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Six months is one month longer than the five months I stayed! I moved from Boise to Seattle and couldn't believe how rude people are in Seattle. Also the stagnant economy everywhere but the Eastside. Lots of delapitated buildings and white trash unless you live in a high price area and I rather pay a high price to live in California! People always give California a bad reputation but I've travelled quite a bit and Seattle is definitely the most rude West Coast city.
Now I'm here in Orange County and moving soon to San Diego.
If you don't mind me asking, were they just introverted or were they actually straight up rude? I've heard of the first but not the latter.
Seattle is a great city to visit, BUT the people there are suprisingly standoffish.
If you are an outgoing person, you SHOULD NOT move to Seattle. I will add my 2 cents.
What is in the water? It doesn't take that much to be minimally cordial. I lived there 3 and a 1/2 years. I couldn't wait to leave. If I held out longer, I would have made more money on the property I sold. Oh well.
I was just there this past weekend. It made me wonder "what the hell was I thinking" when I did everything in my power to move there back in the late 90s.
Best of luck to you in CA. It's my home state, too. There are jerks in CA, but also a lot of nice "regular" people from all over the world.
I hope you can take this with a grain of salt, I do understand what you've experienced.
Imagine yourself for a moment, wherever it is that you might have lived or someplace where you grew up for a moment, where your family lived and theirs before, and so on. Some place that was nothing special but was special for you because of your life experiences there. Think of your greatest childhood memories, teen memories or stories and stories from your family your grandparents, and again their parents and so on, because that's where I am coming from. A fairly rich history in some place, not world class noteworthy maybe, but it's yours.
Trouble is, now imagine that place having a population explosion, growth, sure at first it's very noticable, but you've got such a good thing you think you are happy to share it, and here the cycle begins. It's not personal, but if you actually look at the numbers on growth for this region over the past 15 years or so, and then imagine that kind of growth coming to your home, you probably would clam up and close up shop too. You probably wouldn't want to be every newcomers best friend anymore, you couldn't possibly anyway, you wouldn't have the time. You might randomly find yourself giving out the wrong directions when strangers passing by ask you how to find something or get somewhere.
Now, imagine so much of what you remember about your hometown and all the neighboring towns, you know, you played all their teams back in school or whatever and wandered off after the game in these little rival towns and stuff. Now go back and see how much of it has been bulldozed and is being marketed online by Real Estate agents who can't even spell or pronounce half the town names right themselves, let alone really desribe what it's like to spend time there. They sure can give you a commute time estimate and describe the mountains or country like setting and that's about it. Check out the neat cookie cutter developements with their plastic, closed into themselves buildings, they look like little dull lego block clusters stuck in the middle of nowhere. They look like military bases or company towns, compounds for the random incoming labor forces of some yet unknown future massive. Soon they start to cluster more and more. Now these great big strip mall sections start floating further and further out into the subsurban areas, more and more of them. Then you go to pay for something. Anything. Rent. Mortgage. Parking. Energy. Maybe just dinner or a movie. Suddenly, and it feels like overnight, you're paying a hundred percent, 200 even up to 500% inflation rates over what you look back as maybe seems like it was 10 years that passed, I swear it's only been about that long too, you scratch your head, perplexed. Yes we've had a larger inflation across the country recently but here it's more an ongoing phenomenon.
You know it's not personal, but as far as I can tell, I probably won't have a lot of free time to get to know a quota of new people at the end of the day. That's not to say if you really bring something, if you really have something to offer, or even if you don't. Who knows? Being a stranger in a new place, it's about 50/50, you get in or you don't right? But being a part of a massive explosion, and that's what this place is like recently, well, it might not be going 50/50. Essentially a casualty of war in a metphoric sense. I'm sorry if it didn't happen for you here but I'm also sorry so many have just come, and honestly, I couldn't really put my finger on the why of it. By that I mean I have talked to people and they were like, I don't know, it just sounded cool, let's go to Seattle. Maybe it's really poorly overmarketed and someone is making bank off of that fact, I don't know.
I don't know all the answers, but when small towns that were once nothing special but were definitely important and home to those that lived and really lived in them become nothing more than dumping grounds for high profit bedroom communities, driven primarily by greed and huge unplanned growth rates I suppose, it does leave behind it's share of mixed feelings.
Maybe some of us just want a breather. As for it being naturally beautiful to look around here. Well some of that is due to for so long noone wanted it except those of us here, and nature sort of took it's course. I suppose those days are really gone now. I know some of the things I enjoyed while growing up are not going to be here for my kids to enjoy. Maybe it's just the eye of the 'caine and eventually things will normalize, but whatever it is, I wanted to try to contribute honestly and perhaps help clarify why the commenting here might be reflecting a variety of different experiences, while hopefully not sounding too negative.
It wasn't so bad to live in the state when I was in school there as a kid. But add a few years and it is a completely different story/experience!!
We moved out for a brief period a few years ago, and if it hadn't been for the pals I had leftover from my years there as a kid it would have just been horrible!!
I think it has more to do with the weather than anything else!! Lots of true depression from the lack of sunshine!!! Sort of the same problem folks in London have.
