Bloomington/NOrmal

[ndb]

Originally Posted by NYrules

Like one of my old college professors once said in class, "Bloomington/Normal is like a major Chicago suburb placed out in the middle of no-where without Chicago being attached to it somehow." That couldn't be any closer to the truth. B/N is a very nice town though and nice place to raise a family, not to mention that the weather down there is much nicer than up in Chicago. There is no lake to screw up your weather and keep it 40 degrees and cloudy nearly everyday well into April.

That is a pretty accurate assessment. I lived there from 1996 till 2000, but went to school there from 1993 - 2000 (I commuted from Clinton for a few years). I have not lived there for 8 years so I may be WAY off. The things that are nice about blm/normal are that it's pretty clean in most places (obviously there are some exceptions). It's pretty progressive, has 2 universities and lots of white collar employment that pays really well in most cases. I worked at both St Farm and Country Financial right out of college (neither were for me, I didn't like the environment, too stuffy). Mitsubishi has a factory there (or at least used to) and there are a LOT of chain restaurants and stores. There are a wealth of opportunities for work and stuff to do and they have good schools.
It's a good place to live, in general.

The downsides that I found were:

***take them with a grain of salt, I'm pretty picky***

The entire town seems to revolve around State Farm, which drive me crazy for some reason.
SF pays well and has driven the cost of living up. Real estate can get a little high.
The majority of businesses are chains, in my experience there aren't a lot of small businesses and not nearly enough unique little shops (but there are some).
Not a lot of unique restaurants compared to say, Champaign.

nb