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  • Locked thread
System Metternich
Feb 28, 2010

But what did he mean by that?

N. Senada posted:

That is a fascinating entry System. What kind of work do people do in your community? Is it largely agricultural? Are there a lot of commuters who travel elsewhere for work? I'm super curious about your village. Politics aside, it definitely sounds like a place where I'd want to visit/work/live.

Yeah, it definitely is really nice here! :) it has been chartered as a city since its foundation 750ish years ago, so there never was a lot of agriculture in the town itself, but a lot of craftsmen and state administrative staff (it was a border town for most of its existence) instead. There's also some manufacturing here, though not a lot, and a lot of service industry ofc. The surrounding villages are still pretty agriculture-oriented for the most part.

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His Divine Shadow
Aug 7, 2000

I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.
I grew up in rural Finland on the swedish speaking west coast strip of ostrobothnia, still live here in a smaller town of 6k. Overall a pretty great place to live, good infrastructure, good health care (so far), good education, even got fiber though we're out in the country. Economically this place is doing quite well, I've driven though other rural places in finland and they always seem more run down to me, less vibrant. It's quite sad to see.

Lots of immigrants have actually settled down in the swedish speaking rural areas over the last 30 years so it's quite multi-cultural place despite being rural (one town has more immigrants per capita than helsinki, or maybe it was equal now), which is why it's so great really, my kids speak three languages so far and when I drop the kids off at daycare I often hear more languages than I can identify. I think that's a big reason why these places are still strong, they bolster the population, they take over old homes that would be empty and make lives here.

I love it here, I love driving to work and seeing the golden rye and barely fields this time of year, I love having so much space and nature, being abler to leave the doors unlocked or not freaking out if I leave the keys in the car. We have allemansrätten or the right to roam, so everyone can go into the forests and pick the bounties there without anyone being able to stop them with some "this is private land" BS. Last week I even met a guy who moved here from London, said he really liked it here, but due to a breakup he wanted to go back home, though not London again he said, some place smaller.

Vanagoon
Jan 20, 2008


Best Dead Gay Forums
on the whole Internet!
I live in Memphis, TN and no, it's not worth a drat

People in Memphis are too god drat slow.

They walk slow, talk slow, think slow, breathe slow, and drive slow.

Memphis is a city rife with crime, poverty, and blight. One of the most obese cities in America and one of the least educated. A city with vast social and economic inequality, a city of corrupt politics.

Memphis has always been this way – a backwater town with nothing going for it and absolutely zero hope of catching up with other, better cities like Nashville or Atlanta. There simply are vanishingly few decent, intelligent, honest people here, and they're really very difficult to find. People in Memphis are willfully and defiantly stupid.

Everyone does drugs, addiction is rampant. Learning and knowledge are frowned upon.

Not a place for any decent human being to live, ever, at all.

Also, There is far too much Religion in Memphis and not nearly enough Intelligence.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
What line of work you in, Vanagoon? That is, if you don't mind me asking.

Vanagoon
Jan 20, 2008


Best Dead Gay Forums
on the whole Internet!

N. Senada posted:

What line of work you in, Vanagoon? That is, if you don't mind me asking.

I am the pied Piper.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
well, I can only presume you're taking the kids out o.f that shithole then. I will sing your praises.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

His Divine Shadow posted:

I grew up in rural Finland on the swedish speaking west coast strip of ostrobothnia, still live here in a smaller town of 6k. Overall a pretty great place to live, good infrastructure, good health care (so far), good education, even got fiber though we're out in the country. Economically this place is doing quite well, I've driven though other rural places in finland and they always seem more run down to me, less vibrant. It's quite sad to see.

Lots of immigrants have actually settled down in the swedish speaking rural areas over the last 30 years so it's quite multi-cultural place despite being rural (one town has more immigrants per capita than helsinki, or maybe it was equal now), which is why it's so great really, my kids speak three languages so far and when I drop the kids off at daycare I often hear more languages than I can identify. I think that's a big reason why these places are still strong, they bolster the population, they take over old homes that would be empty and make lives here.

I love it here, I love driving to work and seeing the golden rye and barely fields this time of year, I love having so much space and nature, being abler to leave the doors unlocked or not freaking out if I leave the keys in the car. We have allemansrätten or the right to roam, so everyone can go into the forests and pick the bounties there without anyone being able to stop them with some "this is private land" BS. Last week I even met a guy who moved here from London, said he really liked it here, but due to a breakup he wanted to go back home, though not London again he said, some place smaller.

Allemansrätten is awesome and from your area and by the fact that you didn't say jokamiehenoikeus I assume you are from the Swedish speaking minority as most of my Finnish friends are, though they are almost all from Helsinki. Where you grew up was Swedish the majority language? Did you get any weird racist stuff from Finns who didn't like Swedish-speaking Finns?

Finland is really great.

