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Old 08-30-2013, 09:47 AM
 
5,097 posts, read 6,319,085 times
Reputation: 11750

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Quote:
Originally Posted by jm02 View Post
I didn't find it offensive either. I read it as a bit of catharsis from someone leaving for what they consider greener pastures. I think what riled a few folks up is the stereotyping and some comments that come across as a bit over the top about a place they love and choose to call home. Given this, they chose to call out some of it.

It looks like you've been on CD for a while. I'm sure this is not the first time you've seen this dynamic.

Yes, I understand. I guess for the handful of places I've lived, I've not been offended by others not liking it or finding fault. Everything is so subjective.
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Old 08-30-2013, 09:50 AM
 
16,199 posts, read 11,629,454 times
Reputation: 28859
my opinion on malls.

Very happy with Dover mall.....3 major department stores and a bunch of little ones.
I go what I need "when" I go to the mall....
I like boscov';s and macy's

Met my sis up Christiana once and I said wasn't worth it. Didn't care for it. Maybe it was that day but it was confusing and seemed like everything was soooo over priced.
wasn't worth the hour communte.

Now that is just me........one of the other transplants said she didn't like the dover mall because of a limited selection

I didn't find that so at all.
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Old 08-30-2013, 09:55 AM
 
4,454 posts, read 4,588,383 times
Reputation: 3146
Quote:
When I go to DE, the only real traffic I have to worry about is on Long Island, and in NYC until I hit Jersey. Then it's like breaking out of jail and the feeling of freedom. NO, DE is not perfect, but it is better than here in many ways
Well you know I think about that some times as well. Personally, I too have had my fill. I'm more cognizant of 'changes' around me as well and it's time to depart the area too. The traffic is absolutely terrible here. God did not put me on the earth to sit in traffic for hours. It's ridiculous. heheh I'm not willing to pay the price anymore! I've had real good memories of my life here and I won't dump on it. And if I do really it would be like a negation of my whole life!!!

One thing though that I have to say is that someone leaving an area who lived there 40+ years surely will have a very distinct set of opinions when leaving. If we look at the post I immediately noticed #1. The word 'warning' is in there and 'near' is pejorative. So right off the bat readers are 'on their guard'. This is not a happy-go-lucky come and enjoy post to come and set yourself down in sunny Del! Shucks!

So on that score I'd be curious if jmac would write the same thing tomorrow, 2 days from now, 5 days from now etc to say his son or daughter with their kids who want to come back to live in Del. I'd think there'd be some variation. jmac?
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Old 08-30-2013, 10:07 AM
 
Location: Center City
7,528 posts, read 10,190,227 times
Reputation: 11018
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtees4 View Post
I appreciate your opinion. I don't know why some people who don't agree can't just see that it is your opinion and not everyone HAS to agree with it. That's why it's called a "discussion".
I'm afraid I don't see the dynamic you are observing. The OP did indeed express an opinion. And people are having a discussion.

Again, you confess to being an out of stater. I think you are seeing Delawareans react to what they see as the OP's use of stereotype, and misstatement. Let's start with factual misstatements:
Quote:
Originally Posted by JMac51 View Post
Newark is where I grew up. It is home to the University of Delaware. There are more people from NJ in that university than locals.
The OP states he is being "as honest can be." Well, first of all, he is factually incorrect about the student body of UD. Two thirds of students accepted into the university each year are from in-state, leaving the other third of openings to be fought after by applicants from other states and countries. Those allocations do not all go to NJ residents. And besides, isn't it great that the state's flagship university has such a well-respected program that out of state students are clamoring to get in?

But I think think it's the not really the misstatement of facts that people are discussing. I think it's claims and stereotypes such as these:
Quote:
Middletown - Like all of Delaware, it has no culture, charm, arts, good restaurants, or geographic scenery.

Dover - If you are a redneck you will be in heaven.

Anything below Dover is LSD. - It is Hicktown, USA.