Look at the difference of the folks down South who have sunshine all of the time!! It is not just how you are raised, although all of it looks like sort of a circle: sunshine and good manners, rain and forget the manners I'm too blue which makes for rude.
There are a few who despite the gloom stay clear and happy. But an example of how the weather can take a toll on a person: my old high school pal, Tammi. She moved in from sunny Hawaii. She was so perky and bubbly when she first arrived. I left to move out of state and then came back about one year later. Guess what, she had changed into someone I hardly even recognized!! Clearly depressed!! I left with her as one of my best pals, and when I returned and ran into her she barely spoke to me!!!!!!! She'd also changed appearance-wise!! The new Tammi was dressed in all black, and had stopped wearing any kind of makeup. She also had cut her beautiful hair. I must admit the new look matched her new mood!!
I hope you can take this with a grain of salt, I do understand what you've experienced.
Imagine yourself for a moment, wherever it is that you might have lived or someplace where you grew up for a moment, where your family lived and theirs before, and so on. Some place that was nothing special but was special for you because of your life experiences there. Think of your greatest childhood memories, teen memories or stories and stories from your family your grandparents, and again their parents and so on, because that's where I am coming from. A fairly rich history in some place, not world class noteworthy maybe, but it's yours.
Trouble is, now imagine that place having a population explosion, growth, sure at first it's very noticable, but you've got such a good thing you think you are happy to share it, and here the cycle begins. It's not personal, but if you actually look at the numbers on growth for this region over the past 15 years or so, and then imagine that kind of growth coming to your home, you probably would clam up and close up shop too. You probably wouldn't want to be every newcomers best friend anymore, you couldn't possibly anyway, you wouldn't have the time. You might randomly find yourself giving out the wrong directions when strangers passing by ask you how to find something or get somewhere.
Now, imagine so much of what you remember about your hometown and all the neighboring towns, you know, you played all their teams back in school or whatever and wandered off after the game in these little rival towns and stuff. Now go back and see how much of it has been bulldozed and is being marketed online by Real Estate agents who can't even spell or pronounce half the town names right themselves, let alone really desribe what it's like to spend time there. They sure can give you a commute time estimate and describe the mountains or country like setting and that's about it. Check out the neat cookie cutter developements with their plastic, closed into themselves buildings, they look like little dull lego block clusters stuck in the middle of nowhere. They look like military bases or company towns, compounds for the random incoming labor forces of some yet unknown future massive. Soon they start to cluster more and more. Now these great big strip mall sections start floating further and further out into the subsurban areas, more and more of them. Then you go to pay for something. Anything. Rent. Mortgage. Parking. Energy. Maybe just dinner or a movie. Suddenly, and it feels like overnight, you're paying a hundred percent, 200 even up to 500% inflation rates over what you look back as maybe seems like it was 10 years that passed, I swear it's only been about that long too, you scratch your head, perplexed. Yes we've had a larger inflation across the country recently but here it's more an ongoing phenomenon.
You know it's not personal, but as far as I can tell, I probably won't have a lot of free time to get to know a quota of new people at the end of the day. That's not to say if you really bring something, if you really have something to offer, or even if you don't. Who knows? Being a stranger in a new place, it's about 50/50, you get in or you don't right? But being a part of a massive explosion, and that's what this place is like recently, well, it might not be going 50/50. Essentially a casualty of war in a metphoric sense. I'm sorry if it didn't happen for you here but I'm also sorry so many have just come, and honestly, I couldn't really put my finger on the why of it. By that I mean I have talked to people and they were like, I don't know, it just sounded cool, let's go to Seattle. Maybe it's really poorly overmarketed and someone is making bank off of that fact, I don't know.
I don't know all the answers, but when small towns that were once nothing special but were definitely important and home to those that lived and really lived in them become nothing more than dumping grounds for high profit bedroom communities, driven primarily by greed and huge unplanned growth rates I suppose, it does leave behind it's share of mixed feelings.
Maybe some of us just want a breather. As for it being naturally beautiful to look around here. Well some of that is due to for so long noone wanted it except those of us here, and nature sort of took it's course. I suppose those days are really gone now. I know some of the things I enjoyed while growing up are not going to be here for my kids to enjoy. Maybe it's just the eye of the 'caine and eventually things will normalize, but whatever it is, I wanted to try to contribute honestly and perhaps help clarify why the commenting here might be reflecting a variety of different experiences, while hopefully not sounding too negative.
Change is a way of life, we don't live in the stone age unfortunately. It is such a lame reason to be rude. I don't think there is any justification for bad behavior IMO.
Actually the weather is the least of it. High on the list was that cost of living isn't much better than CA and the people here in WA are incredibly rude, standoffish and just jerky in general.
We should find out next week if we get to come back, I can't wait!
V. =)
Thats what my mom was saying a few years back after she visited Seattle. She said the people in WA have attitudes just like here.
It's hard to get ahead anywhere you move. Even moving from CA, where we have a higher cost of living. My sis moved to Denver, hoping to set up life, but she's coming back since she couldn't get ahead...it's all relative.
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Seattle
