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We live in Saratoga Springs and enjoy all of the opportunities here for families and education system. We have family in the Boca Raton area of FLorida that for the past 7 years have tried to convince us to move to Floirda. Well after our trip to Disney, and the never ending winter, I have thought about moving. The problem is that I like everything here except the winters. Is it worth moving my whole family just for sunny skies???? Does anyone have any insight on this?
Why would you want to move to a state where for 50% of the year you'd have to be worried about hurricanes?
Why would you want to move to a place where the humidity is so thick and heavy and it's so hot from April through October you wouldn't want to go outside? Haven't you heard of the "melting people" syndrome?
Why would you want to move to a state where the public school education is very bad? (like 1 school district out of 10 is okay - so you'd have to do lots of research)
Why would you want to move to a state where most of the time the winters are quite rainy, and not so warm and sunny as they are reputed to be?
And I've heard monstrous stories about alligators in people's yards - munch, munch...
Saratoga Springs is a lovely town - I was just up there 2 weeks ago - had never been there before, and it's a place that I would consider moving to. What a beautiful spot. If you really like it there, with the exception of the winters, stay put. I'd rather dig some snow than have my house blow away in a hurricane.
Thanks AndreaII, I appreciate your honesty, as you put things into perspective, plus I needed a good chuckle, and your hurricane bit made me smile(unfortunate but true!) Thank you!
Grew up in Buffalo--but much of my family (mom, dad, stepdad, sister) ended up in Florida. With one exception, they ALL wished they'd stayed in NY State. Maybe not poor ol' Buffalo anymore, but Upstate, anyway. Among their complaints (which got worse, not better, over decades of time, as Florida's flaws vs. Upstates merits only got clearer):
-Can't be outside almost half the year due to the crushing heat. You're a PRISONER of air-conditioning. And what you think you're saving on heat you're spending on electric.
-Crowded, pushy, over-developed and getting worse all the time. "I'm in what everyone said was heaven, damn it, so get out of my way! I was promised no need to accommodate the reality of other living human beings down here! It's all for ME, all the time! So HONKHONKHONK!" Developers run the state, so development far outspeeds the infrastructure needed to make that development sane and livable.
-Generally lousy, overcrowded, underfunded schools.
-Overcrowded court system throughout the state, due to crime and guns and drugs (see below).
-Hidden taxes, coming in the form of fees for this and that, that match NY State's notoriously high taxes, but which do not produce same high level of services.
-Monotonous environment. NY State's types of mountains? Farms of all sorts? Unpolluted lakes? Rolling hills? Trilling streams? Gorges, canyons, waterfalls? Incredible state park system? The Adirondacks? The Hudson? The Great Lakes? A soaring Norway Spruce against the crystal blue sky above the passed storms gasp of fresh snow? Maples ablaze, the first trumpet of daffodil yellow just when you'd begun to doubt if Spring would ever happen again? And all the memories of childhood, family, dreams rooted in the changing, moody seasons? No way. And thus very little opportunity, much less tradition, of getting out and really knowing the world around you. Little opportunity for special, cherished, protected-from-development places to seep into your soul, along with the CHARACTER of the seasons.
-Monontous weather. Summer major, summer minor, summer major again, TURN UP THE AC! SHUT THE DOORS AND WINDOWS TO KEEP THE AC IN! IS THE ALARM SYSTEM ON? WHO LEFT A DOOR TO THE WORLD OPEN??
-Hurricanes. My dad went through the worst of Andrew thinking about snowstorms in Buffalo just to calm himself.
-Humidity. Take the most humid day you've ever experienced in Saratoga Springs. Now make it twice as bad. And make it last for four or five months in row. Add another 20 degrees of raw heat produced by the much stronger sun of being near the tropics. Add also just about nobody being able to be outside for very long--and all the isolation and loneliness this produces. THAT's Florida for half the year.
