...If someone had come up to me and asked this question anywhere besides work, I would have busted out laughing.
"No."
But I didn't. Because I was at work, and Melora had come across to my cubicle just so she could ask that ridiculous question. And she had a smile behind it, like maybe she thought something was ridiculous, too.
"Well," she says, "I've been listening to this country music station on the radio and they are advertising the Country Ham Festival. And they said just a second ago, 'there'll also be a hog calling contest!'" She made a face. I awarded her a consolation laugh. "That's exactly the sort of thing my family made fun of me for when they found out I was moving here."
"From Atlanta?"
She nodded.
"Isn't that funny how that always works? Atlanta is actually further south that Nashville, making it geographically more southern, and yet people always make fun of Nashville."
"Well, come on, Atlanta's a big city."
I suddenly feel slightly defensive. "Nashville's a big city."
She looks at me like, 'seriously?' Like I am crazy. Like I'm missing some teeth and have no shoes on.
"When you think of major U.S. cities, you know, it's New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston..." She's still waiting for some agreement from me. "You don't think Nashville."
She really must think Atlanta is the shit. And I concede, with a "Nashville's just the right size I guess."
Melora laughed and walked back to her desk.
In the 4:45 silence of my cubicle, I googled populations of the two cities. I was right.
Atlanta, population: 537,958
Nashville, population: 626,144
We might be more suburbs and ghettos than big city lights, but Nashville had almost one hundred thousand people on Atlanta. Nashville is both big and quaint, and Melora shouldn't have looked at me like I was crazy.
Needless to say, one should not include Atlanta in the top ten of the nation's biggest cities. Not even the top 30. I mean, if you're making fun of us for being "country," or for not being a "big city," you are wrong wrong wrong.
Nashville's foreign-born population more than tripled in size between 1990 and 2000, increasing from 12,662 to 39,596. Large groups of Mexicans, Kurds,[26] Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Arabs, and Bantus call Nashville home, among other groups.[27] Nashville has the largest Kurdish community in the United States, numbering approximately 11,000.[28] About 60,000 Bhutanese refugees are being admitted to the U.S. and some of them will resettle in Nashville.[29] During the Iraqi election of 2005, Nashville was one of the few international locations where Iraqi expatriates could vote.[30]
I can't really blame Melora for thinking Atlanta is superior. That's where she's from. But she does live in a duplex near Little Mexico. Of course she doesn't think she's in the city!
6 comments:
Oh shit Jana. You just ventured into my area of expertise so I apologise if this comment becomes long.
First let me correct you on your population figures. You were looking at the city populations which just mesure the number of people living within city limits. This excludes all of the people living in williamson, ruthaford Wilson, chetham, dickson, etc counties. In Atlanta this excludes Cobb, gwinnett, most of dekalb, Forsyth, etc counties. To get a more realistic figure of population, you want to look at the metro population figures because this factors in all of these counties in the 'burbs. When you do that you get quite a different number:
Metro Nashville pop. 1,550,733 (ranked 38th largest in the country)
Metro Atlanta pop. 5,376,285 (ranked 8th largest in the country)
Now having said that let me say that Atlanta isn't the cosmopolitan metropolis that it likes to think it is. In fact, it's kind of sad that the population of people living in city limits in such a heavily populated metropolitan region is less than Nashville's (granted Nashville-Davidson county covers a larger area than Atlanta-Fulton county). Atlanta is still very much southern once your 5 or 10 minutes away from downtown and in many ways, more southern than Nashville (Nashville has a real NIMBY problem though that Atlanta doesn't seem to have).
Nashville being 1/5 the size of Atlanta also has almost the same amount of stuff to do as Atlanta (unless your into clubs which Atlanta runs circles around Nashville) which is also impressive. Atlanta is slightly more diverse (mostly in Asian population). Nashville runs circles around Atlanta when it comes to the local music scene.
Bottom line: Nashville is pretty much the same thing as Atlanta minus the traffic and substitute hip hop for country. Atlanta is either really southern, really gansta, or really yuppie (as in the 'i try so hard it's annoying' kind of way). Nashville is really southern too but also has real, down-to-earth people living within city limits. Overall I like Nashville more but alas, my life exists here in the ATL.
Oh and when I think of big cities in this country, I think of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The rest are just US cities.
Yeah, I think it was her saying it was up there with New York and Chicago that really made me mad. Oh, and also the part about hog calling being somehow typical of this city. Like we are hick as hell. Because I now realize after deciding to pursue an ESL endorsement, that I CAN"T USE THAT IN MOST OTHER CITIES. There just isn't as much diversity in most places. Unless you went to parts of TX, CA, FL maybe. I mean, people get pissed off about the non-english speaking population here just as much as the hog calling, Haha. Two different groups of people; Both haters. Haha!
Actually Adric, Jana is right... I've looked ip up on multiple websites that verify it... So if you can state your source that would be great! Haha That's debater talk for you're wrong. lol
http://www.demographia.com/db-metmic2004.pdf
I'm assuming you're talking about my population figures right?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas?wasRedirected=true
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_metropolitan_area?wasRedirected=true
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville%2C_Tennessee?wasRedirected=true
http://www.planetizen.com/node/23359
I could go on but you get the idea. It's all over the internet.
Oh and Atlanta is no New York or Chicago. New York is almost 4x the size of Atlanta and Chicago is about twice the size. Plus New York and Chicago actually feel like cities. That was just your coworker boasting her hometown.
If she wants to go into stereotypes then talk to her about Atlanta hosting a BBQ festival here in a few weeks.
Why can't I get all my thoughts in one post?
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