Kopijeger
Feb 14, 2010

His Divine Shadow posted:

We have allemansrätten or the right to roam, so everyone can go into the forests and pick the bounties there without anyone being able to stop them with some "this is private land" BS.

For the record, that is in no way unique to Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

KittenParade
Jul 20, 2004
Honolulu, HI here, and while the positives of living in such a location are all pretty well-known, such as year-round warmth and easy access to the beach, there are a couple of things the "Moving To Hawaii" need-to-know lists don't bother to cover in depth that I think people should really understand before they come here for anything longer than a two-week vacation:

1. The rent is absolutely ridiculous. The "Moving To Hawaii" dossiers actually do expound upon this at reasonable length, but it's something you really have to see to believe. I currently pay $700 a month for a shared room, which even for here is a bit of a rip off, but my affordable housing options are fairly limited. The going rate for a single room in a house or an apartment appears to be about $600 a month, and it may or may not include access to a kitchen, much less things like wi-fi. Forget about having a pet, too, even if you can land your own apartment. You're not going to be able to secure even a run-down studio with a hotplate and a severe roach infestation for anything less than $900 a month, and that's if you're really lucky. N.B. that this includes accomodations in areas so sketchy and run-down as to be effectively the Philadelphia of the Pacific.

2. There are approximately zero local takeout restaurants with in-house delivery service. I don't know if this is a cultural difference or what, as I understand some locales regard food delivery as a bit of a luxury, but I found it incredibly surprising, especially considering the prevalence of tourists here who aren't going to be able to cook for themselves. I guess the assumption is that they're going to want to go out to eat. The only places to deliver that I'm stumbled upon so far are nationwide chains like Pizza Slut and one Chinese restaurant that frankly kind of sucks, so I don't bother with it all that much. Instead, there are delivery services like Aloha 2 Go and Bite Squad, which I have never partaken of, because I can't see how having to pay about $30 for your dinner (I told you food here was expensive) AND having to pay a whole separate company's delivery fee could amount to anything less than an astronomical bill for cheap convenience food.

3. It stinks! (cue The Critic theme) Although the tourism industry would probably like to have you believe that your nostrils will be perpetually delighted by the scents of wafting plumerias, kalua pig and errant sea breezes, the fact is that there is a severe funk problem in Hawaii. In addition to the tropical sun, which thoroughly bakes every last open dumpster and smashed pigeon in scenting distance, when you take a state in which temperatures can reach the low 90s in summer, add in chronic poverty and abundant, ill-treated mental illness, and deprive most all the working-class population of the disposable funding for air conditioning, you have a recipe for the potent miasma that blankets much of downtown Honolulu.

Suspect Bucket
Jan 15, 2012

SHRIMPDOR WAS A MAN
I mean, HE WAS A SHRIMP MAN
er, maybe also A DRAGON
or possibly
A MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM
BUT HE WAS STILL
SHRIMPDOR
I'm in Jacksonville, Florida and despite not really liking it the first year or two I was here, it has grown on me. I grew up in Long Island, NY (aaaaay whataup front of the thread), and the change going between the two places was pretty startling.

Pros: It's a city on the upswing after being pretty lovely for a few years. It's got some very interesting areas, lots of fun little neighborhoods with restaurants and bars and culture. We have active professional sports teams that are fun and affordable to go watch. The traffic's not all that bad if you know when to avoid the lovely spots and times of day. The parks and natural resources of the area are decently maintained. You can't beat it for the weather in spring, fall and winter, and even in summer it rarely goes above 95f / 35c. Most hurricanes pass us by due to a quirk of the Gulf Stream cutting the corner away from us. It's reasonably well integrated for a southern city, mostly because it's also a huge US military hub. The people are very southern, but generally in the nice helpful and polite way, less the raging redneck dickhead way. We have many new restaurants, bars, and breweries entering the area in the last 10 years. The colleges are fair to good across the board. The beaches, coast, waterway, marsh, and oak hammock areas are very pretty.

Cons: It's very spread out. Jacksonville is the Largest City In The US (by land area). It is half the size of the state of Rhode Island. The fun neighborhoods are squirreled away into their own corners of the city, but the downtown area is notoriously dead, and the suburbs within are kinda boring. It is a swamp, and insanely humid all the time. The summer weather is daily thunderstorms and oppressive heat and humidity that, yes, rarely goes above 95f, but with 90% humidity that makes the heat index (i.e. "Feels Like") swell to 115. Housing developments are sprawling outwards because Downtown development is not keeping pace with demand. The crime is not great. We still do have racist shitheads. Jacksonville has very little identity unto it's self, other than "It's weird and big and confusing". The Jaguars can't win for poo poo. There's not much public transit.

It's a bit poo poo, but it's on an upward trend. Worth checking out if you know where the fun stuff is. Worth living here if you gotta, but for the love of god stop the boring lovely suburbia.

Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Oct 12, 2017

Seaniqua
Mar 12, 2004

"We'll see how the first year goes. But people better get us now, because we're going to keep getting better and better."
Omaha, NE

I've made a handful of Omaha posts since I started on the forums, but here goes. I've lived in the Omaha area since 2000. I'm 32 with a wife and two kids, so that greatly informs my opinions.

Pros

Affordable. Housing, eating, entertainment, etc. is all very reasonable around here.

Good for kids. Of course this won't matter to you if you don't have or don't want kids. There are a ton of quiet neighborhoods with affordable family housing, tons of playgrounds and parks, and a ton of kids pretty much everywhere.

Good job market (depending on your field). I'm a software developer and have never worried about finding a job in Omaha. I can't really speak to other fields in town, but it is what it is.

A reasonable amount of things to do. Omaha actually does a pretty decent job supporting the arts. Lots of venues for local music and theater, and the big tours come through here or Lincoln. Lots of restaurant and bar districts. Lots of events. I've been in one local band or another for most of the time I've been in Omaha, and the local music scene is really thriving right now.

Traffic (for now). Except during the busiest times, you can get anywhere in the Omaha metro in 20 - 30 minutes. I'm going to list traffic as a con, too, because the city has some areas they'll need to improve in the future.

The people are mostly nice.

Seasons. This is a con for you if you hate the winter. We get all four seasons here. It's hot as poo poo in the summer and cold as poo poo in the winter.

Cons

Traffic in the future. Omaha's current traffic situation does a pretty good job getting people where they need to be. That said, moving north and south through the city is generally very difficult, there are several portions of the city that are very far from major thoroughfares, and there are a handful of pain points that are only going to get worse as the population continues to grow. Public transportation is essentially non-existent. City leadership hasn't really done much in the way of planning for this, so I sorta think the city will have to put a band aid on it once it gets really bad. Could take another 20 years, who knows.

Pro sports teams. We don't have any of these, except for minor league stuff. The two sports events every year are the college world series (which is pretty fun), and college football in the fall.

The view. We don't have mountains, we don't have an ocean. There are lots of trees, and there are some actually really pretty neighborhoods, but a lot of Omaha is ugly, new-ish urban sprawl. I'll say this - there are lots of pleasant places in Omaha, but you have to go to them. They generally aren't surrounding you.

Far from the nearest "actual" city. Eight hours to Denver, six hours to Minneapolis, seven hours to Chicago. Only three hours to Kansas City though!

Racism. The city is racist. I'm trying to think of the most diplomatic way to put it. It's a complicated issue and I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but suffice to say that the city is clearly segregated. Views on race are not always the most progressive.

Politics. The city is purple, especially compared to the rest of the state, but it still leans far too right for my tastes. And there are enough liberal thinking people here that if you're a conservative you'll think the city is too liberal, so it's sorta lose-lose.

von Braun
Oct 30, 2009


Broder Daniel Forever
Stockholm is a very nice place.

Tommy 2.0
Apr 26, 2008

My fabulous CoX shall live forever!
NE Florida

People not from Florida say "But you're from Florida, why don't you have a tan?".

My reply, "Have you been outside in Florida? It's MISERABLE.".

It's pretty awesome going from your front door to your car and already needing to shower and change clothes from sweating profusely (I am NOT exaggerating). If AC was never invented people would NOT live in this state. Look at this latest hurricane. MASSIVE power outages showed people what life without AC is like in Florida. They discovered it is hell on earth. You get one, maybe two, days a year where you can wear pants and a long sleeve shirt ALL day. Starting your day in our winter in shorts and a short sleeve shirt is just the smart thing to do. Because even if it is in the 30s at 7am, you can bet your rear end between noon-seven it is going to be upper 80s with equally high humidity. It's 6am, I have my AC set at 75, and I can feel sweat dripping down my back in to my rear end crack. It's pretty neato as a kid growing up here playing outside, but fuccckkkkkk trying to adult.

That's just one example of the ridiculous stupid obnoxious weather here. And it is only getting worse. Oh, we just got hit by a major hurricane, but you guys know that.

Now...the people. Hooooooo boy. Just google "Florida Man". This is not an exaggeration. There is a SERIOUS pride in ignorance. Education is last priority politically. We don't have state taxes though! Big whoop...

You aren't going to live anywhere nice without paying a serious premium or cost-of-entry. There is no money here. If you want to make a decent living, you are absolutely going to have to leave the state/area and get education/training elsewhere. If you don't, you are going to be stuck doing construction/factory work or dealing drugs. Or if you are a chick prepare for a lifetime of bartending/waitressing. In some small towns the bartenders are on a celebrity level. No joke. Or maybe you are member of the lucky sperm club and were born destined to wear salmon colored shorts and boat shoes all day.

So no, this state...it is not worth living here.