-With the humidity's haze and the increasing congestion's worsening pollution, it's very hard to see the stars there. Crystalline nights don't happen in Florida--you won't find yourself realizing you've been looking into the night sky for a long time, just thinking, remembering, and then suddenly feeling that God may be real and even near.
-Crime. Not just in the obvious urban areas, but encroaching into the new developments.
-Saturated with GUNS, and crazies eager to misuse them. I'm not talking responsible shooters and hunters gun use, I'm talking road-rage and gang-member gun misuse. Guns in teenagers' hands, all over the place. In maybe six months total time in Florida I had more guns pointed at me just for driving only 10 m.p.h. over the speed limit (and not the 25+ m.p.h. over that people wanted) in Florida than I have all my 45 years living elsewhere.
-LONG LONG LONG stretches of hideous cinderblock lowrent shopping plazas of nail salons, porn shops, muffler shops, junkyards, more nail salons, etc., etc. Today's hot new shopping plaza is the next decade's rundown eyesore.
-Drugs. = Crime squared. It's still the country's #1 point of entry for drugs, and it shows. No geese coming and going north and south with the seasons--those are cop sirens, ambulance sirens, fire engines. And the relentless hostility of ever more impatient TRAFFIC.
-Super-inflated home prices (despite the recent bubble-retracting).
-Notice, "developments." Not towns, villages, hamlets, small cities. Not places with roots, character, tradition, IDENTITY. And all of the "developments" are centered not around places to share life and time and the real town, but around SHOPPING. And MORE SHOPPING. Until you go home to watch more satellite TV. That's "community"!
-Obviously, then, a huge and general lack of community: community spirit, community traditions, community touchstones, physical community centers. Village greens? Town greens? Free concerts from the town gazebo? VFW picnics, fire department picnics, church building fund picnics? KNOWING who your neighbors are, and who your neighbors' parents and grandparents were, and what all this meants? Forget about it! Gates and highways and parking lots and more gates and corporate gypsies coming and going and being known more by what car they're leasing than by who they really are and more suspicion and hostility and isolation than you can imagine, instead.
-Fire ants. They DO hurt, and can be dangerous. My daughter got SWARMED in about five seconds of standing in her cousin's backyard. Was screaming in pain, had to be rushed to the doctor, etc. KIDS CAN'T PLAY IN THEIR OWN YARDS IN MOST OF THE STATE FOR MUCH OF THE YEAR.
-The grass has to be of a certain sort so it can withstand the heat--and it's so coarse you do NOT want to be on it. Certainly not barefoot, certainly not for a game of tackle football or a picnic, etc.
-Artificial ponds in artificial "developments" choked with fertilizer run-off boiling in the relentless heat, and stinking. The closer you look at these lovely-from-afar lakes, and the more disgusting you see they are. In fact, the fish have very high mercury levels and shouldn't be eaten throughout most of the state because the food-cycle in these lakes is so out of whack.
-Racial tensions just about everywhere. Not just black and white, but black and hispanic and white, and Cuban and non-Cuban hispanic, and Jamaican and non-Jamaican black, and Cuban and non-Cuban white, etc., etc.
-Lousy state university system compared to the SUNY system.
-Monotony of demographics. In many areas, lots of elderly people with relatively few kids or younger people around. Likewise, pockets of younger people, with relatively few kids and elderly. Pockets of this here, that there, and no real natural mix of age groups, working and retired people, etc. An overly differentiated arrangement of people often based on age alone.
-Smells like sewage in many places, no matter how ritzy. Don't know why--except that with the water-table just a few feet down into the mucky, swampy soil, it might be very hard to bury the sewer lines deep enough, or else they break and leak a lot, etc. But you can SMELL Florida more than you want you. Buffalo smelled better back when the steel mills were still going!
-Swarmed by beyond-rude HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of drunken, bent on reckless hell college students every Spring.
Okay, Floridians: let me have it.
But I'd rather have poison ivy on my eyeballs while cleaning the Saratoga Springs Racetrack stalls, in January, than be king of Florida's nicest "development."
