New Orleans. Great food, good music, beautiful atmosphere.
But if I lived there full-time, the corruption and inefficiency would drive me mad, I’m sure.
I feel this way about most of Europe-too crowded and small.
Amsterdam is like that-nice to visit, but living there wouldn’t do it…for me.
Southern California-great climate, but try to go somewhere. I suppose if you had the money to live in some place like Westwood or Santa Monica-and you didn’t have to commute somewhere…it would be OK.
The Black Hills are pretty but that’s about it. I lived in Florida Keys and I worked overnights as a manager and the sunrises were breathtaking. For the first week, then it’s the same thing.
But I’ve never been that big on nature, I’m a city boy
Rome was gorgeous but I doubt I could hack living there. Vienna, on the other hand…
I see your point.
My aunt left the Los Angeles metroplex to move to South Dakota and open a B&B overlooking Mt. Rushmore.
The back of Mt. Rushmore.
She keeps inviting us to come and stay, gratis, just paying for our transport out there. (Which is, in itself, a PITA.) But the peace and serenity would be nice for a few days, then I’d start looking for Walmarts or McDonalds (quite a distant drive away, apparently) just to remind myself that it was still 2010 America. And that’s pathetic. No thank you.
I’d also have to count all the small cities (Population <150,000) in the Ozarks and Appalachia, places like Springfield MO, Fayetteville AR, Johnson City TN, High Point NC. They’re too big to have retained small town America charm, too small to have the amenities and options of a real metro area. Most of them seem overrun with big box retailers and are cursed with crappy infrastructure, mediocre services and an obscure artistic culture, such that one exists. Just not a pleasant mix, IME.
Avalon, CA.
Great weather, everything is within walking distance, there are almost no cars on the entire island, and it’s a great place to just lay back and relax.
If I lived there, though, i’d go stir-crazy.
Lincoln, Montana - It is a nice little town in a beautiful part of the Rockies with a reasonably good restaurant and, of course, a lot of nature to look at. However, it’s a small town that’s only accessible via passes in a region that gets huge amounts of snow and practically no culture. Being there for a significant length of time opens you up to being trapped there with nothing to do.
By extension, that goes for a lot of small towns in beautiful parts of the world. Moving somewhere simply because you like the scenery is nearly always a mistake; move somewhere where you’ll have something to do year-round.
Butte, Montana - Wonderful architecture and nice little shops and restaurants. On the other hand, it’s a pit of alcoholism, despair, and the festering ruin of our former mining industry. It’s a tourist town that’s too big to survive comfortably as a tourist town.
London - It’s a beautiful old city that exemplifies a certain style of organic growth in both street plan and architecture. It is a cultural center and, as is usual, nearly anything is possible in or around it. On the other hand, it’s ground zero for the famed British Surveillance State and, as Simon Singh found out, if your free expression offends anyone who matters you will be sued into oblivion to keep you quiet. God Save the Queen!
L.A. Way too disorganized for me. I’m from New York, so the size isn’t the issue, just the sprawl.
Cairo. Visiting in a very controlled way was fine, but live there - never. And this has nothing to do with religion. People living in cemetaries and goats in the streets is so a couple of centuries ago.
Switzerland still makes me twitchy. Pretty as a postcard, though.
Wales, especially Snowdonia. The landscape is lovely, and I’ve often considered moving there and buying a house with a couple of aces. But then the reality of being stuck on a welsh hillside in the middle of February, with the only shops a car ride away and having to ferry the kids everywhere, makes me think there’s a lot to be said for suburbia sometimes.
Your suburbia must be different from mine - the definition of suburbia here is that all the shops are a car ride away and you have to ferry the kids everywhere.
Everything is more compact in the UK. If you can’t walk to at least a corner shop (convenience store), you’re in the sticks.
Er… what? Are you trying to allege that if he had made the same remarks in a published article in America he wouldn’t have been sued? Why don’t you call an entire profession fraudulent, in print in a national newspaper, and see what they do to you. As for the security cameras, yes, there are a lot of them and people don’t seem to mind, but maybe that’s because terrorism <gasp> didn’t start in 2001. We accepted things like the ring of steel (tee hee) because we knew what a pain in the arse (tee hee) it would be if they set off another bomb.
Wait … you’re saying chiropractors are “anyone who matters”? I get it now. I’ve been whooshed. God bless America!
Defamation suits in the US typically require the plaintiff to prove actual malice, which is only true in the case of public figures in England and Wales.
Why twitchy, if I may ask?
See, I view SoCal as the opposite of what the OP is asking for. It’s a great place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit here.
Even though there’s lots of fun things for tourists to do here, they’re spread out all over the place, forcing visitors to spend hours trapped in hellish traffic to see anything at all. On the other hand, if you live here, you can enjoy your funky little neighborhood and the amazing weather and schedule your visits to the Getty or the beach or Disneyland to avoid the worst insanity.
Of course, I live in Westwood and commute to Santa Monica, so I avoid the worst aspects of the daily commute … .
Hawaii, specifically Kauaii (SP?). I was considering moving there at one point, got my professional certification there, even had a telephone job interview set up, but I couldn’t follow through. Only visited once. Absolutely gorgeous scenery, more than lived up to my expectations on that score, but just couldn’t wait to leave after only about a week for some reason. It was in the summer, & I found it a little too humid for me, maybe I’da liked it more if I’d visited in the winter, don’t know. Seemed too isolated & claustrophic to me somehow. Maybe I would’ve liked say, Oahu better. I’d certainly visit again, but I guess it’s just not for me long term.
Isn’t that also true in the US, about the public figures? I thought the Sullivan rule was about them, not your average person. (Genuinely open to enlightenment here.) However, having no case/a case which would be very difficult to prosecute doesn’t always stop people from trying. Even the BCA should have known that, especially with ‘fair comment’, it was going to turn into the kind of car crash you need more than a chiropractor to get over.
As a native Atlantan, I must agree with this sentiment.
Atlanta is like 20 different small cities smushed together by time and inadequate planning.
That is why I commute from Athens to Atlanta.