Asklemmy

43881 readers

1484 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What are some of the most boring capitals to the states of America? (kbin.melroy.org)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My pick is Des Moines, currently living here. Like, there's almost nothing worthwhile to see and there are pathetically few skyscrapers. I live in an area where I can get a good picture view of all of the buildings within sight.

And all I can feel is "...there should be more". The buildings themselves aren't even that interesting. Des Moines tries to make itself feel big and comparative to other cities, but it just cannot do that.

My other pick is Montpelier in VT, where I have also lived. Everything feels too damn clustered. the neighborhoods are on steep ass hills with awkward traffic markings. There's almost zero reason to really do anything there and it can easily be missed. Like, you can drive from Barre and through Montpelier before you know you're on the highway out of Montpelier.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There's honestly a lot of lame state capitals in the US, Europeans might be surprised. In Europe the national capital of each country is typically the biggest and most cosmopolitan city. This is not the case when it comes to state capitals in the US. Several of the most boring ones (Montpelier, Augusta, Pierre) have already been mentioned, so I'll just add a few others.

Indubitably Boring

Frankfort, Kentucky
Jefferson City, Missouri
Helena, Montana
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Slightly Less Boring (honorable mentions)

Carson City, Nevada
Jackson, Mississippi
Topeka, Kansas
Olympia, Washington
Lansing, Michigan
Salem, Oregon
Trenton, New Jersey
Montgomery, Alabama
Springfield, Illinois
Tallahassee, Florida
Concord, New Hampshire

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

Many US states got their capital chosen because when the territory became a state it happened to be the closest to the centre of population of the state. Jefferson City, MO is a good example of this. The three major population centres at the time were St. Louis, Kansas City and (to a much lesser extent) Joplin. So Jefferson City was right by the centre of population.

Meanwhile, most European capitals (including at the provincial level - think German states or French regions) came to their state by being the capitals and cultural centres of feudal states, which gives them more depth.

I don't mean any offense to Iowa (this time), but there's not a huge amount going on there. It exists almost exclusively as an administrative division.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Olympia at least had a good punk/indie/riot-grrrl scene in the 90s, and made its mark on music history that way

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah most of the ones in the second list at least had a couple of notable things about them that kept them off the first list. I was hoping people with local experience would chime in if they had reason to dispute my rankings; I'm sure there's some cool aspects of these cities that I might not be aware of.

Carson City is nearby Lake Tahoe which is pretty awesome. Lansing is actually a decent sized city and has Michigan State University. Topeka is reasonably close to KC, and presumably has some other notable features 😅

Montgomery and Jackson are pretty dire but there's not really any better cities/options in Alabama or Mississippi, so I gave them an A for effort.