History UsefulNotes / Michigan

*** University of Michigan: Even with several academic/sex scandals in recent years, U of M is still one of the most highly-regarded public universities out there. Like other Big Ten schools, they have made significant contributions to science and research, and receives ''tons'' of grants from government agencies. Some of their most notable graduates alone include Creator/JamesEarlJones, Creator/Madonna (dropped out), and UsefulNotes/TomBrady. Of course, what most of America ''really'' knows them for is the game against [InsistentTerminology The] Ohio State Buckeyes. After all, who wouldn't want to watch two highly-prestigious public institutions with two of the most prolific football programs ever duke it out in the final Saturday of November? In Michigan's case, this is the same football team with the most wins and the largest stadium in America, one that also pioneered the two-platoon scheme that is virtually omnipresent in football, so they have the distinction of being one of the few schools who put a similar focus on their athletics as well as their academics.

*** University of Michigan: Even with several academic/sex scandals in recent years, U of M is still one of the most highly-regarded public universities out there. Like other Big Ten schools, they have made significant contributions to science and research, and receives ''tons'' of grants from government agencies. Some of their most notable graduates alone include Creator/JamesEarlJones, Music/Madonna (dropped out), and UsefulNotes/TomBrady. Of course, what most of America ''really'' knows them for is the game against [InsistentTerminology The] Ohio State Buckeyes. After all, who wouldn't want to watch two highly-prestigious public institutions with two of the most prolific football programs ever duke it out in the final Saturday of November? In Michigan's case, this is the same football team with the most wins and the largest stadium in America, one that also pioneered the two-platoon scheme that is virtually omnipresent in football, so they have the distinction of being one of the few schools who put a similar focus on their athletics as well as their academics.

** Worthy of note are Southeast Michigan's major institutions of higher education other than the University of Michigan:

* The two largest Universities in the state are the Univserity of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University (in East Lansing, which is immediately [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin east of Lansing]]). The two Universities are leading National Research Institutions and they share an intense, in-state rivalry with each other in sports thanks to them both being members of the [[UsefulNotes/CPowerFiveConferences Big Ten]]--and everything else.[[note]]Academically, consensus holds that MSU's best programs are better than their equivalents at Michigan, but that Michigan is better on average--if only because Michigan is often the "safety school" for East Coasters who ''just'' missed the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague. MSU, on the other hand--and in particular its best programs--is a highly-desired target school for less well-off kids from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Additionally, people in the know note the remarkable number of University of Chicago grads who go on to become MSU profs and and the number of MSU grads who go on to study at [=UChicago=]; they tend think of MSU as a sort of public-university outpost of Chicago. MSU is almost universally agreed, however to have a '''much''' better men's basketball program thanks to their coach Tom Izzo, widely agreed to be one of the best college basketball coaches in the nation, and somewhat infamous for his willingness to make fun of himself[[/note]] How [[FriendlyEnemy friendly]] this rivalry gets depends on who you ask; since many Michiganders have relatives who went to both, and many went to both themselves (it's actually surprisingly common for doctors and lawyers from Michigan to have attended MSU for undergrad and then Michigan for med school/law school) there's often a desire to keep the peace, but others regard the other school as The Enemy (or at U of M, The Second Enemy, The First Enemy being Ohio State), with whom there is no reconciliation. If Michigan State is playing against Ohio State, U of M will be angry no matter the result. U of M feels they're [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou the only school allowed to defeat Michigan State]], but they also don't want MSU to rob them of the opportunity to conquer the Buckeyes. That said, if Michigan's luck has been lousy enough to rule out a Wolverines-Buckeyes game, then most U of M fans will (grudgingly) root for the Michigan State Spartans. The rivalry against Ohio State stems all the way back to Michigan's birth as a state, during which the then-Michigan Territory declared war on Ohio over who the city of [[UsefulNotes/ToledoOhio Toledo]] belonged to. This border dispute awarded the Toledo Strip to Ohio and gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula as a ConsolationPrize. Some Michiganders remain bitter to this day about the whole debacle even though Wisconsin arguably was the state hurt the most by the "Toledo War" and in the long run Michigan actually made out quite well with the Upper Peninsula's abundant natural resources.[[note]]Not that Ohio has forgotten the grudge; every true Ohioan knows a certain ditty, to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare," that goes, ''We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan... 'cause we're from O-hi-o.'' Michiganders don't bother coming up with any cute songs, but instead typically respond with the far more succinct "Fuck Ohio."[[/note]]

*** Eastern Michigan University: Located in Ann Arbor's poorer, sadder twin Ypsilanti. Originally founded as a teachers' college, it currently acts as the University of Michigan's poorer, sadder twin (noticing a theme here?). It nevertheless still has an excellent College of Education, although it was surpassed by Michigan State sometime in TheFifties or '60s.