Rehoboth - If you are not a liberal, you should stay away. You WILL see gay couples hand in hand on the boardwalk.
This is just a sampling of the pejoratives and insinuations the OP coughed up in labeling the state and parts of it. And so you wonder why some people can't just see it as opinion and that not everyone has to agree. Yes, it is opinion. But does not agreeing mean they should just stay quiet?

The OP is free to post whatever he wants here provided it passes muster with the mods. He chose to fire a parting shot that I would imagine many would see as insulting and unnecessary (really - rednecks? hicksville?). While I question his level of maturity in posting much of his OP, I have no problem with him doing so. I've seen much worse. At the same time, I don't think he would have made his post if he didn't expect some pushback and challenge on his assertions and characterizations. You asking asking for a discussion. IMO, that's what were seeing. Actually, I am more impressed with the responses he provoked than with the posts by the OP. Rather than hoping the door hits him the behind on the way out, the majority are wishing him well.

Last edited by Pine to Vine; 08-30-2013 at 10:27 AM.. Reason: typos
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Old 08-30-2013, 10:52 AM
 
Location: Seaford, DE
1,915 posts, read 3,888,229 times
Reputation: 1340
Oh, what you miss when you don't log into the forum for a few days. Regarding the OP's statement: "If I offended anyone, I am sorry. Just being as honest as I can be"---

I'm not offended, but then I'm not an easily offended person--more of an "It is what it is" kinda gal and just state my honest and to-the-point opinions on here. I refuse to argue with anyone on the internet; I have much better things to do such as biking, kayaking, hiking, ejoying the beach life, etc. rather than argue. If they don't like what I post...I'm not losing any sleep over it.

I'm born and raised in DE, been here for almost 39 years and my father's agrarian family has been here for over 300. There are many areas and aspects about DE that make me cringe. However, there are also many areas in Delaware I find extremely lovely, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I lived in north Wilmington (Foulk Road) for the first eleven years of my life. I couldn't stand it--too many snobs in my schools and it's just way too urbanized and fast-paced up there for an old farming family like mine. My parents moved us to Oak Orchard in 1985--I loved it at first, but it lost its appeal once I hit my late teens and the drug addicts, crime, and lack of much of anything to do (or places to shop) years ago chased my entire family out of there. My sister moved back to New Castle County as soon as she graduated from high school and never looked back. My parents moved to rural Eastern Shore of Virginia and seem to like it there. I moved to Lewes and THEN I saw what I had been missing....this was home! Places to shop, things to do, cute local events, restaurants, beach life, better people, places I could actually walk or bike to...just what I was looking for. It got even better--I moved to Ocean View. Paradise!!! Everything Lewes had and then some....but not quite as built up around here. It's more of the "small beach town" feel. Sure, there are some things that irk me, and my time here is limited because the husband insists on retiring to southwest Florida in a few years. I'll cry when I leave and miss Ocean View terribly, I just know it.

My point is....I think we all have to find our own little nook, our own little slice of heaven. It took me awhile to do so (about 25 years) before I really found my ideal place to live in my home state. It doesn't sound like DE is for the OP, or perhaps he would have been happier in another part of DE. Hey, you couldn't pay me to live above the canal...no way, no how. Perhaps Colorado is the ideal location for the OP--either way, I wish him the best and hope it works out for the better.
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Old 08-30-2013, 11:14 AM
 
Location: Newark, DE
201 posts, read 412,364 times
Reputation: 162
Well, I hope you feel better after getting all that off your chest.

Geographic proximity is awesome if you have friends and family living in all of those other places and can get to all of them relatively quickly.

I grew up in DC. I get a good laugh anytime a native Delawarean complains about traffic.

I'm not a student and love Newark. My sons have gone to preschool on Main St (Newark Methodist Preschool) and I've been so grateful for that experience. I love the restaurants and shops on Main St.

Rehoboth Beach is great for families. My 6- and 4-year-olds are not remotely disturbed by seeing gay couples holding hands. They're having too much fun building sand castles with the sand in which we've never run across a pebble.

I can't think of a chain store to which I've wanted to go and haven't been able because it's not here. Well, maybe Wegmans. But there are a couple less than an hour away.

