For the homers, what don't you like about your amazing city? (living in, vs)

[Tom Lennox 70]

I love Louisiana but here are the worst things about the Baton Rouge area .

CRIME
Baton Rouge isn't always nationally known as a high crime city because most of those lists only focus on cities like a population of 500,000 or more. But the city of BR has a homicide rate of 31 per 100,000. This is in fact higher than Chicago, Philadelphia, or Los Angeles. A list I saw that included smaller cities has Baton Rouge as the #6 most violent in the country . This being said, most of the violent crime is concentrated in certain parts of town, unlike a city like Baltimore where the entire city feels unsafe so there are still many parts of BR where I do feel safe going. People also still take the police seriously, and things like car theft and shoplifting are still taken seriously.

TRAFFIC
Baton Rouge has the worst traffic in the nation based on its size or some kind of population to traffic ratio. Nobody here is looking forward to the massive construction about to happen where Interstate 10 is reduced by one lane. There are several traffic bottlenecks like the new I-10 bridge, the I-10/12 split and traffic often backs up on LA Highway 1.

RACIAL DIVISION AND POLITICS
Louisiana is a conservative state, but Republicans don't always have a complete majority and this is because of racial politics among the black population here. There is a lot of self-segregation and political separatism on the part of the black community here. While nearby New Orleans has a unique proud local identity, there is less of a unified local identity in the BR area and racial divisions have a lot to do with this. You'll be surprised how many black people will say they don't care about LSU and only follow Southern University sports. The Metro Council is very divided and often in gridlock, where every Republican is white and every Democrat is black. So political division and racial division go hand in hand and feed on one another. Every time there is redistributing, there are racially motivated complaints and lawsuits. I live in a very conservative suburb though so its less of an issue in the suburbs.

POOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITHIN THE CITY
Livingston and Ascension Parishes have excellent school systems. But I would not suggest sending any kids to EBR public schools. Most people in the city who can afford to send their kids to private schools.

HURRICANES
We're inland enough so its not a direct hit like with coastal communities but hurricanes do pass over here as Category 1 or 2 sometimes. I don't recall Baton Rouge ever being totally evacuated like New Orleans in Katrina but we did lose power for over a week in Ida. Flooding is also a constant risk though flood mitigation measures are being worked on.

[Gaylord_Focker]

I'm in Irvine now. Irvine itself is sort of boring, but the surrounding area makes up for it.

[achtung baby]

Even our 4 cats love Houston, they have a big outdoor safari at home to run wild but still safe.

If I must:

Roller coaster weather. My daughter was in summer clothes during the day and thermal pajamas at night. (Although this part is similar to LA’s.)

And the “freeze” thing. I want to skip Jan/Feb to go straight to March so we can all live in summer clothes.

Anything under 60 degree is “cold” to me.

[masssachoicetts]

NJ- Wish that the property taxes were so astronomically high. It makes buying a house in NJ impossible.

NYC- Lack of nightlife streets like Bourbon St in NOLA, Grove St in JC, Landsdowne St in Boston, Nashville, etc. wish the places to go were closer together.

Boston- Overall classism and pretentiousness of the city. Cant even get a Taco Bell in Downtown Xing to stay open till midnight without residents complaining about crime. Closing time is 12:45am for a lot of bars and the whole alcohol law situation is messed up. Also, for a state that always is the first/best at everything, they sure have a crappy way to go about regional transit in the state.

[Logicist027]

LA

1. The homelessness. Everyone knows this is a huge problem. We literally have a gigantic homeless encampment in the center of the city, skid row.

2. Parks, public space & greenspace. There aren't enough parks in the south/southeast parts of the metro. It's either super ridiculously phenomenal areas (beaches/mountains) or very little (Watts).

3. Climate change. Causing too many wildfires in our beautiful mountains.

4. Public transportation. Unlike many, I don't think LA has particularly bad traffic relative to its size. Every megacity has traffic, it comes with the territory. The issue is that LA doesn't have enough public transportation that is safe, clean, extensive & reliable enough for people to get around. The city has been making strides on this one however.


All that being said, I know I live in paradise and still love it.

[prospectheightsresident]

I'm in Honolulu. Things I don't like about it here:

- Traffic can be a pain in the butt. This is true during the normal rush hour times or whenever there's a little bit of rain (people just lose their minds).

