.....park your car at a sandwich shop only to return to find a horse and cart parked next to you, complete with old sinks and toilets on the back.

Oh, and the horse eating a nearby hedge....

So, how about where you live?

:D

...buy roasted corn on the cob from a street vendor.

...see more signs in Spanish/Korean/Chinese/Arabic than in English

...spend two hours on an 8 lane freeway to go 20 miles.

But no horses!!

...to call someone cock as a term of endearment.

...to be roughly three degrees of separation away from knowing literally anybody.

...see Mike Baldwin down the shops.

Scarlet reminded me....

....be practically related to everyone!

...to be friends with the Bus Station Tramp and the Poundland Big Issue Guy
...take a pregnancy test because you get a free cinema ticket. Regardless of gender.
...support a football team from about 100 miles away, until we win against them, and then suddenly support the home team
...see horses and caravans on the banks along the side of motorways, even though the whole place is surrounded by indestructible fences
...consider McDonalds an ideal place to work
...hear a six-year old swearing in the street
...the others are probably too inappropriate for here. Which tells you all you need to know about my city.

Now Ruth's reminded me!

....take a pregnancy test in a pub toilet and then carry the test openly through the bar to wait for the result!

...be run over by a motorcade while crossing the street for lunch; bonus points if you or a friend immediately can identify who is in the motorcade based on its length

...spend 7 hours driving 2 miles because it snowed maybe 3 inches during the afternoon commute (real experience!)

...have a job title of "executive assistant to the associate deputy assistant secretary"

...for the stench of weed to be rife, and for the police to not even care.

...to meet people on the street you used to know in primary school who now have several children.

...to have the occupant of a nearby psychiatric ward wandering around reading the same random book aloud everyday up and down my street.

...to understand some Turkish just from the sheer amount of street signs and swearing

...to see ridiculous amounts hipsters and trustafarians walking about practicing their middle-aged-cum-trendy pursuits and pretending to be dirt poor.

...to eat baklava for lunch

...for there to be a kebab shop on *every single corner*

...to adjust the length of your skirt depending on what street you're walking down

Yeah...I don't live in the nicest area...

And this is why I love SoCal :P

What is this "snow" you are speaking of?

To enter a roundabout not knowing how you'll get out of it because everybody has its own opinion on how it works! :lol:

...To hear a guy walking down the street playing a harmonica.
...To see a random lady stop and sit on her cane outside your house.
...To find a centuries-old grave in your garden.
...Have random foreigners point at your uniform and yell 'Hogwarts!'

Oh, I hear you on that one!

Driving in Spain and France is wonderful for roundabout horror! Pick a lane, aim for your exit and just drive!

:D

. . .find pierogi, potato pancakes, paczek and other Polish delicacies on the menu of local restaurants.

. . .be surrounded by a swarm of mini-vans with soccer moms.

. . .believe even after a blizzard you should be able to get out of your driveway and around the city the following day.

. . .see deer and other urban wildlife (opossum, raccoon and unfortunately lately skunk) in my front yard.

. . .go to the beach but find out it is shut down due too high bacteria count.

Oh, it's even worse over here in the states whenever a city gets the idea to put one in--mostly because city councils think it is chic (ooh wow--look were so European!) and they can do some grand landscaping with it. NO ONE knows how to use it and then the city ends up putting all this extra signage up about proper usage. And still people have no clue!

OK--some of you I can tell exactly where you are and others...where the devil do you live??? Wow! :D

For my part...

--Run your heater and your air conditioner on the SAME DAY
--Drive 20 miles up a road with not one single break in the chain of strip malls containing bank outlets, fast food restaurants, and an interchangeable rotation of Best Buy/Bed Bath and Beyond/Target
--hear vitriolic expressions of hatred toward the rival football team, until we're out of the playoffs and they're still in and then, eh, they're better than the other guys.
--Qualify every report of the temperature outside with "cooler by the lake"
--Have our local government officials indicted the moment they leave office.
--Drive around town saying "I remember when that used to be a cornfield."
--Be unable to contemplate leaving the area for fear of never getting decent pizza or Italian beef again.

Hehehe...you must be from back East! No roundabouts here, but we do have to make blind left hand turns on a regular basis.

Are you in the midwest somewhere?

Oh yeah--Chicagoland to be precise.

I love SoCal--one of my favorite places to visit. It's so beautiful and vibrant!

Hey hey, don't hate on our driving skills out here! We are quite good as long as it isn't too snowy, rainy, windy or sunny.

I was totally going to guess that based on the "Have our local government officials indicted the moment they leave office." I love your officials for the lovely entertainment they provide!

You mean there's something slightly undignified about getting yourself impeached and then getting fired off of Celebrity Apprentice? :D

Heeee! I always thought they were just taking public service to a whole new level. :)

Oh I LOVE Chicago! Spent some time there in 2009, I absolutely adore it!

....to pull up at a petrol station to find that the car next to you is inhabited by a clown and Tarzan!

...To see various items of undewear abandoned on the wall of a nearby farm, EVERY Sunday morning! Someone is having a great time EVERY Saturday night! ;p

LOL, Nina, now I want to move to wherever you live!

...to hear "Tradegy" and other Steps songs blasting out ridiculously loudly whilst walking to school. There's a safe home of sorts for women and they're always playing 90s music crazy loud!

...to have to wrestle fried chicken bones off of your dog on the way to the park every five seconds. The amount of kebab/chicken and chip shops around here is mad, the pigeons love it.

Be swept along in a protest march by radical Muslims.

See a celebrity telling off a small child for trying to photograph them.

Find yourself in a Tesco milk aisle that smells of excrement.

Hear a police helicopter circling for what seems like the whole bloody night.

Try to avoid drawing attention to yourself in certain areas by only ever wearing tracksuit bottoms and hi tops.

I live in a very strange land of almost cliched contrast!

Eat red or green chile with almost every meal

Get altitude sickness if you are not acclimated

See low-riders with hydraulics lift up off the ground while driving down the street

Eat a "sangwich"

Hear natives raise the last word of every sentence like they are asking a question

Get "down from" the car rather than "out of" the car

Burn a giant effigy nicknamed "old man gloom" every year to ward away the bad mojo

Have someone talk to you in Spanglish

Barring this:

I think we are probably next door neighbors.

You posted earlier you are in SoCal. I'm in Santa Fe, NM. Iived in SoCal for a couple of years, so I can see some of the similarities with one culture in particular.

I hadn't read this thread since I posted awhile back. I think it's kinda neat all us DA addicts coming from such disparate areas!

PBCD, I also live in Chicago. You nailed some our fair city's attributes! I can't believe I was neglect in mentioning our politicians and their "Chicago way" of doing things (what is it. . Last 5 out of 7 governors in jail?). And also our pizza. Two things Chicago is best known for . . .corruption and pizza . . .I'm very proud to live here.

But given the yucky, cold, constant rain of today, I'd rather be in you folks in SoCal!