I'm not sure how useful my insights on East Coast vs. West Coast people would be. Clearly my experiences on both sides of the country have been very different, but for reasons that have nothing to do with geography: public high school vs. Ivy League college, suburban vs. urban, and, to give Haiwen his due, mid- to high-prole vs. bourgeoise are much more meaningful pairings that only incidentally happen to coincide with West Coast and East Coast. In general, the people I've met on the East Coast tend to be less immediately outgoing than the people I knew back home, and in some ways more loyal once I get to know them...but again, this could be for any number of reasons.

Here's an example of how tough it can be to draw comparisons. A good measure of the friendliness of a place, obviously, is how you feel when you start a new job. Well, I've started two jobs in my life: once, at the Bay Guardian in San Francisco, and now, at my current employer. The feel of these jobs was very different, of course, and in some ways the atmosphere at the Bay Guardian was more "friendly"...but that probably has more to do with the difference between a high-tech hedge fund in Times Square and a progressive (and, as we've seen, suspiciously gay) newspaper in the Mission District, and also with the fact that I started at the Bay Guardian with a bunch of other interns my age, while I started in New York as my group's first new hire in a while.

So anyway, for lack of any perfectly parallel situations, I'm free to speculate irresponsibly (as usual). I think you might be right, Noah, that some people on the West Coast think of being "nice" as being sympathetic and polite, rather than as taking any actual steps to help someone, while some people on the East Coast are the other way around. I don't know if this means that West Coasters think in terms of words and East Coasters in terms of deeds, but it isn't a bad theory.

That said, I can't vouch either way for the people in Eugene, Oregon.