The thing that I recall from days gone by that scares me the most about kids in small towns is all the drunk driving. And the driving in general, but mostly the drunk part. There's certainly drunk driving in cities, but I'm hoping it isn't an actual requirement for having a social life at 16.
It's possible that Ogged is thinking of something larger than a town in Nebraska with a graduating class of 3.
There were 17 of us, if you count the exchange student. Also a public high school that was about three times as large.
Perth looked nice and had some good restaurants, and I love Tim Winton, but I'd worry about that mining heiress woman wearying of taking her imposter syndrome out on her children and just buying outright the government of Western Australia to go molto fortissimo Matriarchal Mad Max.
I think Moby's right. Kids want to go places, and kids like to drink, and where it's rural, that means driving drunk (often on smaller roads that aren't well-marked). I remember visiting some of my wife's relatives about an hour outside of Birmingham when we were living in New Mexico, and as we were leaving our host said, assume all the other drivers are drunk, just like home.
My son, who has graduated from Wolfcub, got into cars and guns while there, no doubt in reaction to prevailing SLAC norms and because his circle of friends included several non-student townies. Some have been upside down in ditches but he wasn't one of them.
I've been visiting small towns in WI for decades, and am very familiar with this driving life. The police blotter there is about that, drugs mostly meth but moving toward heroin now, and domestic violence, often all three in the same chain of events. Boredom is a killer.
I was a careful young man. I never went around when guns and drinking were combined.
Unless the guy drinking was middle aged. Because what are you going to do? Go home? Tell the old guy maybe drinking could wait until the bird is dead?
Drinking while shooting, especially in somebody of legal age to drink, was really the dividing line between what I'll call the establishment Republican set and the guys who I'm fairly certain are voting for Trump if they aren't dead.
That and making jokes about domestic violence.
Didn't we go through this before and conclude that Duluth was for some reason the best place in the universe?
But, seriously, just move to a college town in some relatively pleasant middle of nowhere. You'll have at least one Thai restaurant and a class stucture in the public high school where your kid can hang out with the classy children of agricultural economists and African Studies professors and are unlikely to go 100% full yokel.
Tigre's right about college towns. Also cheap music/arts events and oftentimes decent city government (because professors tend to be smart and involved). I actually am considering buying a house in mine even though it would significantly lengthen my daily commute.
Move back to Remoteness, NM and teach your kids to kill rattlesnakes with their teeth. They'll be better prepared for post-Trump America.
I'm really pleased with how moving to a smallish college town has worked out. The udder college town would probably have been ok too, but this one has a bunch of unique features that make a real difference.
You'd better, with the number of geeblets there are to be suckled.
RTigre, Trivers and Charlie Carp all beat me to the punch about college towns. We did this about 15 years ago when the 2 kids had either finished a grade of HS or were soon going to start. They weren't thrilled, esp. the older one, having previously lived in a couple of large cities in the upper midwest, but after a few months, he realized how much less stressful the teen social life was, and it worked out well. Drunk driving wasn't too much an issue, so far as we could tell: drinking was, but the school had really hit hard on the importance of a designated driver, and that seemed to work (also the importance of rubbers, excuse me, condoms).
The one big drawback was just how white it was once we moved from an old line suburb of Chicago. And that is something to think about. However, the kids' grade school was majority AA, and they seem to have been there long enough to have many fewer (and less ugly) stereotypes kicking around the back of their brains and needing to be consciously set aside than I grew up with.
Also, about that class structure: the college town I live in is sufficiently desirable, if only for the school district, that there isn't much structure. It's too expensive for anyone not at least upper middle class to afford, and that seems to include younger faculty members in liberal arts departments.
At work we often order in dinner. Today: pork dumplings. Plain but juicy.
But relevant! Can you get takeout dumplings in your college town?
College towns are definitely the place to start for "people like us" considering such a move. You can branch out from the obvious, too, with Yellow Springs, OH, being my favorite example. Not many people have heard of YS or nearby Antioch College, but it's kind of like Berkeley circa maybe thirty years ago dropped in the middle of Ohio.
even though it would significantly lengthen my daily commute
No! That is always the wrong choice.
That is always the wrong choice.
Almost always. If you're single and can commute by train, it's probably fine.
It's more of a drinking town with a fishing problem, but yes one of our food trucks has big sweet dumplings.
Not many people have heard of YS or nearby Antioch College
My mom grew up in YS, and my parents met at Antioch (I have mentioned this before).
Bozeman? I still nurse a hankering for Bozeman and am in fact carrying my hotel keycard in a plastic wallet from the River's Edge fly shop there.
But the border country in knifecrimea was an extraordinary place for drunk and indeed helplessly stoned driving forty years ago. This may have been a function of the people I hung out with (at the time I had no licence myself) but there was a thing in the pubs in Biggar where some nights the cops would try to catch people leaving at closing time and the customers would simply wait them out. The doors would be locked. A card school, well lubricated, would get under way, and at about three the cop car would give up and disappear and half an hour later we would drive home ...
This is posted from a small post-industrial town in southern Sweden where I have come to write about murder. I would not live here for all the peace and quiet in the world.
Make the detective a cross between Peter Wimsey and Folke Bernodotte and put me down for a copy.
Too late: it all really happened, so I am writing a short true crime piece -- In Freezing Blood, more or less
Bozeman or Missoula for a smaller city, Salt Lake for somewhere with more big city amenities than those.
32: Will you link it when it's published?
Do you ever go there?
I've been there a couple of times, but not since my grandfather's funeral, about fifteen years ago.
Did someone really mention moving to Ohio as an option!?!
If all you people would just move to Ohio you could flip the state and make America great again.
Yeah, neither Moscow nor Pocatello have the same kind of appeal.
36: Right? At least come west where it's sunny.
Yellow Springs is quite charming.
I moved to a college town and commute by train to work. It works pretty good. My college town has surprisingly few cool things but has very nice bars. I like the density and the walk-ability. Plus, a good school system for my kids.
34: if and when -- it's for a somewhat arty outlet so it's not skedded until September. But it is fucking weird to be driving round in the beige and grey of early spring, when the snow has gone but no leaves have appeared, in towns I lived in thirty years ago. This town is the place we used to travel for half an hour on the bus to buy booze in my first summer here. Later it was the nearest bright lights to the house where I lived as a stay at home parent for two years -- which in those days was almost entirely surrounded by the woods, and very much smaller.
Sked is shortened version of the word schedule.
I've learned something already.
I'm trying to get The Company to send me to live someplace less shambolic - Incheon, Korea is at the top of my wish list - but so far that hasn't happened.
If it doesn't happen soon, and I have to bail, I'm thinking Brattelboro, VT, Keene, NH or Northampton, MA. But finding work in one of those places might be a challenge.
Those are all very convenient to walking across Vermont.
What was Berkeley like in the mid-80s? Not a storied time in its history, I think.
Convenient to my lakeside cabin in NH is the common theme.
The trick to getting into Incheon is deception, surprise, and a quick reinforcement of the beachhead.
Aside from the weather, the language, and the possibility of extreme-right racists taking power, Vienna is a pretty sweet place to live. Although we would probably have liked Athens, GA, too.
TBH, Athens, GA, has those exact same problems.
Vienna is a pretty sweet place to live.
Also high on my wish list.
The person most unjustifiably angry with me is an Austrian, so I don't want to go there.
What can I say, I just fucking hate you.
Convenient to my lakeside cabin in NH is the common theme.
I see how Incheon fits right in there. Where are you now? T & T? What's it like there?
I'm liking it here, especially the opportunity it affords me to travel in the region, but I can't say I'd recommend Arrakis unless you've a thing for Fremen culture (and I do but still).
||Barry, while you're around, have you seen the new Macbeth?|>
46: I'm in Northampton often. Nice place, but I've noticed that it seems to have the worst street musicians I've seen anywhere.
Just in case that "quality of local street musicians" is a factor that weighs heavily in your assessment of potential places to live.
All of Berkeley's history is storied, neb. I was there a few times in the mid 80s, and, you know, just like pretty much everywhere else it was better in the mid 70s.
Is there anything better about Austria than Kaiserschwarnn?
Sked is shortened version of the word schedule.
Or in Britain, "Shedge".
My husband and I are having this debate, but the size of the towns is very different. We've been in SLC for over six years and we love it here, especially the housing prices and all the activities available for kids. BUT the pollution is so bad in the winter that it gives my husband asthma. He has to be on prednisone and every year the other drugs get stronger and stronger such that his doctor said that living in SLC will shave several years off of his life.