* The two largest Universities in the state are the Univserity of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University (in East Lansing, which is immediately [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin east of Lansing]]). The two Universities are leading National Research Institutions and they share an intense, in-state rivalry with each other in sports thanks to them both being members of the [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballPower5Conferences Big Ten]]--and everything else.[[note]]Academically, consensus holds that MSU's best programs are better than their equivalents at Michigan, but that Michigan is better on average--if only because Michigan is often the "safety school" for East Coasters who ''just'' missed the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague. MSU, on the other hand--and in particular its best programs--is a highly-desired target school for less well-off kids from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Additionally, people in the know note the remarkable number of University of Chicago grads who go on to become MSU profs and and the number of MSU grads who go on to study at [=UChicago=]; they tend think of MSU as a sort of public-university outpost of Chicago. MSU is almost universally agreed, however to have a '''much''' better men's basketball program thanks to their coach Tom Izzo, widely agreed to be one of the best college basketball coaches in the nation, and somewhat infamous for his willingness to make fun of himself[[/note]] How [[FriendlyEnemy friendly]] this rivalry gets depends on who you ask; since many Michiganders have relatives who went to both, and many went to both themselves (it's actually surprisingly common for doctors and lawyers from Michigan to have attended MSU for undergrad and then Michigan for med school/law school) there's often a desire to keep the peace, but others regard the other school as The Enemy (or at U of M, The Second Enemy, The First Enemy being Ohio State), with whom there is no reconciliation. If Michigan State is playing against Ohio State, U of M will be angry no matter the result. U of M feels they're [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou the only school allowed to defeat Michigan State]], but they also don't want MSU to rob them of the opportunity to conquer the Buckeyes. That said, if Michigan's luck has been lousy enough to rule out a Wolverines-Buckeyes game, then most U of M fans will (grudgingly) root for the Michigan State Spartans. The rivalry against Ohio State stems all the way back to Michigan's birth as a state, during which the then-Michigan Territory declared war on Ohio over who the city of [[UsefulNotes/ToledoOhio Toledo]] belonged to. This border dispute awarded the Toledo Strip to Ohio and gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula as a ConsolationPrize. Some Michiganders remain bitter to this day about the whole debacle even though Wisconsin arguably was the state hurt the most by the "Toledo War" and in the long run Michigan actually made out quite well with the Upper Peninsula's abundant natural resources.[[note]]Not that Ohio has forgotten the grudge; every true Ohioan knows a certain ditty, to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare," that goes, ''We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan... 'cause we're from O-hi-o.'' Michiganders don't bother coming up with any cute songs, but instead typically respond with the far more succinct "Fuck Ohio."[[/note]]

** Worthy of note are Southeast Michigan's major institutions of higher education other than the UsefulNotes/UniversityOfMichigan:

