I lived in Bowling Green in 2000-2002 while attending grad school at BGSU. I see a lot of people had a problem with the topography, but I didn't, as I am from a very similar region in central Illinois. I found BG to be a perfectly adequate place to spend 2 years. It's true that there isn't a WHOLE lot going on, but if you're there to go to school, shouldn't you be devoting most of your time to that?
Let's see....good things about BG:
1. As echoed by a previous poster--the Grounds for Thought coffee shop/bookstore is awesome.
2. there's a fab video store 9and the name escape me right not, but it's right off the main street, not far from downtown). They even carry lots of great underground/cult/indie film.
3. Howard's--a great dive bar that occasionally got interesting bands.
4. SamB's restaurant
5. Japanese restaurant located out by the interstate 9and again, the name escapes me, but it was the only one in town)
6. Popular Culture Library at BGSU has some one of a kind collections...very cool.
7. Wood County Historical Center's museum--check out the exhibit at the "Lunatic House" (and not just because I had a hand in creating it!)
8. The Cla-Zel--a wonderful old one-screen movie theater that has been kept up really well on main st. Sure hope it's still open!
9. 24 hour greasy spoon diner on Main St.--can't remember the name, but my husband loved going there at all hours to study.
10. Myle's Pizza-- a true BG institution. I enjoyed the pizza occasionally, but find it a little heavy for my tastes (LOTS of cheese and sauce, and pretty thick crust, although it technically isn't stuffed style)
11. The old windmill near the college (which is an apartment, actually!)
12. Always heard good things about swimming opportunities at the quarry, but never went.
13. Great proximity to Ann Arbor--it usually only took us an hour to get there.
14. Also great proximity to a wonderful drive-in theater outside of Toledo (in Oregon), the Sundance Kid.
15. Great proximity to Cedar Point amusement park, the best in the US!
16. Pretty good (low) cost of living--the gas was always cheap (like 30 cents less per gallon than in Illinois), and I found groceries, rent, and utilities to be pretty affordable.
Bad things about BG:
1. Horribly hot in the summers (the 2 summers I was there anyways...one was awful--in the 90s nearly every day). The area used to be a swamp, and used to be drilled for oil, and when it gets that hot, the air gets a real swamp-gas kind of odor....
2. The town seemed to actually not care for the University much, in my experience. It seemed less like a real "college town" than a town "with a college".
3. Very, very few job opportunities. If you're a student and can get work study, than you may be ok. grad students might get screwed for the summer if their dept. doesn't support them.
4. No big movie multiplex--although there is a great one 20 minutes north in Maumee.
5. Not a lot of places to choose from to eat (but enough to do ok)
6. Totally draconian apartment rental practices!!!! We had a terrible time getting a place. We called around, and the landlords refused to actually SHOW us the apartments--they said just to go to the addresses and ask the tenants themselves to show us around. We'd never experienced this, and found that the tenants we not pleased for us to just barge in. We ended up renting a place at the last minute that totally sucked. The landlords were TERRIBLE....Greenbriar. They have a big monopoly on rental housing there. I could go on and on about our experiences with them, but I'll spare you the details.
7. Not a very liberal town. Not a lot of diversity to speak of. My husband taught undergrad classes and very rarely had african-american students. Most of the kids are from farms/small towns (as am I), and most were very conservative.
8. Not a lot of shopping opportunities, although they do have a 24-hour Meijer superstore!
9. Being close to Toledo is not much of an asset, I found, as it really lacked a lot of things you would expect such a large town to have. They do have a really cool mosque though.
10. The school is not very pretty, or architecturally interesting. That's not to say they don't have a few nice buildings or occasionally nice events, but overall, it's kind of an ugly 1960s concrete-y campus.
11. Meatheads. One of my fellow grad students was jumped while walking home one evening by some dudes in a truck, and beaten to a pulp and called a certain slur (and he wasn't gay, but had long hair). I don't know if this was done by locals or students, but there definitely was a meathead quotient in town that I observed.
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. 
Another perspective...
...
A little bit of help...
Linear Mode
