Continuing the discussion from Have you canceled your Amazon Prime or Washington Post subscription?:
You forget, you live in Florida where just maybe this is true. But having had houses inspected thoroughly and petty complaints about ants outside of the house, I can assure you large parts of the US have houses without Roaches.
Now here in NJ, having a house without spiders is very unlikely. Also with basements come centipedes and if the basement is damp, cave crickets are not unlikely.
Cave crickets ughhhh
Creepy, but once I knew what the were, though fast moving centipedes still creep me out more. But first few encounters with Cave Crickets were tough. Damn things jump at you instead of away.
Are palmetto bugs different than roaches? I think Florida has them too.
I have lived many places in Chicago and certainly have had roaches in my place but my current place is thankfully free of them. Never seen a one in five years in my current place.
In Chicago I have had many more house centipedes than roaches though. House centipedes are not bad to have around since they eat other bugs but they sure are creepy when you see one.
Not a problem, got my roach clip around here somewhere…
Not seeing one is not the same as not having them, but inspectors are very good and determining if they are in your walls or not.
Palmetto bugs are several species of roaches. So they are roaches and nasty looking.
For those of you who used to have roaches, but no longer have them could you share your extermination techniques?
Ok, substitute “bugs” for roaches. Or substitute rats.
IMO my point largely stands and in any event is mostly a tongue-in-cheek practical example of the time-honored aphorism that “Ignorance is bliss”. Acting on that Ignorance OTOH is often less than blissful; reality tends to intrude awkwardly.
Story time:
My St Louis house came infested w Brown Recluse spiders when I bought it. Being generally pro-spider, new to the region, and clueless about what BRs look like I was totally sanguine about them being everywhere downstairs and slowly colonizing the upstairs.
When I called an exterminator a few months later about some annoying but harmless ants he had a shit-fit when he’d finished surveying the house and partly finished basement / downstairs
Who knew??!!?? Not I.
In my case I live in a hi-rise and my HOA (if you want to call it that) is aggressive at mitigation (professional mitigation).
I’ve never had roaches except when I lived in San Francisco. After that I lived rurally and rural houses in general do not have roaches. Mice, yes, but not roaches. There is nowhere for them to come from. In the US, except for the southernmost parts, they cannot survive outdoors, and outdoors is about all there is around here.
Loads of houses don’t have rats and a handy rule of thumb, if you have mice, you don’t have rats generally; as rats eat all the mice pretty quickly.
Now squirrels and chipmunks invading attics is pretty common up here in the fall. Very hard to deal with also.
Do you mean “without”?
Had roaches in apartments in college, but none since. Only “problem” bugs we’ve had were ants.
I agree, unless by “roach” @LSLGuy is invoking the 60s euphemism for a marijuana joint. 
I have never lived in a house with the insectisoid version of a roach. Infestations of unwanted creatures does seem particularly to be a Florida thing (although roaches are common all over, of course, but certainly not universal).
I recall Dave Barry writing many columns about Florida life after moving to the Miami area to work for the Miami Herald. He once wrote a column about giant Florida crabs or frogs or something infesting his front yard. He wrote that as he was trying to get back into his house after picking up the morning newspaper, a crab on his porch went into an aggressive stance, waving its pincers apparently in an effort to protect its mate. As Barry wrote, “I don’t want to have sex with your mate. Your mate is a crab, for God’s sake. And the crab became even more hostile, because deep in its heart, it knew it was true”. 
Thank you, fixed.
In San Diego, roaches seemed to be everywhere also, like Florida.
Isopods those lousy looking sea roaches
Crawling about the coastal towns. As ugly as a palmetto bug - also a roach but it flies. Then the tiny nasty cockroaches infesting slums
I loathe the things.
Had roaches once, briefly, in an apartment in Chicago in the late 1970s. I got rid of all open food from the cabinets and from then on never had anything that wasn’t stored in glass jars or tupperware. I can’t remember if I sprayed, but I probably did. Never had them again.
Here in the PNW, I had problems with rats for a very long time until I finally had the sewer pipes fixed. I haven’t had a single one (per my exterminator and my dozen traps I still keep armed) in about 5 years, knock on wood.
I agree with @LSLGuy’s larger point made in the underlying thread, but not on the roach thing.
I lived in exactly one place that had roaches, my first apartment, shared with a roommate and in a down-at-the-heel neighborhood in the San Francisco East Bay Area. Urrrgghhh.
No other house I’ve lived in has ever had them, thank fuck. Mice, yes, eliminated with house cats. Carpenter ants, yes, a few, eliminated with regular pest control. That’s it.
I’d have to move to the Arctic Circle if I had roaches.
AIUI brown recluse spiders are pretty chill. You might say reclusive. Don’t fuck with them and they won’t fuck with you.
But I still don’t want one within miles of me.
IME, true.
Mice, house spiders, and in their seasons cluster flies, ants, ladybugs, and wasps. And, if you’re lucky, a black snake in the basement (who will take care of the mice. And the spiders will help some with the flies.) I’ve also encountered a woodchuck once in the basement, a skunk once in a back hall, an occasional extra cat, and quite a few squirrels; but no cockroaches.
In Florida, I’m pretty sure, you get cockroaches even in what remains of the country. They call them palmetto bugs; but they’re cockroaches. But even when I lived in the city in Rochester NY I don’t remember having cockroaches; though I think some people did.
Nitpick: not the whole joint. The bit left over after you’ve smoked the rest, that’s too short to hold on to without burning yourself if it’s lit. Which is why you need a roach clip.
You promised pictures…
