She’s not saying it’s unique to the US. She’s saying it’s more common in older US cities than newer ones. Still probably a dubious claim on the whole, but when it comes to certain measures (like segregation), there is something to be said for it.
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I’d say that means you haven’t traveled much within the US. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but that’s more about you than it is about the places and how people refer to them in shorthand.
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It was more common back when cities only had one area code. Less so in recent years.
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Connie likes to bash the US at every turn, and I find descriptions of places inaccurate at best. Eurocentrism is strong in some circles here. I’ve never heard Boston described that way before so surprised me.
Boston is pretty famous for racism.
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I’m American and have to say Boston does have quite a reputation for racism, actually. Regardless of her views of the US, she didn’t exactly pull that one out of thin air. Cities like Atlanta are less segregated, for sure. I wouldn’t say that necessarily makes them less racist, though.
But hey, how about them airport codes?
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Interesting that was decades ago and would’ve dismissed since it happened all over the country. Boston is majority white though and on some lists along with many southern cities and upstate New York. So perhaps some truth to that still today.
The history and culture of Boston I think makes it one of the more unique cities in US. So writing off it for that would be silly, IMO.
I’ve heard terrible things about London as well, but it doesn’t stop all the tourists.
Yeah, I wouldn’t write it off, but it definitely has a history of racism.
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Southern cities are more progressive???
There is still a lot of def-facto segregation down south.
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I’ve never heard of that. I’m not saying the reputation isn’t there, but I live on the east coast and I’ve never heard of that.
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It also sounds way more bizarre to an outsider.
I was gonna express this sentiment and share these examples. Also BOS, PHL, MSP, CLT, AUS, SLC, SEA, TPA and MIA. And having lived in south Florida I can tell you even FLL is quite common for Ft Lauderdale, and maybe WPB makes sense though I can’t say I’ve had any reason to see it used much.
It’s kind of a hybrid situation as one might expect…I think much depends on the anticipated abbreviation of a location and also how many airports are in that city. NYC, DC, CHI, SF all have multiple large airports so there’s not one code that would represent the entire region. So the above abbreviations are fairly common in my experience. Re: SF, I’ve seen SFO used at times, but OAK also works for Oakland and SJC for SJ, as a way to parse the greater region into smaller sections. (Like the South FL example)
I’ve used the Canadian codes when discussing cities in Canada on a Canadian forum and no one batted an eye. But it might not be common, they’re just too polite to tell me otherwise lol. Those and MCO (Orlando) are the ones I can think of that don’t really look like their city. Thinking of counterexamples, I think NOLA is always NOLA and MSY would be weird, despite it being the only major airport.
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Ask any African-American person from the East Coast sometime.
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I travel internationally a lot and never use airport code in reference to the city.
It would confuse everybody involved including me.
I’ve seen people do it here but when you are reading a thread and have context and maybe not so confusing. Maybe like shorthand or an emoji in place of the actual word
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I’ve lived in 8 states and have travelled to almost 30. Most people I know are also well-traveled. They just don’t pay attention to airport codes.
@OysterOmelet @Malasang88 Regarding the racism in Boston mentioned by @PeiHua-Connie, I can confirm it’s true. I lived there for 4 years (actually lived in the next city, Cambridge, across the Charles River, and worked in Boston). Almost the entire lower-middle class population of Boston is made up of racist pro-Trump Irish-American Catholics. Although Cambridge is the complete opposite.
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Why don’t I hear about any racist incidents coming out of Boston in the news, though? They’re coming from Florida all the time.
Some times I would use airport code
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if someone asked me where was staying and I would say LAX or SFO which means in or near the airport. That only works with certain airports and with people that really knows what that means.
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If I’m talking to people about someplace like Bangkok and they ask where I’m going and I would use BKK or DMK to designate the airport in that particular City where there are more than one airport
I don’t people are using the airport code, I think they are just using shortened forms of the city name which also happen to be the same as the airport code.
313 will always mean Detroit to me. Not sure if just more of a techno music thing, but I don’t think so.