District of Columbia. So of course they went with Washington instead.

[Serenade]

And apparently Oakland is too confusing with Auckland. Someone wanting to go home to Oakland ended up on the other side of the world because he got on the wrong flight back in the 80's.

[wwmiv]

IMHO: Austin is just beneath Nashville. Neither has reached that point yet where the state name is not required. Nashville will beat Austin there, but only barely—and they’re the next U.S. cities likely to reach that point.

And both are absolutely above Sacramento, Tampa, Charlotte, Columbus, Jacksonville, Richmond, VA Beach/Norfolk, Tucson, Portland class of cities.

And commentary: Oklahoma City is only on the list to avoid the repetition of the word Oklahoma twice. I mean, the state and the city share the name so why bother? The state as a whole is more anonymous as it is than the aforementioned cities. And I live here currently—and can vouch for the generic-ness. I also find it ironic that Virginia Beach requires Virginia.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

IMHO: Austin is just beneath Nashville. Neither has reached that point yet where the state name is not required. Nashville will beat Austin there, but only barely—and they’re the next U.S. cities likely to reach that point.

Some cities sound like first names, not last names, and so you expect there to be more to the name. "Texas" sounds like the last name to Austin, which incidentally rhymes with Boston, which doesn't help.

Meanwhile, there are many "ville" towns and cities out there. The L&N Railroad connected two of them. And today three control cities in a row on I-40 are villes: Nashville, Knoxville, Asheville. In fact, there are signs in Knoxville that direct drivers to either Nashville or Asheville:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Knoxvi..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDgxMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D


The most recognizable city name in Tennessee is Chattanooga, which would do just fine without the "TN" surname, despite being the state's #4 city behind Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville.

Similarly, El Paso doesn't need the "TX" like Austin, despite its smaller size. Why? It's the only "El" city in the country, plus El Paso has a song and it has a tomato sauce.

One of the greatest opening lines in the wide scope of the great American songbook:
Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican Girl

[mhays]

If only name recognition actually worked like that.

Outside of SSP, I doubt most people have much clue about cities in that size range that aren't in their own regions, especially if they don't have big-three pro teams. Remember that a large percentage of people think Africa is a country.

[Riverranchdrone]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Some cities sound like first names, not last names, and so you expect there to be more to the name. "Texas" sounds like the last name to Austin, which incidentally rhymes with Boston, which doesn't help.

Meanwhile, there are many "ville" towns and cities out there. The L&N Railroad connected two of them. And today three control cities in a row on I-40 are villes: Nashville, Knoxville, Asheville. In fact, there are signs in Knoxville that direct drivers to either Nashville or Asheville:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Knoxvi..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDgxMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D


The most recognizable city name in Tennessee is Chattanooga, which would do just fine without the "TN" surname, despite being the state's #4 city behind Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville.

Similarly, El Paso doesn't need the "TX" like Austin, despite its smaller size. Why? It's the only "El" city in the country, plus El Paso has a song and it has a tomato sauce.

One of the greatest opening lines in the wide scope of the great American songbook:
Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican Girl

Hey I fell in love with a Mexican girl in Austin. El Paso is a great city. Feels like you are in a town from another country. But Austin beats out Nashville any day of the week due to its food and music/ movie scene and tech scene. If you were from Texas I wouldnt call hot sauce tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is what those companies from "NEW YORK CITY?" try to push on us.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Riverranchdrone

Hey I fell in love with a Mexican girl in Austin. El Paso is a great city. Feels like you are in a town from another country. But Austin beats out Nashville any day of the week due to its food and music/ movie scene and tech scene. If you were from Texas I wouldnt call hot sauce tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is what those companies from "NEW YORK CITY?" try to push on us.

I’m from Austin, and I would never claim that Austin beats out Nashville in name-recognition.

An entire genre of music, one of America’s most preeminent home grown genres, is synonymous with the city.

[JManc]

20 years ago, I would have said Austin would've needed "TX" but it's far and away a different city (not necessarily in a good way) and much more well known because of things like tech, SXSW and being the "it" city with young transplants.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

An entire genre of music, one of America’s most preeminent home grown genres, is synonymous with the city.

Country music was not born in Nashville (unlike jazz in New Orleans) and it wasn't especially prominent there until maybe 1970. It's only synonymous with this music because of a series of random events that occurred well after the rise of the genre.

