11 Things Pennsylvanians Do That Would Horrify the Rest of America

Pennsylvania is a state of magnificent, stubborn, productive contradictions — the birthplace of American democracy sitting alongside one of the most politically divided electorates in the country, a state with two world-class cities anchoring either end and an enormous, deeply rural, deeply traditional middle that regards both cities with the patient suspicion of people who have been here longer and intend to stay longer and have seen trends come and go without being particularly moved by any of them. The Keystone State held the country together at its founding, held it together again at Gettysburg, and has been holding things together with varying degrees of success and complaint ever since. Pennsylvania does not need to be understood. It needs to be driven through slowly, eaten in carefully, and approached with the humility of someone entering a place that was important before you got here and will be important after you leave.

1. Conduct the Philadelphia versus Pittsburgh divide with the seriousness of a constitutional disagreement

Pennsylvania’s two major cities are 305 miles apart and share a state the way two strong personalities share a waiting room — aware of each other, occasionally acknowledging each other, and fundamentally convinced that their city is the real Pennsylvania and the other one is a fine place that misunderstands what Pennsylvania actually is. Philadelphians think Pittsburgh is a small town with good bridges. Pittsburghers think Philadelphia is New York’s suburbs with an attitude problem. Both cities are wrong about the other in specific, entertaining ways. The rest of the state — the enormous, rural, deeply itself middle — watches both cities with the weary tolerance of people who have heard this argument before and have crops to tend.

2. Put french fries inside their sandwiches and defend this as a culinary innovation

The Pittsburgh sandwich — specifically the Primanti Brothers sandwich, invented in the Strip District in the 1930s — contains the meat of your choice, provolone cheese, coleslaw, tomato, and french fries, all between two thick slices of Italian bread, constructed as a complete meal that requires no plate, no fork, and no side dishes because the side dishes are already inside. This is not a novelty sandwich in Pittsburgh. It is a standard. Pittsburghers order it with the casual ease of people for whom fries in the sandwich is simply how sandwiches work, and the first time an outsider encounters it they either convert immediately or begin asking polite questions that reveal they are not going to convert.

3. Eat a cheesesteak and immediately reveal whether they know what they’re doing

The Philadelphia cheesesteak — thinly shaved ribeye, cooked on a flat top, served on an Amoroso roll — is one of the most famous regional foods in America and one of the most frequently gotten wrong outside of Philadelphia. The cheese options at Pat’s and Geno’s — the rival South Philly institutions — are Cheez Whiz, American, or provolone, and a Philadelphian ordering without hesitation and moving quickly through the line is doing it correctly. Asking clarifying questions, requesting modifications, or treating the transaction as a conversation rather than an order will be noted. The line behind you is long. Philadelphia does not have time for this.

4. Follow Punxsutawney Phil with a sincerity that has outlasted every reasonable explanation

Groundhog Day on February 2nd in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania — where a groundhog named Phil is extracted from a heated burrow and consulted about the meteorological future — is treated by Pennsylvania with an affection that goes far beyond ironic appreciation. Thousands of people travel to a small town in western Pennsylvania in February, at four in the morning, in temperatures that could justify staying home, to watch a groundhog be held up. Pennsylvanians do not find this embarrassing. They find it charming, specifically theirs, and worth defending against people who think it’s silly — which it is, and also it is Pennsylvania’s, and those are not in conflict.

5. Treat Pennsylvania Dutch country with a reverence that borders on the protective

Lancaster County’s Amish and Mennonite communities — the Plain People, living without electricity and cars and many modern conveniences, farming with horses, building with hand tools, maintaining a centuries-old way of life in the middle of contemporary America — are regarded by Pennsylvanians with a complicated mix of genuine respect, protective instinct, and tourist acknowledgment that tries hard not to be exploitative and sometimes succeeds. The farmers markets, the quilts, the hand-built furniture, the roadside stands selling fresh produce — these are real commerce conducted by real people, not a living museum, and Pennsylvanians who live near Lancaster County understand the distinction and try to honor it.

