This has been sitting in my starred feed items for a while and I forgot to blog about it. It shows the generic name for soft drinks, broken down by (American) county. Growing up I always called it pop, and I have yet to visit a place in Canada that refers to it otherwise…strange, since all of the northeastern states seem to call it “soda.”

I’m not surprised to see the red…years ago when I was consulting in Texas and going out for lunch with clients, this would be the typical conversation:

Server: “What would y’all like to drink?”

Client: “Coke.”

Server: “What kind?”

Client: “Sprite.”

Server: “Coming up.”

The first few times this happened I was pretty confused. For a while I even thought it was just Chuck — funniest man alive — messing with me. It took me a while to dope out. Honestly, my brain was still busy dealing with the idea that tornadoes happened here. The hotel I was staying in even had “In case of a tornado…” instructions on the door right next to the usual “In case of a fire…” I’m used to seeing.

[via Strange Maps]

[tags]generic names for soft drinks, strange maps, chuck kirby[/tags]