I just got back from a short vacation in Ohio to visit the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (which was great, especially the Springsteen exhibit) and Cedar Point (which was, as always, a blast). I personally have nothing against Ohio (they have a main road near Toledo called Fangboner!!!!) except for the fact that it looks like God picked up his camping hatchet and went Lizzie Borden on every single square foot of highway they have. But I did notice something: a high majority of people from Ohio REALLY REALLY REALLY hate Ohio. At Cedar Point, I saw at least three different guys wearing the same navy blue T-shirt that had the map outline of the state of Ohio and in the centre in big, bold 80's-style letters it said: WORST. STATE. EVER. Wow. That's what I call contempt. I guess through my minimal visits I have yet to see why locals consider it such an asshole state, but every person has their own complaints about where they live. Focus: What do you dislike most about where you live? Do you live accross the highway from and have to stare at Touchdown Jesus? Do you wake up at 7 am to hear E-tarded Jersey shore boys bumpin' Benassi at 115 db? Get it all out of your system.
I live in Massachusetts. So I am endlessly bothered by taxes, a corrupt de facto one party political system, and approximately zero chance of any change.
I live in rural Minnesota, and for the most part, I like it. I live in a town of 5000, which is surrounded by smaller towns of 100-500 people. Everything else is farm land. I can drive around and shoot shit with a beer in the cupholder and not get into trouble. There's no traffic. If I'm not driving on a state highway, I'm doing 75mph. I can walk into any bar within 30 miles and I know 90% of the people in there. Everyone you meet on the road waves, because there's a good chance you know them. There are downsides, though. The cops around here are get bored, so they can be overzealous pricks at times. Everyone knows everyone, so it's hard to keep a secret. People know your business, whether you like it or not. Going along with that, a lot of people around here don't know how to mind their own fucking business. A lot of people can keep to themselves, but a greater amount of people just fucking can't. The gossip gets pretty wild. I've heard some doozies about myself, like the one where I have a few local girls pregnant and I have some sort of mysterious sexually transmitted disease, but no one knows for sure which one it is. Another thing I hate is whenever anyone walks into a restaurant/bar/store, everyone in the place fucking stares at them while they walk in. Anywhere else in the world you can walk into a place without a glance, but in Minnesota you get the fucking stare down. Oh, and winters here fucking suck.
Didn't you hear? Touchdown Jesus was destroyed. God smote it. This was big news here in Ohio. As for Ohio, I like it well enough here. Sure there's plenty of retards to go around, but it's like that anywhere. I do get pretty annoyed with people thinking their sports teams owe them something. Yes, you live in Ohio but Ohio State losing is not cause for lighting couches on fire in the street. Yes, Lebron left, but you'd do the same in his position so get off your high horse, and stop acting like he somehow owes Cleveland something. What I don't understand is why people can hate Ohio so much over other states? There's practically nothing here, what is there to hate?
I live in sunny Southwest Florida, Marco Island specifically. Quiet frankly, I live in paradise. The weather is great(except for the hurricanes, but you can prepare for those), people are nice, and you can't swing a dead cat in this town without hitting a bar. In the winter the tourists will wear a little on your nerves, but the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. On the other hand, it is Florida so the level of stupidity you deal with on a day to day basis is...well...you people read the papers and watch Cops, so you know.
I posted this before but I hate Hartford, CT. I've only lived in the area (outside of the city thank god) for a year, but good god this place blows, let's see why: - Extremely high taxes - TERRIBLE people, both in terms of crime and general shittyness - Most goods are more expensive than anywhere else in New England, the average pay does not reflect this - There's nothing to do Don't get me wrong, this was a great move for me since the city life of Boston wasn't my style, I HATED my old job and the new job is simply incredible. It also doesn't hurt that a couple old college buddies live here and they have some really good BYOB restaurants to satisfy my inner frugal diner, but there is a reason I'm trying to get my boss to move operations to New Hampshire, live free or die baby.
I live in the extreme west of Florida, and there are a few things I can't stand about here. Absolute #1 is the drivers. They absolutely blow worse than high school kids on the last day of school mixed with old people. These fucks drive 10 under all the time, run through obvious red lights, and about 1/4 use their turn signals. #2 is this goddamn humidity. It's easily 98% at 7 in the morning, not something I like waking up to. #3 the drivers fucking blow, can't stress this enough. #4 there are more crazy, stand-on-the-corner-and-preach-to-the-drivers Baptists here than anywhere. I want to run them all over and drive away laughing. Not to mention the 5 church's every mile. That's all for now, can't wait to get out of here. Home home is middle of nowhere TX, and It's only downfall is that It's in the middle of nowhere, quite literally.