6. Use “youse” or “yinz” as a second person plural and consider it grammatically complete

Pennsylvania’s regional dialects are among the most distinctive in the country. Philadelphia gives you “youse” — a second person plural that serves the function that “y’all” serves in the South and that standard English doesn’t actually have a word for. Pittsburgh gives you “yinz” — derived from “you ones,” serving the same function with a different phonetic history — which has become so identified with Pittsburgh identity that Pittsburghers are called Yinzers as a demonym of genuine affection. These are not grammatical errors. They are solutions to a real gap in the English language, arrived at independently by two cities in the same state.

7. Take high school football with a Pennsylvania seriousness that requires its own documentary

Pennsylvania high school football is not merely a sport. It is a community institution of such standing that it has produced documentaries, books, and a sustained national attention that reflects the specific intensity with which Pennsylvania takes Friday night football. The Steelworker communities of western Pennsylvania, the coal country towns of the northeast, the farming communities of the central counties — all of them have produced football traditions of generations-deep seriousness that show up in the filled bleachers, the community investment in programs, and the pipeline of Pennsylvania-bred players who appear in the NFL with a frequency that suggests something specific about how the game is taught here.

8. Celebrate Mummers on New Year’s Day with an enthusiasm that confuses everyone outside Philadelphia

The Mummers Parade — a Philadelphia tradition dating to the 17th century, featuring elaborately costumed performers in sequins and feathers and constructed wings that can span twenty feet, organized into clubs that have been competing against each other for generations, parading up Broad Street on New Year’s Day — is one of the oldest folk festivals in America and one of the least understood outside the city. Philadelphians follow specific clubs, know the scoring categories, have opinions about this year’s performances, and talk about Mummers in January the way other cities talk about their bowl games. The rest of America watches clips and asks questions that Philadelphians find both tedious and understandable.

9. Drive on roads so bad that Pennsylvanians have made peace with the condition as permanent

Pennsylvania’s roads — specifically its rural roads and secondary highways — are among the most consistently criticized in the country, a consequence of harsh freeze-thaw cycles, aging infrastructure, and funding challenges that have accumulated over decades into a pothole situation of genuine civic character. Pennsylvanians navigate specific potholes on their daily commutes with the intimate familiarity of obstacles they have accepted as features. “You get used to it” is said about Pennsylvania roads the way it’s said about other inescapable facts of life, with the resigned wisdom of people who have filed the complaint and received no meaningful response.

10. Make scrapple and eat it without requiring anyone else to understand

Scrapple — a Pennsylvania Dutch specialty made from pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and spices, formed into a loaf, sliced, and pan-fried until the outside is crispy and the inside is soft — is one of the great nose-to-tail foods of American cooking, developed by German immigrants who wasted nothing, and it is eaten by Pennsylvanians at breakfast with the comfortable familiarity of a food so thoroughly integrated into regional life that its ingredients are not something most people think about. Explaining scrapple to people who haven’t had it requires navigating around the word “scraps,” which is doing the dish no favors. The taste is the argument. The taste is sufficient.

11. Root for Philadelphia sports with a passion so intense it has become a national cautionary tale

Philadelphia sports fans are the most famous fans in America, which is not entirely a compliment — the snowball incident, the booing of Santa Claus, the E-A-G-L-E-S chant conducted at volumes that seem physically impossible, the Eagle Super Bowl victory that produced celebrations of such intensity that a city ate a horse poop. These are not myths. They are documented events, and Philadelphia fans carry them with the complicated pride of people whose passion has occasionally expressed itself in ways they regret and also refuse to entirely apologize for. The passion is real. The Eagles are real. What happens when they meet is real in a way that makes other cities’ sports cultures look like they’re playing at it.

Pennsylvania is not going to resolve its contradictions for your convenience — the founding documents and the political divisions, the cheesesteaks and the scrapple, the Mummers and the Amish, the youse and the yinz, the cities and the enormous middle that watches both cities with permanent patient suspicion. It is going to keep being exactly this complicated and this specific and this old, because Pennsylvania has been here since before the country existed and has accumulated the depth and the contradiction and the character that comes from having been something for a very long time. The covered bridges are real. The fall foliage along the Susquehanna is real. The moment you understand why a Primanti’s sandwich has fries in it is real and it comes suddenly, like most of the best Pennsylvania realizations, without warning and with the specific satisfaction of something that was always going to be true.