New To The Area! (Cincinnati, Dayton: home, neighborhood, to live in)

[143soulchild]

Hey everyone, hopefully those of you who are familiar with the Cincinnati area can help me out.

I'm a young professional that will be starting a job in Middletown. The advice I've gotten so far is that Middletown is not where I wanna live! I'm 22 so I'm looking for a place that will have a lot of buzz and things to do. I don't really want to live in a family neighborhood, but i also don't want to have a 40min commute to work each day.

Some people have suggested norther Cincinnati or southern Dayton.

I'm moving from Ontario, so i have absolutely no idea as to what to expect from the night life, or that sort of thing.

Can someone shed some light as to the areas I should look into. I believe my budget is reasonable for Cincinnati.

[Humlermw]

To be honest theres nothing but burbs in the corridor between Dayton aand Cincinnati, which happens to be right where middletown is. If you want any sort of excitement you're gonna want to be in the Cincinnati area. Pleasent Ridge is a nice northern part of the city, but again if you don't want to be surrounded by families you need to be in a place like Clifton. Just 3 miles north of the city center and just filled with people in their 20's. Only drawback is its farther than you'd like.

[jlrosen]

I agree, the nightlife is all in the city and right across the river in kentucky

[cincylifer]

agreed, to live near nightlife would mean a long commute to Middletown

[Briolat21]

If you don't have to have crazy nightlife, there's lots of cute places in the 'burbs with downtowns or villages to themselves. Glendale, Loveland, Montgomery (pricey)... Even Hamilton is kinda cute (though most people on this board seem to be anti-hamilton, we think its kinda neat and fun.

For a true bar-hopping, 25 different clubs with live jazz/rock kinda experience - it would have to be downtown Cinci.

But you could live in between Middletown and Cinci, and have a reasonable commute home to change and then to the clubs.. Look just inside the I-275 belt - especially near I-75, or I-71 as those are straight shots into the city.

Good luck! Welcome to the area. I'm from MI, we used to get up to Ontario (esp. Toronto) fairly often.

[hillside]

downtown dayton has some good nightlife if you know where you're going, and it's not as far as downtown cincinnati from "the middie".
big time decision - are all those cool spots in cincinnati worth the gas? don't thank me, you can thank our commander in chief for that doozy.

[Slash83]

Yep..certainaly George Bush's fault the gas prices are so high. I've always known he has a button to press each morning that says "raise gas prices".