Yes, I hate where I live. Alaska. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautilful state, wildlife in your backyard, strong economy, the youngest “median” age in the country. The last frontier and all that rot…
But, it sucks, it’s cold, it’s dark and there’s nothing to do. Well, let me correct myself, there’s nothing for CIVILIZED people to do. Which is why I’m moving, soon, in about 3 weeks in fact. To Texas.
I’ve lived here for 34 years. I think I’ve given it a fair chance 
I live in Hampton, Virginia, and have been here slightly more than a month. I’m here because I got a dream job after 6 months of unemployment.
It sucks, for different reasons than usual. I lived in Indianapolis for 20 years, and Indiana for most of my life. A person gets mightily comfortable being somewhere that long. The reason Hampton sucks is that I’m not used to it. The traffic is heavier than Indy, the people are packed in tighter, and I’m still learning my way around. That said, I am adapting and the suckness is slowly draining away. Also, the area in general is way cool, so I do have incentive to stay.
If this thread comes up in 20 years, Hampton will be fine and Indiana will suck.
No, I didn’t take you out of context. Just because you personally happen to think that the presence of a college “de-hole-ifies” a town does not change the nature of your previous statement. Most people who live in small towns has some reason that they find beauty, social contacts, love the weather, etc. NO natural beauty? Where in the world can you go that you cannot find natural beauty of one type or another?
It is most definitely condescending to imply that some areas are objectively worse than others and the only reason to live there is that you are a poor ignorant bumpkin.
Note that none of my above comments apply to teenagers. Very few teenagers like growing up in small towns.
I’ve lived in two very different cities, so I’ll go with . . . Austin, TX first. Well, Round Rock, actually.
Ah, Austin.
Pros:
Live music.
Several 24 hour hang out spots.
“Spicier,” if you know what I mean? Not as White.
Friends.
Family.
UT was fun to hang out near.
Friendlier folks.
Hippy-kinda things
Cons:
Traffic was HORRIBLE. I did not leave between the hours of 4 and 7:30. If you left at 4, you wouldn’t get where you were going until 7, anyway.
Conservative Christians out the yin-yang. Being a liberal pagan, it wasn’t a healthy place to live. Well, Austin could be pretty relaxed . . .
Economy being tech and retail based. So, it went to hell in a handbag when the computer industry went down (I lived a 5 minute walk from where Michael Dell himself worked, when he actually worked).
Dry.
Brown.
FRIKKIN HOT. I don’t cope well with heat. Over 80, and I’m grumpy.
Now, for my current home, Kalamazoo, MI:
Pros:
Don’t have to fear for my life in certain parts of the city.
History. BEAUTIFUL old buildings.
Cheap rent ($520 for 730ish sq ft, now looking at a 1,200 sq ft for $700)
Rain. I LOVE rain.
One of the largest Pagan percentiles of population (for the state) in the country.
2 hour drive to Chicago, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Indy, etc. 30 minutes to Grand Rapids.
Manufacturing jobs. My fiance makes enough in one week to pay off our rent. We struggled in Austin when we both worked full-time retail jobs. And manufacturing jobs are pretty secure. Even if this job goes down the toilet, he can get some sort of job at Pfizer/Parmacia/Upjohn and make basically the same money.
Trees!
Green!
Cons:
Less to do.
Miss my friends.
Snow. Well, DRIVING in snow. Snow itself is pretty, driving in it BLOWS.
Having a harder time making friends up here. I’m lonely. Awww.
Where would I like to move? Maybe northern San Antonio. Maybe back to Austin. Maybe Seattle. MAYBE Chicago in a few years. Maybe.
ahem Not to Houston. I’ve actually never heard good things about it, from people who lived/live there. Well, until this thread, hehe. I’ve only been there once, for an Ozzfest, and I got meself lost. All I’ve heard is “It’s polluted, dirty, and crime-ridden.” I can’t personally judge it, but my friends can, I suppose, hehe.
Same for LA. Dated a guy who grew up there. Once said that he took up smoking once he moved to Austin because his lungs couldn’t cope without pollution, lol. I hear there’s, er, a smog you can see because it’s in a valley?
I like smallish big cities. Not New York/La/Dallas, but Austin size.
Oh yes. Feeling the OP’s pain here.
I live in the North-East of England, and it sucks big style (IMHO). I’ve been living here for about 18 months and it’s annoying for me as I’m a townie at heart.
Personally, the crowds annoy me especially at this time of year and some people have such strong accents that it petrifies me - especially when they use colloquialisms (sp?).
Meh. Whadd’ya going to do?
“If this thread comes up in 20 years, Hampton will be fine and Indiana will suck.”