So we're thinking about moving. Both of us work remotely so location is no issue except that it would be better to be in the Western half of the country since my husband's primary client is in the Bay area. Right now the main contender is Portland. Housing is more expensive but it seems like the schools are so good we wouldn't have to pay for private school, which means in the aggregate it's only about 10% more expensive. And it would be awesome to live among quirky liberals again.
Lastly, as much as I love SLC I've always been a little worried about my daughter thinking it's a big city. I grew up near Boston and I want A to be in closer proximity to a major city (sorry, SLC, but you are tiny). Portland seems like a big city but not so big you feel overwhelmed, like Seattle or San Francisco.
Some friends have a cabin in NH, and my wife occasionally floats the idea of living in rural New England, which, I tell her, is indistinguishable from the South for being full of scary white people.
BUT the pollution is so bad in the winter that it gives my husband asthma
This has been my concern. It's actually a hot market for programmers right now, but my oldest already has asthma, so I think that's a no.
(61.2 not intended as an insult to Austria's many fine qualities. But really, K'schwarnn with Zwetschen sauce is good enough to be on the other thread.)
Um... Portland seems like a big city?
59 The Michael Fassbender/Marion Cotillard one? Not yet. Heard meh things about it so I haven't exactly made it a priority.
Yes. I say see it. In theatre.
65: Yeah, definite no. The legislators aren't concerned enough about the pollution so it will only get worse.
67: Is a big city? I didn't mean it's not, I meant it's smaller than Seattle and San Francisco. Looking up the stats, though, it's apparently the same size and population as Seattle. Funny, it seems so much more manageable.
We have been torturing ourselves over this question for ages and somehow are not convinced that we could have a higher standard of living if we left the inner bay area. Sure, housing is less expensive but we wouldn't save that much money, the labor market would be worse, the cultural life would likely be worse, so we're stuck. We are at our optimum in the existing world, living in a random rented duplex across from the elevated tracks. I cannot figure out how we messed this up but there must be an error somewhere. But maybe not! Maybe it really is optimal.
I'm not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe*
And see the sun in wintertime.
*Assuming I don't have a pre-existing condition.
73: Now I remember that I saw them when I was in college. Someone gave me and my girlfriend tickets. They were ok, but not as memorable as JRoth's hotdog.
I wonder if we could do a "best Ogged town in each state" list. Let's start and I'll go until I get bored or decide I need to do paying work.
Alabama -- Um. Auburn?
Alaska -- Um. No idea. Juneau? Seward?
Arizona - Flagstaff, I guess Sedona? But not Sedona.
Arkansas -- Fayetteville
California -- literally nowhere, everything is too expensive or too shitty. Let's go with Weaverville.
Colorado -- Crested Butte, Fort Collins
Connecticut -- Um nope. I guess maybe the Hartford suburbs somewhere?
Delaware - Uh who knows. Lewes? Don't go there.
Florida -- Nope nope nope. Maybe Tallahasse isn't too horrible? Not too small. Port St. Joe.
Georgia -- The Athens music scene is hot, what with REM and some other bands.
Hawaii -- Leper island
Idaho - Moscow
Illinois -- Uh, Carbondale?
Indiana -- Bloomington, wherever Purdue is maybe?
Iowa -- Iowa City, Grinnell
Kansas -- Lincoln
Kentucky -- Wherever "Berea College" is. Maybe Bowling Green
Louisiana -- Um. Don't move to small town Louisiana.
Maine -- too many choices. Just anywhere in Maine is fine.
Maryland -- Uh, Frederick?
Massachusetts -- America's shithole. Fuck that state in all possible ways. I guess Northampton.
Michigan -- Petoskey, Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor too expensive.
Minnesota -- Duluth, Bemidji
Mississippi -- Oxford, obvs.
Missouri - Uh, Columbia. Don't do Branson.
Montana -- take Carp's advice, Missoula or Bozeman
Nebraska -- Moby turned out OK. Sort of.
Nevada - Nope. Reno's OK but your kids are more likely to end up as strippers than as data scientists.
New Hampshire -- fuck that state, but I guess it has some options. Keene, Durham, Concord, Hanover.
New Jersey -- I guess somewhere that's gentrified on the Jersey Shore maybe. Maybe. Freehold seemed sort of OK?
New Mexico - uh. Las Vegas NM?
New York - Trumansburg. Just trust me on this.
I give up, someone else take over.
Lincoln, Kansas? That's got 1,200 people.
Oh wait Lincoln's not in Kansas. LAWRENCE. So sorry.
74 I saw them too. Jone's Beach IIRC or maybe it was the Beacon. Ok, nothing to get excited about. (Think they opened up for New Order, now that was good).
I saw that you'd made a list and I thought "heroic." Then I read the list and I thought "horrible."
Don't move to Fredericksburg, Virginia. I once paid for but never got a chicken sandwich at the Wendy's there.
My hometown could probably really use a doctor and already has a guy from Iran. Just saying.
I thought it would be easy but it turns out to be hard. I feel like Fayetteville, Ypsilanti, Moscow, Iowa City, Duluth/Bemidji are solid choices.
It turns out real America is a shithole filled with yokels and monsters. Just stay in Hollywood where you're safe.
Alabama should be Huntsville.
For Kentucky, maybe Paducah, which has a big art scene?
West Lafayette (Purdue) is not cool. It's the Urbana-Champagne of Indiana.
North Carolina would be Durham/Chapel Hill. Though Cary is your best bet for black BMWs.
I had a friend who moved from Seattle to Lawrence for work. He hated it.
74: Back in my day, people had a little discretion about such things.
85 -- oh, so you're saying Cary is better for an Iranian.
Somebody else needs to do NC-WY. I feel like that's an easier set.
Washington -- a couple options from smallest to largest (none of which are serious suggestions).
Waldron Island (pop 104)
Waldron is in the San Juan Islands, but has no connections with the tourist industry and has a low cost of living. As of 1995 it is designated as a Limited Development District and commercial recreation facilities are prohibited. There is no ferry service, only one, county-owned dock, and no electricity or water supply.
Mazama (pop 200) -- if you'd like to be dry.
In the 19th century the town was called "Goat Creek", after a creek at the base of nearby Goat Peak (then called Goat Mountain). When the former post office was secured in 1899, the settlers chose a name they thought was Greek for "mountain goat". They later discovered that they had looked in the wrong dictionary and, according to Edmond S. Meany, the meaning of "Mazama" was "mountain goat" in Spanish, not Greek. Mazama is a genus of deer (family Cervidae) comprising the Brockets, medium to small deer that are found in the Americas.
Point Roberts (pop 1314)
Point Roberts is a part of the mainland United States but is not physically connected to it, making it a land exclave of the U.S. It is located on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, south of Delta, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, and can be reached by land from the rest of the United States only by traveling through Canada. It can be reached directly from the rest of Washington and the U.S. by crossing Boundary Bay by sea or air.
Port Angeles (pop 19,038)
With the rainforest, wild coastlands, awesome views while skiing and snowboarding and some of the most remote wilderness a short trip away, Port Angeles is one of the best small towns in America.
So Ogged, what is the problem with city life? The cramped quarters?
Or others who are contemplating this.
Lander, Wyoming, has a few pretty good restaurants.
Where are you now? T & T? What's it like there?
Almost three years in, kinda dull. There are a few decent beaches, but on the other side of the island. The really nice beaches are in Tobago. Traffic is shit and makes me not want to go anyplace, not that there are a whole lot of places to go. So we stay at home a lot, which isn't so bad because our apartment is quite nice.
There is a decent movie theater. Shopping is OK, if pricey, and ordering stuff online is an ordeal. You got to ship it to a drop-box in Miami and then pay a mint to have it re-shipped.
Infrastructure is pretty bad. Things break a lot. Sometimes there's no water, sometimes the power goes out, and recently the internet connection has been dicey.
The people here are friendly enough, though that's something of a veneer; I've seen people turn hostile right quick. Its possible the quick tempers contribute to the high crime rate. There was a road-rage murder in sight of my building, in the wake of a 4:00 AM fender-bender.
Organized crime: also a problem. Since I've been here, a prosecutor and a water and sewer authority regional manager have been assassinated. Plenty corruption to go around.
The Caribbean has some of the greatest music on the planet. Except this island, which has soca music. The theme of every soca song is how great soca music is.
Occasionally you hear calypso. I like calypso.
Sometimes the weather is hot, and other times the weather is really fucking hot. There's a rainy season and a dry season. In the dry season, things catch fire. One time the landfill was on fire for a week.
Not the most hardworking folks here. If you go down to Subway, only one or two of the six people behind the counter will be serving the long line of customers.
One thing they are really good at is organizing parties. Carnival is a huge thing. Unfortunately, you can't export party-planning.