I have lived in NE Florida (sorry there, Jacksonville buddy) off and on for thirty three years. In my twenties I got to live in different parts of the world and other (supposedly lovely!) parts of the US. Jacksonville is hands-down the worst city I've ever experienced. Doing an errand in Jax is either a 15 minute drive or an hour due to the hosed up infrastructure and how spread out it is. If you aren't in a nice part of the city, enjoy driving long distances in the ghetto to get to the next nice part.

If you are even remotely left socially/politically good luck. And holy smokes I weep for our minorities. If you are a white male it's a pretty good spot for people socially though!

You mention our sports teams. The fact our minor league baseball team being called the "Jumbo Shrimp" is the best thing about them should say a lot.

Tommy 2.0 fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Sep 15, 2017

Suspect Bucket
Jan 15, 2012

SHRIMPDOR WAS A MAN
I mean, HE WAS A SHRIMP MAN
er, maybe also A DRAGON
or possibly
A MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM
BUT HE WAS STILL
SHRIMPDOR

Tommy 2.0 posted:

NE Florida


You mention our sports teams. The fact our minor league baseball team being called the "Jumbo Shrimp" is the best thing about them should say a lot.

They tied for the win of the Southern Leauge this year. A title they would have won outright if not for the hurricane.

You really seem to have a bug up your rear end about florida. You know you can just move somewhere cooler, right? The swamp is not for everyone.

Next time you're in Jax I'll buy you some beers and show you what's cool and good.

Wait. Do you live in Waldo?

Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Sep 15, 2017

Shayl
Apr 11, 2007

I live in Victoria, BC Canada and its....fantastic:

pros:

- perfect weather
- very low crime (Today's top story was "Man saves baby squirrel in distress")
- nice people, inclusive, lgbt friendly and not racist
- beaches and mountains
- good public transit
- great food
- loving beautiful
- whales

cons:

- houses are expensive
- hard to find a rental
- not a ton of jobs that aren't related to tourism

Tommy 2.0
Apr 26, 2008

My fabulous CoX shall live forever!

Suspect Bucket posted:

They tied for the win of the Southern Leauge this year. A title they would have won outright if not for the hurricane.

You really seem to have a bug up your rear end about florida. You know you can just move somewhere cooler, right? The swamp is not for everyone.

Next time you're in Jax I'll buy you some beers and show you what's cool and good.

Wait. Do you live in Waldo?

Can't leave. Got a kid and an ex-wife. I can definitely admit being FORCED to stay here isn't exactly something that has sat well with me.

Astrognome
Jun 2, 2011
I live in Frederick, Maryland and it's frankly awesome.

I grew up about 30 minutes away in a (more) rural part of the state, and back then Frederick was not known to be a cool place to hang out. Now I've moved back after living a couple other places on the East coast and it's great.

Pros We have a beautiful little historic downtown that has plenty of parking due to the city's foresight in building public garages as growth/renovation really got going in the last decade. Carroll Creek linear park is awesome and you can tell a lot about the city's values by the fact that our nice public library sits on valuable property right on the creek. Our brewing scene has exploded in the last 3 years and we now have 8-10 breweries in or near the city, with the most well known being Flying Dog. There's plenty of other things to do, with lots of festivals/events happening throughout the year.

Real estate is still fairly reasonable - you can pay anywhere from $150k for a small, dated but livable row house or single family to $650k+ for an amazing house right on one of the parks. For the most part the city is welcoming to diversity and seems to me to have a fairly robust LBGT+ community.

It's also fairly well located, I can get to DC, Annapolis or Baltimore in about an hour if traffic cooperates. Gettysburg is about a half an hour North for history buffs.

Cons Job-wise there's a ton of commuting down 270 towards DC (I do this) and the traffic is terrible during rush hour. Communities near us seem to be terrible about letting developers build whatever they want with no regard to infrastructure, so I don't see this changing in the near future.

We are also a fairly liberal city in the middle of a rural/conservative county, so there is a bit of friction there. My impression is that we've come far enough that the racists/other assholes largely keep their opinions to themselves, but there's at least an undercurrent of that and it sometimes shows more obviously - for example, the principal of one of our high schools recently banned a tradition of having one student wear an Indian headdress at school football games, and man are some people PISSED that the "snowflakes" are destroying their sacred tradition of being assholes about other cultures.

Fluffy Bunnies
Jan 10, 2009

I'm currently in the Augusta, Georgia area. It's loving garbage, like most of the south east. And I'm from the south east. I was born in the south east.

Pros:

The river is really pretty

The housing market is slowly ticking up because real estate is "cheap" down here and companies are moving south.

You can generally talk politics without someone flying off the handle and making GBS threads themselves in the middle of an aisle. My feed store knows I'm a practicing pagan and they're mennonites and we're all good buddies and chat and whatnot. It's a good blender town because of the military- as are a lot of SE towns that grew up around military bases.