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Hampton is going to suck until the end of time. <insert only partially smiling face icon here>
I’m unfortunately not as enamored of Houston as my friend Ringo. My biggest gripe is that you can’t get to the mountains in a day so weekend trips to climb or ski are out. To me, living here is a necessary evil. It’s the mecca of the U.S. oil industry and working here means I don’t have to travel and spend time away from my family.
I twice tried the “move to where you want to be and take a lesser job” approach. Anchorage was great but a bit lonely when you’re single. Grand Junction was awesome for my mental faculties but the geo-related pay there sucked big time.
I figure we’ll make more here and can cash out a little earlier and go wherever we want.
True. I’ve lived in the L.A. area and it does get visibly smoggy.
I was a Navy brat so I have lived a lot of places and I have to say that I REALLY REALLY prefer the west coast. It just seemed when I was on the east coasts there were a lot more snobs that I ran in to.
I live in Sacramento now. But Bremerton, WA and Phoenix, AZ are the two places I long for.
I lived in WV for 17 years, in a very small town. I got itchy feet a few years ago and moved to Co Springs.
The good things? More jobs for better pay. The people are more friendly. Co Springs has abt half a million people, so there are things to do and places to go, more places to eat than just McDonalds and Burger King. There are lots of things to do as far as hiking, etc…(we have Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak!) but not near as many places to swim or fish as WV… All while not being a really huge place, like LA or New York.
Drawbacks: it’s dry. really freaking dry…I have to slather on Cetaphil twice a day to keep my skin from crackling up and peeling off…and during the winter, it’s brown. everywhere. Except when it snows, which isn’t nearly as often as other parts of Colorado.
I do miss the greenness of WV and the hills looking like they’re on fire when the leaves turn in the fall…but I don’t miss the 80 mile round trip to my $5.25/hr job.
Oops ,My Bad
Usually when I hear people quoting a time to toronto , its folks from up north in cottage country , the muskokas and peterpatch country , not west to east , and vice versa.
Brings back something that someone once told me in a Bar in Toronto ,when I lived there , basically for a lot of Americans , Toronto is the big city , for those folks in NorEast Ohio , and upper new york state.
Declan
Yeah, I’m in in the Willamette Valley. I live in the hills, so that cools things down. It’s nice here, despite the rep we get for rain. More snow might be nice, but in reality I don’t think I’d like it much, living outside of town. It’s really pretty nice living where I do: about hour from Portland, about an hour from the sea, about an hour from the mountains–and isolated enough to keep me from getting claustrophobic. I’m sorry you don’t like your area more. 
I was born and raised in L.A., lived most of my life in LA, but sadly had to move away several years ago. It sucks.
I can see that there are things to like about this place, but it ain’t home, and never will be. I moved for family reasons and those reasons are still valid. On that level, I don’t regret leaving. But only on that one level. On every other level, I regret leaving bitterly. If circumstances changed and the family reasons for staying here were altered, the sonic boom you’d hear would be me moving back to California as fast as possible.
I really like Los Angeles. I was born here, I’ve lived here forever. Because of that, even though its a huge city, its not that overwhelming to me. I think a lot of tourists don’t like it, but part of that is because most tourist destinations are places normal residents rarely even go. I never went to the chinese theater or rodeo drive until I had an exchange student staying with me, and I haven’t been back. I love the warm weather, and being able to go to a park and have a picnic or frisbee, even in december. And there are parks and trees and flowers everywhere, compared to most other large cities I’ve been too. The traffic is horrible, especially in the evenings. And while show business is prevelant, many of my friends have parents working in it, it doesn’t mean they’re any different from someone whose parents are auto mechanics or farmers. As for natural disasters, I slept through the northridge earthquake, about ten years ago, which was somewhere above 6.0. The fires didn’t affect me that much, and I must be used to the smog.
I’m applying to mainly schools in the northeast or the midwest. I’ve been to boston and new york in the winter, and I know that its quite cold. But I really want to try living somewhere else, because, as many people have posted, there’s something redeeming about almost every place; even if I end up somewhere I dislike, I’d rather go somewhere that I hated and come back to my home, than just stay here forever, never really knowing anything different.
My heavens, aren’t we being quite the jackass?
People live in and love places like that because they have vastly different priorities than you do. All the stuff people ramble on about in the cities, that crap doesn’t mean a fart in a high wind to me. Nightlife? Eh, I’d rather hang out at home and have a few beers with my friends and play with the dogs, really. Shopping? Walmart and the local mall meet my requirements just fine, thanks. Hustle and bustle and lots of people? Makes me claustrophobic and miserable. Ethnic food? It’s cool and all, but if I want it that bad, I got a kitchen, ya know?