* The two largest Universities in the state are the UsefulNotes/UniversityOfMichigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University (in East Lansing, which is immediately [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin east of Lansing]]). The two Universities are leading National Research Institutions and they share an intense, in-state rivalry with each other in sports--and everything else.[[note]]Academically, consensus holds that MSU's best programs are better than their equivalents at Michigan, but that Michigan is better on average--if only because Michigan is often the "safety school" for East Coasters who ''just'' missed the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague. MSU, on the other hand--and in particular its best programs--is a highly-desired target school for less well-off kids from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Additionally, people in the know note the remarkable number of University of Chicago grads who go on to become MSU profs and and the number of MSU grads who go on to study at [=UChicago=]; they tend think of MSU as a sort of public-university outpost of Chicago. MSU is almost universally agreed, however to have a '''much''' better men's basketball program thanks to their coach Tom Izzo, widely agreed to be one of the best college basketball coaches in the nation, and somewhat infamous for his willingness to make fun of himself[[/note]] How [[FriendlyEnemy friendly]] this rivalry gets depends on who you ask; since many Michiganders have relatives who went to both, and many went to both themselves (it's actually surprisingly common for doctors and lawyers from Michigan to have attended MSU for undergrad and then Michigan for med school/law school) there's often a desire to keep the peace, but others regard the other school as The Enemy (or at U of M, The Second Enemy, The First Enemy being Ohio State), with whom there is no reconciliation. If Michigan State is playing against Ohio State, U of M will be angry no matter the result. U of M feels they're [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou the only school allowed to defeat Michigan State]], but they also don't want MSU to rob them of the opportunity to conquer the Buckeyes. That said, if Michigan's luck has been lousy enough to rule out a Wolverines-Buckeyes game, then most U of M fans will (grudgingly) root for the Michigan State Spartans. The rivalry against Ohio State stems all the way back to Michigan's birth as a state, during which the then-Michigan Territory declared war on Ohio over who the city of [[UsefulNotes/ToledoOhio Toledo]] belonged to. This border dispute awarded the Toledo Strip to Ohio and gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula as a ConsolationPrize. Some Michiganders remain bitter to this day about the whole debacle even though Wisconsin arguably was the state hurt the most by the "Toledo War" and in the long run Michigan actually made out quite well with the Upper Peninsula's abundant natural resources.[[note]]Not that Ohio has forgotten the grudge; every true Ohioan knows a certain ditty, to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare," that goes, ''We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan... 'cause we're from O-hi-o.'' Michiganders don't bother coming up with any cute songs, but instead typically respond with the far more succinct "Fuck Ohio."[[/note]]
* The state has four major professional sports teams, all centered in Detroit. They include the Detroit Tigers (UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}}), the Detroit Lions ([[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball Football]]), The Detroit Red Wings (UsefulNotes/IceHockey) and the Detroit Pistons (UsefulNotes/{{Basketball}}). Minor-league teams also abound in Michigan, particularly with baseball and ice hockey--particularly the latter, with one major development team (the Grand Rapids Griffins) and four top-tier/major junior hockey teams (in the [[NonindicativeName Ontario Hockey League]], the Saginaw Spirit and Flint Firebirds[[note]]formerly the Detroit Jr. Red Wings and Plymouth Whalers[[/note]]; in the United States Hockey League, the Muskegon Lumberjacks; and the USA Hockey National Team Development Program based in Plymouth[[note]]This team gathers under-18 players who show promise to become elite players to train for international amateur competitions; NHL players are often ineligible for these competitions either because of age or professionalism. Formerly located in Ann Arbor until the Whalers moved to Flint, and USA Hockey bought the larger arena in Plymouth, which is roughly halfway between Ann Arbor and the west side of Detroit[[/note]]). We should also note that of Michigan's 14 public universities, seven field Division I men's ice hockey teams—especially impressive considering that four of those seven are actually ''Division II'' schools.[[note]]The NCAA has not sponsored a Division II championship in hockey since 1999. Under NCAA rules, Division II schools are allowed to compete in Division I in sports that don't have a D-II national championship. The full rundown: Michigan, Michigan State, and Western Michigan are D-I members with hockey teams. Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, and Oakland are D-I members without hockey (Oakland also doesn't have a football team). Ferris State, Lake Superior State, Michigan Tech, and Northern Michigan are D-II members with D-I hockey teams. Wayne State, a D-II school, has had hockey teams for both men and women in the past, but dropped the sport for men in 2008 and women in 2011. (Incidentally, Wayne State is the only one of Michigan's public schools that has ever had a varsity women's team in the sport.) Saginaw Valley State, another D-II school, has never had a hockey team. Michigan has satellite campuses in Dearborn and Flint, but neither has a varsity ice hockey team (in fact, Flint has no varsity athletics at all).[[/note]] This love of hockey is probably one reason that some have joked that Michigan is the honourary [sic] eleventh province of UsefulNotes/{{Canada}}.

*** Oakland University: With a mailing address in the comfortable suburb of Rochester (which, for the record, is named after [[UsefulNotes/{{Rochester}} the one]] in UsefulNotes/NewYorkState), but situated on both sides of the border between two other suburbs, namely Rochester Hills (which surrounds, and is named after, Rochester itself) and Auburn Hills. Formerly Michigan State University - Oakland, it won its independence--to the relief of the MSU administration in East Lansing--in the 1960s, it currently acts as a commuter college, but it also has a strong nursing program and (as of 2011) has added a medical school.
*** Eastern Michigan University: Located in Ann Arbor's poorer, sadder twin Ypsilanti. Originally founded as a teachers' college, it currently acts as the University of Michigan's poorer, sadder twin (noticing a theme here?). It nevertheless still has an excellent College of Education, although it was surpassed by Michigan State sometime in the 1950s or '60s.

*** Oakland County, located just north of Wayne (somewhat north-northwest, actually), is divided in two parts. The southern part, nearer Detroit, consists primarily of well-educated and white collar suburbs, but of varying characters. For instance, Ferndale and Royal Oak, older-growth former streetcar suburbs built along Woodward Avenue just outside Detroit,[[note]]The boundary between Wayne and Oakland Counties is the famous Eight Mile Road, and the City of Detroit extends fully up to this line. For reference, Ferndale directly borders Detroit, the boundary between Ferndale and Royal Oak is roughly Ten Mile Road, and the northern boundary of Royal Oak meanders up and down between Thirteen and Fourteen Mile Roads.[[/note]] are today centers of quasi-urbanist hipster yuppiedom; Bloomfield Hills a few miles to the northwest is old-school country-club capitalism[[note]]UsefulNotes/MittRomney grew up in Bloomfield Hills to give you an idea[[/note]]; Troy to the north and Novi to the west are the other two Little Indias, populated heavily by Desi engineers, doctors, and researchers; and Madison Heights (sandwiched between Royal Oak and Troy) is an uncomfortable hybrid of old-school White working class and new arrival Chinese. Northern Oakland County is partly rural and partly exurban [=McMansion=] farms inhabited by people with enough money to live in Bloomfield Hills but not enough connections. Sandwiched between northern and southern Oakland County is Pontiac, a sort of mini-Detroit that serves as the county seat--but with a large Mexican population that has served as the city's saving grace since the 1990s. Surrounding Pontiac to the east and north is Auburn Hills, where Chrysler has been headquartered since the 1990s[[note]]moving from its longtime headquarters in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park[[/note]] and home to most of Oakland University (details on that are below) and Great Lakes Crossing Outlets, the largest indoor outlet mall in Michigan.