Grew up in Buffalo--but much of my family (mom, dad, stepdad, sister) ended up in Florida. With one exception, they ALL wished they'd stayed in NY State. Maybe not poor ol' Buffalo anymore, but Upstate, anyway. Among their complaints (which got worse, not better, over decades of time, as Florida's flaws vs. Upstates merits only got clearer):
-Can't be outside almost half the year due to the crushing heat. You're a PRISONER of air-conditioning. And what you think you're saving on heat you're spending on electric.
-Crowded, pushy, over-developed and getting worse all the time. "I'm in what everyone said was heaven, damn it, so get out of my way! I was promised no need to accommodate the reality of other living human beings down here! It's all for ME, all the time! So HONKHONKHONK!" Developers run the state, so development far outspeeds the infrastructure needed to make that development sane and livable.
-Generally lousy, overcrowded, underfunded schools.
-Overcrowded court system throughout the state, due to crime and guns and drugs (see below).
-Hidden taxes, coming in the form of fees for this and that, that match NY State's notoriously high taxes, but which do not produce same high level of services.
-Monotonous environment. NY State's types of mountains? Farms of all sorts? Unpolluted lakes? Rolling hills? Trilling streams? Gorges, canyons, waterfalls? Incredible state park system? The Adirondacks? The Hudson? The Great Lakes? A soaring Norway Spruce against the crystal blue sky above the passed storms gasp of fresh snow? Maples ablaze, the first trumpet of daffodil yellow just when you'd begun to doubt if Spring would ever happen again? And all the memories of childhood, family, dreams rooted in the changing, moody seasons? No way. And thus very little opportunity, much less tradition, of getting out and really knowing the world around you. Little opportunity for special, cherished, protected-from-development places to seep into your soul, along with the CHARACTER of the seasons.
-Monontous weather. Summer major, summer minor, summer major again, TURN UP THE AC! SHUT THE DOORS AND WINDOWS TO KEEP THE AC IN! IS THE ALARM SYSTEM ON? WHO LEFT A DOOR TO THE WORLD OPEN??
-Hurricanes. My dad went through the worst of Andrew thinking about snowstorms in Buffalo just to calm himself.
-Humidity. Take the most humid day you've ever experienced in Saratoga Springs. Now make it twice as bad. And make it last for four or five months in row. Add another 20 degrees of raw heat produced by the much stronger sun of being near the tropics. Add also just about nobody being able to be outside for very long--and all the isolation and loneliness this produces. THAT's Florida for half the year.
-With the humidity's haze and the increasing congestion's worsening pollution, it's very hard to see the stars there. Crystalline nights don't happen in Florida--you won't find yourself realizing you've been looking into the night sky for a long time, just thinking, remembering, and then suddenly feeling that God may be real and even near.
-Crime. Not just in the obvious urban areas, but encroaching into the new developments.
-Saturated with GUNS, and crazies eager to misuse them. I'm not talking responsible shooters and hunters gun use, I'm talking road-rage and gang-member gun misuse. Guns in teenagers' hands, all over the place. In maybe six months total time in Florida I had more guns pointed at me just for driving only 10 m.p.h. over the speed limit (and not the 25+ m.p.h. over that people wanted) in Florida than I have all my 45 years living elsewhere.
-LONG LONG LONG stretches of hideous cinderblock lowrent shopping plazas of nail salons, porn shops, muffler shops, junkyards, more nail salons, etc., etc. Today's hot new shopping plaza is the next decade's rundown eyesore.
-Drugs. = Crime squared. It's still the country's #1 point of entry for drugs, and it shows. No geese coming and going north and south with the seasons--those are cop sirens, ambulance sirens, fire engines. And the relentless hostility of ever more impatient TRAFFIC.
-Super-inflated home prices (despite the recent bubble-retracting).
