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Just thought of another attractive Virginia town: Fincastle, which is between Roanoke and Lexington. Kind of isolated, but in a very nice setting. Historic architecture, well-preserved, and some beautiful horse farms around, a few nice restaurants. Peaceful. Like a miniature Charlottesville preserved in mountain amber. Close enough to I-81 that you can get going to somewhere else pretty easily.
Also, Brownsburg, which is west of I-81 a little bit, between Lexington & Staunton. It's real small, but talk about frozen in an earlier era. Gives you a real sense of what much of Virginia was like until recently. Some beautiful buildings and interesting shops, and roots that go waaay deep. Great views, too, since it's on a ridge, and the old school behind the Main St. is higher up yet.
Alot of people really like Amherst, a college town east of the Blue Ridge. I've never thought too much of it, but I can see why people would extol it. It is a civil, peaceful place. Maybe not too stately by Virginia standards, but an easy place to live.
Also, Virginia autumns are hard to beat. Where Upstate New York blazes a brief, bright yellow and red, Virginia is a long, slow copper and bronze. The autumn foliage here is not nearly as spectacular as New York state's (it's better in the mountains where we have more maples), but it lasts considerably longer, along with pleasantly warm days and beautifully cool, lowering humidity nights. And you can squeeze a few extra weeks out of the autumns by coming off the mountains once the leaves start to fade and fall there.
EVEN SO, give me Cooperstown and Upstate NY culture any day!! You take even a gorgeous autumn for granted if you don't have enough winter, and Upstate's village greens are the high point of western civilization!
I've lived near/around Utica NY for most of my life (I'm in my young twenties now) and am currently looking to leave. For me, I feel that most of the young people move out of the area... mainly because there is no work for them here. Also for a young person in this area there is very little to do going out wise unless you're an alcoholic or compulsive gambler... but even in the alcoholic's case there's not much of a bar scene for you and if you're used to a party scene you'll be extremely dissapointed.
I can tell you from experience the area's been in economic decline for many years and things are not getting better... not before they get worse at least. The economy used to be and to some extent still is based on manufacturing jobs and in the next 10 years most of these companies that haven't closed down already probably will (due to the fact it's cheaper to manufacture in other areas these days). What's left of Griffiss is the best employer in the area (minus some insurance and healthcare companies) and though it'll be there for several years I'd be willing to bet that the park is closed in one of the next two Brac's (they happen about every 5 years). Oneida county has the highest sales tax in the state and ny has the highest sales tax in the country meaning Oneida county has the highest sales tax in the country not to mention obscene property taxes insurance costs gas prices etc.
I'm not a big fan of the winters though a lot of people love them for some reason. Something about the 20 min drive twice a day from Utica to Rome in a foot of snow that doesn't do it for me (becomes a 30 min drive). Not to mention that we got 2 feet of snow in APRIL and I've seen it snow on mothers day and the beginning of October more than once in my life. That means you're only truly away from snow from June-September. But that's good as I find most people who've lived here their whole life despise any type of heat with a passion!!! Eighty degrees and sunny and people will complain about the heat.
However I will give the area some credit there are things I like about it... For instance I love the food there's tons of good pizza places/local restaurants that are absolutely awesome. I also like the people in the area as they have a certain friendly quality to them. And if you like hunting/fishing this is a good area for that as well.
Can you do the same about New York State? You know ALL of NY State well enough to say that "just about anywhere in VA is better than its NY State counterpart"?
Thank you homeward. I am soooooooooooooo absolutely tired of the NYS bashing that goes on in so many of the state boards....I live in upstate so I don't need to exault what you know already about the area but do you have any explanation why otherwise perfectly normal people start spitting nails and downgrading NY all over the place whenever a native sings it's praises???? Do they have a bone for all of us due to NYC and it's well maligned attitude? just curious.....
I think there are several reasons why so many New York staters either exaggerate NY State's flaws or overgeneralize their particular disenchantment with their own area to the state as a whole.
A Five Star post if I ever saw one... nary a wayward word here.
Last edited by Marka; 12-19-2007 at 02:13 AM..
Reason: edited quote
Truly, I think you've convinced us to give up our initial idea of moving to New Hampshire in favor of that village green somewhere in New York (although props to the person who suggested Pomfret, CT - also idyllic).
It's not that Los Angeles doesn't have its charms. After five years here, we've got a small network of good friends, but we're spread out all over and it's hard to make the time for frequent gatherings. When we do, it's often at a restaurant that's midway, or on the way home from school (private school). Our homes are not the centers of our lives.
