Culture
Culturally, the area is tied heavily to Chicago, and most residents of Northern Illinois tend to root for Chicago teams, lean towards the Chicago media market, and visit the Chicago Loop often. In college football, most fans in Northern Illinois root for the NIU Huskies. Other teams present are the Illinois Fighting Illini, Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Iowa Hawkeyes. In Central and Southern Illinois, residents are tied primarily to St. Louis. Additionally, regional dialects in Northern Illinois vary from those in other parts of Illinois. Surprisingly, different areas in Northern Illinois have their own independent cultures. Typically, areas west of Interstate 39 have more ties to Iowa and the Quad Cities area, as that is roughly the location of the westernmost terminus of the Chicago media area. Even dialects within Northern Illinois are different, emphasizing the above. Depending on location and ethnicity, a resident of the Chicago Metropolitan Area may have the stereotypical Chicago dialect, whereas those in more affluent areas, such as DuPage County, may have a more crisp, "sophisticated" manner of speaking. Those west of Chicago have more stereotypical Midwestern dialects, and might not be able to be distinguished from people in Iowa or Nebraska.
Depending on how close to a specific metropolitan area a county is, their culture and media reflect that of the metro area. There are exceptions, however. McHenry County may sometimes be considered Chicago-influenced, and, at times, Rockford-influenced. Areas such as the Ottawa-Streator Micropolitan Statistical Area have a comfortable mix of culture from the Chicago area, Quad Cities area, and Peoria, perhaps being due to its location in the center of the region.
Read more about this topic: Northern Illinois
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life—its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness—conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“When women finally get liberated, they’ll do the same that men do—dog eat dog— that’s what our culture is.... Not cooperation but assassination. Women will cooperate until they attain certain goals. Then one will begin to destroy the other.”
—Alice Neel (1900–1984)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)