Please tell me something positive about LI! (New York, Plainview: crime, buying a house)

[sassieskier]

I recently joined this forum. My husband and I moved to NY nearly 4 years ago, lived in Manhattan for the last two and we are now buying a house on South Shore LI.

There seems to be an overwhelming number of threads regarding the bad....High taxes, crime rising, corrupt service providers, illegal immigrants, people can't wait to get off the island (and move to NC!), the # of LI restaurants featured on "Kitchen Nightmares" etc, etc...

Please tell me what is good about living on LI!

[dman72]

Beaches, the East End, Proximity to NY, some good parks, Port Jefferson, The Mets are close......


There are good restaurants, but there should be more considering the wealth here. Way, way too many Italian restaurants, not enough other ethnic food.

[sean sean sean sean]

Too many illegals, crime is insane, nobody speaks English, the cable company is plotting against me, bad drivers, stuck up ugly women, communism, alien abductions, illegal dog fights, poltergeist and haunted houses, mummies, crack is too expensive, doctors won't prescribe Oxycontin, mafioso, the newspaper is plotting against me, school taxes too high, mercury poisoning, acid rain, stolen cars, burglaries, malls are dangerous - cater to minorities, my name is misspelled in the phone book, I got a papercut on my W2 form, homeless people, boarded up houses, shootings every day, airplanes fly too low, black helicopters, fluoridation of water....stealing our most holy essence....

Just kidding...look out the window. It's beautiful in the snow!

[hotkarl]

Originally Posted by sassieskier

I recently joined this forum. My husband and I moved to NY nearly 4 years ago, lived in Manhattan for the last two and we are now buying a house on South Shore LI.

There seems to be an overwhelming number of threads regarding the bad....High taxes, crime rising, corrupt service providers, illegal immigrants, people can't wait to get off the island (and move to NC!), the # of LI restaurants featured on "Kitchen Nightmares" etc, etc...

Please tell me what is good about living on LI!

Um, er, um...nice weather in the summer?

[AlexisT]

There's tons of great stuff about LI, people just like to complain (but also note, that no one wants to change, either).

Tons of great places to eat (LI got so many slots on Kitchen Nightmares not because we have more crappy restaurants, but because of how they did the filming--Gordon Ramsay was flying in and out of the US to do it, so the NY area got a LOT of the locations)

Great parks and beaches. Not too far from upstate either, which also ups your recreation options. When the weather was better, we had something to do every weekend.

Pretty good climate (IMO)--we don't have a 6 month summer or winter, it's not bone dry and we don't get the 3 sunless weeks in a row you get upstate. It's fantastic if you're a gardener--zone 7 and a long frost free season.

We still have some farms left--not enough but some--delicious produce in season. Oh, and Fairway in Plainview.

Excellent schools and libraries.

Safe. We are still pretty darn spoiled.

Right by NYC so you can get your fill of city life and culture.

The only places that don't have illegal immigrants are the ones with no jobs for them to go to. Ditto bad traffic. So, pick your poison, eh?

[mikealarm]

70% of the people that move away come back! No matter how negative things seem, you get used to
it and miss it. You wind up missing your friends, that NY attitude, no matter how negative it may be
there are people who you may perceive to be a lot stranger. My wife and I moved to the Midwest and we hated it their, we missed New Yorker's and all the crazy things that go on here.

[Peter B]

Originally Posted by sassieskier

I recently joined this forum. My husband and I moved to NY nearly 4 years ago, lived in Manhattan for the last two and we are now buying a house on South Shore LI.

There seems to be an overwhelming number of threads regarding the bad....High taxes, crime rising, corrupt service providers, illegal immigrants, people can't wait to get off the island (and move to NC!), the # of LI restaurants featured on "Kitchen Nightmares" etc, etc...

Please tell me what is good about living on LI!

The food, ocean beaches & shopping. Not much else.

[S.I.B.]

It really depends where you live on LI, as different areas will obviously have differernt strengths and weaknesses. In my case, I enjoy the proximity to my job along with everything else in Manhattan (40 minute commute va LIRR), being able to raise my children in a safe area with quality schools, proximity to ocean beaches/fishing/boating, and my choice of shopping in a nearby walkable downtown or big box stores.

As long as I can afford to live comfortably here, I likely will stay. Once I retire, I may have to do the stereotypical retreat to Florida where the winters and cost of living are a little easier to handle.

[WildCardSteve]

Um...um...uh...

It will probably disappear during the next Ice Age.

Moderator cut: rude and unnecessary

I don't have to live there.

[Mjeacoma]

Most schools are great, we have every store imaginable somewhere on the island, close to NYC, beaches, boardwalks, public transportation is everywhere and to everywhere, great people, rich history and best of all everyone knows where it is on a map!