There are plenty of good restaurants. Expecting it to be New York in that regard is unrealistic.

Glasgow Park, Lums Pond, White Clay . . . all very nice parks.

The theater at Peoples Plaza is perfectly nice and just minutes from my house. When I lived in Baltimore, we would go to the theater at Arundel Mills, considered one of the busiest in the country. It was really neat in that it was decorated like ancient Egypt. Who cares? Once you're in the theater, you're watching the movie.

As someone who gets carsick easily, I like that it's flat.

Best of all, money goes much further here than any other place I've lived. Our house would cost almost double in parts of Baltimore, and easily triple in parts of the DC area.

You are on the nose about PA drivers though.
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Old 08-30-2013, 11:42 AM
 
198 posts, read 288,792 times
Reputation: 56
Quote:
Originally Posted by JMac51 View Post
I am pretty excited to be leaving Delaware. I grew up in New Castle County, worked in Wilmington, Newark, and New Castle. For the last 16 years I have lived in Dover. Spent much time at my parents homes in Sussex county, including the beaches. I have many customers in Delaware, and I have a pretty unique perspective on the area. I feel like I have seen it all.

Want some subjective observations? Sure.

1. When you ask locals about why Delaware is a good place to live, the number one answer is its geographic proximity to other areas (Philly, Baltimore, DC, and NYC). That should be a warning sign to you. In my opinion, living NEAR other areas is not a feature.

2. The three counties have distinct characters, and even sub-characters to them...

New Castle County

It has the city of Wilmington. It USED to be a banking center and chemical center when duPont and Hercules had their headquarters there. The banks moved out. MBNA was sold. Wilmington Trust went under. Chase Bank went out. The big banking center of Wilmington is not as huge as it once was. The duPont buildings there are pretty much empty.

Wilmington has some very bad areas around it. West side is where a lot of crime is. East side is where a lot of poverty is. Center and south central has some high rise apartments and condos that are decent, near the waterfront and baseball stadium. That is an improving area. Northwest is nice. North (Claymont) is bad. I lived in Claymont as a kid and still have bad memories.

Greenville is the "rich area" of the state. It is small, and northwest of Wilmington. Its where the duPont family and heirs are.

Hockessin is one of the nicest places to live in the state, but it is next to PA Mushroom country. Meaning that it smells awful there in the summer time. True story.

Overall traffic in NCC is awful. No doubt about it. Not just the volume, but the danger and the construction.

There are some nice parks around NCC, but they are spread out.

Newark is where I grew up. It is home to the University of Delaware. There are more people from NJ in that university than locals. The University is not just a school. It is an enterprise. As such, it has BOUGHT UP most of the real estate in downtown Newark. This has good and bad effects. It has transformed a neat, charming place into a plastic place. I really don't go there anymore. It feels very empty to me.If you aren't a student, I don't see much value in being near Newark.

Christiana Mall - one of the best things about living in Delaware is the low taxes and no sales tax. No place better to see this than the Christiana Mall, which is the best mall in the state. You will find better malls in other metro areas, but this mall is pretty fantastic for this area. It is one of the few nice things about Delaware. And there appears to be continued investment in the mall.

Middletown - grew very rapidly leading up to the housing crash. Development there now has halted. It is an immense bedroom community. Meaning, many people live there, but they travel from there to work in Wilmington. So it is a suburb that doesn't have much to do other than strip malls. Like all of Delaware, it has no culture, charm, arts, good restaurants, or geographic scenery.

Smyrna - It is where the state prison is. That is all locals think about it. It is growing. But yeah.

Dover
Where I live now. Don't recommend it. There are many retirees here. If you are under 40, you will hate hate hate it here. A major employer was MBNA/BOA - they left. Aetna left. All that is left now is the State of Delaware (the largest employer) and the Dover Air Force Base. You have big, loud planes flying over you. A lot depending on where you live in Dover. It has a NASCAR track and a casino. If you are a redneck you will be in heaven. Locals leave town when races come to town and there is a reason for that. I could go on and on. With businesses closing left and right, the economy has taken a toll on this area.