- Drivers. I know that many complain about the drivers in their city (and I've done so for several cities I've lived in), but the drivers here are on a different level. Their idea of "driving with Aloha" means zipping over to the fast lane on the freeway only to drive 5-10 miles below the speed limit, driving 25 MPH on a 55 MPH freeway when it starts raining a little bit, refusing to move out into the middle of an intersection when trying to make a left turn (instead they stay before the crosswalk, which often means that no cars are able to turn for several lights during busy times of the day), etc.

- Food. Don't get me wrong. Honolulu and Hawaii as a whole has some pretty darn good food. But it also lacks in culinary diversity that I'm used to in some mainland cities to include NYC. The Indian food is trash here, the Caribbean food inauthentic, the Mexican seriously lacking (to be fair, that's the case in most of the US), the African food scene abysmal to nonexistent, etc.

- Geography. It's pretty far from friends/loved ones on the mainland. Distance, in itself, isn't such a big issue as there's always video chats/telephone calls/etc., but the time zone difference can make trying to connect somewhat difficult at times.

- Affordability. Being on a distant island, things are bound to be more expensive than elsewhere. Not a deal breaker for me, but something that I don't particularly care for either.

[Dallaz]

Dallas

The Weather. It can be very bi-polar at times. We can get blistering heat, the occasional ice storm, and severe weather. It is not uncommon for North Texas to get severe weather during the fall/winter time. In isolated instances, hail can get up to baseball/tennis ball size. Which can total cars and cause damage to homes.

The economic/racial divide between North Dallas and Southern Dallas. Years of neglect, redlining, and blatant racism has greatly stunted the growth of the southern half of Dallas. The city recently embraced the re-release of a book called "The Accommodation" by Jim Schutze. It chronicles the history of Dallas and details the reasons why Dallas is the way that it is. In the 80s when it was written, it was banned by the Dallas Citizens Council. That's the organization that completely controlled the direction of the city at the time. Now, even the Dallas Citizens Council (which isn't nearly as powerful as it use to be) has supported the book as well. It opened the eyes of many who live in Dallas, but it wasn't a shock to anyone living in Southern Dallas. People have been saying what the book entails for decades. Now, we're still dealing with the results of actions done well before our time. BTW Southern Dallas is equivalent to the city proper size of Atlanta.

Dallas proper vs the suburbs. There has been a growing tension between the suburbs and Dallas proper. Dallas is trying to retain/strengthen its economic dominance over a highly multipolar metro area. The first time in my life, I have heard the city council and mayor call out the suburbs as competition. There's a serious possibility that Oklahoma will be apart of the Metroplex...at the rate its going.

Parks. Dallas has the assets for great urban parks, but they just need to be fully realized. The Trinity River Project is a prime example.

Traffic. I hate it...but that's everyone's complaint about every big city lol

Infrastructure. It needs to be upgraded badly. It is unacceptable the way traffic lights go out during thunderstorms. Many of them are VERY old. Some go as far back as the 1940s. Potholes and sidewalks needs to be addressed too.

[Hemlock140]

I'm in Sammamish, Washington, and really have only one complaint. With the beautiful 80-100' tall old-growth fir trees, it's like living in the woods, but they drop needles and cones pretty much all year. We have to pay a guy to clean the roof and gutters 2-3 times a year. Still, a small price to pay for the many benefits of living here.

[jcp123]

Hell, I wish I had a good place I could be a homer about. Where I am now has good bones but a metric crap ton of problems. Where I was I. Texas was similar in a way. And where I grew up stands as a place of extremes with wild benefits but also some really distinct and probably insurmountable problems.

[NW4me]

I'm not a San Francisco homer, by any means... but I do like living in SF,
like it a lot, in fact (not quite love, but fairly close).

The weather is great, and SF's density means the walkability is excellent
(I find myself in LA at the moment, and, at least in this neighborhood,
nothing is walkable), as is the transit service.

However, in some ways, SF infrastructure is surprisingly primitive.
Many intersections do not have walk / don't walk signals,
a weird omission for such a walkable city.

Also, the sewer system is old, and there's only a single system,
rather than separate ones for waste and for rainwater.
So during some storms earlier this year, parts of the system
got overloaded with floodwater, and sewage spewed into the street.

And though the transit system is very good, it could be much better.
Many bus stops don't have shelters, or the shelters are too small
to actually keep you dry in a downpour. And like the Bay area in general,
SF transit planning suffers from meddling by politicians. So we recently got
a stupendously expensive "Central Subway" that the people never voted for.
Those dollars could've been much better spent.