Cons:

It's so loving hot

Everybody is super set in their ways.

Food is either salty, greasy, or covered in cheese. Or all three. I miss vegetables being easily accessible like, everywhere.

The snooty stepford wives make me insane

Jobs are iffy

People are shifty

Traffic is hell because the town long ago outgrew it's ability to deal with traffic in general

The stupid rear end golf tournament here ruins evverrryyytthinngg for weeks.

You can easily drop $60 going to the movies and grabbing dinner at Logan's here. That shouldn't be a thing in a south eastern town.

mysterious frankie
Jan 11, 2009

This displeases Dev- ..van. Shut up.
Chicago, IL

THE GOOD
-Mass transport is good enough that you don't need to drive (doesn't stop random rear end fires and severed heads on the tracks effing up CTA lines)
-Great food options.
-The North Side (I grew up on the South side and don't think that living in a dingy crime burb is worth the "cred").

THE BAD
-Rent (it's no NYC or San Fran, but the rent does suck a big one compared to the suburbs. Housing in general is kind of a trash fire).
-Super racism and hypersegregation is a city tradition and it's really made areas in the city sad and dangerous.
-City\State corruption has crippled a lot of services and made proper application of tax money highly inefficient, leading to all kinds of problems. The city is run by capitalist parasites who want to pretend they care while stealing from the people and leaving entire neighborhoods to rot, and the state government is run by conservative maniacs who continually refuse to sign budgets, which leads to departments that rely on government grants to run out of money. At the same time, we as a state continue to exist by borrowing vast sums of cash from neighboring states. It's a big mess and no one seems that concerned about fixing it, which means I might live to see Chicago Detroitify itself.

The Dipshit
Dec 21, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

Fluffy Bunnies posted:

I'm currently in the Augusta, Georgia area. It's loving garbage, like most of the south east. And I'm from the south east. I was born in the south east.

Pros:

The river is really pretty

The housing market is slowly ticking up because real estate is "cheap" down here and companies are moving south.

You can generally talk politics without someone flying off the handle and making GBS threads themselves in the middle of an aisle. My feed store knows I'm a practicing pagan and they're mennonites and we're all good buddies and chat and whatnot. It's a good blender town because of the military- as are a lot of SE towns that grew up around military bases.

Cons:

It's so loving hot

Everybody is super set in their ways.

Food is either salty, greasy, or covered in cheese. Or all three. I miss vegetables being easily accessible like, everywhere.

The snooty stepford wives make me insane

Jobs are iffy

People are shifty

Traffic is hell because the town long ago outgrew it's ability to deal with traffic in general

The stupid rear end golf tournament here ruins evverrryyytthinngg for weeks.

You can easily drop $60 going to the movies and grabbing dinner at Logan's here. That shouldn't be a thing in a south eastern town.

You forgot the real name is "Disgusta".

Also the rampant, unmanaged type 2 diabetes everywhere. Like, people sneak 2L of coke in to the hospital after they get their foot amputated.

Jobs in the area are " work for the government (ft. Gordon, SRS, medical college) and get a good job you can't get fired from" or "get treated like dogshit" . Not much in between.

edit: you can do a good job avoiding the stepford fuckers if you stay out of Hammond's Ferry and Aiken. And don't do horse poo poo.

Sailor Jim
Apr 1, 2010
I live in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Pros---Ok, buckle in because this is a city like no other: beyond incredible food; hundreds of festivals a year all culminating in a holiday bigger than Christmas (for us), Carnival (or Mardi Gras to you foreigners); a slowness that is neither stagnant nor stifling, a speed that has a way of fostering experiencing things; a 'joie de vivre', or joy of living that permeates most of our daily lives; a crazy rich and unique culture that both grows constantly and fiercely defends itself and it's unique identity; awesome streetcars and decent buses; alligators and crawfish and huge water birds; swamps, bayous, and wetlands of all kinds; a few hours drive from the best beaches in the country; SNOBALLS on every corner (a New Orleans dessert sort of like a snow cone); I can't talk more about food or every spot will be that because it's that good; you have a high chance of wearing shorts and a tshirt in January; music that plays on every street corner; neighbors that know you and care.

Cons---way too hot and humid for you Northerners; kinda dirty; big pockets of poverty; high crime in certain neighborhoods; an ever-present threat of being wiped off the earth by a hurricane hitting a city that is mostly below sea level; relatively high housing prices in the city (better in suburbs); crappy schools; being located in the state of Louisiana; horrifically bad streets (seriously, my favorite news show has a Pothole of the Day segment); and a history of inept and corrupt politicians.


Synopsis: come visit, come stay, Bourbon Street is gross and dumb, we have so much fun.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Triangle Shirt Factotum posted:

Aiken. And don't do horse poo poo.

I have a buddy who lived in Aiken for a bit. Can confirm on both counts.

