Valparaiso! Where progress is measured in Applebee’s, walmarts, and cookie cutter subdivisions, in which the houses are too close together.
AFAIC, there ain’t shit to do if you do not like football. I could go out drinking, but there is no point in going by myself.
that, in spite of its bad rap, Cleveland Ohio is a wonderful place to live, especially Shaker Heights. There is culture, culture, culture, friendly people and lots of trees and parks. Diversity too. Housing costs are reasonable. Lots of community organizations. a super great place to live.
Beloit, WI. I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE. If I didn’t like college so much, I’d hop on the first bus the hell out of here.
Weather.
It has rained almost every single day I’ve been here. I grew up next to Lake Michigan and it never rained this goddamn much there. It’s also cold, gray and miserable.
The Town Itself
The town exists in the dead center of a fifty-mile radius of No Work Here. The only two businesses here are the grocery store and the Family Video that sure stocks a hell of a lot of porn for being named Family Video. The Wal-Mart is in financial trouble. What does that tell you about this hellhole?
The streets are always virtually deserted.
The Food
Might not kill you. Do not eat in Beloit.
The People
Actually, the people here are pretty nice. They tend to be old farm couples. Unfortunately, [snotty peer rant]a lot of the people my age tend to be sheltered, spoiled brats who think the old people in the townsfolk are there for their entertainment, and take it upon themselves to freak out anyone over 50 in any way possible. The other night, a girl I knew wore a shirt saying “femme dyke sapphic lavender woman” - TO A SYMPHONY CONCERT.[/spr] (Talk about wanting to beat someone like a Hitler pinata.) So to all the locals, I’ll just be “one of those weirdo college kids.”
The Culture
Yes, there is the symphony I mentioned last night. However, everything’s imported. Hey, what’s the difference between yogurt and southern Wisconsin?
Yoghurt has a living culture.
Right!
Imagine the south side of Chicago, with farm-supply stores.
I hate the weird juxtaposition of the agricultural area (and agricultural people) that surround our city with the crime and urban decay that blights about 60% of our city.
I hate the winters here. If only one person freezes to death in a given winter, we consider it a mild winter. I hate having to scrape an inch of ice off my windshield some mornings. I hate that my car slips and slides about on icy streets and that I have virtually no hope of controlling it. I hate the 4:30 sunsets. I hate the 30-mile-an-hour winds that can cause your face to crack.
I hate the summers here. I hate the swarms of bugs and the relentless heat and the grey haze that hovers in the sky. I hate the humidity that’s so thick you have to swim through it. However, I think I could tolerate the summers here if they weren’t so harshly juxtaposed with the winters.
I hate how the sky seems to close in on me. I hate how I can drive a few miles out of town and, in some places, see the horizon without a single tree.
This city is trapped in that weird netherworld between “small town” and “big city” (we have about 110,000 people). We have all the disadvantages of a small town (nothing to do, nosy neighbors) with none of the advantages (safe leaving your door unlocked, peace & quiet). We have all of the disadvantages of a big city (traffic, crime) with none of the advantages (arts, culture).
If I ever get enough zeroes in my bank account, I’m heading for the Lake-of-the-Ozarks. Either there or I’m going to go to Key West and listen to Jimmy Buffet CD’s all day…
Finally! Someone else who hates 4:30 sunsets! Why the HELL am I still living in this part of the country?
If you like solitude, wide open spaces, and peace and quiet, you’ll seriously loath Hong Kong. The sidewalks are crammed with people, to the extent that walking along the street is basically like standing in line to see a movie.
There is no notion of personal space. Get in an elevator, someone will get in and (unless they are a curvaceous female) will stand jammed up against you. Find an empty space in a bar, resraurant, park, whatever, and within seconds, 20 people turn up. My neighbors are: 1 grandmother, 1 father, 1 mother, 2 teenage boys, 2 yappy dogs, a TV that looks like it’s at least 4ft x 6ft - in an apartment of less than 500 sq ft. That’s normal. I have 800 sq ft to myself - almost unheard of here.
The Government owns all the land and rations it to raise revenue - so not only is there no space, but buildings and planning are mostly ugly and designed purely for space maximization rather than environmental enhacement.
Noise - let’s say I have trouble sleeping when visiting Elkins, WV because it’s too quiet.
Air pollution has decreased a little but is still terrible. The harbor looks like a floating garbage dump.
Traffic - very bad. No serious attempts at pedestrianization. People’s driving skills are terrible, but then the traffic never flows above 20mph in most areas.
The unelected, semi-socialist, semi-plutocratic, nanny-state government is getting more dimwitted by the day, micro-managing and pandering to interest groups.
Weather - half the year it’s sub-tropical, very hot, maximum humidity, incessant rain. You sweat just standing still.
Still - I love the place…
It’s interesting to note that many people in this thread have cited traffic as one of the things they hate about where they live.