We're looking for that sense of centredness. We're also looking for a community in which a blended family of Asians and non-Asians would feel welcome. Do I need to restrict my search to the larger towns, or would I get that in the small Finger Lake towns?
Uh-oh! I can't even convince my 17-year-old to NOT "try" cigarettes---so be leery of my advising powers!
Definitely among the small towns, the college towns can be safely assumed to be the most welcoming. Cazenovia (pricey but very pretty), Alfred (not too pricey but more limited job market, and considerably west, in Allegany Co., nearer Buffalo), Hamilton and Clinton (which I group together since they're both fairly pricey but very stately) come most to mind. They're lovely towns in so many ways.
I'm sure others can suggest other college towns that are both cozily traditional and open-minded (probably because one of their traditions IS a big-hearted fairness of mind and morals).
Probably highest on the list would be Ithaca, though it is more big-town/small-city-like than the others I've listed. Certainly your risks of running into bigotry there would be the lowest of the low. (Though a good case could be made that Political Correctness is itself plenty bigoted. I've heard a very PC colleague of mine say that whites who don't marry minorities are "rejecting" minorities!)
A very nice little old-fashioned town just a few miles from Ithaca is Trumansburg. While visiting it, I kept seeing white, black, and asian kids playing together with evident ease. It seemed a real good balance of college town openness and small town Upstate NY traditional neighborliness (again, two inter-linked sets of morals, it's always seemed to me!).
Geneseo and Oswego are often recommended by very reliable posters as excellent blends of these kinds of qualities, so though I've yet to get to them, I'd recommend them, too. Oswego is right on Lake Ontario, too, which would give you a great open feel even when winter might be otherwise claustrophobic. From what I've heard from many on and off this forum, these remain very quaint-feeling towns.
I've heard the same about Aurora, another Finger Lake college town that I've yet to get to. Pretty small, but serene in its beauty and mood.
A town that doesn't have a college but seems very easy-going is Skaneateles. This might surprise some people on this forum since it's a famously wealthy, and just plain famous, town for both its beauty and its history as a summering place. To many, it might epitomize snooty. But we found it very warm and easy-going, perhaps because so many people of so many types have visited and been drawn there. The town seems, if anything, proud of the variety of people who want to visit or live there. Also, many of the people there are very well-educated, while its wealthy might be more prejudiced against a Smith driving a calico '73 F-150 than a Lee driving a new Porsche.
I think you'd find Hammondsport, obviously one of my favorites, very welcoming too. I've rarely had so many strangers/locals say "hello" to me out of the blue anywhere I've ever been, and its whole feeling is almost "Twilight Zone" serene. But since it's a world unto itself and doesn't have a college in or very near it, you might run into a resident bigot there. Even so, I think the town is so content with its down-to-earth decency and beauty, and the moral code of "Is he a good guy?" is so strong and all-deciding, that I would be surprised if there were more than a bigot or two there.
Plus, to be blunt, I think that when people do allow themselves to slouch into making stereotypes of asians, they tend to be pretty positive stereotypes (yeah, that sounds like a big oxymoron to me, too). Hardworking, education-valuing, tradition-respecting, loyal to family, etc. My (very white) father-in-law, in fact, used to tell my (white) wife, when her grades would slump a bit, "You should have more asian friends." I know that EVERY stereotype is wounding because it rejects someone as an individual and instead lumps them together as this or that because you're one of a Them. I've run into this a lot as someone who's 3/4 Jewish. I get "compliments" that are actually depersonalizing. ("Let's let him handle the [softball] team funds 'cause, well, you know...."--when the truth is, I can't keep my own checkbook balanced, and my one foray into investment went bust in a week.) But I do think that if you ran into stereotyping in these places, they would at least be the "Since this is a positive stereotype, I have a chance for what's truly, uniquely positive about me as an individual to be seen" type of stereotypes. That's probably cold comfort, but it would be better than what, say, an Arab/Arab-American might be facing these days.
Plus, the entire state's long history as a new home for people from all over the world does help here. It's truly not rare to find people in remote villages and farms, far from "enlightened" areas, not only tolerant but truly fair and welcoming because they know that their own relatives came here from Germany, Italy, Poland, etc., and were among the stereotyped-against groups of their day. I remember sitting in a bar in a very German-American part of Allegany county when Al D'Amato {spelling?} was running for the Senate, and when Lew Lehrman {sp.?} was running for Governor. While I can't remember if this was the same election or not, what stayed with me was the fact that not one person there--and believe me, they were plenty relaxed--said a word about D'Amato being Italian and Lehrman being a Jew. Sadly, some in that crowd were pretty free with the N-word. But the fact that they seemed to have no or minimal prejudices otherwise was at least one sign for some hope.