The Dipshit
Dec 21, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

I have a buddy who lived in Aiken for a bit. Can confirm on both counts.

Yeah, I don't get the appeal of Aiken unless you are a younger dude who wants to sleep with 35-55 year old trophy wives who are bored and want somebody to sleep with while their husband is at the mistress's house.

big trivia FAIL
May 9, 2003

"Jorge wants to be hardcore,
but his mom won't let him"

Sailor Jim posted:

I live in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Pros---Ok, buckle in because this is a city like no other: beyond incredible food; hundreds of festivals a year all culminating in a holiday bigger than Christmas (for us), Carnival (or Mardi Gras to you foreigners); a slowness that is neither stagnant nor stifling, a speed that has a way of fostering experiencing things; a 'joie de vivre', or joy of living that permeates most of our daily lives; a crazy rich and unique culture that both grows constantly and fiercely defends itself and it's unique identity; awesome streetcars and decent buses; alligators and crawfish and huge water birds; swamps, bayous, and wetlands of all kinds; a few hours drive from the best beaches in the country; SNOBALLS on every corner (a New Orleans dessert sort of like a snow cone); I can't talk more about food or every spot will be that because it's that good; you have a high chance of wearing shorts and a tshirt in January; music that plays on every street corner; neighbors that know you and care.

Cons---way too hot and humid for you Northerners; kinda dirty; big pockets of poverty; high crime in certain neighborhoods; an ever-present threat of being wiped off the earth by a hurricane hitting a city that is mostly below sea level; relatively high housing prices in the city (better in suburbs); crappy schools; being located in the state of Louisiana; horrifically bad streets (seriously, my favorite news show has a Pothole of the Day segment); and a history of inept and corrupt politicians.


Synopsis: come visit, come stay, Bourbon Street is gross and dumb, we have so much fun.

I've spent nearly as much time in New Orleans as I have in the city I live in (Jackson MS), and yeah, New Orleans is both the best and worst place at the same time.

Kirios
Jan 26, 2010




New Orleans is my favorite city in the world to visit. I'm not sure I'd ever live there, but man, that food is worth flying from Portland, OR to.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
I visited New Orleans once and I thought it would be an exaggeration when a friend told me you can hear live music anywhere.

I didn't see much while I was there, but I heard Jazz non-stop. It was an incredible thing for a guy whose hometown's sole source of local entertainment was a homemade drag racing strip.

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

N. Senada posted:

It was an incredible thing for a guy whose hometown's sole source of local entertainment was a homemade drag racing strip.

I can understand that getting pretty tedious after a while but this is still kind of badass

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
You could say that after a decade, it was a bit of a....



































drag

Bruegels Fuckbooks
Sep 14, 2004

Now, listen - I know the two of you are very different from each other in a lot of ways, but you have to understand that as far as Grandpa's concerned, you're both pieces of shit! Yeah. I can prove it mathematically.
Durham, NC

Pros:
- Good place for jobs, especially software jobs
- Rent relatively cheap compared with other tech hubs (e.g. 700 a month will get you a decent 800 sq ft single bedroom apartment). Real estate is similarly cheap.
- Near three major colleges (Duke, UNC, NCSU), so consequently OkCupid is swamped with bored female grad students.
- Excellent restaurants
- Great beer, lots of breweries, etc.

Cons:
- Public schools
- Hipsters

barnold
Dec 16, 2011


what do u do when yuo're born to play fps? guess there's nothing left to do but play fps. boom headshot
I live in the Greater Boston area, and it loving rules. I'm about 30 minutes north of Boston, which is probably the best place to live in this great state.

1) Sure, living in Mass is expensive. We didn't earn the nickname "Taxachusetts" for nothing. But if you live in northern Mass like I do, you're less than 20 minutes away from the shopping mecca known as Salem, New Hampshire. This is a magical place with no sales tax, and a lower meals tax than Mass has. Are you looking to buy literally anything from a retail store? Taking the trip over the border can save you hundreds of dollars in tax. Technically, this is illegal smuggling if you bring it back to MA, but who gives a poo poo? Nobody has ever been arrested or questioned for buying poo poo over the border. Plus, you can buy fireworks.

2) The area is suburban as gently caress, but not the kind that makes you lose your mind. Most of the state retains it's nice "town" atmosphere and if you're cool with being a short drive from the city, it's not too bad to live in a quiet town.

3) I live right in the middle of three of the major interstate highways in the area. It's really easy to get ANYWHERE from here. You can mostly avoid gridlock traffic if you try, because the highway system is crazy like that up here. Want to go to Foxwoods and gamble your dick off? Hit up 495. Need to get to Providence for the day? 93 is right nearby. Heading up to Canada or Maine for the weekend? Just jump right on 95 and you're good.

Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa
I live in Falls Church, Virginia which is a small city in the DC Metro. I'm about 8 miles from downtown, for reference.

