Do you like where you live?

Scotty Con Queso said:

In reply to Error404 :

I really like Florida and want to live there one day. That said, Tampa and Orlando proper aren't on that list due to the reasons you discussed. 

Having recently visited Florida, my desire to not live there has been reinforced. 

A few responses from the Ann Arbor, Michigan area that I agree with, and don't have much to add. I really like it here, doubt I'll ever leave. It's not perfect, but it's really good. 

I live in Western NC, and have been in the same town for almost my whole life. I love it - my town is a lovely size, the mountains and their roads are right here, the hiking is amazing and the weather is pretty awesome. It's gotten more expensive lately because people can't seem to get enough of Asheville for some reason and it's gotten so bad that it's overflowing and spreading to the nearby towns.

I lived in Charlotte while I was going to college and I couldn't wait to get back. I really like feeling like I'm from somewhere - this place is part of me, it's helped me become who I am today. I love that I can walk down main street and see people I know, or go to the same places I've known since I was a child. I find that no matter how much I think i know this place, there's always more to learn - another nook or cranny to explore. I can't imagine moving all the time, I feel like I would be a tourist wherever I lived.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

i'm in the suburbs about halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor.  Ask me in October and i'm like hell yeah.  But this is February and even though it's sunny today i'm like F this place.  Our roads suck, and i don't like winter.  I'm good with being surrounded by the worlds largest fresh water reservoirs though.

This is sorta me. Come late June I'll be talking about how great it is here and what a value it is. February I make these threads. 

The wife and I have this discussion all the time. We've lived in Seattle, pensacola, Corpus Christi, Sacramento (area), Honolulu,  DC, and back in CA in Davis (outside sac again).  24 years of moving with the CG and our feet get itchy after 3-4 years. Davis is a great town, fairly mild climate, great downtown. Access to the mtns for summer and winter activity, race tracks abound, even a kart track in town. Expensive but we own a house at 2.25% mortgage..... and yet.
 

Colorado beckons, San Luis Obispo (my hometown and the best place in this country if not worldwide to live. No arguments! Haha), Napa area, DC, Asheville, the Portlands.... I wish we could live everywhere, but it gets harder and harder to move if you haven't flexed that muscle. We are trying to decide whether to spend about 200k to make our current house the best possible compromise (still a 2 car garage and a terrible car and motorcycle and camping habit), or find a 1-5 acre spot and put a prefab breeze house on it and have a wicked mortgage until we expire. 

I live in Upstate NY and I like it. I could do with less months of winter and if given my ideal situation I would leave it behind for Jan-March. The cost of housing here is pretty reasonable, taxes are high but not insane. I live outside of a small city in a small village. The village has a $$$ liberal arts college and that helps to keep the village pristine. Being near a small city you get the day to day conveniences like shopping and shows and lower level pro sports. You don't have to deal with traffic. I have also lived in Raleigh, NC, Charlotte, NC, rural, SC and Houston, TX. Honestly I liked parts of all of them but the traffic in the big cities sucks. Also Upstate NY is beautiful country, nice mountains, the Adirondack park is huge and lovely, good camping, lots of lakes, summer temps are great.

The thing I dislike here is the cars. They are mostly beat from salt. I think most people realize their car will be junk in less than 10 years so they treat them as such. It makes it harder to have something that is enjoyable as a daily driver but the older I get the less important I find that.

NJ, central-shore area.  I generally love it.  23 years in this house.  I live on 1.2 wooded acres with an adjoining 4 acre wooded plot.  A lot of school options for my 8th grader.   Taxes are high but I feel like I get something for it.  My community is kind of big (65k residents, 60 square miles) but still small enough that you're not surprised to encounter a friend while out and about.  It's also 350ish years old so there's a lot of history.  My house is 2 streets off a British retreat route used near the end of the Revolutionary War.

