I've lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia my entire life. Specifically, North End. That may not mean much to you if you're not from Parkersburg, but if you are, you know exactly what I'm talking about. North End is the "classier" end of town, the part of town everyone should live in. Or at least that's what I've been told since I was barely old enough to understand. Here are some things that only Parkersburg-ians will understand.
1. The Parkersburg High School vs South Rivalry.
The rivalry is enough to write an entire article about, but I'm going to save you all from that kind of drama. A small recap is my senior year at the rivalry football game, students from PHS had rats on sticks to represent the South "River Rats" as they are called. If you don't know what that means, Parkersburg South High School is located on the other side of the Ohio River, so they are known as River Rats.
To give you all another interesting story from that same game. For those of you who don't know, PHS' mascot is the Big Red Indian, and South's is the Patriot. Well, while the Indian at the time was taking a picture with a CHILD, the South Patriot came over to the PHS side and pulled the Indian down the stairs and broke his staff. While both schools were involved in this situation, it was still incredibly childish.
2. Obviously North End is better because the only mall in town is in the North.
Technically our teeny, tiny mall is in Vienna, but whatever. That's close enough. Yes, I know it's the tiniest mall when compared to malls a couple of hours away, but at least North End can claim it.
3. North End Tavern.
It seems like all the better restaurants are on the north side. If you want to be specific, you need to go to the NET. I don't know that I've ever had better tasting food than from the NET. I haven't gotten a chance to try it, but I hear all the time they're own brewed beer is fantastic.
4. The automatic hate when someone says which high school he or she graduated from.
I'm assuming this is pretty typical of school rivalries, but when someone tells me he or she is a South graduate, I immediately want to give a nice one-two to the face, and I'm not even that into school spirit. I just know I graduated from PHS, and I'm supposed to hate South.
5. Those City Park Christmas lights though...
Ha, I know. How misleading, right? That makes it sound like we have some pretty sick Christmas lights. Really, they're just pretty average for what you expect out of a park our size I guess. I really think we could do better, but I don't want to be the one to donate the money, of course.
6. Fort Boreman Prom Pictures.
It seems like every year I have some girl or guy on my social media accounts posting the latest prom pictures from the top notch picture taking location....Fort Boreman. Can you guys literally not come up with any place better? It really isn't a great spot for pictures. For one, you can see the ENTIRE city in the background of your pictures. Why would you want that? Two, it may be a great location for an afternoon picnic, but it is not pretty scenery for your nice prom date to have to stand there with the wind messing up everyone's hair, just for the typical prom picture..I'm bashing this, but my junior pictures were taken at Fort Boreman. It wasn't my choice though; my date made that decision.
7. DaVinci's is the bomb dot com.
Not even trying to be dramatic about it. It truly is the best restaurant that I have found to date when one wants really good Italian food. It also helps support small business, so that's always a plus.
8. Seems like everyone and the mothers go to WVU and Marshall.
I'm sure WVU and Marshall are great schools and all, but why does everyone have to go there? It seems like if you didn't go there, you probably are going to a church school (not that anything is wrong with that, but it seems that way) or you're going to WVU-Parkersburg, so basically WVU at home. Can't we learn to be original and back away from the party school and go somewhere where we aren't only ever friends with our high school friends and have new experiences with new people who aren't from where you are from?
9. Everyone went hog wild when frozen yogurt became a thing, so Coldstone is now out of business..Along with 8,000 other frozen yogurt shops.
You would have though people had never heard of frozen yogurt before. Seriously though, so many different frozen yogurt shops opened up only to be run into the ground, leaving us with two options: Green Kiwi and Sweet Frog. I'm going to take a moment here to insert my own shameless plug. Green Kiwi is the best of the two ;)
10. You run into everyone at Walmart.
You know that annoying customer you have to deal with every day at work? Guess what? She's in front of you at the check out line. You can never escape anyone. For this being the third largest city in the state, you would expect not to run into half of OVU every time you go to Walmart, but it seems like every time I'm there, I see someone I know. There's a lesson here, kids. This is exactly why you don't go to Walmart in your pajamas. You could very likely see your boss, and then be embarrassed for the next 800 years.
