Hello everyone!
I have been living in Asheville, NC for pretty much exactly 2.5 years at the time I'm writing this. In total, I have lived approximately half of my life in the Southeast, and half in the Northeast. I believe I have a decent grasp on what is like to live in both regions, and this blog post is my way of externally processing my thoughts of breaking down specifically Western North Carolina vs. Western New York. I'm going to dissect a bunch of different topics and award each region points accordingly.
As always, the things to consider when comparing two geographical regions to each other are: Weather, Culture, Grocery Stores, Recreational Activities, Allergies, Food (not including chicken wings), Chicken Wings, Sports Teams, Alcohol, and Most Famous Location.
Let's break it down:
Weather
Western North Carolina features the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the city of Asheville is located over 2000 feet above sea level. This combination of mountains plus elevation means that it gets colder than some of the other regions of the southeast. The mountains provide more shade in the evenings and mornings, allowing nights to get significantly cooler than the daytime, and Asheville sees a pretty decent winter every year. A few snowfalls here and there that give the city and mountains a beautiful white blanket, but only for a few months before treating the area to a full spring, a longer summer, and a full autumn as well. All four seasons are represented, with the emphasis put on the summer, my favorite season.
This is comparison to Western New York, which features a 5-6 month winter full of gray skies and muddy snow. The rest of the year consists of road construction fixing those potholes, and the months of March/April that are constant cold and dreary rain/winter mix that coin the actual medical diagnosis Seasonal Affective Disorder, aka S.A.D. While the summer is absolutely wonderful, it's too short! Growing up in WNY taught me to absolutely despise the month of March.
In conclusion, even though North Carolina has more spiders because of the heat, I'll take the occasional creepy bug with a butt-rope over the ACTUAL DIAGNOSED DEPRESSION that the winter of New York causes.
North Carolina: 1
New York: 0
Culture
North Carolina, just like any other state in the southeast, features the prominent southern hospitality. And it's a real thing! Ask anyone who traveled to Atlanta for the Super Bowl this year. The culture of caring for others and being naturally friendly to strangers (you can't go on a hike without everyone smiling and saying hi to you) is ultimately a heartwarming quality of the south. I have brought friends from New York down here, and they sometimes react negatively to this hospitality sometimes: "Why is everyone on this hike smiling at me?? It seems so fake! I don't need you, guy at Publix, to tell me where to get my food, go away!!" Who would you rather be? The person who is kind and loving, or the one who is skeptical and annoyed?
With that said, I very much miss the culture of sarcasm. Boston typically gets the biggest reputation for this type of attitude: the "bust your balls" sarcasm where everyone's constantly ripping each other down in a friendly way to keep each other humble. People down here don't seem to understand that sarcasm is a sign of respect! If I am sarcastic towards you, it means that I believe that you can take it, which is a sign that I hold you in high regard. If I'm constantly being super polite and superficial with you like a retail worker treats a irrational customer - it typically means I think you aren't mentally/emotionally strong enough to handle something more intense.
In conclusion, I have found that I get the best of both worlds when there is the understood baseline level of hospitality and loving-your-neighbor attitude, and then I combine that with finding friends who understand sarcasm and be a constant loving source of basically what is verbal abuse.
North Carolina: 2
New York: 0
Grocery Stores
North Carolina: 2
New York: 1
Recreational Activities
North Carolina Pros: Superb hiking and camping, Asheville has an abundance of art and music, craft breweries (more on this later), driving distance from the beach, Paul Maki's sauna, and locations to play flag football, baseball, basketball, disc golf, etc.
North Carolina Cons: Skiing on ice, and the main body of water in Asheville - the French Broad River - is nasty.
New York Pros: Quality skiing, Finger Lakes, and the Conesus Lake Ring of Fire.
New York Cons: Have something fun to do inside? Because I don't want to go out in that cold.
This one is directly influenced by the weather category. Even though the skiing in New York is infinitely better than North Carolina, and being out on the lakes in the summer is better than the best summer activity in North Carolina - ultimately the length of the summer allows for more time to do much more fun stuff down here. Making a trip up to New York in the summer for 4th of July is a great yearly vacation to get the best of both.
North Carolina: 3
New York: 1
Allergies
All these mountains with trees on them blow pollen everywhere in the spring! I've never in my life had allergies until I moved down here to Asheville. And no, Asheville person, I don't want to buy your essential oils, I tried already and they didn't work! Point goes to New York!
North Carolina: 3
New York: 2
Food (Not Including Chicken Wings)
North Carolina Highlights: Multiple delicious BBQ locations, Shrimp and Grits, Biscuits and Gravy, Krispy Kreme Donuts, the Low-Country Boil, and last but not least, the crown jewel of fast food, the Wegmans of fried chicken: Chick-Fil-A.
