by Sara-Jessica Dilks

Just like any other city in the country, Kansas City is a proud place. As dedicated Kansas Citians, we memorize every Sporting KC cheer, boast about our famous barbeque, post Instagrams of the beautiful downtown at dusk, insist that the Country Club Plaza has the best shopping in the Midwest, spend every sunny day playing frisbee at Loose Park and hate the St. Louis Cardinals more than anything.

While I have grown up here and am evidently very familiar with the Kansas City lifestyle, I have always been curious about how people from elsewhere view our city. So, I gathered some acquaintances from all ends of the earth and asked them the question that every Kansas Citian has been dying to know: how do people from other parts of the country or world imagine the place we call home?

Here are their responses.

“I know my man Tech N9ne is from “Killa City” [Kansas City] … When I think of Kansas City I think of the Midwest and vice versa. I envision a sprawling city that is flatter than [San Francisco] and has real seasons … I think of Kansas City as sort of in the middle, not too east and not too west, both in terms of ideology and geography.”

 – Cooper Logan, 17, San Francisco, California

“I imagine it to be quiet and calm. A stereotype of [Kansas City] would be [that] it’s a prairie. I think of the Wizard of Oz.”

 – Sabrina Markham, 16, Demarest, New Jersey

“I don’t know too much about it. The people I’ve met from there have been nice. When I hear of Kansas City I think of like, open fields … but I know it’s a big city.”

– Ryan Berger, 14, New York City

“Before I went to KC I had viewed it as very stereotypically American and ‘redneck.’ I found [it] to be the opposite and a very cosmopolitan city. KCMO is a hidden gem within the American heartland, and definitely an amazing city to travel to.”

 – Tom Green, 22, London, England

“To be honest I didn’t know Kansas City was an actual city with like skyscrapers with windows all over them like in New York City or Los Angeles (until I looked it up online). But whenever I hear of Kansas City I just kinda think of a place where the houses are small and close together and people walk the streets and mug each other. I mostly associate the Midwest with poverty and farms.”

 – David Torsiello, 16, Westchester, New York

“Since there is Kansas in the name, I imagine it kind of like the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, but a bit more modern.”

– Lea Tassabehji, 15, Doha, Qatar

“I imagine life in Kansas like the Wizard of Oz. For stereotypes … [I think of] redneck sports fans. I don’t know much [about Kansas City], I just know the sports teams and such. [You] for sure live on farms … and the people are very friendly.”

– Zack Blumenthal, 19, Montreal, Canada

“I first thought KC would be a very traditional city. And it would be [agricultural] and rural. Weather would be nice. [I thought] people who lived there would [be] friendly and everyone had [their] own dream. After I [went to] KC, everything [was] much better than I thought … except the transportation and [snow].”

– Kathy Zhang, 18, Guangzhou Shi, China

Some foreigners who I spoke with did not have much of an idea about Kansas City specifically, but could tell me instead how they envision American life as a whole.

“I imagine America to be a country formed by nice people who take things more in a ‘playful’ way than how Europeans do. A lot of you are far more open-minded than [Italians] are and that’s obviously a positive fact; maybe that’s because your country is formed by many people coming from different cultures. I think you have a strong national sense and you live in a place where you’re given a lot of possibilities. Oh, and I have to say that it’s a common opinion that in America, food isn’t good as it is in Italy!”

 – Giorgio Acquati, 17, Milan, Italy

“In America, certainly the technology is more developed but there are not so many people [who live quietly], and there is also the fear of [more crime]. But because you’re in a more nice country, [it] would be good if I could live [there] for a few days.”

– Evagoras Christou, 15, Episkopi, Cyprus