Regarding the sushi/multitude of wonderful restaurants debate, I live in a city of over a million people with some world-class restaurants here (certainly there are plenty of places to eat, and lots of variety), and go to the same four places all the time (and I suspect there are a lot of people living in large cities just like me).
Doesn’t Saskatchewan have all kinds of rivers? Don’t the Saskatchewans learn from the bears how to just grab a fish right out of the water and eat it raw on the spot?
That’s how I imagine it up there.
:smack: Ignorance fought. I guess I took what I learned about the fresh tuna market in Japan and inaccurately applied it to all sushi fish. Interesting article, though now I’ll look around for more current information about the -70 freezing process.
I had to dig, and dig deep to find once sentence that mentioned the requirement for freezing fish in the US. It’s down in there, though, for those who care to dig.
I prefer to believe my ignorance is facilitated by my pretension, though. It’s willful.
300K people is small? My home town of 30K is suddenly looking like a fly did its business on the map… and it’s the big town in its area!
That’s what I was thinking. The town I live in now officially has 16,000 people, though functionally I think it’s about twice that. (This is true of a lot of rural towns–the city limits tend to be drawn pretty narrowly, so a lot of people who would claim to live in that town aren’t counted in the population.)
I have a busy, active, and fulfilling life. I have a fun and diverse group of friends and good, well-paid work. I stay as informed about culture and everything else as I would be anywhere. (This is why the internet has made living in a small town much more appealing to me that it would have been twenty or even ten years ago.) Yeah, I miss having good restaurants and nightlife, but I appreciate those things more when I venture into town for them.
I spent most of my adult life in small cities, and I liked that. I’ve never lived in a large city, but I’d love to for a while. (Doubt it’s ever going to happen at this point, but it would be cool.)
There are obviously bad fits for people, and I’m probably rare in that I could be happy pretty much anywhere. But my experience is that most people who are interesting and capable of being satisfied will live interesting and satisfied lives no matter where they are.
(Regarding sushi, we can now get it as part of the Chinese buffet here in my little half-ass town. And Lexington, KY is known for its proliferation of great sushi. So maybe it’s time to find a new marker for cosmopolitan status.)
All I can imagine up there is frozen, windswept tundra.
I spent my life from age 7 through 21 (mostly) in a town of about 5,000, so remote, the nearest big American city was an 8 hour drive away (but the nearest big Canadian city was a short 4 hour drive).
Then I moved to a small-sized city and then to San Francisco. Now I’m back in said small city – Portland, ME.
There isn’t a chance in hell I’d ever move back to that small town. Cultural void is very apt. There was shit going down in the world that I never even knew about until I moved away from that black hole of nothingness.
No … not living a big city isn’t torture in general … but it sure as shinola would be for me.
Guys, guys…no need to fight about it. We can objectively prove where the best place to live is.
“Wow, Chessic Sense, your city tops the list!”
You’re welcome.
Vegas is consistently near the top of the list for best cities to live/raise kids/whatever. It doesn’t seem like it if all you know is the strip, but apparently, there’s more to it than that. Who knew?
I live in northern Virginia (read: DC suburbs) and I get nothing but shit from those assholes downtown. One of them told me “well, it’s the South” and another told me it was really far away. I want you, Dopers, to pull out a Google map and look where Arlington is…it’s right across the river! By train, it’s 12 minutes to the White House! And yet, it’s always “Oh, you live in VA? Sorry…” I mean, WTF?!
So I can totally see it the other way when one of those assholes comes out to Shenandoah or somwhere. They deserve it, IMO.
Is at least the first part of the story true?
I SAID INEFFABLE, DAMN YOUR EYES.
I wouldn’t call 50k a “*very *small” city. I’d say that’s maybe small-to-moderate.
Color me also surprised. The one time I visited there, my plane arrived at night, and I was shocked at how tiny its footprint is. Population-wise, it’s not really that huge, either: just lots and lots and lots of tourists.
Anyone who says “yum” inconjunction with “grocery store sushi” is a fucking idiot.
Yes, the laws of physics are actually suspended inside the white lines. If you’re crossing there and a car approaches, it actually becomes physically incapable of crushing your puny meatsack body with its tons of metal and glass.
No, it’s really not. D.C. has a lot of problems with crime and poverty.
