Big cities and their surrounding areas are known for having many activities that someone living there could pursue. I plan to move to a larger city than the one I currently live in now (about 70,000 people) after I graduate from college this December, though my move will likely not occur for a year or so. I am always complaining about the lack of things to do in my town. There are three movie theaters and various bars, and that’s about all that is reasonably close by for a non-driver like myself. Downtown is a little more busy, but it’s not easy to get to, and anyway it seems to be mostly more bars, which isn’t really my kind of thing. There’s hunting, fishing, and camping fairly close by, but I don’t do that either.
What I’m asking, Dopers (after a bit of digression, but that is how I am), is if you live in an area with a lot of things to do, do you actually do these things or are you a stay-at-home type? I like bookstores, museums, odd little shops, and good places to walk, like parks. I enjoy hanging around at home, but when I feel like venturing out, I want to have places near by that I’d actually like to venture to.
Yeppers, I sure do! Maybe if we had a big honkin’ house instead of small apt I’d be more content to stay home.
I think the trick is to honor your needs while stretching your comfort zone. Like, we loved the festivals in downtown Chicago, but went at off times/days to avoid the worst of the crowding & heat. The best one was seeing Foreigner (for free!) at the Taste of Chicago. But I’ve met a lot lot of people living in Chicago’s suburbs who wouldn’t dream of going downtown, like it was a war zone or something.
Bars aren’t my thing, either, but when we lived in a small (35,000) town we sure got in the habit of going to one. It was right up the street & featured a national trivia game. So there was something fun to be had. Sometimes you have to be willing to search for those things.
I’ve worked in NYC for more than 25 years, and the only reason I don’t do more New Yorky things is I’m old and tired. But I still do a fair amount of museums, clubs (not young people dance clubs anymore, I mean cabarets), stores, live in the libraries, I have my favorite restaurants and “sights,” etc. (I adore Times Square).
I’ve walked past it a thiousand times and had appointments in it, but I’ve still never been to the top of the Empire State Building.
Some of it. Austin’s got a great lake right downtown surrounded by a hike-an-bike trail and I spend a lot of time down there. I hit the clubs maybe once a month and see a concert about that often as well. I visit a pub or a good restaurant weekly. I also spend time every summer (less this summer tho’) out at the lake (the big lake) and tubing on the near by rivers.
Things I don’t do: Visit the capitol/museums unless company’s in town. There are still a lot of neat outdoor recreational places I’d like to visit. I often notice arts festivals and don’t find to visit them. I’d love to sail but don’t have access to a sail boat. I never remember to get tickets to roller derby. And I haven’t explored the surrounding small towns which I hear good things about.
Sort-of: Greensboro’s oppurtunities are few and far between for a city of 233,000. I can’t go to the bars so really it is either restaurants or the few shows for entertainment. Weatherspoon, the local free museum, really sucks as well.
That is why my friend and I make our own entertainment. We have ridden in 17 of the elevators downtown, hoping to one day ride them all. Only 3 buildings have denied us access, but in time we will get those too.
I’ve done most of the touristy things in Montreal. I spend summers at the festivals and wandering the Old Port and Mount Royal. I watch the international fireworks competition every year, and I have a season pass to the Botanical Garden. I go to the Biodome, the museums, and the planetarium about once a year. I go to hockey games and used to go to baseball games… until Washington stole our team.
There’s probably a whole lot that I haven’t done, but I try to take advantage of what my city’s got to offer.
We don’t have much in the way of excitement in Central Pennsylvania, but we do have opportunities for what is called “heritage tourism”; that is, we’re loaded to the gills with historical sites, agri-tourism, and various museums related to history and government. As much as I’d love to visit these, I just don’t have the time these sites deserve. For example, a proper trip to Gettysburg would take at least two days.
When I’ve lived in cities like Houston, I have taken advantage of the museums and art theaters, but they’re easier to tackle in one day.
You should do that before someone knocks it down. In 2001 a friend of mine really wanted to see the top of the WTC but we kept procrastinating.
I don’t go to museums very often, but I go to the theater a lot (everything from Broadway to tiny independent productions.) I also sometimes go exploring in neighborhoods in search of new restaurants, which are almost always good, unless they’re in Chelsea in which case they’re trendy as hell and the food and service are awful.
Go to museums a lot; for music, I’m way more apt to to to some of the nice small venues rather than the stadium shows. It’s also nice being able to see indie films in theaters – in my choice of theaters, sometimes. (There are a couple of Main Street type theaters in the 'burbs that have turned into indie houses.)