15 minute drive to the ocean.  Great group of cyclist friends who like to ride at 0-dark-30.   When it's warmer, we have easy days that terminate with coffee along a scenic river.  A couple great MTB areas.  Amazing county park system.  Lots to do.  10 minutes from a walkable downtown (Red Bank, NJ).   An hour to Princeton.  75 minute drive/ferry or train to Manhattan. 

Only complaint is not great motorcycle roads but I'm 2hr from NJMP.

I travel a lot in the US and Canada, and anytime I go somewhere new I look around wondering if it would be somewhere I would like to move to. I look at general cleanliness, state of the roads and buildings, traffic, weather and the general feel of the place. For the most part they come up short in some regard but then I am also a little critical of where I live which many regard is one of the nicest spots in the world. (Fraser Valley of British Columbia). Despite all of the advantages, the winters are long and wet, house prices are completely unaffordable (which has benefited me, but will hurt my kids to the extent they can't afford to live here), and traffic is increasingly awful. I certainly do not want to retire here. 

Central Indiana. Lived her my entire life. We have about 8-10 years before we find someplace warmer. HATE winter. Rust everywhere. COL is nice, taxes are low and income levels are fine. Last state in the union that still allows forced annexation. Hate that. 

I really feel sorry for those folks who don't like where they live.  Life is too short to be miserable, move FFS!!!

We're in SE Michigan, Oakland County in Metro Detroit to be specific.  Love it here, love Michigan, love the environment, the nature, love it.  I also love our specific community.  Nice small village between several larger cities.  We end up with slightly larger lots.  Our schools are one of the best districts in Michigan.  Outstanding public library and services.  20-30 mis to down town Detroit with all sports franchises, ballet, opera, orchestra, world class art museum.  Fantastic dinning, plays, concerts.  I like four seasons, I like to play with cars, ski, walk, hike, sail, ride etc.  All easy to do here.  Detroit is big enough to be a 'big city' metro area with all the advantages and facilities that brings, while being small enough not to suffer from terminal traffic congestion like Chicago, which is only 4 hours away for more fun things and family.  Several top hospitals etc.  We also have a place up North where we will eventually retire as we do like being away from the urban area, but it works during our working stage of life.  We will keep the primary house as a fall back if old age makes living in a more rural area difficult for us and family.

The only other state that comes close in attracting me to live is Colorado.  My wife has deep family roots there, a great uncle has a park named after him in Aspen.  The problem with Colorado is three fold.  i) Too far from water.  ii) Water rights, iii) Housing cost.  

So for us, we're staying where we are as we love it.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

I've made a few mentions of the changing situation around us. If you'd have asked this question 5 years ago it would have been a different answer. When you get warehouses built around you in the number and size that are going in around me it sucks. 

Dallas, Texas. Used to be a good place to live. Then everybody from everywhere else moved here.

Housing used to be reasonable. Now it is stupid expensive. But we have two houses paid for and no desire to go into the crazy housing market to buy or sell and move somewhere else.

Traffic used to be reasonable. Now it's insane. My car insurance is going up because transplants drive like idiots. I see lots of cars upside down on residential streets and have no clue how they managed to roll a car over in heavy traffic on to somebody's front lawn where the speed limit is only 45 mph. Everybody in my neighborhood drives a truck that is the same size as my Class C Motorhome with a tiny little pickup bed that doesn't haul anything, and they drive them over 80 on the freeway until they manage to hit something like a stalled car or a jacknifed 18 wheeler. Then traffic stops for everybody and it takes two hours to get home. And I get three calls a day from aggressive house flippers trying to low ball me on one place or the other.

I miss the snow. Dallas gets about a week of it every two years. Last week was that week. The highways turn into skating rinks. The office and everything else closes. The mail stops and they don't even pick up the garbage. I sit by the window with Mrs. Snowdoggie, drink hot chocolate, and we watch our dogs play in the snow while the local animal control people send us warnings about dogs freezing to death. I could do this all year. 

