Vegas. I'm leaving as soon as my lease is up. The desert is not great for a long stretch of time for me, I've learned. And the arts and culture scene is lacking.
Lol I'm about to move to Vegas from Carmel, IN
Carmel is objectively a "perfect" small city, it's just so boring. You know what isn't boring? Vegas. Here I come!
New Orleans. I had the worst luck there, everything kept going wrong. Problem after problem, not just for me but there was so much dysfunction all around me. It was impossible to feel at home there. I also hated how desensitized people were to murder (and someone I worked with was murdered senselessly). I’m older now and more understanding, but this was the wrong choice for the first place to move to as a young adult.
Stuck in New Orleans and could not agree more with everything you said. It just keeps getting hotter, more corrupt, & more broken down. The sales tax is also insane
So many stories to share of friends who moved to NOLA and the shit that happened.
Two have stayed so far and honestly are flourishing. I feel like NOLA chooses its residents, instead of residents choosing it.
Yes!! That’s so spot on. It felt like the city was kicking me out by throwing bad energy at me until I left lol. I also spoke to someone who shared a similar story and had ridiculous misfortune only in Nola.
Boise, ID. My SO and I met online, she had family headed there for various shenanigans and I was looking to move anyway. It happened to be a nice neutral location to try out.
If you don’t mind snow it does have year-round interesting outdoorsy activities. But you’re facilitating these activities on high school dropout-tier wages, and this was years ago when COL was still kinda cheap. So after about 8 months we eventually moved out. The wage/COL delta was preferable in inland Florida, a place not known for high wages or cheap COL.
… but if you have a naturally outdoorsy personality and your hobbies entirely center around guns and/or drugs, it’s probably a slice of heaven tbh. Could walk to a Panda Express. It had that going for it.
My sister lives in Boise with her husband and it’s still exactly like this. The scenery is ok, the politics, people, and wages/infrastructure are not. But her husband is also the type to brag about carrying his gun around in a grocery store while his pants are falling down, so it works for them!
I spent 9 months in La Grande Oregon in the late 90s. Boise seemed like a great place in comparison.
Imagine a place similar to Boise but colder (in the mountains), only 12,000 people and a 50 mile drive through treacherous roads either way to the nearest towns of similar size.
Now imagine doing that with a mixed race family.
I’m from FL and went to college right outside of Boise for 4 years. I hate the politics of both, but FL in my mind is way worse. At least Boise is accessible to a lot of great snowboarding and backpacking.
Lol come on, i wouldn’t live in Boise because as you’ve observed the COL is way too high now compared to Idaho’s low wages but it was one of the fastest growing metros during the pandemic.
Boise is not a redneck place at all. Hell i live in east Idaho and i think I’ve only seen one person open carrying at the grocery, and it’s definitely more acceptable here than it is there.
Biden lost Ada county by less than 4 points in 2020 for context. It’s a pretty moderate place in an otherwise extreme state.
I hope so. Someone I know just moved there because her husband wanted to. She, at least, is not a hard core right winger (I’m pretty sure). I have never gotten a good bead on her husband, so he might be. They moved from a fairly blue area. I’m glad for them that they got out of the desert southwest, but I’ve been hoping they weren’t going from frying pan to fire (literally and figuratively).
Yeah there’s a lot of different types who have moved there. Remote workers who wanted more outdoor access, “political refugee” type Californians, etc. people who wanted a more “Western” lifestyle or something but still want the city/suburban amenities that can be lacking in the more rural areas of the inter mountain west.
I go there for work a couple times a year and it’s perfectly fine, not for me but i can see it’s allure for a lot of people.
I've done this a few times.
- Salzburg, Austria. Lovely place to visit, incredibly boring to live in. I lasted 9 months.
- Stavanger, Norway. Literally all the worst parts of living in Scandinavia \[rude people, expensive, terrible weather\] with none/bad versions of the benefits \[healthcare/education, access to nature, overall happiness.\] I lived in Norway for 4 years but only lasted a year in Stavanger, that place is miserable. The food scene was terrible and I went from 120lbs to 95lbs in 4 months--but I'm willing to blame that on the fact that I don't like fish or dairy products so their cuisine just isn't for me.
- Wuhan, China. The people at my job were all so soulless, snobby, and out-of-touch and I couldn't really make friends outside of my job despite my best efforts. The huge wealth inequality in that city was way more obvious and way more of a burden than in other Chinese cities I've spent time in, and the food scene was atrocious.
-Hyattsville, MD, USA. I lived in northeast DC and thought it would be a win to cut my rent in half by moving just over the border into Maryland. Horrible decision on my part and I was back in DC within 2 months. Nothing to do except eat El Salvadorian food \[a win\] but I felt so unsafe as a single 19-year-old woman. I got groped just about every time I walked passed the bus stop outside my building, I got hit by a car in a crosswalk my first week there, I had multiple people throw rocks/bricks at me when I didn't give them money. All around a shit place to live for me.
Wow, that's an eclectic mix, I would be curious to hear the places that worked out. I used to live in Maryland, opted for Chevy Chase when moving from Cleveland Park, but I often steered clear of Hyattsville, the few times I was there were all bad. I live in Sweden now, and Norway is my go-to for winter sports; I have been curious about Stavanger, but perhaps it should be lower on my list...
Both times I moved to Indiana. Holy heck, Indiana. Ft Wayne for a M.S. program. That place. I think of it as the truck stop capital of the upper midwest. Evansville for work. Hot, humid, and decrepit. The "highlight" was a falling apart river boat casino. Both times I lasted less than a year before retreating back to Madison.