Hope you'll post about your choice and experiences, and BEST of luck to you and your family!
homeward bound,
First off: WOW!!! Your response post to my inquire of the constant bashing of NYS was overthetop....bravo sir!!!!
And after reading your post which was followed by one from waverlyroot stating their search for a "sense of centerness", it all brings home a very scary sociological occurrence that has happened in America over the last 2-3 decades: we are a very transcient population and it has begun to affect a lot us....I believe the book out a few years ago titled "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam addressed this problem very well and it was documented in a study done at Duke which concluded we are losing our social networks at alarming rates. As a result, in a world with instantaneous connnections, we are by far the loneliest group of people the human race has ever seen.
So, to carry my tangent back around, as we move more and more, uprooting the delicate balance of the social network we may have in search of "bigger, better, happier" places, we often find ourselves back at square one only now it's in a new place and our unhappiness skyrockets and we again start complaining about where we live which results in a vicious circle of malcontent. Lemmings for sure, but often very sad, lonely, lemmings constantly looking for what use to exist in our own backyards (or front proches...remember front porches ???)
I say bring back the 21st century's version of the communities centers, barn-raisings, quilting bees, welcome wagons, church socials that were the epicenter of society years ago (yes, I'm sure they exist to some degree in some areas but not all) and the need to look beyond the hill may not be so urgent.....because when it comes right down to it, we all want a friendly face and hello at the end of a long day and to live a life void of that human connection is tragic....
Now back to one of NYS's gorgeous summers days ....... 75, no humidity and fluffy clouds that look like cotton candy.........I Love NY
smalltown
Last edited by Fallingwater79; 06-23-2007 at 11:27 AM..
Thank you for your worthwhile contributions to this forum homeward bound. Often I find this forum a waste of time, but posters like you restore my faith in city-data forum's usefulness.
You folks on this thread are making me pine for NYS in a big way, even with those high taxes and long winters.
The USA is a huge country with so much to offer, but NYS and (y-e-s I confess in small doses) NYC too are a big part of what makes me happy to live in America. A section of a blog about a few places mid-state: Brian Trout's Blog: New York Mid-Hudson Valley (broken link)
Gotta check out that book, smalltown. Another good one in a similar vein is "Habits of the Heart." The loneliness is incredible. More and more of my foreign students comment on this. They really admire American openness and individualism, but then say, "But people really seem lonely here--when did family and hometown stop mattering here?"
Two weeks ago, I went down to Houston to visit/take care of my very ailing dad (my sister moves in near him in a few days, so that's a huge relief). When he was all rigged up with oxygen and his (too-beloved) TV and set for a while, I'd set out for walks (cellphone in hand in case he needed me, of course). I walked all over his development. SAW FOUR KIDS OUTSIDE PLAYING DURING THAT WHOLE WEEK, w/ that week totaling maybe 20, 22 hours of me outside, walking around streets that had, easily, 300 or 400 houses on them. Four kids! Granted, it was hot and humid, but not brutal by Texas standards. I rarely saw more than one family-member with another, in fact. Instead, I saw the parents coming home from work, going inside--and rarely reappearing again, except to get in the car and drive somewhere, usually alone. Even on the weekend.
I guess it's not too much of a wonder, since the grass (St. Augustine?) is so coarse and sharp, you don't want to play on it. There are fireants that can swarm, etc. Even so, what happened to playing in the street? Racing bikes? Shooting baskets? Washing your parents' car just so you could nail your little brother in the head with the soapy sponge? The most joyous thing I've ever seen in that neighborhood was two kids out on the garage roof pelting the family SUV with waterballoons. Their laughter really stood out amid a dead silence broken only by the leafblowers of the (Mexican) lawncare crews. Their parents hurried them down--I could see that roof =risks--but they never got to use the rest of their ammo. What gives? What happened that letting kids have a water balloon fight on a summer's day is verboten??