Its an oil-and-gas exporting country, which means that there is a massive recession going on right now. The steal plant just closed. A lot of stores are closing. A lot of our petroleum engineer friends are leaving the country, or have left already.
Its dirty here. There is litter everywhere. People throw trash out of their car windows. At the beach one time I saw a guy take his beer out into the waves and let the bottle float away when he was done with it.
That's a pretty dismal description!
The Caribbean has some of the greatest music on the planet. Except this island, which has soca music.
That pair of sentences is very nice.
Yeah, I'm ready to go. But probably here for another year.
I grew up near a college town and spent my twenties in another (not counting the college I actually went to, although I'm not sure this clarifies or muddies things). As for being good places to grow up... eh. Maybe the ones I spent time in were too small? I mean, they weren't really walkable, so teens still drove, and there were some entertainment options other than alcohol and drugs but that doesn't help during the age range when people would actually prefer that stuff.
We like living in a city. No Unfoggeders have been in my neighborhood, IIRC (actually, E. Messily has been very near it, but I think that was before I lived there), but it's walkable to the necessities and some fun stuff and sort of metro-accessible. Cassandane's parents would love if we moved to their rural area but we wouldn't, even if jobs weren't an issue. If we had to move somewhere else, I think our first choice might be urban France, but that's completely impractical.
63: The pollution is bad in SLC? Or is it just city-level pollution generally, and he needs to live someplace rural?
65: Like you said, hot market, and really we're not even a top 25 for worst year round. You're already living in a top 20 city for ozone. What we get is short term particle, which is common on a lot of cold winter areas and easier to avoid because you tend to be mostly indoors during those times.
rural New England, which, I tell her, is indistinguishable from the South for being full of scary white people.
I'm surprised this isn't a concern for you more generally in considering small towns. I've visited most of the 50 states, and the list of states where I've gone outside of large urban centers and not been subjected to some degree of unpleasant racial hassling is as follows:
- California
- Hawaii
- Alaska
- New Mexico, somewhat to my surprise
New England and the upper Western states were probably the worst. I haven't spent any time in the rural South because I'm scared.
In sum, I'm never leaving LA. The best weather, the best food, and beautiful scenery. I don't know why everyone doesn't live here, unless it has something to do with the underfunded schools, soul-killing traffic, crumbling infrastructure and impossible real estate market.
Link for 100:
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html
88: IIRC "black BMW" means "Persian", not "Iranian".
There's probably some explanation like that for why more of you don't live in NYC.
I've been rereading the Nero Wolfe books, and in the one I was reading last night, Archie comments about how nice it is getting out in nature on a pleasant spring day, "anywhere between the two rivers but preferably south of 59th street."
61/66: kaiserschmarnn is nice, but I could give it up without all that much regret; €365 yearly transit passes and zillions of kilometers of bike lanes, less so. Hmm. Transportation infrastructure really might be my favorite thing about this place. Oh, and canal/riverside cafes in the summer.
The pollution is bad in SLC?
SLC is in a valley, and in the winter gets something called an "inversion," which basically means that the air in the valley gets trapped and doesn't clear. Same problem in Missoula, from what I understand.
I'm surprised this isn't a concern for you more generally in considering small towns.
Oh, it totally is, and one of the main reasons I liked living in California so much. But you must be browner than I am, because I've been to a lot of the country, but haven't really ever had a problem.
what is the problem with city life?
Busted tag. The rest of the comment:
To be clear, I'm in the burbs, not the city, and actually find it perfectly pleasant, except that there's so little natural beauty in the Chicago area. But we both really miss the slow pace and endless quiet space. On the other hand, growing up with a slow place and endless quiet space turns kids to heroin. I should find a pic from our friend's porch in Durango (or our other friends in Pagosa Springs) to illustrate why we find ourselves thinking, "what the fuck are we doing here?"
Here you go. A pic looking out of our friends' kitchen window in Pagosa Springs (now that's too rural, but there are similar places in Durango, and that's a pretty happening college town).
Well if you like that sort of thing...
Meadville, PA might be a sleeper. PA is full of towns that are big enough to be not-shit, but none of them are great. I don't think any of them is a classic college town. They do lean in various directions, so you could maybe find a suitable one. Eg, Brookville is very Frank Capra, but with hippie farms nearby and big forests; Washington and Greensburg are sort of satellite cities to Pgh, with substantial downtowns; there are some pockets out east that are beyond the suburbs but still in striking distance of NYC or Philly. Lancaster is a sweet town in a lot of ways, and has a liberal arts college in town, but the politics are surprisingly Republican.
Well if you want a college town adjacent to striking nature, it's Ithaca. Centrally isolated.
99: Just to jump onto gswift and ogged's comments, the inversion is awful in SLC because it's a bowl, but the rest of the state does have issues with particulate matter in the winter. For most people, it's not that bad because you can just stay inside. But even though my husband isn't outside very much in the winter, he develops a chronic cough and has frequent asthma attacks. It's awful for three months out of the year.
Meadville? The satellite city of Erie?
Actually, I don't think any of PA's non-tiny towns are set amidst striking nature. I guess Uniontown is at the foot of a mountain (US 40 drops something like 1400 feet in 3 miles coming into town), but that's an old coal capital--basically no living culture.
There's a steep hill going down into Scranton, too.
113: I suppose you could call it that. Allegheny College, a nice little downtown with its old Market still going, bike trails, French Creek Nature Preserve. I'm sure you could get a 3000 sq ft house, ca. 1910, walking/biking distance from downtown and the HS, for $100k.
Erie is actually showing some signs of culture; a friend owned a sailboat up there for a couple years, and there were a solid half dozen respectable restaurants. But the town's layout is weird: it sorts of stretches along the lake, so that you get pockets of desirable living without quite reaching a critical mass anywhere.
Buck referred to it as "Ice Station Erie" when he was in college there in the eighties.
Altoona is set amidst striking nature, but you'd need a lot more than that to want to live in Altoona. Easton is very picturesque and looks impressive on approach from the highway, though technically it might be in New Jersey.
As far as all places outside Philly and Pgh go, Lancaster is exponentially more livable at this point, for people who want a walkable downtown, a thriving downtown, college town stuff, etc.
117: It is true that I have never been there between October and May. Although I can't imagine it's that much worse than suburban Chicago. A difference in quantity, not quality, I'd think.
Anyway, I'd advise Meadville over Erie, I was just noting that, as the nearest larger town, Erie has some appeal.
Morgantown in West Virginia.
Lancaster is a sweet town in a lot of ways, and has a liberal arts college in town, but the politics are surprisingly Republican.
Also it has what is probably the country's most disturbing neighborhood watch program. (It even has its own website!)
PA is full of towns that are big enough to be not-shit, but none of them are great. I don't think any of them is a classic college town.
How big does the college have to be to be a classic college town? I think Carlisle and Lewisburg come close. The problem is that all our prominent liberal arts colleges are in decaying industrial cities or suburbs of Philadelphia, not bucolic locales.
And there are too many middling public colleges. If we only had five giant middling public colleges, like Illinois, they would be of sufficient size to constitute college towns. But currently they are all either in the absolute middle of nowhere, or as stated earlier, the suburbs of Philadelphia. Possible exceptions: Kutztown, Bloomsburg.
Pagosa Springs is incredible. Or, it is in friends' pictures. I've never been there.
It's amazing how hard it is to do a list of nice, small, reasonably livable rural towns for California. Almost all the nice towns are really extraordinarily expensive, and the desert/federal land thing keeps things either devoid of towns at all or the towns feel built up. And all the UCs are in either urban-ish areas (even you, Davis) or are in expensive areas (Santa Barbara) or are in Merced, which, no. So it's hard to get truly classic college towns.
Possible contenders, but all of which fail along some metric of pretty expensive/not that rural: Arcata, Weaverville, Dunsmuir, Grover Beach, Pismo Beach, Redding, Paso Robles/Templeton/Atascadero, Ojai, Redlands, Julian. Maybe some others I can't think of.
107: There's a couple hospitals on the campus. This is the view from Primary Childrens.
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4062/4657446464_b0336174b1.jpg
Has someone mentioned Bellingham? Have we talked about Bellingham, ogged?
Easton is very picturesque
Darn it, I was going to say Easton. So I guess I'll have to say Columbia, which has a nice river.
You know what place is a dump? Hanover.
I'm a Utah fan. I have a relative in SLC who moved from Ann Arbor and loves it. But I can't take my asthmatic kid there and tell him to just stay inside for a few months out of the year.