I generally stay away from Downtown/Strip area unless there is company. I have hiked in the Red Rock area in the last 5 years but not lately. If we do anything, its usually to frequent the local casinos (usually to see a flick or eat) or to hang out at the Crown & Anchor. When my friend is in town, we may go play Bingo. I havent been to Lake Mead or the Dam (except to pass through on the way to AZ) for years, and the local museums I’ve been too when I was younger but not lately. We do go to the Shark Reef sometimes- that ROCKS!!
I used to live in the Chicago suburbs, so there was always something to do. But my (now ex) husband didn’t really like to go out, so I didn’t get to do a lot of things that I wanted to do. We did touristy things when our families came to visit, but otherwise we didn’t go out much–mostly just to the mall or to movies or museums. I went out more with my friends. Before we got married, we were going to college in a small town in Virginia, so we did lots of fun low-budget things–we had a little rubber boat and he had a motorcycle, so we did a lot of boating and motorcycle riding, and we had picnics in strange places. After we got married, he hardly ever wanted to leave the house.
I live in Chapel Hill now, so there’s not quite as much going on, but there’s still plenty to do. There are some things I’d like to do that I don’t do just because they’re a little too far away. I go to concerts almost every week. I go to museums when my family’s visiting (once a year’s enough, usually). I took my brother to the train museum (which turned out to be not so much a museum as a bunch of trains, and it was really hot, but he had a good time).
I do, but not as much as in the past. I probably get out to the Houston Zoo about twice a year and I’ve been to the symphony about a dozen times over the last 6-7 years. In that same time span I’ve been to a few plays at Jones Hall and, since I live adjacent to the Museum District, I do get to a museum every 6-8 weeks. The pubs and bars I visit once or twice a week. Up until I was domesticated by a woman in my mid-30s, I did the bars every night. Since release from that program, I haven’t picked up the bar habit to quite the former degree, but I still like to go have dinner at a pub once or twice a week. I get to the beach about 6 times a year.
I think a lot of your degree of participation is determined by where in a metropolitan are you live. I live in the center of Houston and much of the many distractions it has to offer are within fairly easy reach. But there are many who “live in Houston” who are 45-50 miles away from me, and it’s a major trip for them to partake of central metro delights.
It depends. Given that I’m only in the area where I am presently living on a temporary basis, it seems like there are a lot of things I should do within a reasonable driving distance. (Where reasonable driving distance is equal to two hours or less one way). On the other hand, I start feeling like I’m spending a lot of time and energy (and money) for not very much enjoyment when I do things like use more than half a tank of gas for one hour in a museum I don’t even enjoy–not the museum’s fault exactly. This is the first summer that I’ve gone to see free theater in the park (out of three I’ve lived here) and it was easy and convenient enough that I wish I’d done so previously.
My other problem is that I’m single and lonely. There are activities that would be much more fun to do in a group- or even just a duo. I’m about to turn into a boomerang and move back home with my parents, and hopefully while I’m living with them we’ll take advantage of some of touristy things that one always intends to get to “someday”–like Eve’s comment on the Empire State Building.
I live in the DC area, and I go to the museums all the time. They change exhibits every so often so it stays interesting. Of course, now that I have kids, there’s even more reason to go. I work near The Mall so I’ve even managed to go have lunch at the Folklife festival or whatever’s going on. I don’t do things that have huge crowds, like 4th of July on The Mall, very much, though.
Nope. I live in LA, and pretty much only do touristy things when I have touristy people in town. Other than that, it’s just a few restaurants, bars, bookstores, etc., that I hang out in. I’m seriously considering moving to Austin, because I have such a great time when I visit there, but I need to recognize that one of the reasons I have such a great time is that we go to all the fun places to hang out. If I were a resident, as opposed to a visitor, I suspect my life would be the same in Austin as in LA. Just, you know, hotter.
I was born in NYC and grew up in Central Jersey. I have tried to take advantage of my location. I use to take my niece & nephew, now my own kids and out of state friends on trips to the Major Museums, the Intrepid, Statue of Liberty, Liberty Science Center. I have been to the tops of the Empire State building several times & the WTC twice, RCA/GE building. I’ve visited NYC Main Public Library. I’ve gone to Bronx Zoo dozens of Time & the Staten Isle Zoo. All the local stadiums in NY/NJ and also Camden Yards in Baltimore. We take a June vacation every year now to take advantage of places like Cape May, Mystic Sea Port, Cooperstown. We take day trips to Museums & Aquariums in area. Yesterday we went up to the Morris Museum for The Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of 700 historic mechanical musical instruments and automata (mechanical figures). Great hidden gem of a museum we heard about on NPR. My wife and I average 1 Broadway play per year. Etc.