** Southeast Michigan also has the dubious honor of being the most racially-segregated metropolitan area in the United States. After the race riots of the late 1960s, wealthier white Detroiters fled to the suburbs, leaving Detroit predominantly poor and black. This has major effects on the region's dynamics; [[SeriousBusiness this is understandably a hot topic]].

An oft-forgotten fact about Michigan is that it is ''huge''--the largest state east of the Mississippi by total area thanks to all those lakes and the second-largest east of the Mississippi by land area (UsefulNotes/{{Georgia|USA}} is a little bigger). Its land area is approximately the same as that of England and Wales combined, and its total area is slightly greater than the [[UsefulNotes/BritainVersusTheUK island of Great Britain]] (in other words, Michigan has an entire UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}}'s worth of lake). The shape of the state--two peninsulas roughly perpendicular to each other--makes getting from the UP border with Wisconsin to Detroit quite a long trip. [[note]]The drive from Monroe (the south-easternmost major town in the LP) to UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} is actually shorter than the drive from Monroe to Ironwood (the north-westernmost major town in the UP)[[/note]]

Michigan is a northern American state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States (the eastern half of the Midwest). It is bordered to the south by the states of Indiana and UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, and by UsefulNotes/{{Wisconsin}} to the west. Michigan also shares a narrow maritime border with the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Canadian]] [[UsefulNotes/CanadianProvincesAndTerritories province]] of Ontario. The state borders four of the five Great Lakes (Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie) and for this reason is known as the Great Lake State. Michigan is the only state to lie entirely on a peninsula, or (as it happens) two: the sparsely-populated Upper Peninsula (UP) in the north and the more densely-populated Lower Peninsula (LP) in the south. The LP famously looks like a mitten; if you ask a Michigander where he/she is from, very often he/she will point to a spot on the back of the left or front of the right hand (the fingers are populated, but not as heavily), using the hand as a rough map of the state. [[UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} Metropolitan Detroit]] occupies the area around the first knuckle of the thumb, while Flint is about halfway up the thumb webbing on the palmar side. Saginaw and associated cities are up the thumb. Lansing is smack in the middle of the palm, and Grand Rapids occupies approximately the fourth (ring) finger's first knuckle (if using the back of the left) or a bit below the base of it (if using the inside of the right). Traverse City, the Leelanau Peninsula and associated "cottage country" all are located along the pinky finger, while Mackinac Island is just off the tip of the first (index) and adjacent to the middle finger.

* [[CardGames Euchre]]. Euchre is popular. If you don't know how to play, you're not from here. You don't have to be any good; you just have to know how to play.

** People also have a good if rather immature laugh at the expense of [[HaveAGayOldTime Gaylord]], which has precisely two claims to fame: being exactly halfway between the North Pole and Equator (at 45 degrees north) and being the smallest city in the US with a Roman Catholic cathedral. (And probably the smallest city in the US to have a TJ Maxx, but the jury's still out.)

*** Wayne County is the most populated, and is home to Detroit and its western, southern, and eastern inner-ring suburbs. Wayne County is primarily black, but has a large Arab minority. The main center of the Arab community is in Dearborn, the historic home and continuing headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, due to Henry Ford having hired many Middle Eastern immigrants to work for his company. (Largely because he was a flaming bigot with Nazi sympathies who refused to hire Blacks or Jews for his factories. Contemporary Dearborn Arabs find this funny given the state of American populism in the 21st century.) Also of note in Wayne County are Detroit's eastern suburbs--the Grosse Pointes, some of the richest ZIP Codes in the country; and the far less prosperous Harper Woods. Henry Ford's son Edsel (who for the record was not even a tenth as bigoted as his father) built his (large but very tasteful) mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. Garden City in west central Wayne County has become internationally known for being the site of the world's first official UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} store and the world's first Little Caesars Pizza restaurant, both of which, unfortunately, no longer exist.[[note]]the Kmart was a victim of an early 2017 string of store closures, while the Little Caesars moved in 2018 just a short distance down Cherry Hill Road to the Westland side of that road[[/note]] More recently, the communities of Plymouth and Canton have become centers for Indian immigration, being two of the four Little Indias of the metro area. The westernmost part of Wayne County starts to ''seem'' like it's about to get exurban/rural, but then runs directly into Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor area (for which see below). Meanwhile, to the south is Downriver, famously (in Southeast Michigan) home of the White working-class folk who fled Detroit after the 1960s but couldn't afford Macomb County--and who have made something of a sport of coming up with ever-larger food items to eat (for a solid while, Southgate was the home of the world's largest hamburger[[note]]the bar that serves it happens to be right next to another huge thing--one of the world's largest railroad grade crossings, where a single track runs diagonally right through an intersection of two major roads, east-west Northline Road and north-south Allen Road, the latter of which serves as the western boundary of Southgate[[/note]]); although Lincoln Park and Allen Park are fast becoming a center for the metro area's Latino population, evident in the many Mexican restaurants and stores that have opened in those two neighboring suburbs tenfold since the mid-2010s; historically center of Catholic Pole population and blue-collar Wyandotte[[note]]a large BASF chemical facility on Biddle Avenue a mile north of downtown is the city's last remaining major industrial employer[[/note]] has started becoming the metro area's newest hipster destination, and the island of Grosse Ile can be seen as Downriver's version of Bloomfield Hills.

