This reminds me a bit of a lot of places in South-East Asia - There were town and territories that were Coke and others that were Pepsi... If you were in one then that's all that you could get.

Not sure of the mechanism behind it. For all I knew the government cola rights to each region up for auction.

That struck me about visiting China, too. I remember I got to Beijing, saw that literally everything was Coke and there was no Pepsi in sight, and thought "Damn, I oughtta buy Coca-cola stock." Then I got to Chongqing and Wuhan and everything was Pepsi, with not a Coke in sight.

When I worked in Mexico it was that way with beer. In northern Mexico every little pueblo was either all Tecate or all Modelo Especial. The residents would let you know their undying loyalty to the brand. "!Aqui somos tecateros!" The only exception I can think of was a remote mountain town loyal to marijuana instead. Locally grown, of course.

The most amusing thing I remember from the cold war, was the prevalance of pepsi in communist countries. That and the saying "coke for jews, pepsi for arabs" in the middle east...

I was on a plane going to San Jose, the flight attendant asked what I wanted and I said, 'pop' (being from the midwest) and the guy next to me, turn to me and said 'not from california?' I always thought is was funny.

btw coke is not pepsi, it's better accept no substitutes.

This map can't be accurate... I've never heard anyone say anything _other than_ soda in the greater Boston area.

FTA: Map based upon 120,464 respondents. (Which they spelled 'Respondants')

This isn't enough to draw a meaningful map of just Alaska. There are likely whole counties colored base on a single response.

People used to say tonic, and some oldtimers surely still do.

Pfft. It's called "coke," regardless of what it tastes like.

How do you order say an orange drink? Do you say you want an orange coke? Or worse pepsi - do you order pepsi coke?

Sprite coke? Coke sprite?

Generally the conversation goes like this:

What kind of coke you want, hon?

Sprite please.

Yes.

I seem to recall that there are places in the southern U.S. where soft drinks are called "dope".

Confusing....

Having lived in the south (Tennessee and North Carolina) most of my life, I haven't heard that one. I can believe is coming from a heavy southern accent sounding like "dope" instead, though. People are strange, nonetheless.

Before I was born, the majority of my family made a move from Iowa to Illinois to Tennessee (A weird transition on its own.) My brother almost got in trouble with a fast food chain when he ordered some "pop". The cashier misheard and thought he was asking for some pot and freaked out. (It didn't help he was a teenager at the time.) Nowadays, I think he's given up and conformed to just saying "coke".

According to the article, they call it that in the Carolinas.

I grew up in the Carolinas and I've never heard of "dope". It was all "soda" or maybe "coke" as the generic term.

Please try to avoid these "interesting factoids" genre in HN.

I didn't vote you down, I think your point is valid. Still, I think this is something that people like to see surfaced here. Who knows what ideas it peaks in the minds of readers? People could be getting ideas about anything from a GIS for human terrain . . . to a Pop vs. Soda civil war video game. You never know.

Voted up to equal your voting down. (I'm indifferent about the comment..)

And while the Coke vs Pop map is a but old / not really news, there were some other interesting visualizations on the blog a bit further down.

So even if a particular story isn't "hacker news," the site has some visualizations that might be of interest still. Which, imo, makes it ok to post here, even if the title could have been better. But thats just my opinion and I'd hate to force it on someone.

Why?