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I grew up in Milwaukee and love the place, but freshman year of college my car died and I ended up embracing the car-free lifestyle. My family all moved away from Milwaukee while I was in college, so I had the opportunity to move anywhere I wanted. I explored cities all over the country looking for the best place to live out my car-free lifestyle. I tried living in Chicago for a bit after college, but that was short lived. Ultimately I chose Cincinnati because it's walkability is unparalleled. There are plenty of cities in this country with good transit systems that carry people across parking lots and freeways that divide neighborhoods, but very few have the continuous urban fabric the way the Cincinnati does. I walk almost everywhere, sometimes as far as 4 miles without having the landscape make me uncomfortable as a pedestrian. I can actually see myself raiding a family without a car here. That's rare. I've been in love with the city for about 7 years, but I'm lived here full time for about 2.5 years now. It's only grown on me. I love the culture, the old German beer halls, the Italianate architecture, the food (Goetta is incredible), the arts scene, the traditions, and everything else that makes this town so different.
Sounds great. I grew up in Ohio but never spent much time in Cincinnati.
Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
10,749 posts, read 23,813,296 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tcave360
New Mexico loves up to its reputation doesn't it? I've never been to the Southwest (My mom been to Phoenix-Scottsdale and she loves both it and Arizona), how is it in both states?
What I like most about the Southwest is things look and feel different here more than an other part of the country. In my own (subjective) opinion much of the US looks the same to me. Similar rolling hills and forested tree canopy from New England all the way to the Carolina Piedmont, plains covering a huge chunk of the country, and well.... you get the idea. The Southwest has a variety of colorful landscapes and micro climates. The landscapes change rapidly from baking hot low desert valleys, saguaro cacti covered hills, irrigated agricultural valleys, piñon covered high desert hills, ponderosa pine forests and snow covered alpine mountain peaks (called sky islands), red rocks mesas and canyons etc. You can always see the horizon here, the skies are stellar, and the sunsets are amazing all of which I find inspiring. There are palpable elements of Spanish Colonialism and ancient Native American settlements so it's culturally intriguing as well.
Northern New Mexico has a very agreeable climate, four seasons and 300 + days a year of balmy sunshine but high enough in altitude in many parts that it's not excessively hot in the summer like Southern AZ/Phoenix. It's fairly mild in the winter but we get cold temperature swings every now then and it gets windy in the spring which is fine as it keeps it from getting boring.
Albuquerque is the center of commerce, there is some of that "Enchantment" vibe here, but overall it's a sprawly mid sized metro with a beautiful high desert and mountain setting, a few prosperous parts and a lot of lower middle class and impoverished areas as well (commonly found throughout the state). The show Breaking Bad for better or worse made a big mark on the city, seems very well embraced here which is fairly telling as there is a lot of drug trafficking going on here and the state has a very high DUI rate.
Like any place you take the good with the bad, but the thing that bugs me the most about New Mexico is the state of education here is abysmal. Without a good education foundation in place there won't be much of a promising future to look forward to. A 2012 report stated that Albuquerque had a 63% high school graduation rate and that is shameful (APS reports 63.4 percent graduation rate | Albuquerque News - KOAT Home). Many of the good paying jobs here are reliant on the federal government such as the Sandia and Los Alamos labs, which is vulnerable to cut backs and there isn't enough private enterprise here. I'd like to see conditions get better here as there as the state has a lot of untapped potential.
Last edited by Champ le monstre du lac; 11-13-2013 at 07:22 PM..
People ask me this question all. the. time. "Eww why you live in Jersey City?" As if a penthouse in the UES was really an option.
I'm here because it's the closest place to my job that I could afford. And at the time it was a cool neighborhood. Now it's been "discovered." Some changes are good, some not so good.
I chose it because it's not too hot or too cold, too big or too small, not too expensive or isolated. Beautiful scenery, lots of outdoor opportunities, festivals, etc. and seems like a pretty decent place to spend the next twenty years.
Los Angeles
Great weather, diversity, a lot of culture, different food everywhere, liberal, big city, entertainment 24/7, people are very body conscious, like to look good, eat healthy, etc.
I live in Tampa bay. I love it. I live on the water, 4 blocks from the beach. It is a near perfect place, but if I could move further south, I would do it in a heart beat. Tampa's winters are entirely too cold. It's almost like I'm not living in Florida.
I live in St. Louis, Mo since it's my hometown, and it's cheap. I like the four season weather in our area. People are the nicest you'll meet anywhere.
A woman. It was a bad idea. Never follow a woman to another state. It's a trap I tell you.
Remember this next time you walk by the pest killer shelves at the hardware store. Look at the mouse traps and then look at a woman in the store. Ingrain that connection in your mind like a laser etched plaque. Women=trap. RUN!
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