The development is one among hundreds in the endless Houston sprawl. Took my dad out for a drive and he wanted to see newer developments--as a Depression-era kid, he's always been in love with new home building. Again, they were all virtually kid-free, with virtually no one outside doing anything (except for the Mexicans slogging through the heat to build the houses and cut the lawns). And every development is SURROUNDED by SIDEWALK-FREE roads that kids couldn't bike on or even too safely cross. And these are all SURROUNDED by clogged cloverleafs and access roads and highways that they're always expanding from four lanes to six, to eight.... Stripmalls all in between. More parking lots--not spaces; whole lots--than trees. How many Targets can one town really need? And in THEM you can see some kids--most of them overweight, whining, impatient at the littlest inconvenient, and so bored-looking you'd swear they just got off the neural-overstimulation machine, whose dials don't go high enough to renew the jolt of delight anymore, all being taught that the purpose of time, freedom, childhood and life is to shopshopshop.
I come back to Blacksburg, Virginia--a town whose flaws I've complained about elsewhere--and the difference is amazing. THIS TOWN HAS OLD-FASHIONED, PRE-CAR, PRE-SUBURBIA PHYSICAL PLACES FOR AND HUMAN CUSTOMS OF *COMMUNITY.*
For example, in the summers, we have weekly Friday evening free concerts on a section of the Virginia Tech campus that abuts the old downtown shopping district. It's our version of the New England/Upstate NY village green. And just about the whole town turns out. Everyone leaves a big space in front of the band for the little kids to run around, "dance," roll down the little incline, and generally entertain the hell out of everyone else. The more audacious kids run up to a big slanted sycamore and try to run up the side of the tree as far as possible before toppling off--it's a spontaneous contest, one that makes so much kid-sense, it happens every week, without any adults having to plan or orchestrate it. People bring picnic baskets or carry over food from the restaurants across the street. Even the teenagers are willing to be seen within 100 feet of their parents, to meet other teens and go off awkwardly sneering and seeing who has the cigarettes to take behind the Tech buildings. The young lovers hide behind the big trees and kiss. The nursing moms pull a baby blanket over them and babe and look serene and sway. And after the concert, people hang around for an hour or more, just chatting, "visiting," teasing, gossiping, catching up. You can then WALK across the street for a proper dinner or a movie, or to a pub. About 50% of the town's homes are within a half-hour walk ON SIDEWALKS from this downtown/campus corner spot, and many people DO walk, and delight in being able to leave the damn car behind.
It all feels especially good after a week of softball, which again is a kind of town picnic. For the early games, families come out, spread blankets, watch the kids try to imitate their dads (and moms if it's a co-rec league night), take the kids to the adjoining playground when they get bored, etc. We've got everything from a Cornell PhD in astrophysics to an electrician on our team, and we come out early to watch the other teams (esp. when our friends are on them), talk with our teammates, and stay late to do more of the same, before we head a few blocks away to our sponsoring pub. And everyone on our team, no matter his education-level or other interests in life, has said, "This is really the high point of my week" or "I'm real proud of us as a team." We have a regular mid-season party at a teammate's house just outside of town at the riverside. People camp there overnight. When guys have gone through deaths in the family or divorces or other strains, they all say, "This is really like therapy to me--really keeps me going." Most of us have known each other or played together for eight, ten, fifteen years now--and that long familiarity is like a deep well that's always got something for you when you need to go it. Guys who join the team always comment on its closeness, and guys who have to move away always write back to say they really enjoyed the team's loyalty most of all.
These are the best things about Blacksburg to me (aside from the close friendships I have within these traditions). It's exactly what suburban sprawl is not only lacking because of its raw newness, but WORKS AGAINST in its physical design, gross addiction to the car and its highways and parking lots, and emphasis on atomized, cul-de-sac "living." Sure, people in these developments can and will be neighborly, but on an individual basis, not as part of a general, long-standing set of customs. Several of my dad's neighbors have been very kind to him. But they're going against the grain and force of their own surroundings to do this. So it's no wonder that they wonder why their kids have such little sense of loyalty to anything beyond alleviating their own boredom with self-entertainment.
While the sense and traditions of community are of course available in many parts of the country, and humans can be kind even in the most alienating settings, it truly is in Upstate NY where I've found this to be more the norm than the exception. And that's just one reason, though the single biggest, we wanna get there: life's short and lonely and often ugly enough as it is. So if you can have a deep sense of community in a place of both natural and man-made beauty, if you can be in a place that brings out the best in you that's also best for others, why not truly live there instead of pseudo-live elsewhere?
Last edited by homeward bound; 06-23-2007 at 02:42 PM..
"A section of a blog about a few places mid-state"
should read -
"A section of a blog about a few places down-state"
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Mid-Hudson Valley