Pros:
- Able to take advantage of everything DC has to offer (museums, restaurants, sports, etc) without having to live in DC, which is expensive.
- Outdoorsy type activities are also close by. I can drive 30 minutes in the other direction from DC and be at a national park, the mountains are only a few hours away, etc.
- Plenty of other cities are close by to visit as well. Baltimore is about an hour away, Richmond VA is 2 hours, Raleigh/Durham is about 4.5.
- The Arlington/Falls Church area of Northern Virginia has a lot of good bars, restaurants, nightlife, etc., itself. So I guess consider this kind of a sub-note to my first point.
- Pretty good public transportation
- Jobs in Northern VA pay really well
- I don't have kids but the public schools in Northern VA are generally among the best in the nation
- I sort of mentioned it before but I can get basically any food I want, it's great.

Cons:
- Traffic is probably among the worst in the nation. Definitely top 3 with Greater New York and LA.
- While it's cheaper than living in DC, and salaries are good, housing is expensive unless you really hunt for a deal. If I was looking for a studio apartment in the area I live now it'd be like $1,000+ a month, easily
- Our sports teams suck. Even when they do really well they still blow it because they're doomed to suck.
- The DC metro area is a pretty status-obsessed place. People will judge you for what you do, where you went to school, etc.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Turdsdown Tom posted:

I live in the Greater Boston area, and it loving rules. I'm about 30 minutes north of Boston, which is probably the best place to live in this great state.

1) Sure, living in Mass is expensive. We didn't earn the nickname "Taxachusetts" for nothing. But if you live in northern Mass like I do, you're less than 20 minutes away from the shopping mecca known as Salem, New Hampshire. This is a magical place with no sales tax, and a lower meals tax than Mass has. Are you looking to buy literally anything from a retail store? Taking the trip over the border can save you hundreds of dollars in tax. Technically, this is illegal smuggling if you bring it back to MA, but who gives a poo poo? Nobody has ever been arrested or questioned for buying poo poo over the border. Plus, you can buy fireworks.

2) The area is suburban as gently caress, but not the kind that makes you lose your mind. Most of the state retains it's nice "town" atmosphere and if you're cool with being a short drive from the city, it's not too bad to live in a quiet town.

3) I live right in the middle of three of the major interstate highways in the area. It's really easy to get ANYWHERE from here. You can mostly avoid gridlock traffic if you try, because the highway system is crazy like that up here. Want to go to Foxwoods and gamble your dick off? Hit up 495. Need to get to Providence for the day? 93 is right nearby. Heading up to Canada or Maine for the weekend? Just jump right on 95 and you're good.

The most amusing thing about the taxachusetts nickname is that the overall tax burden isn't that high anymore relative to other states.

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

Jamwad Hilder posted:

- The DC metro area is a pretty status-obsessed place. People will judge you for what you do, where you went to school, etc.

This is pretty much every major metropolitan area, and the richer the metro area is, the more you run into people with this attitude.

As someone who grew up outside of a major metropolitan area and who lives in one now, it is pretty incredible to me to see how self-conscious people can be regarding social status and how they feel like they are obligated to disparage people and places which are beneath them. To see an example of this, check out the California thread in D&D where people are crapping on the relatively less wealthy, but still actually pretty nice places to live, Fremont/Milpitas and Gilroy/Morgan Hill areas of the San Francisco Bay Area.

silence_kit fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Sep 24, 2017

FreakyMetalKid
Nov 23, 2003

I love Tempe, Arizona. Desert climate isn't for everyone, but I'm plenty happy to never experience winter. The Phoenix metro area is big enough to satisfy my needs for things to do (sports, concerts, comedy venues) while having reasonable traffic for its size and it's affordable. I also love Mexican food. Politically, Arizona is more conservative than I am, but it doesn't affect my day to day. Public schools are underfunded, but it's not a potential setting for Footloose.

FreakyMetalKid fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Jan 6, 2018

Hotel Kpro
Feb 24, 2011

owls don't go to school
Dinosaur Gum
I grew up in the bay area. It was diverse as hell, so they had that going for them. It was close to the beach, there's some decent sized hills to hike up scattered around the bay, and everyone goes to Lake Tahoe in the winter to ski. It's also expensive as I'm sure everyone knows. This forced me to leave and I lived in a small town in southwest Idaho for 5 years.

Since I wasn't much of a city person, I thought it was the best thing ever. Hunting, fishing, hiking, skiing, white water rafting, 4 wheeling, snowmobiling, they had it all. The town sucked since it was dependent on the nearby military base and unless you liked drinking there wasn't a thing going on. Boise was a nice city and Sun Valley is a hidden gem that I would end up in almost every summer weekend. It was windy as poo poo and the winters were kinda cold, the summers were pretty hot, and the other seasons didn't really matter unless you were a farmer.

