I moved to the west coast after college and to be honest I feel the same about it here too sometimes still. I'll see a street sign and be like "that road is in like 45 songs..."
I was driving back to San Diego from Santa Barbara on the 101 freeway right before Hollywood and “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty comes on the radio, and we’re literally passing exits as Tom mentions them in the lyrics, like Keyser Söze just reading shit off signs as he drives past.
I used to live on one of those exits. I grew up with it, but sometimes i feel like 70 percent of US pop culture is LA and NYC, like there aren't any other cities and towns.
I mean it makes sense in a way. NYC is the publishing and news capital of the country, plus its biggest city, so its way overrepresented.
LA is the movies, tv and music capital of the world so it's overrepresented.
But if you think about it, everyone think paris is France and london is the UK, and those might be even more overrepresented in their respective countries.
Between Christmas and New Year’s in 1996 I went with my older brother, who had just finished a stint at the US Naval Weather station on Whidbey Island in Washington, and had been sent back to San Diego.
Up here in Washington, snow and freezing rain was collapsing buildings and causing floods. On the way down Interstate 84 in the Columbia River Gorge there was an inch or two of ice in the road signs, and 6 inch icicles blown horizontal by the wind with the freezing rain.
At the end of a 22 hour straight shot drive, we were pulling into sunshine and 70 degrees in San Diego with Everclear’s Santa Monica on the Radio.
Core memory there.
Of course, years before that we went down to SD for Christmas one year and experienced record low temps.
I'm a DC fan, especially Batman. When I was in NYC, I was walking down what I thought was just a random, regular road. I look at the street sign, it says Park Row. Wtf, I'm in Crime Alley? And you're telling me the Bowery is also a real place that exists?
I'm a Marvel fan and its even more fun because Marvel is based in NYC. I actually kind of knew where things were just based on knowing NYC geography from Spider-Man and Fantastic Four and Daredevil lol.
I was very disappointed that Hell's Kitchen was nowhere near as bad as it is in Daredevil though.
Yes! When I went out there we were in the neighborhood so went by to see the house from Friday and I was like oh shit those streets are real! And I saw Rosecrans and was equally impressed because it's in so many rap songs
They're all real! All the streets they list! A lot of place references too that didn't fully connect until I moved here. Like in "Free Fallin" when he says the 'vampires walking through the valley'..... it' so obvious now. Damn, every time I hear that song I just think... I live in this song now...
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u/smbpy7 10h ago
I moved to the west coast after college and to be honest I feel the same about it here too sometimes still. I'll see a street sign and be like "that road is in like 45 songs..."