Thanks to Ana for this photo of fondue mushroom burger on a hoagie and fries at Brick House, Plano, Texas. And now, off to eat lunch!
Check out our Food of the World photo group on Flickr to see more photos posted by PocketCultures readers around the world. We’d love to see yours too! Just join the group and add your photos.
Read more:
Hot cross buns from the UK
Chicago’s cultural stew
Khao chae, a cooling Thai summer treat
This is the introduction to I Love Ranch Dressing, a guide to ‘stuff White Midwesterners like’:
If you like sporting novelty sweaters, dipping everything in ranch dressing, smothering your home with sunflowers and white wicker, and eating top-notch dinners at Cracker Barrel, then you might be a White Midwesterner (or at the very least you should move to the Midwest as soon as possible).
The Mid-West USA, as defined by US census bureau. Credit
It’s funny and (especially if you’re not from the USA) very informative. Let us know what you think!
Read more:
More USA blogs from Blogs of the World
Irish American culture and St Patrick’s day in the USA
Navigating Chicago’s cultural stew
Maple toffee is a winter tradition in Canada. It is made by pouring maple syrup onto snow. Thanks to Xiaozhuli for sharing this one!
Pocketcultures loves to discover food from around the world. If you have some photos, why not join our Food of the World Flickr group?
Read more:
Canadian blogs on Blogs of the World
Canadian street barbeque
Celebrating the arrival of Spring in Romania
I have the luck of living and working in two of the most diverse neighborhoods not just in the city of Chicago, but also the whole USA: Rogers Park and Uptown.
I was reminded of this fact by several people I met on a recent Monday night as I stopped into my favorite Rogers Park watering hole. It’s just a little neighborhood dive; cheap beer, pool table, dart boards, cracked tile, and the standard wood-paneling of any old-style American bar.
The bartender that night was Cuban-American, and I ended up in conversation with 3 Sudanese refugees. One of the Sudanese fellows wound up talking to an ethnically-mixed gentleman who grew up in Hyde Park (15+ miles away) about politics, while I spoke with his two friends about Sorghum and Millet (two types of grain very common in Africa) and the resulting beverages one can make from them… among other topics.
We were suddenly interrupted by a Mexican-American gentleman… he was either perturbed by the fact that I was speaking Spanish to the Sudanese immigrants (I was doing my best Cuban accent for them and the bartender), or that I wouldn’t speak Spanish with him.
In any case, he had some choice Spanish words for me, and I decided to head home for the evening. I could have been upset, but the ludicrousness of the situation just made me laugh. There wasn’t a potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding… there was going to be cross-cultural misunderstanding. It was as if five drivers obeying five different sets of driving laws all ended up on the same road.
I returned the next day to watch a hockey game with some friends, and found six Montenegrin immigrants (former Yugoslavia) quite jovially singing traditional songs together.
I talked to the bartender, and neither of us could figure out what had made the one gentleman so upset the night before. The best part was after I left, he apparently was trying to ask the Sudanese refugees if they would “step outside… I got my people outside,” in other words, he wanted to fight. The Sudanese gentleman had been confused: “What’s outside? Why would we want to go outside?” The bartender and I had a good laugh over that one.
In the Uptown neighborhood where I work, the maintenance staff of our building is mostly Bosnian. There’s a refugee/immigrants’ services organization that operates out of our building, and it’s not uncommon to see people in full Hijabs, Burkas, traditional Afghan dress, etc. entering and leaving the building. This is juxtaposed with a slew of “native” Chicagoans, with backgrounds typically from Poland, Germany, Ireland, Italy and other European countries, as well as a sizeable population of African Americans, and newer Mexican immigrants (and native-born Mexican-Americans). There is “Little Vietnam” just north of my office on Argyle, where you’ll find a wide plethora of Asian immigrants, and the buildings East of Sheridan road along the lake where you’ll find large numbers of retired people and dog-walking professionals living in condos.
It gets confusing sometimes; elevator etiquette, for example. Many Americans would prefer to completely ignore people they see in an elevator, even if they may have ridden together dozens, or even hundreds of times. This is generally my preference too. However, there are certain US subcultures, who generally believe it is rude not to speak to people. So every so often, I’ll adopt my usual glazed-eyed stare at the wall while the elevator goes up, and I’ll hear a *cough*, and a “Well, how do you do today too sir?”, indicating displeasure with my failure to greet them or make eye contact. I’ll smile sheepishly, and say “Oh, excuse me, I’m fine, how are you?” and do my best to strike up polite conversation, usually about the weather, sports, or lately, the economy.
It’s inevitable. You can make your actions as contextually specific as you want, but there are simply too many cultures present at any given time to always be able to effectively communicate. You just try your best, and are prepared to laugh at the results.
Chicago’s claim to fame has always been immigration. In horribly over-simplified order: Irish, Germans, British, Scandinavians, and Swedes; later African-Americans, Czechs, Lithuanians, Serbs, Croats, Greeks, Russian and Polish Jews, Italians, Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese; and more recently Mexicans, Caribbeans, Central Americans, Indians, a new smaller wave of Eastern Europeans, Africans and Middle Easterners.