We've considered this a lot, obviously, and I think, if I had to choose, somewhere along the Colorado Front Range is the way to go. You can go more or less rural and still be pretty close to a major city in Denver or a college town in Boulder or Fort Collins. Lots of sunshine, not horrible politics, and some solid school districts. You do get some severe weather, and there are no major bodies of water. "Culture" is fine but not major city caliber. The Front Range is getting pretty expensive and suffers from sprawl. Trade-offs, like I say.
Glenwood Springs would be my CO pick. Because who doesn't like hot springs?
I think I'd prefer CDA to Moscow. What little you lose by not being around the flagship U, you gain by being near Spokane. I've enjoyed Sandpoint. If someone wanted to buy me a house in Ketchum, I'd consider living there part time.
123 is exactly what I wanted to add to my comment, but I didn't want to get longwinded (plus I thought I might be missing someplace; and, indeed, I forgot Carlisle has a college).
For the purposes of this discussion, thought, ISTM that we're looking for college towns that aren't just bucolic-yet-sophisticated (i.e. Williamstown MA), but actually urban in meaningful ways (Ithaca, Charlottesville).
Here's the thing about (western*) PA: what's actually ideal for these purposes is to own cheap in the city and also to own a vacation property in one of these tiny towns that are adorable and even have some culture/character, but you'd never want to raise your kids in. That's what we always wanted to do, but decided to be declining UMC instead. And it's because virtually none of the college towns have enough critical mass to be urban and urbane.
Ooh, here's the definition: you want the kind of college town where there's actually a non-college, non-townie (in the derogatory sense) population. That is, being a professional in Charlottesville will inevitably involve lots of clients who work for the university, but it's not literally everyone. But in Slippery Rock? It's a poor, rural town where a couple hundred academics live, and middle class parents take their kids out to dinner sometimes. If things are just right (weather, scenery, local culture), the latter condition is OK, but it doesn't take much to turn it into a hellhole.
*I think this is semi-true in the east as well, but not exactly
Has someone mentioned Bellingham? Have we talked about Bellingham, ogged?
Bellingham or Olympia are the obvious college towns in WA. I was just going for smaller and more isolated in my list in 90.
Image search for Bellingham shows a lot of pretty pictures . . .
The Front Range is getting pretty expensive and suffers from sprawl.
From what I've seen, the sprawl anywhere outside of city limits is intolerable. I get the jitters driving between Boulder and Denver.
I'll admit that my landscape scale setting is Eastern. I don't like eastern sprawl, but I can get my head around 100 quarter acre lots around a little creek valley; out west, it feels like 50 1 acre ranchettes surrounded by 1000 acres of desolation, with pretty mountains in the distance.
college towns that aren't just bucolic-yet-sophisticated but actually urban in meaningful ways
Annapolis
I thought Eugene was nice when we went there for a track meet.
135: That could work. If you can handle that many midshipmen.
124: Davis isn't that urban. Woodland is slightly more urban, because it's the county seat. There was no decent bus system, and it's bikeable but not really walkable.
The particulate pollution in the winter along the Wasatch Front is bad, and usually there's another bout of bad air in the summer. The rest of the time it's pretty awesome, so a lot depends on how sensitive you are to it.
Bellingham is super nice. I'm urban through and through, but if you made me pick a small town at gunpoint (
bracket fail
cont'd
under 100,000 population), I'd pick B'ham.
123 is exactly what I wanted to add to my comment, but I didn't want to get longwinded (plus I thought I might be missing someplace; and, indeed, I forgot Carlisle has a college).
Not just a college. A WAR college. And also a normal college. And a law school.
In addition to the other nice downtown stuff, downtown Carlisle has a bizarre profusion of extremely old, picturesque storefronts containing tiny (picturesque?) law firms.
139: Yeah, my wife passed her asthma on to our daughters but it doesn't seem to affect them beyond occasional inhaler use.
I'd definitely pick Lancaster over Carlisle if I were moving back to southcentral PA.
Ithaca is kind of actually urban, in (very small) parts, which is why Ogged needs to be in Trumansburg.
Let's keep the list going.
North Carolina -- Apo says Chapel Hill/Durham, but isn't it really Boone?
North Dakota -- Fargo
Ohio - Yellow Springs, Miami?
Oklahoma - Nope.
Oregon - I say Eugene, Bend is too expensive.
Pennsylvania -- Apparently Carlisle
Rhode Island - live on Block Island I guess
South Carolina -- ??? I have a friend who lives in Spartnansburg and it actually looks kinda OK
South Dakota - Uh. A Google search says "Brookings SD hopes to be America's first breastfeeding-friendly city" so maybe there are hippies there.
Tennessee -- Sewanee
Texas -- tough one. Marfa fits but somehow doesn't feel quite right. Let's say Heebieville and Fredericksburg.
Utah - let's go with Moab
Vermont - it's like a whole state of nothing but this shit. Burlington because why not.
Virginia - Charlottesville feels like a boring choice. Let's go with Lexington.
Washington -- Bellingham, obvs.
West Virginia - Morgantown for sure
Wisconsin -- Oddly difficult. Madison if it counts, if not Minocqua because it has something called "Beef-a-Rama"
Wyoming - Lander, says Flippanter. Laramie is in the crappy part of Wyoming, so it's out.
Obvious corrections to previous list: Colorado s/b Durango, Alabama, Huntsville.
Central Pennsylvania is great. Just don't go East of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.
Bellingham has a nice locale.
I wonder if Salem might be gaining on Eugene.
But Corvallis as a small college town is pretty okay.
Gotta tell my parents Minocqua showed up on this list. That's fabulous (...but no.) Eau Claire had a hipster thing going for a while and is close to the twin cities. North of Wausau it gets more picturesque but also full of snowmobiles, jetskis, etc. I kind of liked Green Bay on the strength of a single visit. The Fox Valley is the home of Satanic forces that will someday overrun the country. Wausau is one of those places where you can (or could recently) buy a straight up gilded age mansion for $150K, it is not 100% white, and it is near the tallest "mountain" in the state, so it might get my vote. Very tough call though; best would seem to be near the giant lakes.
Utah - let's go with Moab
For his specific case wrt likely proximity to tech jobs the better bet is probably the Heber/Midway area.
Moab is two blocks and rocks. Lovely place, but come on.
Texas -- tough one. Marfa fits but somehow doesn't feel quite right. Let's say Heebieville and Fredericksburg.
Terlingua is close enough to Marfa to get the benefits (a good bookstore, public radio, cultural events, nice restaurants that only stay open for a year), but also right by Big Bend.
"Close enough" by West Texas standards, that is.
I remember finding Green Bay pretty depressing when we stayed there for the Oshkosh air show (no it's not that close, but the hotels in Neenah and Appleton were sold out already).
Rhode Island - live on Block Island I guess
Isn't Rhode Island small enough that the answer is "anywhere"?
Wiki says Terlingua, TX has a year round population of 58, which would be fine if Ogged actually liked rural seclusion and wasn't, per 152, a total poseur.
What about Pullman, WA? I spent a lot of years there. Moscow, ID is only seven miles away so you have two state universities seven miles apart in two very different towns.
Newport, RI. Tourists might be obnoxious though.
Walla Walla, WA is a pretty town with some mountain views although it also has some winter/mid-summer inversion issues.
Compelled to defend the honor of Oklahoma. Norman. You'd all hate it but not any more than you'd hate Miami, Ohio.
Now this is my kind of thread! (And not just because I'm name-checked in the OP.)
It's not clear to me what size range we're actually going for here, though.
Anyway, thoughts on the list in 75:
Alaska -- Um. No idea. Juneau? Seward?
Both good options. Any of the larger coastal communities in Southcentral and Southeast would work, I think; obviously you'd be compromising on the weather in any of them. Cordova has good schools and has actually been attracting a lot of young families on that basis, according to the people I talked to when I was there last week. I think the best choice overall might be Sitka, though.
Arizona - Flagstaff, I guess Sedona? But not Sedona.
Definitely Flagstaff. Not Sedona.
New Mexico - uh. Las Vegas NM?
Definitely not Las Vegas. Silver City is nice but might be too small. Las Cruces might be too big and too close to El Paso/Juarez. Santa Fe, also maybe too big and definitely too expensive. Jemez Springs is nice but maybe not a good place to live year-round, also very small. On balance I'll say Silver City.
Wiki says Terlingua, TX has a year round population of 58,
And they have a propensity for noirish murders.
Actually probably Stillwater, OK, but I feel like frackquakes and tornadoes are worse there than Norman. But plus side maybe frackquake/tornadoes exciting enough that less risk you need to turn to oxy for fun?
You're really not selling Oklahoma there, C-Stabs.
Hang on Teo, I haven't even gotten to the comparative density of the feral hog populations of the various counties.
Thank you. So. There are more feral hogs near Stillwater, if that tips you in one direction or the other.