If you must be in Dover, get into the Caesar Rodney School District. It is one of the best in the state. Choosing the capitol school district could be a mistake.

LOWER, SLOWER DELAWARE

Anything below Dover is LSD. You have the beaches, and the rest is rural farmland. That is it. It is Hicktown, USA. Milford isn't too bad, and is one of the better non-resort areas to live. Harrington has a huge drug crime problem.

Georgetown is one of the largest cities, and it is where the corporate courthouse is. Other than that, Sussex County is a wasteland. The beaches are a different story, but most property owners are from DC and PA. You will see MANY Pennsylvania license plates when you visit the beach. And PA drivers are the WORST when they come to Delaware Beaches. Don't know why they lose their minds, but ask any Delaware local about it. Beach traffic is terrible in the summer. You have one way to go north, and that is Route 1. Multi-mile backups are not uncommon. Going west to DC, there is one bridge over the bay that gets backed up many miles as well sometimes.

REHOBOTH BEACH
The beaches have the outlets for shopping, that is decent.

I prefer Ocean City Maryland's beaches, or the Delaware State Park beaches (below Dewey Beach) to Rehoboth. Rehoboth lost a lot of sand years ago due to storms, and they dredged up sand from offshore. This RUINED the beach. It now has a ton of pebbles in it. I am not kidding - I don't go there anymore. The south end of the beach is known as "Poodle Beach", and is nationally known as one of the largest gay beaches in the world. There is a huge gay business owner contingient in Rehoboth. If you are not a liberal, you should stay away. You WILL see gay couples hand in hand on the boardwalk. IT doesn't bother me, but at the same time they can't promote themselves as a family resort.

LEWES
Nice, small, near Rehoboth, good school system down there.

DEWEY
Party town. Disfunctional government. Upside down tax revenue, cutting police force, is very ugly. Not a place to live. Hotels are now bullying them and getting around ordinances. Not good.

CANCER HOTSPOTS
There are some cancer hotspots in Delaware. Mainly around the refineries in Delaware City. But there are also other chemical dumping grounds in central Delaware that the chemical industry created. You can search online for where these areas are. As a whole, I don't think Delaware ranks very well with cancer risk (going from memory, but research it).

If you move here, you will miss:

*Name brand chain stores
*Restaurants
*Having a sports team
*Good roads
*Scenic roads (route 9 doesn't count)
*Large parks
*The Arts
*Good movie theaters
*Wide range of employers
*Hills (it is all flat)
*Good economy (there are many states better)

I am leaving because my kids are grown, and I am moving to a state that isn't missing all of the things that Delaware is missing. Don't move here to save on your NY, PA, or NJ taxes. Many people do, and that is not a good enough reason to be here. There are many parts of NJ that are terrible, so that would be a good reason to come to Delaware.

If I offended anyone, I am sorry. Just being as honest as I can be.

Thanks for all the details and I did live in DE - New Castle and Wilmington and I totally agree with what you said. Good Luck with your move.
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Old 08-30-2013, 12:31 PM
 
Location: Greenville, Delaware
4,726 posts, read 11,918,558 times
Reputation: 2650
Going to have to point out another inaccuracy: Delaware is NOT all flat. While most of the State is indeed coastal plain, the area I live in is piedmont. The terrain in this bit of Delaware is fantastic. Farther south, I find the flatness made more interesting by the marshes and wetlands, and by wooded areas.

I don't have relations living in either NYC or these days in DC (part of my childhood was spent there). However, I still value the proximity to those cities, and most recently my spouse and I are especially enjoying trips down to DC. We really can't afford to live there, at least on terms that would be acceptable to us. It is incredible to think that in 1964 my parents paid about 36K for a very nice brick home with slate roof in the Chevy Chase section (Barnaby Woods) of NW DC, which today I probably couldn't have for a million dollars.