Neighborhoods have changed drastically in terms of main ethnic group since the early waves of immigration as well: Mexicans have replaced once-Czech Pilsen, though the East Side of Pilsen has lately become gentrified with artists and other non-Latinos. The major Puerto Rican neighborhood in the city, Humboldt Park, was previously a Jewish and Polish neighborhood, and before that, was mostly populated with Germans. Rogers Park formerly had large Jewish and Cuban populations, but is now a mix of most everybody.
Both neighborhoods have historically been points of entry for various immigrant groups, and as a result, in the stretch of Broadway and Sheridan road between them, I can buy pretty much any food product in the world. Sometimes on a Saturday, I’ll pick a recipe from a country I’ve never been to (and never cooked), and just try to find all the ingredients on my way home.
In the summertime, everyone in Rogers Park comes out to the beach, and you can listen to music from every corner of the globe, and smell all the different foods cooking on the park’s grills. Kids play soccer, football, or softball; adults sit and talk, and a few local neighborhood characters who like to sleep on the beach drink beers out in the sunshine on park benches. We don’t always all get along, but we try.
All photos courtesy of Rogers Park in 1000 words
This is Sean Oliver’s first post for PocketCultures. Why not say hello in the comments?
Sean is a project manager for Language & Culture Worldwide, a cross-cultural training and consulting firm. Sean grew up in Ohio, ending up in Chicago after extended periods in Costa Rica, Chile and California. He now has no intentions of living anywhere else; Chicago is one of his favorite places on the planet. Sean will be writing on PocketCultures mostly about American culture, and drawing attention to the vast differences between Americans across ethnicity, class, gender, generations, etc.
Read more:
The year of America: do Europeans stereotype the USA?
A photo tale of 50 states: around the USA in photos
Global migration and Europe’s population collapse
Last week on Twitter I forwarded this article on how the UK sees Americans.
@nocrowds, @andrewghayes and @LEHedges all forwarded the article with the comment:
“A Brit defending Americans. I’m speechless”
That made me think. It’s probably true that in the UK (and maybe the rest of Europe too) we hear more about the negative aspects of American culture than the positive ones.
Like the article’s author, when I visited the USA I was not prepared for the friendly, open nature of the Americans I met. Eating a sandwich on a park bench, complete strangers sat down next to me and began chatting. I’m used to this living in Turkey, but in the UK? That doesn’t happen very often.
When I’m in the UK, I’m far more likely to hear reports of bad American junk food than the friendliness of American people, or the many other good things about life in the USA.
And Americans online (so it seems from here) are more likely to be talking about travelling the world than writing about life in their own country. In our Food of the World photo group PocketCultures readers have shared photos of food from over 30 different countries, but apart from the fantastic contributions of Marfa Food Shark, we don’t have any examples of food from the USA.
In the rest of the world we think we know US culture. American brands, films, fast food chains are everywhere right?
But just like watching Four Weddings and a Funeral won’t tell you anything about life outside a small subsection of English society, I’m guessing that eating in McDonald’s doesn’t help you make any generalisations about America either.
Sean Oliver of Language and Culture says: “the thing to always remember about the US is how big and varied it is”
“When Americans travel around the country, fast food/Gap blue jeans/popular movies are something familiar to eat/buy/watch… They’re certainly not the best of, or representative of, what many of us eat/wear/watch on a daily basis”.
Julie Schweitert Collazo wrote on her blog Collazo Projects that for her 2010 will be the year of America. I’m looking forward to 2010 being a year of opportunities to learn more about America’s many other sides.
Read more:
PocketCultures is looking for regional contributors
A tale of 50 states: around the USA in photos
Food of the world: PocketCultures readers share their food
Thanks to the internet you don’t need to travel to see what people are wearing in other parts of the world. Here are five sites to take in the different street styles on five continents.
The king of street fashion blogs for many people is The Sartorialist. He has been photographing stylish New Yorkers since 2005, and The Sartorialist is now a design influence in its own right.
Pretty and stylish Lula Street shows that Poles have plenty of individuality when it comes to dressing.
Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko lives and works in Johannesburg. She featured young South Africans from the streets of Johannesburg in her series “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”. See some of the portraits on Afronova.
We’ve written before about the original fashions on display in Tokyo. But different districts of Tokyo have a distinctive style of their own. On Tokyo street style you can find fashions from Harajuku, Shibuya, Omotesando, Daikanyama and Ginza.
On the Corner shows colourful and alternative fashion found on the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Agostina, a 23 year old cook, from On the Corner
Do you have a favourite site for street fashion that we haven’t included here? Share it with us in the comments.
Read More:
Ever tried making your own Mongolian boots?
Street style from Finland
Fashion freedom in Japan
Picture Postcards: Colours of Argentina
The Netherlands – a country of many names
Bucharest Seen From the Arch of Triumph
From our contributors: week of May 13
Familiarizing the World with Assam.
From our contributors: week of April 23
This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Please read our attribution policy
Recent Comments