WANTED: New hometown

Forget Naples and St. Pete, it doesn't get any better than this:
http://steinhatchee.com/

 

Ah, hoo-ville: It's a beautiful college town in the middle of fucking nowhere ...

 

Oh.

 

I have no problems with Oxford, but I prefer Athens.

I also love the San Francisco area, the San Diego area, Chicagoland, Charleston, Athens and all of the major Tennessee and North Carolina cities except Memphis.

I could live anywhere, but I grew up in East Tennessee, and when I drive from Nashville to Knoxville to Asheville to Greensboro to the R/CH/D area, it just feels like home. I spent some time in Chattanooga, too, and I had a blast.

Feel free to PM me with any questions.

 

I haven't read all these posts, Jones, so I don't know if it's been mentioned already. But you could do a lot worse than Lawrence, Kan.

 

It's been mentioned in past pages, but middle of nowhere?

If that means one hour from a million plus city and two hours from a seven million plus city, then I guess you could say that.

 

Sirs, Madames,

A US option and a Canadian one. I'm a sucker for Albuquerque and Vancouver Island, where my buddy has been for a couple of decades. Still, moving is always better in prospect than reality. I've lived in Toronto's east end my entire life. Don't see it changing.

YD&OHS, etc

 

Mr. F
One of these days you may come to your senses and move to the west end.

 

Or to the 'burbs out here in the 905.

 

I think Headbutt or someone already mentioned it but the eastern shore of Maryland always comes up with me when I go through this exercise myself -- great combination of climate, schools, airports, affordability. I like where I live in Westchester -- great schools, plenty of transportation and easy commute to the Most Important Place on Earth -- but it is expensive. I'd also like to have a few more days of golfing weather each year but I figure global warming will take care of that if I stick around long enough.

 

Re St. Pete: No.

My mother-in-law has a place in Bradenton, so we've been in the area quite a bit. When my kids were toddlin' like yours, my wife and I thought we were fools not to consider moving out of cold-ass Chicago. Now that they are school age, we shudder at the thought. The schools are terrible -- we have friends who moved out of Tampa to Milwaukee rather than have their kids spend their elementary days in a trailer because of the people in the following sentence. The area is filled with cranky seniors who gum up the roads and lines and seethe at your very existence, and reject anything that might help say, schools and infrastructure. The rich-poor divide is stark. The state motto should be "deed restricted community" -- god help you if you deviate from the norm in your neighborhood.

Of course, it's possible for the weather and the beach to trump all of that, like it did for a guy from Indianapolis I met in a restaurant who said he hated, hated, hated St. Pete after moving there, but he couldn't leave because he couldn't deal with the winters anymore. (This guy was probably in his late 30s/early 40s.)

Also on the plus side, because it's so overbuilt, real estate values are dropping about as fast as anywhere in the nation, so you could get yourself someplace nice, real cheap, especially if you wait another year or two.

 

St. Pete is the original "nice place to visit but ..." town. I just spent my annual week at the Vinoy, which is charming as ever, but, God, I'd go nuts trying to live there year-round. I imagine, like most of Fla., the schools are terrible. I'd like eat some mushrooms and visit the Dali museum someday, though.