Literally three or four blocks away…
I live in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, DC. The most notably things about my neighborhood is that th Rock Creek Church Cemetery is about two blocks from my house (Upton Sinclair, the guy who invented Wonderbread, Tim Russert, Alice Roosevelt and others are all dead there), just beyond that is the Lincoln Cottage where Lincoln worked on the Emancipation Proclamation, and about 100 feet from my front door was DC’s first homicide of 2011 (they never caught me, I mean the killer, whoever he is).
I live in South Elgin, Illinois–about 55 miles west of Chicago. Population about 24,000. A quiet place. The Fox River borders the east edge of town. I live in a townhouse village with 3 units per building. I take care of the neighbor’s dog when he is out of town and I talk to the lady upstairs and the lady across the driveway so I know my neighbors. Not well, but enough to ask after them and how their pets are. My job is about 9 miles straight south of my house. My horse boards 5 miles straight west of me. Until 15 years ago, my neighborhood was just a bunch of dirt. The village is old, but my neighborhood isn’t. The elementary school is 2 blocks down. Two drugstores and a grocery store within a mile.
It’s a solidly middle-class town. I like it here.
I live in a bedroom community several miles south of San Jose, California, and commute to SJ for my job. My hometown ‘burb has a population of about 33,000, and it’s a typical central Californian suburban town, with a Wal-Mart and a Target and several grocery stores, but nothing more sophisticated than that. We do have plenty of access to natural recreation, including bike trails and lakes and wilderness areas. Also, farmland and vineyards are all within easy short drives.
I like the city of San Jose; it’s pretty prosperous, as it’s within the southernmost border of Silicon Valley. It’s safe as large cities go, and has an interestingly diverse population. We have considerable Vietnamese, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, and Korean populations, and they’ve all filled the area with their wonderful restaurants.
Silicon Valley itself is fun, if you’re a nerd and like to be in the middle of everything that’s cutting-edge tech. I’m no computer geek at all, but I still like the dynamism and technical gossip of the Valley very much.
I live in Mossley It’s a small town just east of Manchester UK. It’s safe, has some good pubs, good curry houses and not a lot else. The downsides are that it’s location means some of the streets are damn near vertical and it rains a lot.
There isn’t much more to say really, I do love it here though.
There never seems to be a consensus about whether this place is like the Middle East. Hollywood uses our desert but it’s 50/50 upon whether they’re correct. I’d say some spots really do look like it. Return of the Jedi was shot near here, so we know we do look like Tatooine!
So far our road signs are still all in English. I’m waiting for the day they start to include Spanish.
I will tell you about the place where I live but I will keep the name out of it, not because I fear you knowing, but I don’t want people following me here (who knows what Google will bring).
Anyway, this is like a small private republic in the middle of the Caribbean. Really. The firefighters, ambulance service, aqueduct, electricity company, garbage collection, town administration and security is private. The international airport is private too. The police has a hands off deal with the security people and they would only come to collect somebody, or work with the local security if needed. It is about the size of a small town (26 square miles) and has a largish supermarket, shops, school, beaches, an ecological reserve, etc.
It is fairly easy to figure out where I live if you know anything about Caribbean luxury living. A few celebrities have their homes here and a lot of them visit frequently (Bill Clinton played a tournament my husband played in last weekend).
I wake up every day in awe that I can live here, it’s like I am always on vacation.
And, BTW, I have an obsession with life in Tel Aviv after I watched a House Hunters episode about TA. Cool to see some replies from TA residents.
I live in Cumberland Rhode Island. We are seperated from the mainland by a sea of ignorance. Nothing much happens here at all. We go shopping at a mall called Massachusetts. The retirement system for former mayors and governors is a minimum security factility in Connecticut.
hehehe, is Buddy back in prison? I catered a couple of dinners for him when he was elected Gov after he got out the first time.
I live in the Eye of Massachusetts, otherwise known as Southbridge. It’s called the eye because for many years, American Optical was a huge employer in the town. I don’t know if any manufacturing is still going on there but the factory still stands, right next to the huge Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center (which seems kind of out of place in this town) and a branch of Quinsigamond Community College.
Hmm, it’s a fairly quiet town with about 18,000 residents. In the last 6 months, we’ve had a tornado, a hurricane, and an October snowstorm. It’s not usually so exciting.
The closest point of interest is Old Sturbridge Village, which is in the next town over.
Everything closes too damn early here which is why I have to drive 20-45 minutes to find cold medicine at midnight. This is the only aspect of not living in a city that drives me bonkers.
