Sheffield is better known than I thought!

[viney40 10]

I was raised in Sheffield and new very little of anywhere else until my early twenties, when I moved to Kent. I didn't presume that anyone would know anything about where I came from, but was amazed when almost everyone that I met down there had a personal story about Sheffield (and there were many over that five year period). Many people could even rattle of street names! I have had the same experience down in Cornwall.

 

Sheff's not a bad old place you know.

[teddie 10]

Your right, Sheffs great i love it, wish I could get back more.

[tab1 10]

Yes, it did make a name for itself during the Miners strike. I was talking to a Londoner who thought Sheffield was somewhere in Wales, because he had seen news of the miners dispute on Telly and to his knowledge coal was only mined in Wales. So, no, it seems many southerners have little knowledge of Sheffield other than a northern City somewhere near Leeds or Wales even:roll:......They're just not bothered what exists north of Watford.

[natjack 10]

Good old aftab! There's always one, int there? I lived in London half the time as a kid and people seemed to know about Sheffield and what it stood for. Although like on QI the other night, the first thing they said was Knives and forks, or steel.

 

Now it's snooker and sport stadiums, but Sheffield is quite well known in the south and worldwide. A lot better than most northern people know places in the south. But that could be because there are hardly any big cities down there, other than London.

 

I like Sheffield, but I don't like it as much as I did even 10 years ago.

[chimay 10]

Your right, Sheffs great i love it, wish I could get back more.

 

Me too.

 

Sometimes living dahn sarf doing missionary work spreading the word of hendos, real fish cakes, bread cakes, copelands bakeries etc is a lonely job. Thank goodness I can connect to my roots through SF.

[pattricia 575]

I believe the film The Full Monty put Sheffield on the map.

[tab1 10]

Good old aftab! There's always one, int there? I lived in London half the time as a kid and people seemed to know about Sheffield and what it stood for. Although like on QI the other night, the first thing they said was Knives and forks, or steel.

 

Now it's snooker and sport stadiums, but Sheffield is quite well known in the south and worldwide. A lot better than most northern people know places in the south. But that could be because there are hardly any big cities down there, other than London.

 

I like Sheffield, but I don't like it as much as I did even 10 years ago.

 

Would you say then that anyone associating knives and forks, or steel with Sheffield actually knows much about Sheffield today? Or even associating this city with The Full Monty, which incidentally portrayed Sheffield in worst light possible, so nothing to be proud of there.

 

The attitude of Southerners is one of indifference and has little regard for how you or I feel about our home City. Hearing of a place as a place name and knowing it are two different things and not many down there know it. Some of them are even today astonished that anything like Meadow Hall exists here.

 

I still love Sheffield and feel it's better now than has been since the steel factory closures of the seventies, but that doesn't make any difference to the perception of the Joe Southerner.

[viney40 10]

Your right, Sheffs great i love it, wish I could get back more.

 

I used to come home to Sheff' at least once a month.

 

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

[callippo 10]

once you get outside Britain, and especially Europe, hardly anybody has heard of it, but that kind of changes according to the flow of events, or fashion.

 

when the Full Monty and Sean Bean was/were 'hot', that certainly put the place on the map. I'll never forget when I told a couple of Japanese girls I was from Sheffield, at a time when the movie had just been a big hit in Japan but I had not seen it yet. They collapsed in a fit of giggles, expecting me to do a striptease right there I think.

 

the film was a big success at the time, but the industry depends on novelty and now hardly anybody remembers the Full Monty, and even fewer associate it with the city where it was set. When memories of it were fresh, the name Sheffield would have got recognition. Now, fifteen years later, almost everyone's forgotten about where the the film was supposed to be. If they remember it at all, all they remember about it now is it being a movie about a bunch of blokes, who could have been from anywhere, taking their kit off.

 

when one or especially both of the soccer teams is in the Premiership, then name recognition goes up a lot. But now a 10 year old kid in somewhere like Korea that lives and breathes Manchester United, and has heard of Bolton, Fulham, Portsmouth, Hull and now Burnley, will probably not have heard of Sheffield.

 

really big, older soccer fans may have heard of Sheffield Wednesday, as the name is so odd and memorable, but if you're in a country where soccer is not especially popular then even that tenuous possibly of it getting recognised goes out the window.

 

it doesn't help that all the place names in the United States and Australia, etc, towns also called Sheffield, are so small. Most Bostonians in Massachussetts probably have dimly registered at one point or another that their city is named after a small market town in Lincolnshire, ditto Alabamans that live in their largest city, Birmingham, might see that place jump off the map of the UK if they ever look at one.

 

the old association of Sheffield with steel and knives and forks, which once upon a time really did put it into people's minds even right across the world, has now pretty much gone.

 

I met a Canadian guy a few days ago, of Romanian origin, moved there in 1992, a highly trained aeronautical engineer on vacation, who somebody might expect to have heard of the UK's '4th largest city'. But he hadn't. He'd never heard of it. Even educated English speaking people, well read and with enquiring minds, have no reason at all to have it come up on their radar their whole lives long. And who can blame them. To put it bluntly, they have other things to think about.

 

Even people that have visited Britain on holiday might not even have heard of it as there are so few reasons for foreign visitors to go. Foreign visitors will recognise far smaller places like Stratford on Avon, York, Bath, etc, much more.

[Cyclone 10]

The attitude of Southerners is one of indifference and has little regard for how you or I feel about our home City.

 

What do you know about Exeter, do you care how the locals feel about it?

 

A basic grasp of geography and the knowledge that a place exists is about all you can expect from someone unless they have reason to know more.

[Cyclone 10]

I met a Canadian guy a few days ago, of Romanian origin, moved there in 1992, a highly trained aeronautical engineer on vacation, who somebody might expect to have heard of the UK's '4th largest city'. But he hadn't. He'd never heard of it.

 

Why might you expect that, can you name four Canadian cities? I can only name two and some ski resorts.

How about France, I might manage four cities there... Paris, Lyon, Grenoble (skiing airport), Calais, Cherbourg. Pretty poor I suppose, two of them I know because the ferry crossing goes there, one because I've flown their recently on the way to the alps. I couldn't tell you what the fourth largest city is in France though.

[tab1 10]

What do you know about Exeter, do you care how the locals feel about it?

 

A basic grasp of geography and the knowledge that a place exists is about all you can expect from someone unless they have reason to know more.

Absolutely my point, there is nothing that important about Sheffield that people from other places would know about it, hence my comment you quoted "and has little regard for how you or I feel about our home City"

We love it as home but you must admit it's not all that when you start comparing with many other places. Plus mine was a reply to Natjack's assertion "There's always one, int there?" that I was somehow pulling Sheffield down.

Edited December 27, 2009 by tab1