Michigan is a northern American state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States (the eastern half of the Midwest). It is bordered to the south by the states of Indiana and UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, and by UsefulNotes/{{Wisconsin}} to the west. The state borders four of the five Great Lakes (Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie) and for this reason is known as the Great Lake State. Michigan is the only state to lie entirely on a peninsula, or (as it happens) two: the sparsely-populated Upper Peninsula (UP) in the north and the more densely-populated Lower Peninsula (LP) in the south. The LP famously looks like a mitten; if you ask a Michigander where he/she is from, very often he/she will point to a spot on the back of the left or front of the right hand (the fingers are populated, but not as heavily), using the hand as a rough map of the state. [[UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} Metropolitan Detroit]] occupies the area around the first knuckle of the thumb, while Flint is about halfway up the thumb webbing on the palmar side. Saginaw and associated cities are up the thumb. Lansing is smack in the middle of the palm, and Grand Rapids occupies approximately the fourth (ring) finger's first knuckle (if using the back of the left) or a bit below the base of it (if using the inside of the right). Traverse City, the Leelanau Peninsula and associated "cottage country" all are located along the pinky finger, while Mackinac Island is just off the tip of the first (index) and adjacent to the middle finger.

* Henry Ford was from what used to be Greenfield Township; the place where he was born is now part of Dearborn.

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a PyramidScheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once house speaker before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain[[note]]which has been running supercenters decades before UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and Kmart entered that business, and now has supercenters stretching from the Upper Peninsula all the way as far south as Kentucky, and from the Youngstown, Ohio area west to Illinois and Wisconsin[[/note]]) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.

*** Macomb County, to Oakland's east, is heavily blue-collar. The term "[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan Democrat]]" arose from a report on white working-class voters in Macomb County. Of note, much like Oakland County, only the southern part of Macomb County actually matches the general description; northern Macomb County is rural/exurban, except that the [=McMansion=] owners in northern Macomb not only lack the connections to live in Bloomfield Hills, they lack the money as well. There is also a small transition zone in Sterling Heights--on the western edge of the county between Fourteen Mile and Hall (i.e. Twenty Mile) Road, which has become the main center of the local UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}i community (primarily Chaldean Catholic, but other ethnic and confessional groups are definitely there), and the aforementioned Hall Road is well known for its miles-long chain of big-box retail stores, so expect heavy traffic during major shopping periods.

*** Macomb County, to Oakland's east, is heavily blue-collar. The term "[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan Democrat]]" arose from a report on white working-class voters in Macomb County. Of note, much like Oakland County, only the southern part of Macomb County actually matches the general description; northern Macomb County is rural/exurban, except that the [=McMansion=] owners in northern Macomb not only lack the connections to live in Bloomfield Hills, they lack the money as well. There is also a small transition zone in Sterling Heights--on the western edge of the county between Fourteen Mile and Hall (i.e. Twenty Mile) Road, which has become the main center of the local UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}i community (primarily Chaldean Catholic, but other ethnic and confessional groups are definitely there).