A friend had a job in Stillwater for a few years. She didn't like it and now lives in Cincinnati, which she much prefers.
Brookings is almost certainly the best South Dakota has to offer.
According to Wiki, Brookings SD is bot only America's most breast-feeding friendly city, but is also where Baby Bel cheese comes from. A pleasant town, reasonable housing, good schools, and an opportunity to become a major player in the red-wax-wrapped cheese industry -- what more can a man reasonably hope for in this life?
But plus side maybe frackquake/tornadoes exciting enough
Too many places in the world get the frackquake/tornado ratio wrong. Its important to have a good balance.
Is Oklahoma the worst state? Probably, right?
It was the only place I had someone steal the gasoline out of my U-Haul truck on a cross country trip. So, yes, probably.
Also love those trout streams and snow capped mountains.
On the other hand, sinister carnies.
It is my ancestral homeland and I truly and fiercely love it but precisely *because* it is the sort of place where something like u-haul gasoline theft would happen so look, it's not for everyone.
My brother and I had a game as children called "good state bad state" where one of us would call out a state and the other had to say "good state" or "bad state" immediately without thinking about it at all or, well, nothing happened, but that was the game; ANYWAY Mississippi stands alone in our family for never having gotten "good state." I went to a nice lake there once though, so.
94: Thanks. You achieved a really smooth gradient there: 'meh' > 'bad' > 'awful'.
Let's use the criteria we had in another thread -- needs to be a basically crappy state, culturally unpleasant or boring, and there's some other nearby state that does what it does only better. Like, you feel shitty just by virtue of being in the state. Conservative politics are a leading indicator of crapitude but not sufficient; South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama are fine, despite having the worst politics and being terribly governed, because you know it would actually be OK to live in them. I'd say candidates are: OK (much shittier Texas), NH (much shittier Vermont), SD (much shittier great plains), DE (much shittier mid-Atlantic), KS (Nebraska's even crappier cousin), FL (the exception -- not a shittier version of itself, but in putting together the pleasant small town list it was striking how much FL obviously sucks). Oddly, by these criteria, I think WY joins the list -- obviously, it has beautiful parts, but it is clearly the much crappier version of a mountain state.
Regarding 155, let me make it clear that I personally would not live anywhere in Wisconsin other than Madison or, with careful planning, Milwaukee, and in both cases you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming. I feel guilty about being part of "blue flight," though, which is the term I'm amazed no one has coined for educated liberals leaving their home states for the coasts. This is a real thing, right? It sure is in Wisconsin.
I guess we can now blame lurid personally for Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and Reince Priebus.
why Wyoming but not Idaho?
I feel like the game in 184 relies on several flawed premises.
184
I'm sorry, but you need to choose one state from the classic bottom tier (MS, AL, AR, WV). Shitty weather, shitty politics. I'd go with MS in a close race.
I'm actually pretty surprised that Tigre considers Mississippi and Alabama to be fine places to live.
Yeah, because if I had to choose a single place as the hellmouth of all shittiness in the US, it'd be somewhere in NE Mississippi.
I dunno, I feel like I'd rather live in Jackson or Birmingham than Tulsa or Cheyenne or Nashua.
I remember once a couple decades ago meeting with an agronomist newly graduated with a Ph.D. from Minnesota who had taken a job at an agricultural experiment station in west central Mississippi (name of town escapes me at the moment). When asked how his wife was adjusting to Mississippi he replied that she was no longer crying every day.
I suppose if you do all your exercise indoors (hell, do everything indoors). There're a few reasons the obesity epidemic emanates from MS/AL.
MS and AL? Holy hell. My brother lived in MS for a couple of years while he worked his way up to flying for a major. And MS sounds like one of the worst places to live. AL is probably a close second.
You all lack imagination regarding California. What's wrong with San Luis Obispo or more realistically Oceano/Pismo? Not that a big city, has a college, remote enough that it can't be THAT expensive, etc.
Once again, on behalf of NH: fuck off, Tigre.
192 is objectively wrong in many ways. How someone could like rural MS/AL but despise rural MA/NH is beyond me. I can't name a single thing about MS/AL that is better.
192: Jesus, no. But I might say Laramie rather than Cheyenne. Only downside of Laramie might be the altitude (7K+) if Ogged's kid's lungs are weak.
Carp is also right that there's some amazing areas up in NE Idaho.
198 - I thought I was talking about small cities and overall state-ness. But sure, rural New England has charms. It's just that NH is the crappiest, angriest, racist-iest version of those charms. It makes it inherently a shit state. And if you hate Northern Mississippi, the only real question is what you hate more -- black people or music.
So I guess it's more about RT being anti-New England than pro-Deep South?
196 -- i think SLO is really expensive these days, as is Pismo. And neither is really rural-feeling.
Still not sure why Cheyenne's on the worse list, though.
I dunno, it just seems like kinda a wasteland. Birmingham or Jackson would be filled with some interesting Southern characters and weirdos.
Definitely Flagstaff. Not Sedona
Quite.
Nevada - Nope
For "nope" read "Carson City," which is not somewhere I'd expect to live but definitely the closest thing Nevada has to an ogged town. Tahoe proximity, politics if you want em. Reno is too big for this game.
California -- literally nowhere
I haven't been to Nevada City but it has been presented to me as a place where bayareans move when they've Had It.
I've actually never been to Cheyenne, so maybe its great. Nashua and Tulsa do suck though.
203: Yeah, if those price ranges are on the table then add Park City and Jackson to the list.
I still think ogged should check out Susanville. Or, I don't know, Weed or something.
Based on today's research, I think that Arcata is the best California Ogged town.
201
You trying to claim that NH is more racist than MS? I mean, I might give you "NH is much more racist than you expect", but come on.
Music and BBQ are the only two things where rural MS wins.
I've been to Weed. It's beautiful, but there's nothing to do there and it's about five hours away from any other place.
Los Alamos, NM is a very nice small town that I think meets all the OP criteria except that it's so cold in the winter. Ogged, I think you should move to Los Alamos.
I'd be hesitant to move to Bemidji full time. It's nice, but really small, and you're a long way from the Cities. Duluth is not as cool as it was when it was still properly industrial. If you wanted to live somewhere up north, I'd say one of the smaller cities on the North Shore would be a better bet. Lots of hippies and not nearly as many racists as when you move inland or go to Wisconsin. And you could still take advantage of Duluth amenities, and come down to Minneapolis if you wanted to go on a tear.
Let me point out for the record that since the great deindustrialization, our inversions in the Zoo City are basically just fog. Very different from the bigger city stuff.
I've been worse places than Cody or Sheridan. Not that I'd pick either.
Just got back from a live storytelling thing. Truth be told, we go out a whole lot more here than we did in DC.
For many years, my parents drove periodically from their summer home in BC to visit my sister in the Bay Area, and back. Invariably, they would pass though Weed, and invariably they'd call me from there. "We're in Weed. Just wanted to let you know. From Weed."
Los Alamos, NM
Yeah, I've been there and it's pretty. It felt...very boring.
We have friends who moved from SF to Nevada City. They absolutely love it, but there's actually a similar pollution issue, where the dirty air from SF and Sacramento goes north and gets stuck in the mountains right next to Nevada City. It's something I never gave much thought, but there are a lot of places in the country where the air is dirty. Welcome to the future.
Arcata
Man, northern Northern California is so gorgeous. Don't know anything about those towns though. Lots of weed and meth, right?
Yeah, I've been there and it's pretty. It felt...very boring.
Yeah, I've never actually been to Los Alamos, but it has a reputation in the rest of the state for being very boring and suburban despite its spectacular setting and interesting history. It also historically voted solidly Republican (people who make nuclear weapons aren't the most liberal around), but that's probably changed.
I've been worse places than Cody
I like Cody but it's probably a tad remote for what he's looking for. Ditto Whitefish.
Wait, I thought remoteness was exactly what he's looking for.
The NM towns that Teo mentioned look pretty great. Silver City and Jemez Springs.
I'm guessing our high score for particulate is summer forest fires, not winter inversions. We're no 1 for ozone
Speaking of forest fires, Los Alamos is very vulnerable to them. So there goes "physical safety" along with "good weather" and "opportunities for your kids."
221: I thought he was looking for more remote than Chicago but with access to things to mitigate the small town-ness like a nearby college or medium city.
Not just me! I think a lot of people want that, which was part of the point of the linked piece.
I think he just wants some of the amenities that a college or medium city would provide, not necessarily proximity to either.
I'm pretty sure that there's no way you could raise your kids in Arcata without one of their friend's parents smoking weed with them. But that seems pretty survivable, and it sure looks pretty and would be pleasant.
