Sorry, your city STILL isn't unique

You CAN'T tell me that Tiny Tom's Donuts are not the greatest mini donut in the world. I won't hear such blasphemy! Unsubscribe!

We have a McDonalds, several sports teams, a long and proud history, a strong working class mindset and rampant drug use. I think you'll find us to be quite exceptionally. Truly the essence of unique.

People from my town? Yea, were super polite.. until you get on our 𝘣𝘢𝘥 side 😏

Every tourism ad for a mid-sized city (or college in a mid-sized city): “We’re a UNIQUE mix of BIG city vibes, and SMALL town friendliness” ✨

In Boston, people are renowned for their positive attitude, friendliness and manners. Also for being fantastic drivers who know how to safely merge across all the other lanes at a moments notice.

You know what's really crazy about (MY CITY) is that the downtown and the area around the college is really liberal, but once you get out to the suburbs it gets super conservative. Don't even try going to (NEARBY SMALL TOWN). It's like the 1950s out there!

I said it before I'll say it again, if you think something about your city is unique, thats not the thing thats unique. the unique things are the things you never think about/assume everyone has and then you talk to someone else on the internet about it and they're like "what in the world are you talking about"

Also, just saying, it’s okay to love your city’s thing without it being globally unique

J.J., a really interesting follow-up to this series of videos would be "aspects of North American cities that actually are somewhat unique." Or, potentially, you could compare and contrast how rural areas differ: are they also all much more similar than they realize? Or are they more heterogeneous than the cities?

I just thought of an example of this, the overrated ice cream stands that you have to line up in front of outside. A lot of people insist their local one is the best but they’re all about the same quality wise.

I find the "my city is super is super unfriendly" one super interesting, because here in England, there 100% are some really friendly cities and some really unfriendly cities. In Sheffield you would be never be surprised for a stranger to strike up a conversation or call you 'my love' or 'darling', which you would never ever expect in Birmingham or London

Every college campus also claims to have specific special squirrels that are just so zany and weird. They might even claim they are a specific color you don’t see often. Literally every college tour I went on mentioned the squirrels.

You have to do a video about the un-unique stories told on college campus tours. When I was still choosing which school to go to (almost a decade ago now), my dad and I had a game where we would keep tabs on the dumb stories and facts about each school we heard. There were several tour guides at different schools who told us that their friend met their girlfriends as drivers in the campus pickup carts and many tour guides who told us that the school observatory is the best date spot. Almost every school has something they rub for good luck before finals and if you can't find a club on campus, it only takes 5 (or 4 or even 3 at some schools) friends to make your own club. My favorites are the "we have the largest/tallest [insert some interesting thing, i.e. bell tower, library, gym], west/east of the Mississippi" and schools bragging about the biggest artists they've gotten for their big annual concert.

My college had a similar bad-architect legend: that the parking garage was originally designed to be 5 stories tall, but they only built three when they realized they'd forgotten to account for the weight of the cars

As a European living in London (a city that really did have a GREAT fire in 1666) I can say that from this side of the pond American cities do all seem very similar compared to the differences between European cities (and specifically capitals). I'd love to see JJ do a video about things we Europeans think are unique about our cities that actually are quite common between most of them.

I will say, as someone who has lived in the NW, SW, and SE of the United States and has visited 38 of the 50 states, I would put an asterix on some of these. 1. Giant dealership flags in the southeast (Texas and Arkansas especially) are way bigger than giant dealership flags in other parts of the country. 2. Unfriendliness is absolutely a regional thing. Of course larger cities will generally be less friendly than smaller ones, but it's not the full picture. I've lived extended periods in Seattle, San Diego, and Dallas, and as someone who is religious, I do tend to have an easier time making friends by simply connecting myself to the nearest place of worship of my persuasion. After living 7 years in Seattle, there is no one there who I would call a friend. Meanwhile, in San Diego and Dallas (which are each much larger cities) making friends was easy and even if I don't keep in touch with all of them, when we do run into each other, we can pick up where we left off. I do have a theory why this is the case. Very few people in Seattle were born there, most moved there for work and so most people are isolated from their family circle and so have their defenses up. Meanwhile, in both San Diego and Dallas, a much larger percentage of the population was born there and have their extended family nearby, thus in addition to friends and co-workers, they tend to have a family circle as well, and in my experience, people who have more social support are more open to adding new people into their circles and are less guarded.

i’m from chicago and the only one of these i’ve heard about my city is the “great fire” but for chicago it was actually important because it led to the invention of the skyscraper, which led to the modern city.

Well JJ, I can now say my hometown of Bakersfield, California is unique in a way no other town can claim to be: our representative was the only house speaker to ever get fired

So I grew up thinking that my city (Sydney, Aus) was basically like most cities, but was totally unprepared for moving to a much smaller city in the UK - it's still technically a city, but the difference between a few hundred thousand people and five million people is pretty spectacular (in hindsight, duh). Here, I can see 'the countryside' out my window, which was a completely foreign idea in Sydney, where you can drive in a straight line for 2+ hours and still be in the suburbs. A lot of the cultural and geographical markers of 'the city' that I was used to and expected to find anywhere are just not here. And I didn't even think Sydney was a 'big' city based on the reference points I had - cities in Asia where a lot of my friends were from have populations that are orders of magnitude bigger than us, and the cities in the US that I was familiar with (NYC, Chicago, LA) were of a similar size. I'm pretty sure in Aus we'd just call the 'city' I currently live in a 'town', but the difference between a town and a city in local vernacular is itself an interesting cultural artefact.

I'm curious if anyone else has their city do this. My city (Canada) decided to be more inclusive of the native American heritage by writing a greeting in their native language all over the city like a slogan, and also invites tribal elders to any official city events to give a traditional prayer or something of the sort. I feel like this is something that pretty much any city can use as a representation of their local "specialness" that really is generic enough to be used for the same effect everywhere in NA.