So nobody is ever allowed to bitch about anything they don’t like about where they live just in case some visitor should get the impression that there’s nothing good about the city? :rolleyes: Fuck that. I *loathe *the weather here a lot of the year, and I’m not going to be shy about it. It’s just that everything else has been good enough to keep me here thus far.
Come to Milwaukee! We’re the second-coldest city out of the fifty largest. (Minneapolis takes the #1 spot, but if you move here, you can still easily drive or take a train back down to visit Chicago.)
Yes, I would agree that on the general scale of the U.S., 300k is a big city.
Sushi isn’t raw fish, per se. What defines “sushi” is the vinegared rice. It can be combined with raw fish… or cooked fish… or vegetables… or even cooked egg. Just plain raw fish is sashimi.
To answer your question, though: raw fish is great because it is fucking delicious. Put a slice of fresh tuna sashimi in your mouth and tell me you don’t want to just fucking melt.
You know, I had that same problem. In Kawasaki.
One of the awesome things about dating my boyfriend is that we both really love good food, so this has been an excuse for us to go to a whole bunch of different restaurants. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve eaten out at more different restaurants over the past eight months than the past five years.
Yup, I live London, and I mostly go to the same dozen places pubs/restaurants over and over again. And when was the last time I went to a gallery that wasn’t the Tate Modern? Or a show? And yet, I love the idea that I could, if I wanted, go see or do pretty much anything, if I could just be bothered.
After living in the Chicago area, with its 10-million-metropolitan-area population, I will freely admit that 50,000 feels very, very small to me.
I was born and raised in a small city. If I didn’t have NYC 6 hours away to escape to every chance I get, I would have eaten a bullet ages ago.
There are things keeping me in this barren hicksville, but those things are soon going to not be an issue, and when that happens, I’m out.
I admit though; after 36 years, I do have some sentimental feelings about my city.
The largest city in my entire state is smaller than 50,000. It is regularly included in lists of the “most livable places” in the US.
That’s nice for you. But it’s different from what I’m used to. That is all.
Yes, because my post was completely dead serious, (and there was no way to tell I was kidding, no smilies, no goofy sayings, nothing you poor thing) and I was actually advocating being unsafe in traffic.
I live in a fairly large urban area, the “Twin Cities” (Minneapolis, St. Paul and suburbs). Specifically I live in a residential area of north Minneapolis. There are plenty of things to see and do in the metro area, but virtually nothing within walking distance of my house. My neighborhood is just block after block after block of residential housing with a scattered handful of small crummy convenience stores good enough to maybe get a newspaper or a candy bar. To do much of anything means getting in the car and driving to either downtown or to the nearest suburban mall. One can get around by bus but be prepared to take three times longer than driving your own car would take.
If we were having this conversation in person, at this point I would pat you on the cheek and say, “That’s nice, dear.”
It’s simple, whereever you choose to live is the best place. If you prefer a big city to a small city, an exurb to a downtown loft, or somewhere with horse and buggies instead of light rail, you chose that because it works best for you and your lifestyle. I used to live directly above the first Kurdish restaurant in the US, a three block walk to work, one block to a large science museum, the home of a very popular public radio broadcast, a couple major theater productions, opera, and lots of artists and co-op foods. The city I lived in was definitely looked down upon by its twin by being backwards for not living the same fast paced life. St Paul doesn’t have the same life as Minneapolis. It’s a different city with different plusses and minuses. Sure we have sushi but Minneapolis’ has better sushi (Origami), but our Thai restaurants kick their asses any day.
I’ve lived in Minneapolis, I prefer St Paul better. Cost of living, proximity to my employer, and a couple other factors made my decision. That’s not to slam another city, I’d love to afford to live in NYC and have the same lifestyle I do now or better than NYC; Paris, Beijing, or Rio. Cities that would offer more than NYC. Every city has its plusses and minuses. The major point is to STFU about them like it’s a superior/inferior battle. Unless you’re talking about Detroit. Detroit sucks.
It’s been mentioned before, but there has been a lot of talk in American politics that the populace of cities aren’t real America and yet, time and again, I see people complain how city dwellers look down on residents of small towns.
I would suggest that people are largely imagining these slights and that it is small towners who are hostile to urban dwellers. To be honest, I don’t really think about it that much.
Saskatoon is a real place? Amazing.