*** Wayne County is the most populated, and is home to Detroit and its western, southern, and eastern inner-ring suburbs. Wayne County is primarily black, but has a large Arab minority. The main center of the Arab community is in Dearborn, the historic home and continuing headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, due to Henry Ford having hired many Middle Eastern immigrants to work for his company. (Largely because he was a flaming bigot with Nazi sympathies who refused to hire Blacks or Jews for his factories. Contemporary Dearborn Arabs find this funny given the state of American populism in the 21st century.) Also of note in Wayne County are Detroit's eastern suburbs--the Grosse Pointes, some of the richest ZIP Codes in the country; and the far less prosperous Harper Woods. Henry Ford's son Edsel (who for the record was not even a tenth as bigoted as his father) built his (large but very tasteful) mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. Garden City in west central Wayne County has become internationally known for being the site of the world's first official UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} store and the world's first Little Caesars Pizza restaurant, both of which, unfortunately, no longer exist[[note]]the Kmart was a victim of an early 2017 string of store closures, while the Little Caesars moved in 2018 just a short distance down Cherry Hill Road to the Westland side of that road[[/note]]. More recently, the communities of Plymouth and Canton have become centers for Indian immigration, being two of the four Little Indias of the metro area. The westernmost part of Wayne County starts to ''seem'' like it's about to get exurban/rural, but then runs directly into Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor area (for which see below). Meanwhile, to the south is Downriver, famously (in Southeast Michigan) home of the White working-class folk who fled Detroit after the 1960s but couldn't afford Macomb County--and who have made something of a sport of coming up with ever-larger food items to eat (for a solid while, Southgate was the home of the world's largest hamburger[[note]]the bar that serves it happens to be right next to another huge thing--one of the world's largest railroad grade crossings, where a single track runs diagonally right through an intersection of two major roads, east-west Northline Road and north-south Allen Road, the latter of which serves as the western boundary of Southgate[[/note]]); although Lincoln Park and Allen Park are fast becoming a center for the metro area's Latino population, evident in the many Mexican restaurants and stores that have opened in those two neighboring suburbs tenfold since the mid-2010s; historically center of Catholic Pole population and blue-collar Wyandotte[[note]]a large BASF chemical facility on Biddle Avenue a mile north of downtown is the city's last remaining major industrial employer[[/note]] has started becoming the metro area's newest hipster destination, and the island of Grosse Ile can be seen as Downriver's version of Bloomfield Hills.
*** Oakland County, located just north of Wayne (somewhat north-northwest, actually), is divided in two parts. The southern part, nearer Detroit, consists primarily of well-educated and white collar suburbs, but of varying characters. For instance, Ferndale and Royal Oak, older-growth former streetcar suburbs built along Woodward Avenue just outside Detroit,[[note]]The boundary between Wayne and Oakland Counties is the famous Eight Mile Road, and the City of Detroit extends fully up to this line. For reference, Ferndale directly borders Detroit, the boundary between Ferndale and Royal Oak is roughly Ten Mile Road, and the northern boundary of Royal Oak meanders up and down between Thirteen and Fourteen Mile Roads.[[/note]] are today centers of quasi-urbanist hipster yuppiedom; Bloomfield Hills a few miles to the northwest is old-school country-club capitalism[[note]]UsefulNotes/MittRomney grew up in Bloomfield Hills to give you an idea[[/note]]; Troy to the north and Novi to the west are the other two Little Indias, populated heavily by Desi engineers, doctors, and researchers; and Madison Heights (sandwiched between Royal Oak and Troy) is an uncomfortable hybrid of old-school White working class and new arrival Chinese. Northern Oakland County is partly rural and partly exurban [=McMansion=] farms inhabited by people with enough money to live in Bloomfield Hills but not enough connections. Sandwiched between northern and southern Oakland County is Pontiac, a sort of mini-Detroit that serves as the county seat--but with a large Mexican population that has served as the city's saving grace since the 1990s.

*** Wayne County is the most populated, and is home to Detroit and its western, southern, and eastern inner-ring suburbs. Wayne County is primarily black, but has a large Arab minority. The main center of the Arab community is in Dearborn, the historic home and continuing headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, due to Henry Ford having hired many Middle Eastern immigrants to work for his company. (Largely because he was a flaming bigot with Nazi sympathies who refused to hire Blacks or Jews for his factories. Contemporary Dearborn Arabs find this funny given the state of American populism in the 21st century.) Also of note in Wayne County are Detroit's eastern suburbs--the Grosse Pointes, some of the richest ZIP Codes in the country; and the far less prosperous Harper Woods. Henry Ford's son Edsel (who for the record was not even a tenth as bigoted as his father) built his (large but very tasteful) mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. Garden City in west central Wayne County has become internationally known for being the site of the world's first official UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} store and the world's first Little Caesars Pizza restaurant, both of which, unfortunately, no longer exist. More recently, the communities of Plymouth and Canton have become centers for Indian immigration, being two of the four Little Indias of the metro area. The westernmost part of Wayne County starts to ''seem'' like it's about to get exurban/rural, but then runs directly into Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor area (for which see below). Meanwhile, to the south is Downriver, famously (in Southeast Michigan) home of the White working-class folk who fled Detroit after the 1960s but couldn't afford Macomb County--and who have made something of a sport of coming up with ever-larger food items to eat (for a solid while, Southgate was the home of the world's largest hamburger[[note]]the bar that serves it happens to be right next to another huge thing--one of the world's largest railroad grade crossings, where a single track runs diagonally right through an intersection of two major roads, east-west Northline Road and north-south Allen Road, the latter of which serves as the western boundary of Southgate[[/note]]); although Lincoln Park and Allen Park are fast becoming a center for the metro area's Latino population, evident in the many Mexican restaurants and stores that have opened in those two neighboring suburbs tenfold since the mid-2010s; historically center of Catholic Pole population and blue-collar Wyandotte[[note]]a large BASF chemical facility on Biddle Avenue a mile north of downtown is the city's last remaining major industrial employer[[/note]] has started becoming the metro area's newest hipster destination, and the island of Grosse Ile can be seen as Downriver's version of Bloomfield Hills.

