I’m from Wisconsin, family from Michigan as well and traveled there a lot. Went to college in Iowa and dated girls in college who all were from Illinois. Now i live in Minnesota.
One thing i find odd is that Minnesotans don’t do a lot of the Midwest stuff. No midwest goodbyes, no chatting up strangers as if they were your BFF, doing all the obligation events we never want to do but say “o yah we should get together”, etc. The whole Minnesota Nice, aka being passive aggressive, isn’t really that Midwest. Of all the Midwest I’ve lived in, the highest ranking one is definitely the least Midwest in my eyes.
Good rule of thumb: if your state fought for the Confederacy you are not part of the Midwest.
Looking at you Tennessee and Arkansas.
If you’re a bloody traitor to your country, you aren’t Midwest.
Kinda? Chicago just doesn’t feel very “Midwestern” to me, but I did grow up in Sioux Falls, which is definitely the Midwest.
Chicago is on the eastern edge of what I’d consider the Midwest, but it’s not really any further east than Milwaukee, which is definitely Midwestern. I’m not sure if the dissonance is just due to Chicago being a World City, if that cosmopolitan vibe is interfering with a Midwestern baseline or vice-versa.
Michigan is soundly Midwestern lol you definitely cannot call Ohio and Michigan part of the East Coast, and both of those are East of Chicago. Chicago is in the heart of the Midwest.
Not East Coast but certainly Rust Belt or Great Lakes region. Nothing in Eastern Time is in the Midwest. It’s the East. That’s why they called it “Eastern Time”.
Why would the name of the time zone matter? Also the upper peninsula of Michigan extends west of Chicago, can half the state be Midwestern?
Sure, but just the UP, everyone knows it should have been Wisconsin from the beginning anyway. /s
By that logic, 87% of Indiana is not in the Midwest.
I’ll go further and assert that none of Indiana is in the Midwest.
We’ll have to disagree here. Part of Michigan is in CST, and living here my entire life everyone knows we’re Midwestern. Weird way for a Chicagoan to try to distance themselves from us when we’re next door neighbors.