Traffic was one of the big reasons I moved off of Long Island, where I grew up. It became a serious quality of life issue to me. The amount of time wasted sitting on the Northern State Parkway added up in a big way, and you don’t get that back at the end of your life.
So now I’m in upstate NY, where if something is 60 miles away, I can actually get there in an hour. And it makes sense to drive a stickshift - yeah!
I think traffic congestion is an interesting issue. It gets worse and worse, but everyone just seems to accept it. Very little hue and cry for good public transportation, or for eliminating tollbooths (one of my pet issues).
In any case, I can’t imagine living in a congested area again. I refuse to drive to Long Island even to visit people now.
Woooooo Hooooo!!! A fellow Bostonian (or should I say Beverly-ite?) heard from!
I read someplace once that most Bostonians have a difficult time adjusting to living in another place, except for San Francisco. I don’t know if it’s because the weather there is similar (I tend to think not – I’ve never been there), or because it’s compact like Boston. Actually, scratch the compact – I’ve never been there, so how would I know?
Visiting London back in the late 70s, I felt completely at home. I’ve been to other countries, and as lovely as they were/are, I felt like I was walking familiar paths there…
I thought of another reason to dislike Los Hideous. Instead of rivers, we have concrete channels. They used to be rivers, but instead of letting water get into the ground it was thought better many decades ago to shoot it straight into the ocean.
I’ve been living in various places in New Brunswick, Canada for the last couple years, almost. It has some good things going for it, but I think you really have to grow up here to really like it. The old folks love it. Younger people dream of moving to Halifax or Ottawa (but not Toronto).
New Brunswickers consider themselves very friendly and tolerant. And it is true there is a refreshing lack of egotism here and community is very important. But the community is cliqueish and largely closed to people who have not lived here a long time. People hang around with the people they went to school or church with, and the “small town mentality” Silverfire speaks of is very much in evidence. The tolerance comes at the expense of being discouraged from complaining about things that could be done better. With little diversity, it is easier to be tolerant.
It’s a very pretty place, outside of the cities. But few of the people I know who moved here want to stay, and not because of crime or traffic or the fact there’s no place to rollerblade. Just that some of us don’t get a thrill from small-town pleasures like strolling around Canadian Tire.
Seattle checking in here. Born and raised, got out for about six years, wound up back here. I’ll probably get killed by all those Seattle lovers out there, but too damn bad.
Is is weather? Cool, rainy, little sunshine, not much snow. Nope. Don’t mind it. Wouldn’t mind if it was even more like S.F., either.
Is it geography? Mount Rainier, Cascades, Olympics, multiple ski areas, Lake Union, Lake Washington…Nope. This is beautiful country, fershur.
Is it traffic, cost of living, crowding? Yes! Yes! YES! And wait, there’s more!
Definitely on the tops of the worst traffic lists, definitely high on cost of living, and yes, it’s crowded. No more rush hour traffic, 'cause it’s almost always slow through Seattle/Tacoma. Throw in a shower and it’s gridlock. Add the big one to my list of gripes:
Seattle has pretensions that it’s a BIG city, say like Chicago, New York, L.A., Denver even. It’s not. It’s a medium size city with delusions of grandeur. We have about a million people in the city limits. NOT big, medium maybe. But, we have to live like the big boys, don’t we? Take down the old football stadium, not paid for? Who cares? Build a big one, and a spare for baseball. Let the resident billionaires (Bill and Paul) build, respectively, the biggest lakeside monstrosity (read: home) ever seen, and the ugliest, GOD I mean ugliest, museum (EMP)to humiliate greater Seattle every day into perpetuity. Who said,“being rich doesn’t mean having taste”? Plus, we just have to have one of them fancy spanking new light rails, just to cover the same route city buses do, which is I-5, the only real major interstate highway in western Washington. Yup. That’ll work. D’oh! Not to mention leaving the Monorail, developed for the '62 World’s Fair, which WAS to be the transportation mode of the future, and a stupid waste of taxpayer money as a, GAK!, tourist attraction!
There’s only one solution. Emmett Watson, local columnist just recently passed away, started a group years ago for just this situation. It’s called KBO, Keep the Bast*** Out*, also known as Lesser Seattle. While it was meant as a tongue in cheek counterpart to the Greater Seattle/Chamber of Commerce thingy, the time has never been better. So, I’ve sent in my app, just waiting for my official acceptance to begin spreading the word.
Seattle? Nah, nothing to do here. Rains all the time, don’t cha know? Grunge? Nope, that’s a dirty lie L.A. started about us. Don’t believe a thing from them. Starbucks? Well, they’re gonna move to Chicago, right next door to Boeing, across the street from the Microsoft HQ. Here in Seattle we turn out the lights at sundown, still have blue laws, and keep to ourselves, mostly. But we’ll tell ya to move along real nice, we will. Move along, now.
See, nice.
. . . and I hear there’s still plenty of room in Detroit!! 
You aren’t my ex-fiancee, Shauna, are you? That sounds familiar…