I've actually been thinking about some of these issues myself lately. It's looking increasingly likely that I may not be able to stay in Alaska much longer (due to the looming economic catastrophe caused by low oil prices and the state legislature's inability so far to deal with in a serious way), and as look for jobs in other places I've had to think about what characteristics are most important to me in a place to live.
I'm coming at the problem from a very different perspective than ogged, of course.
So, what's on the list? Also, most of these places would kinda suck to be single in.
Well, I'd like to be in a bigger city, partly due to the singleness issue, which may be tricky since a lot of the sorts of jobs I would be most interested in are in smaller communities. I'd also kind of prefer to stay in the West, but I'm not totally committed to that. Really it depends what sorts of jobs I come across; there's nothing specific I'm considering at the moment.
Eureka/Arcata might be ok in California, though the people I knew who've lived there have wanted more urban living and moved to the Bay Area.
I see RT already got there in 211. I searched the thread for Eureka but not Arcata. Also possible, but smaller: Ukiah. But Yreka is too small.
Oh Ukiah is a good call. No college but maybe that doesn't matter.
What are the qualities of Ukiah?
Not just me! I think a lot of people want that
I'm worried too many are headed this way and are going to drive up the housing costs. The tech jobs are springing up like crazy around here, especially in the Lehi area. Just a few miles north of that is Draper, which in the next couple years will see the prison relocated and that's another 700 acres or so for which they've got ambitious development plans.
Beautiful natural setting, not as wet and gray as farther north but not as dry as California to the south, not too far from the coast and mountains, but not so close that it's a destination for that, not that far from the Bay Area, but far enough it doesn't seem like it's in the orbit of the Bay Area.
Ok, so I have no idea about it as an actual town to live in. I've just driven through a bunch of times and also stayed there in motels a couple times on the way from Canada to southern California.
FWIW, I've stayed in two different motels in Arcata and I'm pretty sure people were dealing pot out of both. Although in one case there might have just been a party. I didn't hear anything from my room, but heard someone lay out a long list of complaints at the front desk when I went to check out.
The relevant quality of Ukiah for us, lourdes, is that we'd have all the irritating mountain driving parts of the drive to Mendocino/Ft Bragg without also being near a BART station in everyday life, so it would be all Welcome to Tantalus County. But pretty sunsets IIRC.
An acquaintance had an exceedingly shitty year or two teaching at a community college in Redding. I do still want to explore Mt Shasta and Redding is part of the staging, though.
I think you're undervaluing the now-shitty driving from San Rafael past Santa Rosa. I'm surprised how much traffic there is up there now.
Now, if this were "tastiest place name in all 50 states" then Forks of Salmon, CA might be a contender. (I imagine this listicle has been done; I am not going to look for it.)
In 242, I mean undervaluing being able to skip that driving.
I've heard literally nothing good from people who've lived in Redding or Red Bluff. A coworker who's either from there or from near there was puzzled to hear that I'd ever stayed in Dunsmuir. There's a railroad car hotel where my family stayed on our way north on some trip when I was a kid. I remember going to a pizza place where all the teenagers were wearing jackets with Junior Varsity logos. Those could be your kids' future, ogged.
The Shasta/Castle Crags area is gorgeous, scenery-wise.
I should go to sleep instead of commenting when almost no one else is around, but I just want to say that the article in the OP hasn't sold me on Red Lake County. Landlocked, flat, cold, very white: no.
I'm around! No need to go to sleep yet.
But yeah, not really getting the appeal of Red Lake County. The people are nice, apparently. Is that enough?
Also if the real problem was his terrible commute, which does sound offer, he could also have just moved closer in to DC. Which would have been expensive, of course, but then moving halfway across the country ain't cheap either.
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I guess this is the late night show now.
I was valuing it as "depressing and constant barrier to weekend trips to the metropolis" rather than as a current-life barrier to going to Mendocino. It's true that it sucks. (Nothing quite prepared me for how it took A WHOLE HOUR to drive six miles from my office in Palo Alto TO THE DUMBARTON BRIDGE, however, during my first and last rush hour car commute east. Never, never fucking again, never. BART would have to run two-car trains every half hour (like Muni!) for me to reconsider.)
In fairness to the youth of Redding, surely it is not so appalling to go for pizza after a game? I think I had such a jacket in high school, but was it rented or something? Total, total blur.
Crap, was this athletic jacket thing an implanted memory? Maybe. Bad commutes are real.
Annapolis is lovely with wonderful historic Georgian buildings. Arcata is lovely with wonderful historic Victorian buildings. Both became economic backwaters hence the buildings weren't demolished in the name of progress.
Glenwood Springs has surprisingly great food. And it's quaint and beautiful.
Annapolis is lovely with wonderful historic Georgian buildings. Arcata is lovely with wonderful historic Victorian buildings. Both became economic backwaters hence the buildings weren't demolished in the name of progress.
The same is true of Las Vegas NM, which is an interesting place to visit for that reason. It has remained a severely impoverished backwater to this day, however, and not a place you want to live.
Ok, ok, I'm still up for a few minutes. I feel like having lived in the south bay at a couple of different times in my life, I have the within-Bay Area local cred now to call it a transportation and land use planning shithole. It's not just my Berkeley-area* bias making me say that.
*Also, Berkeley thirty years ago? Probably not at all like any current midwestern college town. Berkeley isn't a college town, anyway. I think I liked Berkeley more in the 1990s than in the 1980s, but it was probably less like whatever people who think of Berkeley and the 1960s imagine Berkeley to be.
I thought the Bay Area's status as a planning shithole was well established, at least in the planning community. Maybe not more broadly.
Oh cool, Teo, I will have to visit there sometime.
Oh cool, Teo, I will have to visit there sometime.
It's definitely worth it. Lots of cool old Victorian buildings in various states of disrepair.
It's an easy day trip from Santa Fe, and a somewhat longer but still doable one from Albuquerque.
I caught a bus from Raton, NM last summer and was surprised at how beautiful the storefronts were.
Arcata is still in economic backwater status, I think, except for the pot industry.
Still, that's an important industry. And it may soon be legal.
Berkeley thirty years ago? Probably not at all like any current midwestern college town
Maybe so, but 2004 Berkeley instantly and uncannily felt like home to me after the 80s/90s Madison childhood. The effect was powerful enough to destroy my sense of cardinal directions in Berkeley for years: north Berkeley was west Madison, south Berkeley was the east side of Madison, taking University west was taking Park Street south of the UW campus, on and on. The Berkeley Hills were Shorewood Hills. I probably shouldn't even write this or I'll just re-reinforce it.
Some googling says, maybe not reliably, that 1/4 of the economy of Humboldt County comes from pot. What exactly that means who knows. And also whether they'll do better or worse after legalization (you'd think that they'd be taking a huge price hit and it would be an economic cataclysm, but maybe easier distribution turns them into a national hub. Who knows).
The economics of legal pot is an interesting subject. We're currently in the midst of developing a regulatory framework for it here in Alaska, which unlike all the other states that have gone for legalization didn't have a previously existing regulatory structure for medical use (I guess the presumption was that medical users would either grow it themselves or buy it illegally but use it legally). I think the state is still accepting applications for pot-related business licenses and the first retail businesses are expected to open in the fall, because they have to buy from legal growers who still need to have their own licenses in place.
Amend that to say not like any college town ogged was thinking of. I've never been to Madison or Yellow Springs, but I'm guessing they have fewer stores with bars on the windows, fewer people sleeping on the streets, smaller proportion of people who are living there to commute to the bigger city nearby. I think it looks different coming there for college/grad school than growing up there. There were a lot of 90s era changes that made downtown and Telegraph more pedestrian friendly, and less 1980s decline of the city urban.
I saw a presentation from the head of the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office (formerly the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board) at a recent conference about the regulatory issues involved, which are complicated.
252.2 There's nothing so rented as a rented junior varsity jacket.
I would like to move somewhere smaller and less expensive, but I think it would make being single even harder*, the kind of work I do is largely place/institution based so I'd have to find somewhere with a job I want or change what I do, and I need to be able to get to my parents fairly easily.
*Maybe I should have ads saying "must be willing to relocate from the Bay Area".
I've now gone down a deep late night internet hole reading about Humboldt County's (ie Arcata, California's) pot industry, and it's super interesting. The Humboldt growers apparently are going all in on trying to preserve themselves fir the future as providers of a small-scale luxury product. They fear post-legalization competition from Central Valley big ag more than anything. They did very well for themselves until recently under a regime where pot was illegal but they were tolerated locally as full community members. But a big price crash has happened and they fear a bigger one. And it really is the county's major industry.