* Beer. Time was, Wisconsin was where the breweries were. But for some reason, the craft beer thing really caught on in Michigan--even more than in traditional brewing regions. Michigan today has two of the largest and most widely-distributed craft breweries in the country (Founders out of Grand Rapids and Bell's out of Kalamazoo; neither is a "true" microbrewery, as they produce more beer than that). (Also: We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that one of the most successful products from Bell's is their "Two-Hearted IPA", a first-wave American IPA with a strong rosemaryish flavor explicitly named for the Big Two-Hearted River that Hemingway so loved to fish. The beer is sold nationally with a trout theme on the packaging, to give you an idea of the popularity.) There are at least fifteen more craft breweries in the state, plus a plethora of brewpubs, and really, Michiganders have gotten rather used to the idea of being a "Great Beer State"--these beers are increasingly a source of state pride and a symbol of renewal in a state that ''[[INeedAFreakingDrink really]]'' [[INeedAFreakingDrink needs a drink sometimes.]] The state government has even cautiously made moves that would encourage the industry and Michigan beer culture, starting with a bill in the State Senate in 2013 that would impose a British/German-style requirement that a pint at a bar always contain exactly 16 oz.

* Beer. Time was, Wisconsin was where the breweries were. But for some reason, the craft beer thing really caught on in Michigan--even more than in traditional brewing regions. Michigan today has two of the largest and most widely-distributed craft breweries in the country (Founders out of Grand Rapids and Bell's out of Kalamazoo; neither is a "true" microbrewery, as they produce more beer than that). There are at least fifteen more craft breweries in the state, plus a plethora of brewpubs, and really, Michiganders have gotten rather used to the idea of being a "Great Beer State"--these beers are increasingly a source of state pride and a symbol of renewal in a state that ''[[INeedAFreakingDrink really]]'' [[INeedAFreakingDrink needs a drink sometimes.]] The state government has even cautiously made moves that would encourage the industry and Michigan beer culture, starting with a bill in the State Senate in 2013 that would impose a British/German-style requirement that a pint at a bar always contain exactly 16 oz.

*** Macomb County, to Oakland's east, is heavily blue-collar. The term "[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan Reagan Democrat]]" arose from a report on white working-class voters in Macomb County. Of note, much like Oakland County, only the southern part of Macomb County actually matches the general description; northern Macomb County is rural/exurban, except that the [=McMansion=] owners in northern Macomb not only lack the connections to live in Bloomfield Hills, they lack the money as well.

*** Wayne County is the most populated, and is home to Detroit and its western, southern, and eastern inner-ring suburbs. Wayne County is primarily black, but has a large Arab minority. The main center of the Arab community is in Dearborn, the historic home and continuing headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, due to Henry Ford having hired many Middle Eastern immigrants to work for his company. (Largely because he was a flaming bigot with Nazi sympathies who refused to hire Blacks or Jews for his factories. Contemporary Dearborn Arabs find this funny given the state of American populism in the 21st century.) Also of note in Wayne County are Detroit's eastern suburbs--the Grosse Pointes, some of the richest ZIP Codes in the country. Henry Ford's son Edsel (who for the record was not even a tenth as bigoted as his father) built his (large but very tasteful) mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. Garden City in west central Wayne County has become internationally known for being the site of the world's first official UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} store and the world's first Little Caesars Pizza restaurant, both of which, unfortunately, no longer exist. More recently, the communities of Plymouth and Canton have become centers for Indian immigration, being two of the four Little Indias of the metro area. The westernmost part of Wayne County starts to ''seem'' like it's about to get exurban/rural, but then runs directly into Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor area (for which see below). Meanwhile, to the south is Downriver, famously (in Southeast Michigan) home of the White working-class folk who fled Detroit after the 1960s but couldn't afford Macomb County--and who have made something of a sport of coming up with ever-larger food items to eat (for a solid while, Southgate was the home of the world's largest hamburger[[note]]the bar that serves it happens to be right next to another huge thing--one of the world's largest railroad grade crossings, where a single track runs diagonally right through an intersection of two major roads, east-west Northline Road and north-south Allen Road, the latter of which serves as the western boundary of Southgate[[/note]]); although Lincoln Park and Allen Park are fast becoming a center for the metro area's Latino population, evident in the many Mexican restaurants and stores that have opened in those two neighboring suburbs tenfold since the mid-2010s; historically center of Catholic Pole population and blue-collar Wyandotte[[note]]a large BASF chemical facility on Biddle Avenue a mile north of downtown is the city's last remaining major industrial employer[[/note]] has started becoming the metro area's newest hipster destination, and the island of Grosse Ile can be seen as Downriver's version of Bloomfield Hills.