FOCUS: I don't know if this counts, as I'm in the process of moving away. I spent the past eight months living in Boston. Aside from the occasional and brief pang of nostalgia, I couldn't be happier to be out of there. I realize eight months is virtually nothing, but I still have some grievances to air. I'll get the obvious cliches out of the way first. The weather sucks. It's completely unpredictable and it makes planning any kind of weekend getaway more than two days in advance impossible. I'd bitch about the humidity, but I'm originally from the south. The drivers are ruthless, though I didn't mind it very much. You adapt and get used to it. I was driving in Delaware this morning and was very confused when I turned on my turn signal and the guy in the other lane actually slowed down to let me in. The terrible cost of living is second only to NYC and San Francisco. I paid $535 a month for a basement in a shitbox house in Brighton, which was by far the most I've ever paid in rent. It also was by far the shittiest place I've ever lived. My weekly food bills jumped from $70 to $100+, and I bought the same items. I could go on. -This is another cliche, but deserves it's own paragraph. The people. The people in Boston aren't rude pricks because they're consciously trying to be rude pricks. It's just the way they were raised, and the way everyone else up there acts. I met some wonderful people in my time there, most of whom I thought initially were rude pricks. I guess what I'm saying is, Bostonians get a bad rap. And maybe they deserve it. But it's not really their fault, and don't write them off without giving them a chance. There are shitty people and great people everywhere; Boston is no exception. -The state rapes money away from you, and not just in the form of taxes. I paid more than $200 to get my license and registration. I paid something like $90 for the exact same thing in New Mexico. Health insurance prices are ludicrous, as well, because the state mandates EVERYONE have it. It's illegal not to. I researched buying my own individual plan before my employer benefits kicked in, and the cheapest I could find was $380 a month. Even with a matching plan with my employer, I paid $200 a month. There are state-offered plans called Commonwealth Care, but you basically have to be a worthless crack whore to qualify, and even then it's pretty expensive. The individual plan I just purchased in Colorado? Yeah, it's $74 a month. And there were much cheaper options available. -My stupid whore of an ex-girlfriend lives there. -This is dumb, but the names of the cities in New England always bothered me. Like nails on a chalkboard. Groton, Stow, Woburn, Braintree...these don't sound like places I'd want to live. They sound like skin infections. The pronunciations didn't bother me too much (Worcester = Wusster, Quincy = Quinzy). Every region has cities that are pronounced oddly. ANTI-FOCUS: It's a beautiful, endearing city. I dare anyone to walk through Harvard Square or down the Esplanade and not be enchanted. The view from the Red Line crossing into Cambridge at night, looking over the Charles River into downtown, is one of the best views of a cityscape I've ever seen. The public transportation is great (except for the B Line. Fuck you, B Line), compared to other cities I've visited. It's a true sports town and the people are perhaps the most passionate out of all American cities. Do I regret having lived there? No, absolutely not. Would I have wanted to stay longer than I did? No, absolutely not.
Those people probably weren't locals. But they certainly were University of Michigan fans. Those shirts are all over Ann Arbor. I'm assuming the text and outline were yellow? I like living in my area, except Ann Arbor has a bunch of weirdo hippies.
I'm pretty happy with where I live. I'm pretty close to everything and downtown Seattle is 20 minutes away. There are two fucking things I hate. The neighbor above me who loves fucking stomping everywhere at 11 PM when I'm trying to sleep, and the fact that Edmonds/Lynnwood/Mountlake Terrace cops have nothing better to do than to fuck with drivers. I see speed traps EVERYWHERE. I guess this means that the crime rate is so low that the cops have nothing better to do than write chickenshit traffic tickets. I used to live in Lakewood, or as I and some of the locals called it, Lakehood. Lakewood would be generously be described as a shithole. There's a reason why you can rent a 2 bedroom apartment there for $550 a month. It's because the meth heads down the street would break into your apartment and steal your stuff. The only nice part of Lakewood is the area next to the golf course and INSANE ASYLUM. I could have just written that preceding sentence and you probably could have inferred the rest. In fact, 4 Lakewood police officers were gunned down while they were in a coffee shop by a violent psychopath. In Lakewood's defense, he did come from Arkansas, but still. Lakewood is a suburb of Hell. Don't go there.