I live in Utah now. It's just weird here. The state is very white and this means there's no good hole in the wall spots to get awesome ethnic food. The mormon culture is very real. Drinking blows, everyone wants kids, things shut down on Sunday for church. In the summer there's smoke from all the wildfires in all the other states, in winter we have inversions which trap all the pollution and slowly kill us all. They don't care about recycling here and we just throw everything away. Drivers are real assholes. For some reason we have a pro basketball team, I have no idea why. The good news is the outdoors are practically in your backyard. The Wasatch range spans many miles and there's plenty to do in them. If you want more solitude the Uintas are a short drive. If it wasn't for the mountains I would have never come here.

Fozzy The Bear
Dec 11, 1999

Nothing much, watching the game, drinking a bud
I'm in the Bay Area, so yeah... :smug:

Scathach
Apr 4, 2011

You know that thing where you sleep on your arm funny and when you wake up it's all numb? Yeah that's my whole world right now.


I live just outside Arlington, WA. It's close enough to Seattle to get the awesome international food, festivals and fun stuff, but far enough I'm out in the country and the next neighbor is 40 acres or so away. My town is filled with working farms and ranches. I literally live on a farm in a beefalo pasture and about a hundred feet from a bunch of bee boxes. I've got a river nearby and a creek within walking distance. Summers can hit the 80's, and winters dump decent snow but you really don't get snowed in. The people are generally friendly and accepting, including a rather large population of Mennonites.

The view is unbeatable.





Scathach fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Sep 25, 2017

PainterofCrap
Oct 17, 2002

hey bebe



Scathach posted:

I live just outside Arlington, WA. It's close enough to Seattle to get the awesome international food, festivals and fun stuff, but far enough I'm out in the country and the next neighbor is 40 acres or so away. My town is filled with working farms and ranches. I literally live on a farm in a beefalo pasture and about a hundred feet from a bunch of bee boxes. I've got a river nearby and a creek within walking distance. Summers can hit the 80's, and winters dump decent snow but you really don't get snowed in. The people are generally friendly and accepting, including a rather large population of Mennonites.

The view is unbeatable.







You live in a bus? With hookups?

Scathach
Apr 4, 2011

You know that thing where you sleep on your arm funny and when you wake up it's all numb? Yeah that's my whole world right now.


We're still working on the inside. We have an outhouse (woohoo) in the new winter spot we're parking which is slightly down the hill and in the woods. Today the wood stove is being installed. Next week wires are being run for electric and we're putting solar panels in-- right now everything we need is powered by a generator. We haul water and do the camp shower thing. We have a kitchen and all the basic stuff we need to live off-grid.

We started this back in June and it took all summer to find an appropriate spot to rent. Now we're known in town as "those hippie kids that live in the bus on so-and-so's pasture."

Like, if you want a simple country life in a place with fresh, inexpensive meat and poultry and are cool with friendly rednecks, this is the place to be. There's a kangaroo farm if you want some weird in your life. A few miles down the road from us there is a big restaurant over a barn where we went to eat and see a blues group play.

Driving here isn't too bad, and if you're walking on the side of the road for whatever reason people slow down and move over to get past you, even if you're a couple feet back from the white stripe. Rent can be expensive but food and gas prices aren't bad. You can get farm fresh stuff pretty cheap. Everything is relevant to how close a place is to Seattle. If you like church Arlington has just about every denomination.

Did I mention we have a viking fest?

Scathach fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Sep 26, 2017

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ifuckedjesus
Sep 5, 2002
filez filez filez filez filez filez filez filez filez
I'm stealing another users template:

[quote="Seaniqua" post="476397847"]
Columbus OH/b]

Pros

Affordable. Housing, eating, entertainment, etc. is all very reasonable around here.

Good for kids. There are a ton of quiet neighborhoods with affordable family housing, tons of playgrounds and parks, and a ton of kids pretty much everywhere.

Fresh water Our water comes from the Great Lakes and we border them. While some cities have water rations, we've never even considered such an injustice.

Lots of things to do. There is art, comedy, different districts with different feeling (German Village / Italian Village / Victorian Village / Brewery District / Short North / ect.) Plenty of concerts, festivals, and Cincinnati/Cleveland are only about 2 hours away with Chicago maybe 5 hours away.

Traffic Not terrible unless you are driving towards downtown during rush hour. According to a quick google search we are 15th most populous city in the US. You can get most anywhere in 1/2 hour if it isn't rush hour. Our highway system is actually pretty robust for a city of our size.

Highly educated population. Having the largest college in the nation helps with that. Low unemployment (somewhere around 4%)

Seasons. This is a con for you if you hate the winter. We get all four seasons here. It's hot as poo poo in the summer and cold as poo poo in the winter. It rarely actually snows anymore though.



Cons


[b]The view.
No mountains (it's super flat), no ocean.

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