They were:
1. Survival of the weekly Grand Ole Opry radio show, decades after similar shows ceased on similar clear channel AM stations around the country. It went into nationwide syndication after regional competitors disappeared.
2. The house band for the Grand Ole Opry radio show formed the nucleus of local session studio musicians.
3. Bob Dylan recorded several albums with the Grand Ole Opry's house band (the above-mentioned session musicians) in the mid-1960s, which exposed the rock & roll world to these musicians. Other rock/pop people subsequently did records with these guys.
4. The bigger and better-known Memphis, Cincinnati, and Mussel Shoals studios/labels went out-of-business for various reasons by the early 1970s. Nashville didn't really become the center of country music until after that competition evaporated.

The other thing is that only one city came to be associated with country music because it was a small genre as compared to rock & roll, r&b, etc. There could be no single rock & roll city because the genre was gigantic and was filling arenas and stadiums all over the world with bands originating from other parts of the world. Recently, a few country people have popped up from Australia and Canada, but none from England or anywhere else who I'm aware of.

Twenty years ago, the major record labels all dropped rock & roll in favor of boy bands, rap, and other crap. This left a void since people who want to hear real singers and real instruments have few places to turn other than country music. Otherwise it's lip syncing at the New Year's ball drop.

I'd even argue that Nashville came relatively close to not becoming "Nashville" in recent times. First of all, the Ryman Auditorium sat vacant for 20 years and was slated for demolition but somehow survived. Probably more importantly, the downtown Broadway strip physically survived the 1998 tornado. Had there been more destruction and had various developers been able to put up cheap crap in the place of the old brick row buildings in the early 2000s, the "Nashville" that appeared around 2015 would have never happened. I remember that as recently as 2015~, a major hotel chain was greasing palms to demolish an entire block of the historic strip.

[niwell]

I think this story was burying the lede - the international ones are much more interesting in what they include / exclude:

International Datelines
These international locations stand alone in datelines,

AMSTERDAM
BAGHDAD
BANGKOK
BEIJING
BEIRUT
BERLIN
BRUSSELS
CAIRO
DJIBOUTI
DUBLIN
GENEVA
GIBRALTAR
GUATEMALA CITY
HAVANA
HELSINKI
HONG KONG
ISLAMABAD
MEXICO CITY
MILAN
MONACO
MONTREAL
MOSCOW
MUNICH
NEW DELHI
PANAMA CITY
PARIS
PRAGUE
QUEBEC CITY
RIO DE JANEIRO
ROME
SAN MARINO
SAO PAULO
SHANGHAI
SINGAPORE
ISTANBUL
JERUSALEM
JOHANNESBURG
KUWAIT CITY
LONDON
LUXEMBOURG
MACAU
MADRID
STOCKHOLM
SYDNEY
TOKYO
TORONTO
VATICAN CITY
VIENNA
ZURICH
In addition, use UNITED NATIONS alone, without a N.Y. designation, in stories from U.N. headquarters.

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by mhays

To many people, Silicon Valley is basically the name of all tech in the region even if the majority is in the South Bay. Sometimes even our Seattle area companies are referred to as part of it! For much of the public, it's as much about an industry as it is a location.

This is true, Silicon Valley is a metonym. I definitely think of it both as a geographic region of the Bay Area (that supersedes San Jose in in importance) and also as a word for the whole US tech industry. There are many other examples, but my favorite is the name "Hollywood."

That name refers not only to the movie industry, but also to the parts of LA that people associate with it. Only a city nerd or local Angeleno would likely know where the real boundaries of the neighborhood are. To everyone else, Hollywood can just as easily apply to Burbank, Century City, Beverly Hills, or just about anywhere in the LA area we associate with movies and celebrities. I have also heard the name "Thirty Mile Zone" for this same part of LA - But I'm not sure if that's an industry term or also something locals would recognize.

[mhays]

New York is home to TWO OR THREE of these -- Wall Street, Broadway, and Madison Avenue.

All are often used with location in mind, but all frequently get credit for things that aren't physically there.

[Shawn]

One of the main B-plots in Road Trip was a character going to Boston instead of Austin because another character didn't know Austin was a city in Texas.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by niwell

I think this story was burying the lede - the international ones are much more interesting in what they include / exclude:

At least one person is not going to be happy to see Guatemala City "outranking" Osaka.

[Docere]

And Sydney being included but not Melbourne. That's gotta hurt.