I've bitched about this before in some other thread, but I hate Philadelphia. I mean really, passionately detest this city with the very fiber and essence of my being. I don't know how else to describe it. We have the most rabid sports fans of any city I've been to. Fuck, they boo'd santa: Spoiler http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/philadelphia.asp And then there is that omnipresent smell of rotting homeless man. And the shitty public transit. And the horrible roads. And the obscenely high wage tax. And the violence. And the hipsters. Christ on a cracker, the hipsters alone are reason enough to abandon this city and let them fight it out with with the third-generation public housing degenerates they willingly live next door to. Oh, there's also the corrupt government. It is so bad, we once had a mayor climb out his window and threaten to jump to his death. I mean, really, can any city compete with this? This is the birthplace of the fucking nation. It has fallen so hard and so far. The one redeeming quality is the gastro-scene. But consider that while you are enjoying your obscenely tasty food, you have to avoid making eye contact with the vagrants, or else they will ask for some food or money. I can't count the number of times I've had a meal ruined.
I hate where I go to school the most. That's for another day. Right now I am living in near-rural Quebec, south of Montreal. I mean, Montreal is nice enough, but even with its multitude of attractive and well-dressed women, that only barely balances out the monstrosities lurking around here. And oh dear Jesus that Quebecois accent. «C'est quoi, ça?» «J'aime pas, là». Je veux te frappé, là. That said, the cheap beer from the depanneurs is pretty nice.
I live in Phoenix, Arizona and since it is summer I am very happy with it for the most part but I do hate a few things that primarily happen when the mercury goes under 90F degrees, not sure and don't care what that is in celcius. It seems a large percentage of people over 70 from all 50 states and however many provinces Canada has deem it a necessary to spend 6-7 months a year polluting my great city, while driving 45 mph in the fast lane on the freeway in their quest to find a fucking cracker barrell at 5pm on a Wednesday. The gray hairs also take every available tee time on every fucking course and they play slower than shit, 5 iron, 9 iron, wedge, putter on a par three, making what should be a 18 hole 3 hour round a 5 hour agonizing marathon. Listen up Fred, the retired pig farmer from Iowa, you don't need to spend 20 minutes looking for your ball in the desert, take your drop and move on, and no I don't care if that was your favorite top-flite xxxxx out get your fat suspender wearing as back on the fairway and hit it and If I see you take out that range finder again it will be up your ass. Also, Marlene from Upper Darby PA, stop trying to write fucking checks at the self check out in grocery stores, better yet don't use the self check out, the machine that beep with the red light scares you, no one cares how they do it where you come from and no that hispanic boy is not required to carry your bags out and no he is not drunk that is spanish. Besides that it is great, well if you don't include the one of the most depressed real estate markets in the US and the fact that the girl I am sleeping with and myself are in that business it is all good.
Political Extremism - Rarely will you encounter public interactions in this great state where at least one person does not belligerently berate this administration or the previous as the causation of all evils in our society. We're at a bar, you are twenty-three, and I really don't want to hear about how you think this economy is "mad crazy." Save it for your pickup truck/prius bumper sticker. Sports Obsession - N.C. has some very respectable universities; two of which heavily contribute to bi-annual madness during football/basketball season. I know I am painting a target on myself but honestly I am not a fan of either. Consequently I get a little alienated when I am out with friends and the dialogue drifts into a half-hour discussion of their newest man crush - a high school kid prospect who lives a thousand miles away that they will never meet. Just typing this blasphemy could get me tarred* and feathered if I was discovered. *pun? Smell - Traveling via highway through N.C. will introduce a driver to a variety of scents - from the foreign and repulsive to the familiar and inviting. Pig shit and poultry processing plants are the most disgusting, though the odor of a paper/pulp plant deserves honorable mention for its ability to permeate dozens of miles of otherwise refreshing air.
I actually like where I live. Denver is an awesome city, and there is a ton of fun stuff to do both in the city and within reasonable driving distance. Of course there are the usual things people think of when they think of Colorado, i.e. the mountains, but there's a lot going on in the city as well. That said, there are a few bad things, foremost of which is the insane cost of registering a car. When my wife and I bought a new car earlier this year, it cost nearly $500 to do the license and registration on the vehicle. The cost will go down each year, but not by that much. That really sucked to get hit with. Also, the dry air. Its nice in the summer to not have to step into 95% humidity, but I have to use saline nasal spray every night so I don't wake up every morning unable to breathe through my nose or suffer through nose bleeds. Plus lotion and chapstick are constant needs. My only other complaint is the fact that eastern Colorado is one of the most boring places in the country. When I moved out here from New York, that was the worst drive ever. I had to go through Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and finally eastern Colorado. A lot of people don't realize that basically until you Denver, there's nothing in Colorado except open empty farm land. Most boring drive ever. Also, Ohio sucks. I made the drive from Illinois to Central New York several times over the 3 years I lived in NY, and the worst part of the drive was always Ohio. People would sit in the fast lane going 5 miles under the speed limit, it takes forever to get across the state, the only break in scenery is when you drive through Cleveland and let's just say I understand why LeBron wanted to get the hell out of there, and the roads are in terrible shape which led to a lot of road noise in my old 1998 Grand Cherokee.