Delaware has been a generally good fit for our life situation and needs. I would not have wanted to live anywhere for 40+ years. Having had an upbringing in a military family, we moved repeatedly, and still more after my dad retired and built a second career. My spouse and I also moved around multiple times until our early thirties, only to start back on the nomadic life in our late forties. We've now been in DE for six years and I think it's quite likely we will remain here, though I wouldn't like to feel myself completely stuck anywhere and without options. My impression is that the OP likely waited too long before making a move. At the same time, there are many DE natives who are entirely happy here and have no desire to move elsewhere.

My problem with the OP is the factual distortions and frank inaccuracies that are presented.
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Old 08-30-2013, 01:33 PM
 
Location: Delaware Native
9,678 posts, read 14,149,908 times
Reputation: 21388
Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorjef View Post
My problem with the OP is the factual distortions and frank inaccuracies that are presented.
Me, too. Read between the Original Poster's lines. Given the rat-a-tat-tat list of complaints and inaccuracies, it's perfectly clear to me that there's more there than meets the eye, given his list of irritations. Ask yourself: If you didn't like Delaware, would it take you 40 years to get out, and then, lash out on a public forum to air your unhappiness, and in your very first post, at that? Factual, it was not.

I do thank the Original Poster for his first post here, though, as he certainly knew how to get everyone's attention whether factual statements, or not. There have been some really good responses and it has been quite entertaining.

By the way, Bubba just told me after he graduates from grade school next Spring, he's marrying a girl the next farm over, down in the hollow. EllieMae has always been a sweetheart, and she's 20 years old, just a year younger than Bubba. I'm glad he chose her. She's one of us, my sister's daughter. We Delawareans stick together.
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Old 08-30-2013, 02:07 PM
 
5,097 posts, read 6,319,085 times
Reputation: 11750
Quote:
Originally Posted by beachliz View Post
Oh, what you miss when you don't log into the forum for a few days. Regarding the OP's statement: "If I offended anyone, I am sorry. Just being as honest as I can be"---

I'm not offended, but then I'm not an easily offended person--more of an "It is what it is" kinda gal and just state my honest and to-the-point opinions on here. I refuse to argue with anyone on the internet; I have much better things to do such as biking, kayaking, hiking, ejoying the beach life, etc. rather than argue. If they don't like what I post...I'm not losing any sleep over it.

I'm born and raised in DE, been here for almost 39 years and my father's agrarian family has been here for over 300. There are many areas and aspects about DE that make me cringe. However, there are also many areas in Delaware I find extremely lovely, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I lived in north Wilmington (Foulk Road) for the first eleven years of my life. I couldn't stand it--too many snobs in my schools and it's just way too urbanized and fast-paced up there for an old farming family like mine. My parents moved us to Oak Orchard in 1985--I loved it at first, but it lost its appeal once I hit my late teens and the drug addicts, crime, and lack of much of anything to do (or places to shop) years ago chased my entire family out of there. My sister moved back to New Castle County as soon as she graduated from high school and never looked back. My parents moved to rural Eastern Shore of Virginia and seem to like it there. I moved to Lewes and THEN I saw what I had been missing....this was home! Places to shop, things to do, cute local events, restaurants, beach life, better people, places I could actually walk or bike to...just what I was looking for. It got even better--I moved to Ocean View. Paradise!!! Everything Lewes had and then some....but not quite as built up around here. It's more of the "small beach town" feel. Sure, there are some things that irk me, and my time here is limited because the husband insists on retiring to southwest Florida in a few years. I'll cry when I leave and miss Ocean View terribly, I just know it.

My point is....I think we all have to find our own little nook, our own little slice of heaven. It took me awhile to do so (about 25 years) before I really found my ideal place to live in my home state. It doesn't sound like DE is for the OP, or perhaps he would have been happier in another part of DE. Hey, you couldn't pay me to live above the canal...no way, no how. Perhaps Colorado is the ideal location for the OP--either way, I wish him the best and hope it works out for the better.

Off topic but can I ask why SW Florida? I've never been there but was talking with my sister today and that is where she and her husband are retiring as well as her son and wife. What is it about the area? I guess I'm thinking you are near beach and community in De., how is it different?

Thanks
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