Western New York Highlights: Dinosaur BBQ, the garbage plate, beef on weck, real maple syrup, and Zweigle's white hots.
Since chicken wings deserves their own category, the win goes to North Carolina here. The north misses out on so many good things by refusing to learn how to make a biscuit - it's not that hard! Somehow North Carolina can even make sand taste good! And although Cartwright's Maple Tree Inn serves out plenty of delicious syrup, I wish they were more creative than wasting that precious liquid on a dry tasteless pancake.
North Carolina: 4
New York: 2
Chicken Wings
This didn't deserve it's own category until I went back to Duff's Famous Wings this past Christmas. I had been living in Asheville for awhile and tried out plenty of good wings at various bars and restaurants. Make no mistake, Asheville has many places that make good wings that are creative with how they cook, prepare, and serve the wings. But going back to Buffalo to eat some Duff's put into perspective how far behind the rest of the world is in regards to chicken wings.
North Carolina: 4
New York: 3
Sports Teams
The sports landscape in North Carolina is primarily dominated by college sports. Duke v UNC is probably the country's best sports rivalry, up there with Red Sox v Yankees. College football is huge in the entire southeast, with the South Carolina Gamecocks and Clemson Tigers being the main two teams dividing the locals of Asheville. As for the pros, I remember the Carolina Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup when I was a kid living in the Raleigh area. I also remember the Carolina Panthers losing to the Denver Broncos when everyone was picking the Panthers and Cam Newton and nobody was giving the Broncos and our superior defense a shot and all the kids in the youth group came to the Super Bowl party dabbing and saying that Cam Newton was their new favorite player just because they didn't want to root for the Broncos who had defeated the overrated Pittsburgh Steelers a few weeks prior. I'm still not over that disrespect, East Main Presbyterian Church Youth Group.
Ultimately, because it's truly about the college teams down here in the southeast, you have to be a fan of minor league sports to enjoy the sports culture here.
For Western New York, you've got the Buffalo Sabres, and the joke of a football franchise that is the Buffalo Bills. As far as the minor league sports that people care about, there are the Rochester Red Wings and Syracuse basketball.
You know what? I'm going to give it to Western New York here. Those Buffalo Bills fans start tailgating in the freezing cold on Friday nights just to watch their Bills lose a 1:00pm-nobody-cares thrashing by the New England Patriots where more tables are smashed than points scored by the Bills. The Buffalo Bills have given their fans practically nothing to be proud about - my grandfather was a fan of the Bills since they started as a franchise, and he died before they ever won a Super Bowl! They ended their 18 year playoff drought with the most pathetic playoff game I've probably ever seen vs. the Jags. While writing this blog, I googled "Buffalo Bills" and one of the first things that came up was "Is the Buffalo Bills game blacked out today?" Somehow Google thinks that I would be wanting to know the information for that even though there hasn't been a Bills game in two months! That's how many times people type in that question! But with all of that said, Bills mafia gets out there in the cold to support their team. That's true love right there. Point goes to New York and the Bills.
North Carolina: 4
New York: 4
PS. If you are a non-NY native wondering why I didn't include the various New York City based teams in this consideration. Please refer to the below map that accurately shows how New York City is not near the region I'm talking about at all.
Alcohol
Asheville has more breweries per capita than any other American city. The craft beer scene here is so huge that it's basically impossible to try everything that it has to offer. People here drink to socialize and enjoy life - I've made great friends socializing at a local brewery, and our church even has multiple groups all about getting in community that meet at breweries.
In Western New York, people drink to stay warm, inebriate themselves enough to think that the Bills are winning, or to forget that they live in Western New York.
North Carolina: 5
New York: 4
PS: I haven't yet lived in WNY since turning 21, so I haven't gotten to truly experience the wine scene of the Finger Lakes. I'm sure that will influence my opinion if I ever get to try that out.
Most Famous Location
Although I think the Corning Museum of Glass is super cool, Western New York's most famous location is easily Niagara Falls. Even though the Canadian side is better, Niagara Falls is a place that people flock to from all around the world. It's where people survive/die trying to go over the falls in a barrel, but also where everyone's favorite couple secretly got married! It's super cool, and I highly suggest that everyone visit there at least once in their life.
Asheville's most famous location is a house. Yay...?
North Carolina: 5
New York: 5
After this entire exercise, it looks like it's a tie. I'll give the tie-breaker to North Carolina. I love living here, and the weather has such a huge impact on how much I enjoy everything. The weather can basically affect all those other categories, so I ultimately give the five categories that North Carolina won more weight than the others. If a Wegmans were to come to Asheville... watch out world.
Thanks for reading! Whether you're a WNC native, a WNC native, or neither, I hope you were able to enjoy. I appreciate you taking the time to read the written form of me externally processing my thoughts of comparing these two regions.
Until next time, God Bless!
Jeremy