Did you know that in 2015 California, encouraged by Humboldt's delegation, which fully works with local pot growers, enacted a law providing for appellation controlees for pot? I didn't. It's now illegal to call your weed "Humboldt" unless it really comes from Humboldt. That's a move transparently designed to help the smaller-scale but high end growers. And they also got (and want) tracking and labeling regulations to make sure people know where their pot comes from. It looks like the growers originally resisted legalization but are long past that and are figuring out how to live with it. Also the former Humboldt DA now has a practice advising dealers and growers on regulatory issues.
This was a great article and there are more out there.
273: Fascinating. Among the big issues here is that the Mat-Su valley is both the main current growing area and the most conservative part of the state, so it's still unclear what direction the Mat-Su Borough is going to go in allowing legal growing or not, and under what conditions if it is allowed. Another issue is how legal sales might work in off-road communities, given that both air and water transportation are federally regulated and unlikely to allow wholesale shipments of pot from other areas of the state even if they're legal under state law.
And this is all against the backdrop of cratering oil revenues for both state and local governments, so there's a strong financial incentive for local governments to allow marijuana-related businesses for the potential tax revenues, even though they're only a small fraction of what they're likely to lose in reduced support from the state.
Yeah, it really is super interesting. Another big regulatory issue in Humboldt is water use -- making sure that the growers are doing their fair share to deal with the drought. So maybe that will encourage people to move their pot production to Alaska.
But, the bigger deal is that Humboldt is desperately hoping that legal pot production is more like making wine, where small scale but high end farmers can take a huge premium, than it is like growing lettuce. If it's the former they're the new Napa and in great shape, if it's the latter most farms fail and the region's economy is screwed. No one seems to know how it will shake out. I haven't smoked pot in 20 years -- does it plausibly have a terroir?
I've never smoked pot at all, so I have no idea. Maybe?
Anyway, this is one of the reasons I'd really like to be able to stay in Alaska for at least a few more months. It's really a fascinating time to be here.
273: Much is now shaking out as your link projected - you may have seen from my blog, but the big well-funded legalization initiative proposes industry regulation much like the new statewide MM regulations - priority to existing licensees, appellation rules, comprehensive tracking and tracing, etc.
The quote in that link from the advocate "lamenting" that the flip side of local control is local veto power sort of glosses over that local veto power over businesses of much/any scale is the status quo legally.
There's what appears to be a contingent of growers that is so scared of commodification of pot /price cratering that they oppose legalization in general - a label given to them is GGAL, "greedy growers against legalization". Usually this is disguised in the form of making the perfect the enemy of the good (like decrying the proposed tax level or 6-plant cultivation limit or the principle of local control), but there is an SF dispensary person directly quoted as saying "Prop 215 is beautiful, it's all we need."
The recent Buzzfeed article about PoC and the legal marijuana industry is a great illustration of how the medical regime relies on whiteness to function.
Oh, and the appellation rules as currently in law apply only to county names, it looks like, so Humboldt but not Arcata. The new regulatory bureau "may" add additional rules.
I haven't smoked pot in 20 years -- does it plausibly have a terroir?
I drink wine and I can't even tell if it has one. The concord grape is very adaptable.
Maybe all the dirt in upstate New York tastes the same.
MN-wise it seems to me like southern MN might work better than the more isolated parts of northern MN. Northfield seems to match most of the criteria anyway, though I don't know if it counts as being rural enough given the moderately small towns scattered relatively close around it (: small town; two colleges; large cereal factory* so that not everything in the town is because of SLAC presence; nice wildlife areas; close to 35W so the Twin Cities is only 45 minutes away or so; and yearly historical carnival which is susch adorable Americana that it's hilarious. Also when you're going there via 35 you take exit 69 to get there which is a nice bonus.
*Which also means that when the wind is right (at the right time of year) the town smells like pancakes with maple syrup on them.
90% of the mail I received when I was 16 and 17 was from people who wanted me to live in or near Northfield.
Actually, it's possible that Ligonier is the answer for PA. It's a beautiful little town, old money WASPs but not, I think, expensive by the standards ogged is used to, and it's 20 minutes from this sort of thing. The immediate setting is quite lovely, too. Oh, and it's 5 minutes from one of the best kid-oriented amusement parks in the world, so summer jobs are set. I'm sure those clean-cut kids never do anything bad in the off hours. It's 75 minutes from Pgh, and half an hour from the aforementioned Greensburg, which would provide some more urban culture/dining.
Here you go. $182k, 3 bed, 2 bath, two blocks from the center of town, 9 minute walk from the local grocery. Oh, and when Tigre visits, you can take him to this bar.
OTOH, there appears to be (guessing/inferring) one black adult who has two kids with a white partner. So maybe not the most diverse place around.
Wow, is that white.
Another bonus: sometimes Moby will just show up!
I have not been to any bars out that way.
It might be a different rock, but it sure looks like the one I stood on. I'm thinking of the LHHT not far from 653.
It's actually just above the trail (I'm pretty sure), but yeah. Relatively close to US 30. Beam Rocks.
Then I haven't been there. I went by Beam Rocks, but I was limping so I didn't take the side trail to the overlook.
If it were Germany, they'd move the rock to somewhere more convenient. But then you'd lose the view.
But we both really miss the slow pace and endless quiet space.
I'm pretty sure Heebieville has a slow pace (because I asked Jammies and E. last night) but what exactly is the difference on a day-to-day basis? What does a slow pace versus fast pace translate into? Expectations about the number of after-school activities that kids are involved in? Higher rate of invitations that are being turned down due to conflicting events?
In a slower paced place, if you don't drive when the light turns green, you get five seconds before somebody honks. Also, if you get bowled over by somebody walking faster, you won't feel like it was your fault for being in the way. Also, you're expected/allowed to add five minutes worth of small talk to every interaction.
Slow pace: people leave the office at 5.
Fast pace: people leave the office at 8-9.
By 8-9 I've barely read my email. They really should stay until lunch, at least.
"Also, if you get bowled over by somebody walking faster, you won't feel like it was your fault for being in the way. Also, you're expected/allowed to add five minutes worth of small talk to every interaction."
Aaaargh.
197: Spike, if you accept Tigre's premise -- since my impression is that Tigre is a lawyer, perhaps I should write, "if you are willing to stipulate" -- that it is reasonable to generalize from Nashua to NH, you also have to admit that he's on to something. So far as I can tell, the only reason to live in Nashua (or nearby NH) is to be near Boston or I495 and escape taxes.
Now, there are all sorts of reasons not begin with that premise. But for whatever reason, he believes it is reasonable and is willing to expound on that basis.
201: Not sure that "NH is the crappiest, angriest, racist-iest version of those charms," if only because it is too white (at least in the traditional American binary) for AAs (or even Hispanics) to occupy much emotional space of residents. OTOH, our governor (M.Hassan) did not put her best foot forward when she made her statement last fall about accepting Syrian refugees: notice however that no other Democratic elected officials backed her up.
273-276:
Dude, a Humboldt pot advocate linked to one of my posts on a forum (on the potential for Central Valley pot growing) and I got the third most hits I've ever gotten. Pot-blogging is the way to get clicks.
I was pretty blown away because the entire country's supply could be grown on 10,000 acres. For some of the big farms (60,000 acres), that's one rotation on a couple fields. It wouldn't even be most of what one big farmer grows.
what exactly is the difference on a day-to-day basis?
Less scheduled stuff, and less traveling to stuff to do. Things happen at home or in the neighborhood, and often spontaneously.
If you mean those fires, they can't prove anything.
I am charmed at the idea the Humboldt County planning department has sent a delegation to Napa for tips on how to do high-end, barriers to entry up the whazoooo. I would love to see Humboldt's pot-funded answer to this:
this:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mangoandpeaches/4774690228/
and this:
http://mrspeeksfarmhouse.blogspot.com/2009/11/catille-de-amorosa.html?m=1
36.2 is amazing and puts it into context. The Humboldt folks had better hope that there's something really special about their soil/artisinal cultivation techniques or else the Resnicks/Paramaount Farms will wipe them out completely within what, a year? If I were a grower in Humboldt I'd be looking to turn like half my operation into running a fancy inn with a farm to table menu and a curated high end pot tasting experience.
That should be 306.2. Maybe the Humboldt grower's best move is to encourage the feds to keep sporadically enforcing the pot laws, so it's non-respectable for the Resnicks to turn over 1/1000th of their acreage and put them out of business. They really need high end lawyers and lobbyists.
If I were in charge, I'd like to see an acreage limitation on pot farms (like, 5 acres). Spread the wealth around.
Five acres of pot seems like a very great amount.
I don't feel like googling "How many people can get stoned per acre of devoted to pot cultivation?" while I'm at the office.