Edmonton is a dirty industrial city. Our football team is 0-4, and our hockey team.. well, here's hoping our #1 draft pick can pick up the whole damn team. Our major pastime is avoiding road construction, and it smells like cow shit from April to June. Fuck this, I'm moving to Calgary.
I've lived in the same city my whole life, the "Other London". It's remarkably clean, there's few homeless, and has a super-corrupt city hall made up of knuckle dragging assholes that refuse to let the city's newspaper expose them for who they are. What I actually hate about my city is the way the nightlife has gone into downward spiral mode. In less than ten years, we went from a town filled with fun-loving bars and patrons to Douchebag central with small clubs that charge large prices: High maintenance without a reason to be. This is a working class city with two large colleges and it pretends to be something more with Axe spray-scented dickweed breeding ground bars like Mansion and 29 & Park and other Miami Beach wannabes. BEcause of this degeneration, my city is not one that people road trip to on a regular basis I can tell you that. We lack the fun of Niagara Falls and the selection of Toronto. Oh, well. At least we're not Hamilton.
I wish it were a little less awesome here. Maybe then I wouldn't be so distracted by how fucking awesome it is. "But it's so dirrrrrrty." No, that's Awesome Dust.
I live in Chicago and I fucking love it. It is the only city I've lived in since moving to this great country of freedom and opportunity 16 years ago, and I would have turned out a different person had we moved to New York or Bumblefuck. It's a great city, and the pros outweigh the cons 100 to 1. If anyone is looking to come visit, or recently moved here, PM me if you need to find out what to do/appropriate rent prices/fun shit, etc. The cons? Well, there are smelly areas, especially near Toyota Park and most bridges crossing the Chicago river and it's branches. The chocolate factory in the west loop area, well, smells of chocolate. It can be overpowering at times. The bums. They are nicer bums than L.A., but still plentiful and often times rude. The hipsters are plentiful, but they contribute to society like running co-ops and selling fresh veggies and whatnot. They also open beer-snob type bars with large, delicious selections of brews at reasonable prices. However, they ride bikes like total assholes. And 90% of them are quite useless. Our sales tax is 10.25%. Our government is fucked. Our last state governor was on the Apprentice. Traffic. Godawful. All of you bitching about rent/living expenses would shit your pants on the prices here. Between me and my room mate, we spend about $1600-$1700 a month on rent, cable/internet, utilities, and groceries. Add eating out, drinking, dates, insurance, gas, buying random shit, and so on, and I'm spending roughly $2000 a month. With student loans, this means my savings account is not growing. Yep, that's not too bad. Awesome place to live.
I live in Los Angeles. By and large, I like it here. It helps that I love tacos and have a morbid sense of humor. Compared to Chicago and Philly, are homeless people are downright charming. If I have to deal with a shallow person, I can usually hit it off by mentioning how shallow everyone else is here. Just as there are obnoxious, status-obsessed assholes in Chicago, Philly and the Florida Panhandle, there are plenty of smart, solid people here. Not to mention near-perfect weather and rampant eye candy. Twelve million people don't live here because it sucks. It's such a pervasively shat-upon city that I'm usually more compelled to defend it. Obviously, between the prohibitive rents and the half-tank it takes to get from any one place to any other, it's fuck-all expensive. (Note: It's still cheaper than San Francisco, and you're much less likely to get mugged every 48 hours or so.) After awhile you don't really notice the foul air anymore, but I get a strong buzz whenever I visit somewhere that isn't apocalyprically polluted. And with the utterly broken economy, corrput politics, maddening traffic, endless sprawl, social isolation and pervasive sense of late-stage unreality, it's an easy place to believe we're all fucked and the Boomers used up all the good times. If there's any city designed in complete ignorance of evolutionary psychology and human nature, this would be it. It's Chinatown. PS: I spent one night in Cincinnati and stumbled into one of the best parties I've ever been to. Thus, I have a rosy view of Cincinnati that confuses the fuck out of anyone who's from there.