We have a good location. We’re less than an hour from Worcester MA, Providence RI, and Springfield MA and just a bit farther from Boston MA and Hartford CT. We have a hospital (which I believe is full service), a middle/high school, and 3 elementary schools. We have a decent library and a grocery store called Big Bunny (which, yes, does have a big bunny on the roof).
I’ve only been here for 2 years so I don’t know much more than that. I can tell you a lot more about Worcester because I lived there for 19 years.
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The Dominican Republic is nice, isn’t it? It’s definitely one of the places I want to go back to, someday.
I live in a small and unremarkable town in Hampshire (though very close to both Berkshire and Surrey), about 35 miles from central London. The closest place anyone would have heard of is Sandhurst, a couple of miles away in Berkshire, home to the Royal Military Academy, where British army officers are trained. Sandhurst itself is, if anything, even smaller than my hometown, though. We’re also quite close to Farnborough, home of quite a large air show every two years, and home of various aeronautical industries.
Like many around here, it was originally a small village but has expanded rapidly since the 1960s to become a commuter town. Plenty of housing estates, but very few shops or other facilities. There’s no real centre, just a few small parades of shops scattered around.
We have a 12th-century church (although it burnt down 30 years ago so the wooden tower is not original). There are some nice old houses by the village green. Other than that it’s an odd mixture of modern boxy housing developments abruptly running up against farm fields.
On the fringes are a small airport, which used to be considerably bigger during the war, but several runways are now disused and slowly being reclaimed by nature to become part of the common. A few minutes’ walk from my house are some of southern England’s few remaining patches of relatively wild heathland.
This is the closest pub to my house.
I live in Albuquerque NM. Dry, sprawling, mysteriously full of nail salons although nobody ever seems to get their nails done. Good things: Lots of nature if you know where to look for it, Sandia Mountain is close by if you want to go hiking, and there are quaint places like Oldtown if you want to shop or just take in the sights. Bad: Economy is slow even in the best of times, lots of crime, seems like lately every other person I meet uses meth (okay, I’m exaggerating, but it’s a serious problem.)
Buddy Cianci was the Mayor of Providence. That is actually a higher position than governor. He’s out now, and a popular radio talk show host. He may be eligible to run for office again this year.
Forest Grove, Oregon is a smallish sleepy little college town. Pacific University is about the most interesting thing around here - a small liberal arts college with enrollment of only about 3000 (although it does have a well-known College of Optometry).
Tommy Thayer, current lead guitarist for KISS, is on the Pac U board of trustees.
Pacific University grew out of the Tualitin Academy, which was the first secondary school established in the Oregon Territory.
Ummm… I guess that’s about it.
We live in a log house in west central Ohio, in the middle of 15 acres of hilly woods and brush. (Pic.) We have no close neighbors; we can’t see them from our house. You can’t see our house from the street, either. Complete privacy. Around us is farm land and wooded areas. The closest supermarket is in a small village called Saint Paris, about 6 miles away. Deer are everywhere, and we can hear coyote yelping on some evenings.
Aren’t we the little smartypants? 
When you are all the way to the east let me know, that’s my neighborhood.
Ok, this is just fricking hilarious and so reminiscent of my own country. Can I steal it?
I live in Upstate NY not far from the Great Lakes, which can cause extreme weather. Also - not far from the Finger Lakes wine country! In 2010 we had over 178 inches of snow (not all at once, of course - from October through March), which I believe is the most snowfall for any city in the US. I live in the suburbs, middle class - all around me are fields. Once out of the suburbs there are either McMansions or tarpaper shacks and trailers. I seldom go into the nearby city, there’s nothing there except police/government buildings/yuppie hangouts. But we have a major university and several excellent hospitals. We are financially a bit better off than other similar upstate cities. They are still building houses like mad, though I have no idea in the world who is buying half million dollar McMansions, or how. But average houses are quite reasonably priced, the same house that costs $200,000 here would sell for $1 million in California, I’ve heard. For entertainment we have a few malls, a baseball team franchise, used to have a symphony, and lots of outdoor activities and festivals for the short but brutal summer months. The scenery and outdoors IS beautiful here, especially in the fall. They are making great strides cleaning up what was a hideously polluted lake. And of course we have a swell farmer’s market, and an excellent library system… I can’t say I like my neighborhood (not that there aren’t good things, it’s just a boring nondescript place). There is little sun, it’s humid, and I hate the snow more and more and more every year. Moving is out of the question, so I suppose I’ll die here someday. So it goes. (My brother who has lived in big cities always laughs when he comes to visit when he hears the traffic report - “the light at the intersection of First and Main is out, expect delays in traffic of 10 to 15 minutes”, lol. So the traffic isn’t horrible, anyway.)