Northwest suburbs of Atlanta.  No, I don't like it.  While I won't completely trash it, there's nothing special about it to me.  I don't really fit in anyway...I don't like brodozers or even pick up trucks, don't have a tattoo, don't drink, don't hunt, am strongly anti-gun, hate college football and country music.  

I am soooo homesick (Philly) and can't wait to go back, hopefully in a few years.

Orlando, FL. 

Traffic sucks, tourists suck, wage disparity means you see some really crazy E36 M3 (nothing like people sleeping on the ground within a mile of million dollar plus homes).

I haven't had to shovel my car out in nearly a decade. Other than moving further out of the Orlando metroplex (Longwood Florida is high on my list) I don't see going anywhere else. The only place I would go is back to Minnesota, and I'm not playing which snow pile is my car. 

East side of Cleveland, OH.

Speaking specifically, if I had to be in Cleveland (which, for now, I do), I like where I live. The house is nice and houses us, it's a quiet neighborhood, we've got some pretty land and room for lots of cars. 

More broadly, I really don't like living here. Neither does my wife but she refuses to leave because we both have a lot of family here. Housing is cheap, there are tons of amazing restaurants and the summers are nice but life's too short to live in Cleveland. 

My younger kid will be 18 when I turn 50. If we haven't moved by then, I've given notice to my wife that I'm leaving then and truly hope she comes with me. I will also be trying on a weekly basis to get her to move sooner. 

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

Dallas, Texas. Used to be a good place to live. Then everybody from everywhere else moved here.

Housing used to be reasonable. Now it is stupid expensive. 

Traffic used to be reasonable. Now it's insane. My car insurance is going up because transplants drive like idiots.

Same complaints about Austin. It doesn't help that the racing series I like (IMSA, WEC) stopped coming to COTA. Still gotta drive it myself a lot more before I'm done with the place.

j_tso said:

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

Dallas, Texas. Used to be a good place to live. Then everybody from everywhere else moved here.

Housing used to be reasonable. Now it is stupid expensive. 

Traffic used to be reasonable. Now it's insane. My car insurance is going up because transplants drive like idiots.

Same complaints about Austin. It doesn't help that the racing series I like (IMSA, WEC) stopped coming to COTA. Still gotta drive it myself a lot more before I'm done with the place.

I know at least two people who actually moved to Dallas to get away from the high cost of living in Austin. Housing is even worse down there.

Chicago western and SW suburbs since 1970.  

I love the area but hate the property taxes - now at $10k a year but can be frozen in 5 years for senior status.  

I love our ranch home but hate the size of my garage.  No option to build on due to ranch home locking in any expansion.  

All my family and friends are looking to move south but I want to go old school and live here until I die or the Lord returns!  

Someday I dream about living in a house on Lake Superior but my wife won't do that.  

Berks County, PA.

Love it.  Affordable, rural/suburban/city atmosphere changes pretty rapidly as you pass thru it, so you're never stuck in cookie cutter hell nor the middle of nowhere.  There's a ton of small towns a few miles apart, each with their own festivals and activities - and independent restaurants.  Plenty of outdoors stuff.  Great schools as long as you pick and choose your area with that in mind.  It's not overcrowded - like, cities are obviously still cities but you can drive somewhere without considering if traffic will affect your plans.  It won't. There's 4 seasons and temps are reasonable in all of them.  The region is generally an alternating pattern of hills/plains, so you get development in the flat areas - large farms which over time are becoming suburban housing, warehouses, and industry - but much less so in the hills which are comprised of smaller family farms, rural housing, cute little towns, great roads, wineries, hiking, skiing, etc. So it's possible to live in a rural environment but still find ample employment and shopping nearby.  Or live in a new house plunked in an empty field next to 100 others if that's your thing while having access to outdoorsy stuff not far away.  I grew up in suburbia outside baltimore (just ew) and have also spent a bunch of time in more rural/isolated environments (relaxing but also impractical to a degree) and this is a really nice compromise.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

j_tso said:

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

Dallas, Texas. Used to be a good place to live. Then everybody from everywhere else moved here.

