You NEED to live in other places if you really dislike living here. Only then will you know for sure what’s the best place for you. I lived for a considerable period of my life on the East before moving to California, that’s how I know that I do want to live here.
You want to know how I know you’ve never been to Minneapolis?
All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?
Yeah, it is to laugh. A quasi-foodie friend recently moved from the Bay Area to Minneapolis and had had nothing but praise for the restaurants out there. She has much less praise for frozen winters ;).
Really, OP - this is a spectacular case of the “the grass is always greener.” There are legitimate regions to prefer other parts of the country - fall leaf spectaculars, warm thunderstorms, warmer ocean, regional cultures, the tremendous diversity of plethodontid salamanders in Appalachia.
But the west objectively the worst part of U.S. to live in? That’s frankly delusional. And I say that as someone who was born in the East and has lived there, the Midwest as well as the West ( plus lengthy excursions into the South ).
Moving certainly doesn’t cost a “small fortune.” I’m not saying you can do it for fifty bucks, but you can pull it off for a month’s rent, easy.
You clearly have never had to deal with 30 inches of snow like we had in NJ just before I left. (I know, a sprinkling compared to Boston this year.) You never had to deal with an entire month where the temperature never got above freezing like I did in Illinois. You never had to deal with 110% humidity (well, it felt that way) like in South Louisiana. And bugs the size of your fist.
Now, I wouldn’t live in the Central Valley if you paid me. Terrible weather, high unemployment, Republicans. But the Bay Area is pretty nice if you can afford it.
I was born in Florida (fond but distance memories), raised in the midwest.
I lived in Los Angeles for 30 years and now live in Sacramento area.
The only thing that would get me to move back to the midwest would be nuclear fallout that made the west coast, Arizona, Texas and Florida uninhabitable. And I would still consider suicide to be a reasonable option.
After a moments consideration, it would be suicide. I will NOT endure another one of those winters.
I would venture to say the south of the US (can’s speak for Canada) but southern California, AZ, New Mexico, Texas, Deep south US - all of it seems a nightmare to me.
Moving does not have to be expensive. At 25 I moved from the east coast to Northern California with 3 months pay (of a moderate paying job) in my pocket - and a car payment due each month. I couch surfed for a few months with friends until I found a job.
Yeah, Santa Barbara totally sucks. How can anyone liver there!?
If anything its the best part of the United States to live in-especially the belt from San Luis Obispo to the Mexican border.
I know. Nobody can drive there. There’s too much traffic.
And the closeness of the Santa Ynez Valley just promotes alcoholism!
I’d never want to move there. The place is so beautiful I’d never get anything done.
“No, I will not look at the beach!” It would try Odysseus, it would.
For the real bigots you have to head north about a half hour. Butler through Clarion was, and as far as I know still is, a serious hotbed of Klan membership and activity. Most of the stuff passed around Pittsburgh and left on windshields originates from up there.
As for sports; not many places beat people to death for not being fans - Pittsburgh does.
http://old.post-gazette.com/neigh_south/20021225beating1225p2.asp
It really made going to class difficult while I went to the City College.
“I could go to class and learn about the Civil War, or I could go across the street and be at the beach…”
The value of first hand experience is often limited by the abilities of the person having the experience.
I think the West Coast is the best place to live if you’re upper middle class. The entire coast seems to be geared towards upper middle class sensibilities.
Here in Sacramento, we do get 100+ degree weather every summer. It’s ‘hot’, but it’s nothing like the 90 degrees and 90% humidity that much of the East and Gulf Coasts suffer miserably through. And for two or three days every winter it dips into the upper 20s…it may not be “the best weather in the world” here in the Valley, but it’s a damn sight nicer year-round than lots of other places.
And we have no earthquakes, no tornadoes, no hurricanes.
It’s a horrible place…whatever you do, don’t come live here.
Protoboard is correct.
The nature in California is weird.