*** Wayne County is the most populated, and is home to Detroit and its western, southern, and eastern inner-ring suburbs. Wayne County is primarily black, but has a large Arab minority. The main center of the Arab community is in Dearborn, the historic home and continuing headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, due to Henry Ford having hired many Middle Eastern immigrants to work for his company. (Largely because he was a flaming bigot with Nazi sympathies who refused to hire Blacks or Jews for his factories. Contemporary Dearborn Arabs find this funny given the state of American populism in the 21st century.) Also of note in Wayne County are Detroit's eastern suburbs--the Grosse Pointes, some of the richest ZIP Codes in the country. Henry Ford's son Edsel (who for the record was not even a tenth as bigoted as his father) built his (large but very tasteful) mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. More recently, the communities of Plymouth and Canton have become centers for Indian immigration, being two of the four Little Indias of the metro area. The westernmost part of Wayne County starts to ''seem'' like it's about to get exurban/rural, but then runs directly into Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor area (for which see below). Meanwhile, to the south is Downriver, famously (in Southeast Michigan) home of the White working-class folk who fled Detroit after the 1960s but couldn't afford Macomb County--and who have made something of a sport of coming up with ever-larger food items to eat (for a solid while, Southgate was the home of the world's largest hamburger[[note]]the bar that serves it happens to be right next to another huge thing--one of the world's largest railroad grade crossings, where a single track runs diagonally right through an intersection of two major roads, east-west Northline Road and north-south Allen Road, the latter of which serves as the western boundary of Southgate[[/note]]); although Lincoln Park and Allen Park are fast becoming a center for the metro area's Latino population, evident in the many Mexican restaurants and stores that have opened in those two neighboring suburbs tenfold since the mid-2010s; historically center of Catholic Pole population and blue-collar Wyandotte[[note]]a large BASF chemical facility on Biddle Avenue a mile north of downtown is the city's last remaining major industrial employer[[/note]] has started becoming the metro area's newest hipster destination, and the island of Grosse Ile can be seen as Downriver's version of Bloomfield Hills.

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a PyramidScheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once house speaker before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain[[note]]which has been running supercenters decades before UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} entered that business, and now has supercenters stretching from the Upper Peninsula all the way as far south as Kentucky, and from the Youngstown, Ohio area west to Illinois and Wisconsin[[/note]]) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.

** The Detroit metro area has three main counties (the three most populated in the state). These three counties account for almost 40% of Michigan's population.
*** Wayne County is the largest[[note]]by population, not area[[/note]], and is home to Detroit and its western and eastern inner-ring suburbs. Wayne County is primarily black, but has a large Arab minority. The main center of the Arab community is in Dearborn, the historic home and continuing headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, due to Henry Ford having hired many Middle Eastern immigrants to work for his company. (Largely because he was a flaming bigot with Nazi sympathies who refused to hire Blacks or Jews for his factories. Contemporary Dearborn Arabs find this funny given the state of American populism in the 21st century.) Also of note in Wayne County are Detroit's eastern suburbs--the Grosse Pointes, some of the richest ZIP Codes in the country. Henry Ford's son Edsel (who for the record was not even a tenth as bigoted as his father) built his (large but very tasteful) mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. More recently, the communities of Plymouth and Canton have become centers for Indian immigration, being two of the four Little Indias of the metro area. The westernmost part of Wayne County starts to ''seem'' like it's about to get exurban/rural, but then runs directly into Washtenaw County and the Ann Arbor area (for which see below). Meanwhile, to the south is Downriver, famously (in Southeast Michigan) home of the White working-class folk who fled Detroit after the 1960s but couldn't afford Macomb County--and who have made something of a sport of coming up with ever-larger food items to eat (for a solid while, Southgate was the home of the world's largest hamburger[[note]]the bar that serves it happens to be right next to another huge thing--one of the world's largest railroad grade crossings, where a single track runs diagonally right through an intersection of two major roads, east-west Northline Road and north-south Allen Road, the latter of which serves as the western boundary of Southgate[[/note]]); although Lincoln Park and Allen Park are fast becoming a center for the metro area's Latino population, evident in the many Mexican restaurants and stores that have opened in those two neighboring suburbs tenfold since the mid-2010s; historically center of Catholic Pole population and blue-collar Wyandotte[[note]]a large BASF chemical facility on Biddle Avenue a mile north of downtown is the city's last remaining major industrial employer[[/note]] has started becoming the metro area's newest hipster destination, and the island of Grosse Ile can be seen as Downriver's version of Bloomfield Hills.

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a PyramidScheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once house speaker before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain[[note]]which has been running supercenters decades before UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} entered that business, and now has supercenters stretching from the Upper Peninsula all the way south Kentucky, and from the Youngstown, Ohio area west to Illinois and Wisconsin[[/note]]) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a PyramidScheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once house speaker before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain[[note]]which has been running supercenters decades before UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and UsefulNotes/{{Kmart}} entered that business, and now has supercenters as far south as Kentucky[[/note]]) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a PyramidScheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once house speaker before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.