Housing used to be reasonable. Now it is stupid expensive. 

Traffic used to be reasonable. Now it's insane. My car insurance is going up because transplants drive like idiots.

Same complaints about Austin. It doesn't help that the racing series I like (IMSA, WEC) stopped coming to COTA. Still gotta drive it myself a lot more before I'm done with the place.

I know at least two people who actually moved to Dallas to get away from the high cost of living in Austin. Housing is even worse down there.

Having lived in both, Austin housing prices are much, much worse. At least in Austin you have culture and food and an abundance of live music. DFW has...the stockyards...and deep ellum is kinda cool sometimes. 

Pittsburgh, PA 

Car scene is OK but growing. We are becoming a tech hub, which brings money, which brings a better collection of cars to Cars N Coffee.  We are close to a really good race track too. And we have 2 autocross options. 

We used to have 4 seasons, but are slowly morphing into 2: one that is too muggy and one that is cold and crappy. But spring and fall are still great, while they last. We are close to a lot of outdoor activities, from skiing to rafting to hiking and hunting and fishing. 

We have a great airport, which used to have more flights, but it still better than not having one I suppose. We are within a reasonable drive to a lot of other places and trains pass through if you are into that sort of thing. 

The food scene has gotten a lot better over the past few years. Most people eat at chains unless its a date night, but at least we have more chains now. Plenty of international food options too, which is good. 

People here are overall pretty good, helpful and friendly, we maintain a small-town feel. There is big difference between the actual city (very blue) and the surrounding communities (very red) but neither extreme is causing any problems...yet. 

Overall, I like it just fine. I think about moving sometimes, but I could not stand living in the bible belt (no offense, not my jam) or in an area where natural disasters are the norm (no offense, not my thing) or in a really big city, or where it is too hot, or too cold...anyplace not like Pittsburgh I guess.

If there is a city that averages 70 degrees year round, is an hour from the ocean, and has decent church perogies please let me know.  

Scotty Con Queso said:

In reply to Error404 :

I really like Florida and want to live there one day. That said, Tampa and Orlando proper aren't on that list due to the reasons you discussed. 

My parents are just down the hill from the mall in your town. They are heading to FL in the spring probably for good. Somewhere on the Atlantic near the GA border.

I left PGH to go to college and I've never looked back.

As for me:

NH is a great state, Live Free or Die and all that. Mountains, beaches, lakes, it has a ton to offer. Yet, I do not do anything in the winter anymore except freeze my ass off and bitch about it.

Winter is the prime reason I have traveled for the last 8 years for work. San Diego vs. berkeley me cold...sign me up.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You're not acknowledging the mosquitos :)

Hey, hey! Easy man, that's our state bird! 

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You're not acknowledging the mosquitos :)

Hey, hey! Easy man, that's our state bird! 

Honestly I don't think the mosquitos have been too bad for the last few years.  Don't know if anything has changed, but I'm sure I get bitten less than I used too.  Maybe my aging skin is too tough for the litter buggers these days.

I live in Southeastern MA. As a proud MA-Hole, I can't imagine living anywhere else.My town is on the rural side of the suburbs, and we have a good mix of convenience, highway accessibility, and quiet places to go on a cruise or hike. The weather can be a pain, especially in winter, but there's weird weather in most parts of the country these days.

My town is pretty good with utilities and services, and they are what I'd consider a "car friendly" town. Put it this way: they put on car shows at the town hall in the nicer weather. On my street alone, we have a guy with a supercharged 06 GTO, myself and my dumb projects, a guy with a 1994 Vette 6-speed and a 1985 GMC Sonoma that he bought brand new and completely restored recently, and a guy with a Fox Mustang 5.0 that's being built. Not all towns are like that around here, so I'll take that as a win.