What State is the Friendliest?
 

In my experience I have to go with Kentucky and Tennessee and Hawaii. And I'll have to admit that even though they're obsessed with their cars and cell phones...Californians are great, too.

Texans are pretty friendly....except when they are on the freeways.

I have lived in a few different states, and have been blessed to visit a great many more than that, I think that Minnesotans are among the nicest people I have been around. I lived away for a decade, and am happy to be back 'home' for almost five years now.

Come on over for a visit... don't forget to try our Wild Rice Soup, hee.
:)

The red ones.

Detroit.

I agree with jorr - Texas. Except, yes, those freeways! Why are such otherwise polite people such rude drivers??

Hawaii comes in a close second.

I agree with ahhnold, except for Michigan.

And I think that not entirely, but almost across the continent, the countryside is friendlier than the cities or the suburbs are within that same state or region- almost anywhere.

Kansas City is a very, very friendly city if you are a baseball fan- and so is Cleveland.

My favorite will always be NYC with San Fran coming in a close second.

And those would be cities, not states ;)

The state of inebriation!!

No, the BLUE ones.

There IS NO friendliest state. States are only geographic areas. People are the same all over. I don't recall if it was Mark Twain or Will Rogers who told the story about the guy sitting on his front porch and two different people stop to ask what the people in that town are like.

In both cases, the old man asks what the people were like in the visitors' home town. One tells how great they were, the other complains how bad they were.

In both cases the old man replies that the people in his town are just like that too.

Do you lie awake concerned about this?

I thought it was Texas until I went to Alaska in June.

Wrong rb, people are not the same all over.

There are friendly people in every state, but I have encountered much more courtesy and neighborly acts in Iowa than my native and current state of Massachusetts.

Haven't been to every state yet, but of the ones I have been to, Texas gets my vote. The folks in Hawaii do run a very close second, though.

"Texans are pretty friendly....except when they are on the freeways."

I see the perfect example when I look into the mirror. Not rear view mirror, but regular one.

And I'm not always friendly on this board either. ;)

I've lived in several states in the Eastern half of the US and visited most of the 50. Tiff is right, Minnesotans are pretty nice. But Ahhnold has it pegged - Iowa.

My DH and I always describe the difference with the "car in the ditch" theory, which goes like this:

If you put your car in the ditch at 4 a.m. during a Minnesota blizzard, the farmer will come with his tractor and pull you out - no problem.

If you put your car in the ditch at 4 a.m. during an Iowa blizzard, the farmer will come with his tractor and pull you out.

Then he'll invite you into his home where his wife will cook you breakfast, he'll introduce you to his daughter and urge you to stay for lunch.


Ahhnold knows that I am NOT exagerrating.

I had to stop at a gas station in DEs Moines for directions. The guy showed me on the map where to go,opened the door for me and waved goodbye as I drove away.

No, not all people are the same.

Very few people in Massachusetts will go out of the way to help you.

And Des Moines is considering relatively "unfriendly" by most Iowans.

City people. Hrumpph.

Totally disagree with rb, people are not all the same everywhere, especially in their social constraints and what they consider friendliness.

And it isn't anything I or tracys2cents lie awake over, just another Fodor's query. And I myself, like it when people who live locally share themselves, even with a few words. Or go out of their way to help or guide me. And like to hear about places where people feel that this is the norm. I love this kind of question because it helps me find another Kansas City.

Friendliness is subjective.

I take it to mean that people will talk to me and interact personally to me on what I would judge is a pleasant and mannerly (even joyful) scale. It doesn't mean I LIKE that place, or feel that I mesh with the location at all over others.

Blue states' populations love to love people in the abstract, IMHO. They don't for the most part, person to person, want to graduate to the personal, in your face, level.

Red states' folks tend to different modes, but almost all have a real tendency to "see" you there. And smile or talk to YOU. That's what I consider friendliness. Mississippi was outstanding, Texas is as well.

In Kansas City I have had two different families in the ball park ask us home to dinner later that day. REALLY! It will never happen at Yankee Stadium. I tried to talk to a girl there and she acted like we were stalkers.

I just did think of a possible exception. Some of the SW states can be very stand-offish- or at least they were to us after the "scale" of what we experienced in the south.

Hawaii sounds excellent. I wish I knew.

JJ5 is right. In my younger years growing up in Boston, I could try to strike up a conversation with any girl from the most drop dead gorgeous right up to the girl with a fat ass, and they all ignore you as if they are a super model(yes, even the fat one).

When I was in college, somewhere in the midwest, any girl would at least, shall we say, give you the time of day for lack of a better term.

Needless to say I married a girl from the midwest.