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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I took a moment to realize there’s a place called Gary, Indiana. And that there isn’t just some guy who is so infamous that he’s just known as Gary.

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It’s actually a very famous city, but not for entirely good reasons. For starters, it did in my youth have the highest per capita rate of murder in the United States.

However, Michael Jackson is from there. So there’s that.

> it did in my youth have the highest per capita rate of murder in the United States.

> However, Michael Jackson is from there.

There are no coincidences.

Bunch of murderous psychos going heehee as they murk you smoothly.

Clearly not a fan of musical theater. The Music Man ~~takes place in~~ repeatedly refers to Gary. Ron Howard sings a song called Gary Indiana in the movie version. He’s about waist high in that movie.

Pretty close, but the musical takes place in the fictional town of River City, Iowa and Henry Hill claims to be an alumnus of the Gary Conservatory (class of '05), which is the hook used to launch the song in question.

D’oh. You are correct.

Every guy named Gary is named after Gary, Indiana. Gary Cooper named himself after the town, and then got very, very popular.

Not all, only most Americans. For Brits it's usually after Sir Garfield (spear field) St Aubrun Sobers.

And even before Gary Cooper there were people using it for Gerald (spear power), Gerard (spear hard/brave), and (old) Gerbert (spear bright). It is a cousin to, but believed not historically derived from, Garrett/Garrod. It is unclear whether German/Germain derive from this root or not. It is usually unrelated to Jared (which is usually a Hebrew name, but does have spelling variants that overlap Garrod).

Thank you, I thought this was interesting!

It is known for not being Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rome.

Gary, Indiana is still memorable to me 50 years later from when we'd drive through it, handkerchiefs pressed to our faces to block out the terrible smell from some sort of toxic industry. Is Gary still like that or has it been cleaned up?

Reminds me of driving through Eureka, California in the early 80s and the overpoweringly horrible smell from the paper mills in the area.

Where did all the effluent go; directly into the bay?

No, there's a pipe from Samoa Peninsula out to the ocean. (Fun fact, they're now using that pipe for the fiber optic cable that's landing here.)

It doesn't stink much anymore. It's still extraordinarily poor, but this is also Gary:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6196019,-87.2547571,3a,75y,3...

The town's even referenced in Futurama:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qUW1pabZpLE

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