Anyhow, this turn in the thread is totally relevant, because it's basically a case study in why pleasant, cheap, culturally engagrd and rural small towns are so hard to find. You better have a university, or your options are to pray for just enough tourism to stimulate the economy, but not enough to make it unaffordable, or face economic collapse because most agriculture is run by mega corporations owned by wealthy philanthropists in Los Angeles, and your pleasant rural town won't be able to support anyone.
306.2: There's a lot of market for different strains, but then a lot is grown indoors too.
312: That exists in a form in the proposed AUMA. No premises of greater than 1 acre outdoor or half an acre indoor to be licensed before 2023, but it doesn't bar licensees from holding more than one license, so I'm not sure how well that really caps big investors. It limits economies of scale some, at least.
Huh, I just sent Heebie a couple of links about pot legalization, and didn't realize that this thread had turned to that subject. Should I just post them here?
Like teo, I find it an interesting subject because I don't use pot so, while I was aware that pot was incredibly popular, it wasn't something I paid any attention to prior to legalization.
most agriculture is run by mega corporations owned by wealthy philanthropists in Los Angeles
I figure the Resnicks are an outlier, and most big ag is run by mega corporations who don't bother to be philanthropists in Los Angeles.
I thought that was just a typo for "Rednecks" until it came up again.
your options are to pray for just enough tourism to stimulate the economy, but not enough to make it unaffordable
I spent much of Friday driving through some truly lovely parts of WV, places I've never been before, and it was striking how vague and marginal the economic bases of these places were. For the most part I wasn't deep in coal country, and there were some really fertile-seeming farmlands (way too small for serious agbusiness, but enough for substantial truck/dairy farming), but mostly it just seemed like these tiny, self-sufficient towns that got just enough tourism to keep them out of poverty. When we got to Davis, near the Canaan Valley, there was enough tourism for a full block of touristy businesses, but it was nothing like gentrified. You'd never want to live there as a non-local; it would be like Newhart (at best).
On a side note, I was genuinely shocked at the ubiquity of Confederate flags. I've always been bugged by seeing them in rural SW PA, but here it's occasional, while down there it was at least even odds that any given rural property would have one (often in some sort of country-crafty form, like painted on the slats of an old pallet; I don't know if that's better or worse than a flag on a pole).
317: Let me know! Either way.
It's at least a little bit amusing to see them in a state that only exists because back then they didn't want to be in the Confederacy.
You can totally walk across West Virginia. The Allegheny Trail crosses the whole state, but I read that it is not nearly as well marked as the trail across Vermont.
the entire country's supply could be grown on 10,000 acres
What's the basis for this amount of supply? Like, how much is used now, or how much if it were legalized nationally? Is anyone really sure what per capita usage would be in a completely legalized setting?
322: I know! It made me really mad, and led to explaining the history of WV to the kids.
323: I was on a very, very short section of it. Really gorgeous, at Blackwater Creek Falls.
You can call that a "section hike."
On topic: I should just move back to Nebraska. My dad has 80 acres and my cousins have bunches more and no kids interested in farming. I could do SAS in the winter and evenings in the rest of the year.
317: Let me know! Either way.
I don't know.
I'd vote for a separate thread because I think it's interesting and I could have easily missed this conversation, but it also feels a bit silly. You're the FPP aren't you supposed to know these sorts of things?
It would also put me closer to my parents, which would be a helpful thing about now.
Stop talking about pot, everybody!
Plus, instead of reading about the Attorney General investigating pornographic emails, I could read about the Attorney General trying to get Colorado to make pot illegal again.
324: Well, my basis for saying so was seeing that number on the Reality-Based Community blog. I don't have any other way to estimate that number.
Humphries looks to be quoting RAND.
I think my biggest failing as a farmer would be my inability to drive large machinery very well.
And removing the buds seems like the sort of detail work I don't do well at.
Ok, start talking about pot, but not here.
Can we keep talking about the Resnicks here?
Or the scenic Platte River Valley portion of Nebraska?
It's all so specialized now. You can't afford to grow hay on corn land.
I don't think any of my relatives have kept animals in the last 50 years, except as a hobby. My dad's cousin keeps draft horses, but they don't eat them or use them except in parades and such.
They're Belgian, but he doesn't have one called "Stella."
I don't think any of my relatives have kept animals in the last 50 years, except as a hobby.
This arguably means that I out-hick you right now, though only because I own a tiny percentage interest as an absentee landlord of the old family farm, which no one in my family ever actually farmed, which I've never visited, and which no one wants to sell because that would be too complicated and force everyone to talk to other relatives.
That's it. I'm moving the family to Nebraska. I suppose I'll have to wait for the end of the school year.
Your kid can learn what he needs on the farm.
I'll need a realtor, a u-haul, 8 cases of Yuengling, and another realtor at the other end. And I suppose I should text my wife.
She might want a case or two of Yeungling for herself.
Might be a great year to see wildflowers in Idaho. Apparently it's also a good year to visit AZ and get an idea of what it would be like to land on Mars.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/basinswe.html
Mars is full of retired white people?
That's why it ain't the kind of place to raise a kid.
Oddly, I had a twinge of curiosity about Ukiah as we were driving through, though it may have just been relief as it was the apparent end of 2 (?) hours of that kind of mountain switchback driving where you can't tell where you are or where you're going. Anyway it looked like it might have good qualities, within the usual context of "it's in California so it is probably full of mediocre things and qualities regarded by locals as the best in the world."
Don't smear that whole state with that NorCal bs. We're totally aware down here of all that sucks.
I couldn't move anywhere rural and tolerable with black kids, I don't think. But I know this couple and a bunch of other lesbians who've bought land and created a community (and I know them via my straight friends who have a winery a few miles away, so they're not lesbian separatists either) and there's something very appealing about that and yet I also know it's not for me.
323: Allegheny Trail? Is that what it's called down there. Up here we call it the Appalachian Trail.
346: Yuengling? Even though they now rank up there with Coors as anti-union? Fie on thee.
354.1: It's the Appalachian Trail the whole way. But that doesn't really go through West Virginia, at least not very much of it. The Allegheny Trail is a different, less used, trail that runs the length of West Virginia. It's now part of a longer trail that runs from Alabama to New York.
354.2: Coors tastes worse. I keep trying to boycott Yeungling, but I keep getting dragged back in because craft brewers are too enamored with hops and absurd things like coriander. Also, lots of bartenders just pour a Yuengling when I sit down.
"This one has the looks of a Yuengling man."
It's mostly just the ones that know me.
The bartender at BOGF bar might think I'm on court-ordered not drinking because I haven't been to his bar in a while and because the last time he saw me, I was kicking a car outside the grocery store.
355.1 I misread 323, inferring that "the trail" referred to the same trail (and forgetting about the Long Trail). On rereading it, and with this new knowledge, I can see my mistake.
355.2 Yes on "hops". I've not run into coriander. For over 3 decades, my favorite beer was Yuengling Porter, so it's been a bit hard on me (cue the tiny violin), especially as I rarely had it during my time in the midwest (in the late 80s and 90s: I have to admit, there were offsetting pleasures, like living in Chicago for most of the years that the Bulls were on top.)
a longer trail that runs from Alabama to New York
They turned the Underground Railroad into a trail?
I recommend a small town in a foreign country. That way all most of the downsides of a small town seem quaint and there's the intellectual challenge of figuring out the language and culture.
Or there's always James Fallows list of up and comers in the Atlantic. Sure, sure, someone probably already mentioned it, RTFC, I get it...
James Fallows never goes to a place and says "wow, this is a shit town with horrible people and no prospects." So I'm leery of his judgment.
list of up and comers in the Atlantic
Eyjafjallajökull?
364: Based on your 94, you should invite him to yours and see what he says.
"I had believed that every island in the Caribbean has its charms, but then I visited..."
Hypothetically speaking, if Betty just got laid off today, would that make it a good time to present "Plan Farmer" as an option or would I be an asshole for suggesting further disruption at a bad time?
Um, how do you think she's likely to feel about the idea generally? If it's "Hey, honey, this is great, now we can move to a cornfield like you've always dreamed of! Your stupid job isn't holding you back anymore!" it could be cheering.
On the other hand if she's going to hear it as "Now that you're unemployed, leaving everything familiar and any hope of ever speaking to another human being who isn't either (a) wearing bib-overalls, or (b) actually a cow, is probably your best option. Let's start packing!" then maybe you should hold off on the suggestion until the initial shock has passed.
That sort of idea needs to emerge organically, not be suggested.
To the main topic of the thread: Hilo.
That sort of idea needs to emerge organically, not be suggested.
Agreed. You will have a much better chance of success if you can make it seem like it was her idea.
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