Moving from Texas to Charleston-Champaigne area (Chicago, Rockford: rent, co-ops, motel)

[zanraz]

Hi everyone. I just got offered a job in Charleston, IL and will have to move in the area pretty soon. I'm only 26 yrs old and don't really like small towns. My problem is that I'm not sure if I should move in Charleston, or if I should move into the Champaign area and deal with the daily long commute to work. I'm single and have no kids, so right now I'm not worried about school districts and so on. Any idea on what are good places to move into if you were in my situation?

thanks to all.

[Paxtonian]

I assure you that commute will grow old quickly. Just move to Charleston, you'll enjoy it. It's a small city with a university, you should be able to keep fairly busy during the week there. If you need a more urban experience on weekends, rent a motel room in Champaign-Urbana and go out and do whatever you like- pub crawl, listen to the bands, eat at the restaurants, etc.

[Drover]

I spent 4 years in Charleston. Looking back on it, if I hadn't like drinking cheap beer in cheap bars so much, I'd have hated pretty much every minute of living there. In fact, when I got married and got too old to hang out with drunken college louts, I did hate it. It may have a university, but it's not even a "cool" university town where there's eclectic, artsy coffee houses and indie music venues and ethnic restaurants and organic co-ops (or even a Whole Foods) and vintage clothing stores all the stuff you find in "real" college towns. U of I seems to attract all the students who are into that stuff.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks I guess, but if I worked in Charleston, I'd gladly suffer the 1-hour commute each way to live in something approximating a real city -- and I don't even like C-U all that much. But I like it that much better that I'd live there and do the commute. It should tell you something that many if not most EIU profs live in C-U and do the drive every day. The only good thing that ever came out of that town was Jimmy John's. You couldn't pay me enough money to live in that clapped-out dump of a town ever again. If small towns aren't your thing, than a town of 10,000 hayseeds and 10,000 apathetic drunk students probably isn't gonna be your cup of tea. Mind you, this is the town where I met my current wife, and even the potential nostalgic value of it is not enough for either of us to ever want anything to do with that place ever again.

[zanraz]

Thanks Paxtonian and Drover. I've been dating an artist for almost 4 years now, so I'm more into the eclectic, artsy coffee houses and ethnic restaurants and so on; I guess so far I'm leaning towards Champaign. The hour commute is the only problem. I did have profs in college who drove even farther than that on a daily basis. Any other pros and cons I should consider?

[Drover]

Obvious pro of living in Charleston versus C-U is the substantially lower cost of living and the money you'd save in gas and a far lower rate of depreciation and frequency of maintenance on your car. Obvious pros of living in C-U versus living in Charleston is that it has more of what you seem to be looking for in a place to live than Charleston does, and you'll find a lot more kindred spirits there too. The student body at EIU is on the whole considerably more conservative (or just plain apathetic) than at U of I.

[M TYPE X]

Charleston is a cute little town ... if you're 56, not 26.

YES, the Jimmy Johns there has a drive-through. It's that hip.

[Jamesbond]

I went to school at Eastern Illinois and really liked the small town atmosphere of Charleston. The housing costs will be much lower in Charleston than Champaign and you do not want to drive an hour each way, especially in the winter time!

- Paul

[Drover]

Glad you liked the small town atmosphere of Charleston, but maybe you didn't notice that the OP explicitly states that he is not looking for a small-town atmosphere.

As for winter driving... you might have maybe 3 days out of the year where it actually makes a difference. IDOT is well-equipped to handle snow and the interstate is typically cleared off within 24 hours after a snowfall.

[M TYPE X]

Originally Posted by Drover

Glad you liked the small town atmosphere of Charleston, but maybe you didn't notice that the OP explicitly states that he is not looking for a small-town atmosphere.

As for winter driving... you might have maybe 3 days out of the year where it actually makes a difference. IDOT is well-equipped to handle snow and the interstate is typically cleared off within 24 hours after a snowfall.

Except, in February, I drove all the way up I-57 from Champaign to O'Hare in the early morning mess, with the trucks rocking past my compact Honda. That was fun. BF Goodrich Traction T/A tires are amazing.

Chicago out to Joliet, Kankakee, and Rockford was cleared rather quickly ... midstate or far downstate? When you have a huge storm, I think the response is slow. Then again, the storm of earlier this year hit southern Illinois harder than northern Illinois.

[Switch625]

The Interstates get cleared very quickly. The other numbered routes get cleared a bit more slowly, and the back roads take days to get cleared off.

Charleston is not exactly high culture. It is kind of redneck. I have relatives in that area, and I might disavow them if I didn't have the same last name as they do. Hard to believe I come from the same genetic stock. *shudder*