I live in Connecticut, the nutmeg state, and as a result I live near the highway that connects New York City and Boston and getting to one of those cities is why most people travel through Connecticut. This closeness comes with many benefits, but also some annoying headaches. It’s really cool that I can get on a train or into my car and be in New York or Boston in short order, preferably the train into New York City and driving into Boston. However because of this closeness there really is not much to do in Connecticut itself, the late night scene is pretty dead everywhere but New Haven because you can just go to Boston or New York and there is always going to be a better anything there because why the hell would you build a world class anything when you can just put one in a major city. All we really have are Foxwoods and Mohegan sun Casinos and that’s really because they could not put them in a major city because they had a set place where they needed to be based on their tribal lands. Being in between these two major sports markets the rivalries and divided loyalties abound, I myself am a New York Yankees/New England Patriots fan and you will find many a Boston Red Sox and New York Giants fan. In fact there used to be a bar that I went to that was a New York Jets/Boston Red Sox bar, they had a fathead of Mark Sanchez right next to one of David Ortiz, quite frankly the bar sucked and it was only open for maybe two years at most but the point remains. Individual bars generally predominately cater to one side or the other, but they have to accept everybody, except Mets fans because nobody cares about the Mets even people who like the Mets don’t care, any bar wil have at least one item dedicated to teh other side of the rivalry. This however has inhibited Connecticut from having/maintaining a Pro Sports team, in the entire state of Connecticut we have the Connecticut Sun a WNBA team that plays in the Mohegan sun casino and several minor league baseball and hockey teams; that’s it, in a State of 3.5 million we have nothing and it’s because you really could not fit anything here, we used to have the NHL franchise the Hartford Whalers and the owner decided to move the team because our governor wanted to get the Patriots here and because the franchise could get a TV deal if they moved to North Carolina, which they did. You could not have another one in Connecticut as we already have three team specific networks in most of the state. The idea of any sports team moving here now is insane as there would be three teams at least in every league, that they would need to compete with and plus they would block any attempt to move a team here.
I know what some of you are probably thinking, who live somewhere like the Dakotas or something, I mean come on I’m crying about not having a Pro sports franchise? It must be nice to be able to go to either of these places and have world class everything and it certainly is, however the way Connecticut is viewed by these places would likely irk you as well. When you talk to people outside of the area they generally assume everybody in New England speaks with that no R vocabulary that is often referred to as a New England/Boston accent when nobody outside of Boston and really only parts of Boston speaks like that, In fact in Connecticut we are identified as having the least accent of anybody. The other part is that we tend to get lumped in with New York City and Boston and while I know that does not make any sense it still happens. A common thing is for national media types to associate everything New England with Boston or vice a versa and the Boston media does this too, anything important in New England has to happen in Boston or it’s not important, UConn is by far the dominant College athletic program in New England in almost every facet but Boston media is still talking about Boston College from the Doug Flutie era. New Yorkers view of it is different because Fairfield County in Connecticut is considers part of the tri state metropolitan area and pretty much everyone who lives there is a New Yorkers. As a result New Yorkers generally think of Fairfield county as Connecticut and so if you ever speak to a New Yorker about anything that does not have to do with that area they have no idea what you are talking about. It seems odd and I have a feeling that non-nutmegers will be confused by this but it’s basically two completely different places because Fairfield County is entirely New York focused. Almost anyone from NYC who refers to Connectiut is referring to the rich suburbs of Fairfield county, seriously this is where all the rich and famous people in Connecticut live, Mark Teixeira, 50 cent, etc, they all live in Fairfield county. This seems trivial but I remember going to a Brooklyn bar called The Way Station and a friend and I had a conversation with a random stranger, who happened to be a fellow true nutmeger about how annoying it is that New Yorkers don’t think Connecticut exists after New Haven
I know what some of you are probably thinking, who live somewhere like the Dakotas or something, I mean come on I’m crying about not having a Pro sports franchise? It must be nice to be able to go to either of these places and have world class everything and it certainly is, however the way Connecticut is viewed by these places would likely irk you as well. When you talk to people outside of the area they generally assume everybody in New England speaks with that no R vocabulary that is often referred to as a New England/Boston accent when nobody outside of Boston and really only parts of Boston speaks like that, In fact in Connecticut we are identified as having the least accent of anybody. The other part is that we tend to get lumped in with New York City and Boston and while I know that does not make any sense it still happens. A common thing is for national media types to associate everything New England with Boston or vice a versa and the Boston media does this too, anything important in New England has to happen in Boston or it’s not important, UConn is by far the dominant College athletic program in New England in almost every facet but Boston media is still talking about Boston College from the Doug Flutie era. New Yorkers view of it is different because Fairfield County in Connecticut is considers part of the tri state metropolitan area and pretty much everyone who lives there is a New Yorkers. As a result New Yorkers generally think of Fairfield county as Connecticut and so if you ever speak to a New Yorker about anything that does not have to do with that area they have no idea what you are talking about. It seems odd and I have a feeling that non-nutmegers will be confused by this but it’s basically two completely different places because Fairfield County is entirely New York focused. Almost anyone from NYC who refers to Connectiut is referring to the rich suburbs of Fairfield county, seriously this is where all the rich and famous people in Connecticut live, Mark Teixeira, 50 cent, etc, they all live in Fairfield county. This seems trivial but I remember going to a Brooklyn bar called The Way Station and a friend and I had a conversation with a random stranger, who happened to be a fellow true nutmeger about how annoying it is that New Yorkers don’t think Connecticut exists after New Haven
In the end though I very much enjoy where I live, I find it very amusing to ask people in New York where the closest Package store is and be referred to Fed EX or head up to Boston to see a concert a few days after taking the Yankee clipper train directly to Yankee stadium. We are New Englanders through and through but that doesn’t mean we are Bostonians or New Yorkers, we are Nutmegers and we will still wear our Whalers gear on a Packie run before we do whatever the hell we do here.
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