-Notice, "developments." Not towns, villages, hamlets, small cities. Not places with roots, character, tradition, IDENTITY. And all of the "developments" are centered not around places to share life and time and the real town, but around SHOPPING. And MORE SHOPPING. Until you go home to watch more satellite TV. That's "community"!
-Obviously, then, a huge and general lack of community: community spirit, community traditions, community touchstones, physical community centers. Village greens? Town greens? Free concerts from the town gazebo? VFW picnics, fire department picnics, church building fund picnics? KNOWING who your neighbors are, and who your neighbors' parents and grandparents were, and what all this meants? Forget about it! Gates and highways and parking lots and more gates and corporate gypsies coming and going and being known more by what car they're leasing than by who they really are and more suspicion and hostility and isolation than you can imagine, instead.
-Fire ants. They DO hurt, and can be dangerous. My daughter got SWARMED in about five seconds of standing in her cousin's backyard. Was screaming in pain, had to be rushed to the doctor, etc. KIDS CAN'T PLAY IN THEIR OWN YARDS IN MOST OF THE STATE FOR MUCH OF THE YEAR.
-The grass has to be of a certain sort so it can withstand the heat--and it's so coarse you do NOT want to be on it. Certainly not barefoot, certainly not for a game of tackle football or a picnic, etc.
-Artificial ponds in artificial "developments" choked with fertilizer run-off boiling in the relentless heat, and stinking. The closer you look at these lovely-from-afar lakes, and the more disgusting you see they are. In fact, the fish have very high mercury levels and shouldn't be eaten throughout most of the state because the food-cycle in these lakes is so out of whack.
-Racial tensions just about everywhere. Not just black and white, but black and hispanic and white, and Cuban and non-Cuban hispanic, and Jamaican and non-Jamaican black, and Cuban and non-Cuban white, etc., etc.
-Lousy state university system compared to the SUNY system.
-Monotony of demographics. In many areas, lots of elderly people with relatively few kids or younger people around. Likewise, pockets of younger people, with relatively few kids and elderly. Pockets of this here, that there, and no real natural mix of age groups, working and retired people, etc. An overly differentiated arrangement of people often based on age alone.
-Smells like sewage in many places, no matter how ritzy. Don't know why--except that with the water-table just a few feet down into the mucky, swampy soil, it might be very hard to bury the sewer lines deep enough, or else they break and leak a lot, etc. But you can SMELL Florida more than you want you. Buffalo smelled better back when the steel mills were still going!
-Swarmed by beyond-rude HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of drunken, bent on reckless hell college students every Spring.
Okay, Floridians: let me have it.
But I'd rather have poison ivy on my eyeballs while cleaning the Saratoga Springs Racetrack stalls, in January, than be king of Florida's nicest "development."
Thanks homeward bound, you have so many good points. I appreciate the time you took to share your views. This is such a big decision, I really need to look at the big picture. Thanks again.
The Sunshine State has an enormous problem with cockroaches. Of course the people who live there don't want to admit they are cockroaches, but they are. They are known as "palmetto bugs." The houses have to be treated by an exterminator every other month or so ("as needed"). They are supposed to be rather huge. (And the "no-sees" or "no-seeums", those little tiny microscopic bugs that annoy everyone)
One other thing: The roofs of the houses have to be treated something like every 3 months with chlorine since mold grows on them due to the humidity.
Gee, Florida is beginning to sound better and better!!! Can't wait to move there myself - not!!
I couldn't agree more with homeward bound. I'd rather have paper cuts covering every inch of my body and be dipped in acid than to ever live in Florida
Seriously though, I don't know a single person who has moved to Florida and is actually happy.
I don't understand how all of these things exist and yet it continues to be an oasis for my father and brother....Keep convincing me....any other stories from people who moved to Florida from NY and then moved back????
This is interesting, my grandparents retired to Florida after living on Long Island their entire lives. After living there for about 2 or 3 years, they ended up moving just north of Saratoga Springs and have lived there happily for the past 6 years.
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