Heh.<p>I had lots of experiences like yours up there. People noticeably changed their demeanor when they found out I was from Kentucky and Ohio, grew up on food stamps, and went to a medium sized Midwestern school. I once had someone actually ask me with a totally straight face &quot;how do you know this stuff?&quot; He was referring to machine learning and combinatorics. It was not meant as an offense. He was genuinely mystified that someone with my background could possibly know what a state space was.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;midwest-discovered-between-east-and-west-coasts-1356" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonion.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;midwest-discovered-between-e...</a><p>Another true story:<p>I was once sitting in a restaurant in Boston for lunch. There was a basketball game on. I overheard two obviously upper crust fellows at the bar chatting about it: &quot;I see they&#x27;re playing a bit of street hoops... they must be in Chicago or Detroit.&quot;<p>&quot;Detroit&quot; was pronounced &quot;dee-troit.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m a white nerd and right then I felt black as oil. Hilarious.<p>There&#x27;s an <i>amazing</i> amount of brains and talent up there but it&#x27;s all stuck in this morass of cultural anachronism. You could probably fix the place by kidnapping all incoming Harvard freshmen, dosing them with acid, and dropping them off at a hip hop show or Burning Man or something. It&#x27;s too bad because Boston is a fantastic city and I otherwise liked it up there.<p>Unfortunately I fear that the insane gentrification in the Bay Area may eventually infect it with this stuff or at the very least drive out its culture of hands-on reality. You should thank the bums and the dirty hippies. They&#x27;re a vital part of the ecosystem, a constant reminder that there is in fact a universe beyond planet trust fund.