New York a state income tax. NY has a four percent state sales tax and most counties have an additional sales tax on top of that. In Tompkins County, you pay eight percent. Food in stores, medicine, and magazines are exempt from sales tax. But you pay tax for food in restaurants (or prepared food sold in stores). There’s a property tax which you won’t pay directly if you’re renting. Some areas have a local tax for utilities. A lot of places also have mandatory recycling. There’s a nickel deposit on bottles and cans.
Thanks for the tax deets, Little Nemo. Nickel deposits on bottles and cans! I was always sad that the fine print on glass bottles never applied to Illinois. 
Well, I’ve had a lifelong yearning to get the fuck out of the midwest, and I hate my job with the fire of a thousand suns (insurance blows). So I’m capitalizing on my extant desire to get out, and the fact that my boyfriend lives in Ithaca. I’m in the middle of multiple long-distance interviews, god save me now… as soon as I get a written job offer, I’m going! Well, I’ll be going 2 weeks later. Close enough.
The address is actually in Ithaca. It’s been described as a very quiet cul-de-sac in a very quiet neighborhood on the very quiet outskirts of town. I’m too old for “nightlife,” although it’d be nice if the town stays open past 8pm. But that’s hardly a dealbreaker.
Ooo, see… um… I’ve gotten used to a late dinner hour here in Boston - 8pm reservation is prime time, 9pm is not ungodly late. But the prime dinner hour in Ithaca is more like 6pm. I don’t know if there are a lot of kitchens open past 9. Ithaca has a lot of good restaurants (for a city its size) but they mostly close fairly early. Far earlier than I suspect you’re used to in Chicago.
But State Diner is open all night, so if you need 3am gyro or Bo Burger it’s there for you. Steer clear of Manos, which is also open all night, unless you’re drunk.
ETA: Two local-ish terms that you don’t see as often as you used to, but which you should learn anyway because they’re local flavor: Bo Burger and Tullyburger.
Nope. I went to Ithaca for a concert a few months ago and the transition area between sprawling farmland and Ithaca is like a half-mile.
There are some very good Finger Lakes region wines (and some really bad ones, but you take the good with the bad). Take some time to go tasting.
I remember it raining about 300 days out of the year, so be prepared for that.
I also remember enjoying Moosewood restaurant when I went to school on the hill but that was a long time ago.
They do have the odd pop-up development here or there, but they’re not connected to the city. They rise up abruptly out of farmland. They’re kind of odd. Like suburbs that wandered away from their urb.
I’d like that more, but people not used to it could be in for a surprise. The last people I talked to who moved there had come from far away, so their impressions may have been misleading.
It is a college town. Obviously it’s not shutting down completely at 8.
Although being a college town, one big thing you’ll probably see is the difference between when school is going and when it’s closed.
Good luck on your move!
Mountains! and a vibrant thriving local music scene from what I’ve heard…
Swimming- there’s Taughannock Park in T-burg, about 10 miles up the west side of the lake and Treman Park and Buttermilk Falls both have public swilling areas. Lots of people swim in the various gorges and streams around, but that is frowned upon by the Po-po. I got kicked out of a stream a couple summers ago. Best swimming is find a friend with a boat.
Collegetown and downtown are really two separate things. Collegetown is Cornell’s, populated by Cornell students who rarely go down the hill to downtown. I.C. students go downtown, but mostly it’s locals.
Restaurants and bars stay open til 1, but most kitchens close at 10 or 11. Lots of places to see live music.
To elaborate on this for the OP, swimming in creeks is also dangerous if you are upstream from a waterfall. In the Ithaca area, if you don’t know the geography, assume you are upstream from a waterfall (I can think of 10 falls over 20 feet high in large creeks just off the top of my head in the area.)
In addition, there is the Taughhannock falls plunge pool, which is located below brittle cliffs that sometimes drop large rocks into the pool, which has also killed a few people. (There is swimming in some other parts of the park, but the plunge pool is roped off and off limits.)
So to the OP, I don’t know if you have shale in Illinois, but the majority of Upstate NY, Ithaca included, is made up of shale, which is very brittle, so if you are hiking, be very careful if you like to climb or scramble off-trail, because what would be a safe ledge if you were climbing granite or other less crumbly rock, could give way under your feet at any time. Which isn’t to say you can’t have fun scrambling up slopes, just don’t assume any ledges or handholds are safe.
It’s actually extremely dangerous.
There are surprisingly strong currents in what appear to be small idyllic pools that carry swimmers underneath underwater ledges and drown them.
A few more details in this Cornell Alumni Magazine article.
That’s good to know, about the swimming stuff. The water I’m used to has sandy beaches, not shale. I wouldn’t have known the difference!
Just had my skype interview this morning. It went well! Crossing all my fingers and toes :3
If you go to Ithaca take a drive up and see Taughannock Falls. They’re the tallest falls in New York state and there’s a nice park. It’s less than ten miles away.
You can also take a drive over to Watkins Glen and Montour Falls, two scenic towns about twenty miles from Ithaca.
One thing in NY is that bar closing times is set by the counties. So some counties close their bars at 1 am and some stay open to 4 am. Which means there are places where people have been drinking up to one in the morning and then when their local bar closes, they decide to drive thirty miles to find a bar in the next county that’s open until four. Obviously this is a bad idea.
Holy hell in a handbasket. I tore my car apart (and hair out) last night looking for my vehicle title, because the NY DMV website said I’d need the title to re-register my vehicle over there. I was so upset, I still have my originals of everything from when I purchased the vehicle. The title was the only thing I couldn’t find!
…only to find that in Illinois, the lienholder keeps your title until the car is paid off. :o Welp, at least I figured it out before I went and paid $100 for a duplicate title! Thank god for the internet. I guess I just need to call my lienholder after I move and have them do a title transfer? Do I do that before or after I go to the NY DMV?
Is it paid off? It can tricky sometimes if not. Anyway, you’ll have some time to work it out. Definitely wait until after the move, you aren’t a New York resident yet.
I hear the steamed hams in upstate New York are really good.
Well, I’m from Fredonia and I’ve never heard of steamed hams! Although I hear the cuisine in Albany is different. Why not Utica? Cause I’ve never been to Utica so I’d be lying
It’ll be paid off in 12 months. 
But I’m not staying here until then, and the car’s got to go regardless. Apparently IL is a title-holding state, but NY isn’t? They’ll just have to figure out how to handle it, I can’t be the first person in this situation.
I don’t get why so many states won’t provide owners with a title with the lienholder’s name on it for their own records, though. That seems dumb.