No beauty in places like the holes in the ground where Dr.J and I grew up? You have to be joking. Look around you at the strip mines being reclaimed, turned into fishing lakes that shine like molten gold in the glow of the rising sun and golf courses that unroll a carpet of green against the gray rocks. Watch the redbuds and dogwoods burst into glory in the springtime. Walk down the street and see the smiles and friendly nods from people who’ve never seen you before in their lives. There’s a simple, quiet dignity in the people there, something I can’t quite put into words.
I don’t love those places because I’m stupid, or uneducated, or poor, or just don’t know any better, or have never been anywhere else. Maybe all you see is a boring, ugly hole in the ground, but I see a beauty there that makes my heart swell till it nearly bursts out of my chest.
I’ve lived in all sorts of places, from the suburban 1/4 acre and the brick veneer to a cottage in the bush. I’ve lived in what was once considered a working-class slum area (as a child in a very poor family), and I lived for 8 years in a small coastal village. And I loved them all, for various reasons.
Now I live in a very cosmopolitan part of Melbourne, where the cafe culture and nightlife go 24 hours. And I love it here, and cannot ever imagine how I managed to survive in the other places.
Inner-city living just has so many positives (apart from my close proximity to the fucking yappy dog next door). It’s safe to walk the streets at night because there are always other people out walking too. Whilst my area is known for it’s substantial population of ‘undesirables’, I have never been hassled or threatened in any way. I can get public transport within a minutes walk, and I can get jolly cheap shopping in the next suburb. You never feel really isolated in a place like this, because a few steps out your front door and you are invariably chatting to someone…people around here still nod and say g’day.
The downside is that being in a built up area, it is hard to see the stars at night. That is the one thing I miss from living in the bush.
I was born in Sydney, and realised I was a city boy at age four, when we moved the the Central Coast, which (was) a very beautiful and undeveloped string of pristine surf beaches and bushland (I hated it immediately, and I still dislike it). I’ve also lived in the bush - a farmhouse with no telephone and the no neighbours. That was fun for a while.
I’ve always come back to Sydney though. Unfortunately, the Sydney I love is disappearing. It’s too cut-throat, crowded, and expensive now. The yuppies, poseurs, and developers have destroyed most of the places I loved. I think I’ll have to move to the mountains.
After getting out of the military, my SO and I decided that we wanted to live closer to family, so we moved to the same city his mother lives. Most of my family lives within seven hours from here, so it’s a heck of a lot closer that the twenty hours it used to be. It’s great to live close to my SO’s mother, it gives her a chance to see our children (her only grandchildren) more often. I have often told my SO that if we were to move again I would want to move closer to my family. Although, on the other hand though, they would be likely to drive me more insane than I already am, so maybe it’s a good idea to stay away ;).
I moved to Chicago last summer. I had been living in Ann Arbor, Michigan and it is very de rigeur in Michigan to go to Chicago for a weekend every now and again, so I did a few times and I just loved it. I was always sad to leave. And when I realized there was nothing really holding me in Ann Arbor, I just split.
I love Chicago. Okay, the weather can suck, but it’s a really great city. It has great architecture, more friendly little pubs than any place I’ve ever been, a large body of water, plus all the things you’d associate with a big city: great museums, theaters, restaurants; there’s always something to do. There’s excellent public transit and housing isn’t too expensive (although I’m originally from the Bay Area, so everything seems cheap to me.)
However, I should say that whenever I imagine buying a house and settling down, I always picture it being in my hometown in Northern California. It’s a very nice small city (pop 56,000) near San Francisco. Chicago is a zillion times more interesting, though, so maybe that will change with time. But I do miss the rolling hills turning green in the winter.
BTW, since everyone’s giving their opinions on LA… both of my parents are originally from LA (my mom from Pasadena, my dad from East LA proper) and most of my extended family lives there and in Orange County, so I’ve spent a great deal of time there. And I haaaaate it. It’s so ugly, all of those towns with fake Spanish names and fake Spanish architecture, the horizon grayish brown on hot days (inevitably giving me a horrible allergy attack), and the awful traffic. It is, honestly, the only place in the United States I’d never even consider moving to. Not that I’ve been everywhere, of course, there might be other places I dislike equally. I dislike it on its own merits, though, I’m not going to resort to stupid comments like “but they have fires there!”
I LOVE where I live, it so does NOT suck. (SF Bay Area) There are some downsides, it’s expensive, there is a lot of highly visible poverty, traffic can suck.
What do I love about where I live?
and lastly… food. Very important to me. I have been miserable on trips across America, because I can’t get the kind of food that I am used to eating. Both high end and low end are important. Being able to get good stuff at the grocery is important. Being able to get WEIRD stuff at the grocery is important, being able to go out and choose between different incarnations of Pub, Indian, Thai, Mexican, Sushi, French, Italian and fusion is really important to me.
BTW, Effingham, Illinois??? I’m from Santa Fe, I used to have a pen pal from their. WEIRD I tell ya!