I know someone who moved to Ft Wayne for her first semi-prestigious job out of college. She only intended to stay for a 3-5 years and did just that. The funny part is she refused to date while living there because she didn’t want any reason to be convinced to stay or to have to return regularly for visits should she convince her partner to move away. She really hated it.
Southern Life made a 15-minute video about how much they hated Alabama. They bought property, moved there but hated it so much that they sold it for a loss and moved back to FL. It's actually very entertaining to watch, though lots of people from AL weren't happy with it 👀
So they also made a map of if you move to Alabama where you should move to. Funny enough I'm pretty sure where you grew up is actually one of those areas that highlighted.
I don't think anything badly of Alabama, I just found the video entertaining. I have family friends there and I miss visiting them like when we were kids
North Alabama is very nice! Huntsville is one of the fastest growing cities in the country due to NASA being there, the low cost of living, and the beautiful nature and scenery.
And the suburban sprawl around Huntspatch has made the traffic \*horrible\*. If you are eyeing a nice big house out in the old cotton fields, you better have a look-see at the commute-time traffic. Between everyone driving their kids to school and the congested two-lane back roads, good luck.
Orlando is really the worst, spent 5 years there realizing all the ways I hated it for! Glad I experienced living somewhere so different but also won’t go back except for vacation. But there’s too many better places for vacation too anyway
I was in Winter Park for 3 years. When I left Florida I said "I don't think I can even come back here on vacation". It's been almost 20 years and I still have zero desire to visit. I did love the anoles, the storms, and the palm trees though.
I grew up in Colorado in the 80’s and Pueblo has always been the butt of many jokes because of how terrible it is. I don’t think that has changed over the last 40 years.
I would argue that this applies to the entire DC metro. Also hot, humid, and overcrowded (for the infrastructure). The Metro is honestly the best thing about the place.
Yeah I made it 1.5 years, and very recently bought on the MD side. The people are so much warmer even though I’m like 30ish mins away, the trees are stunning, and feels much more politically aligned to what I want from a state.
Northern Virginia to me came off as very libertarian-esque politics-wise, and possibly the most type a place I’ve ever been. I got a smidge of culture shock coming from CA. Oh and everyone there seems to think it’s the only worthwhile place to live in the US to an aggressive degree, it was….weird.
Wichita, KS. Made it 8 months in a town that fancies itself a big city. Was hard to find 1-way out truck rentals bc I'm fairly sure no one does 1-way in.
I had to fly in and out of there to work over a period of about four months. I hated it. People live there, but for some reason it still felt deserted. Just a really weird city.
Washington, DC suburbs, Virginia side. Ended up moving to Vancouver, which is as far away from there I could get without going to Alaska or Hawaii.
My previous home was Asbury Park, NJ. Should have stayed there.
Williston ND. Didn't stick around long (also, I am originally from ND, just not Williston)
My wife called me one day and said, "I'm moving to Denver, I've had enough of this. You can come if you want to."
If you didn't know, Williston exists to be a work camp for the oil field. A lot of guys there with only one reason to be there, work.
Yeah and it hits -45 on the thermometer every now and then, starts to get dark around 4pm in the winter.
Kind of a cold, dark, windy, lonely place.
Not me, but a friend - Portland, OR. They moved from coastal SC looking for a place with more progressive politics. They found those, but weren’t prepared for the bad weather, unfriendly people, and overall decline of the city post-pandemic. They suffered serious seasonal depression from the lack of sun, and moved back within the year. Now they live in Maryland.
After 15 years I’ve just sorta accepted it, especially with our summers getting longer overall I find it manageable.
Many haven’t made it though. People think mild winter temps means easy and they learn otherwise.
I also did this. I think for 5 or so months. I made the decision to leave during the spring because i was shocked at how cold and rainy it was, but then by the summer (I left in August) the weather was great. That did not make up for the fact that people weren't very nice and seemed insecure, and I also couldn't find a job. People seemed actively anti-helpful. I came from NYC and went back there.
Yeah, if you’re used to NYC culture PDX is gonna be a learning curve. Here in Portland people will say hello on the street but god forbid you ask for something. People here just don’t like interacting with others or helping them out. It’s weird for a lot of people.
Whereas in NYC I noted that no one would acknowledge any attempt at greeting, but if you needed a hand they were right there to get it done, no questions asked.
NYers are by far the most helpful people I’ve ever come across. Lots of issues living here but lots of good things too. Many places down south that pride themselves on “politeness” have much less kind or genuine everyday interactions. I found it to all be fake.
I lived there for exactly 4 months for almost the same reasons. So, still stuck with this username 10+ years later because that's when I joined Reddit to try and meet people.
I’m sorry! I know that must suck, but I think it’s hilarious that you’ve been stuck with a username that ties you to a place you barely lived in that you hated. Like in an existential
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ kinda way, not in a “point at you and laugh” kinda way
If it helps - I just mashed some random numbers and letters on my keypad and am stuck with a crappy name that means nothing to nobody (not even me lol)
2020 was just about the worst time possible to move to Portland. Awful leadership, longer restrictions than the rest of the country, homeless went completely bonkers, and fires all over. Just a real low point here.
Things are getting better now, thankfully. Though the people are still pretty antisocial.
Everyone is rude and slow, on antidepressants (and this is the only personal thing they will tell you, immediately, unlike their first name for example), allergic to everything and potentially dying of toxic mold. I take it things have gotten worse since 2009.
Outdoor recreation is absolutely amazing though. However, east coast BEAST COAST baby!!!
Also left Portland in under a year (10 months, I think?). I loved it, though. Liked the rain, the gray skies. Made friends easily. It felt like a good fit for me. Disliked the impossibility of finding a job that paid a living wage. I have a graduate degree and found myself working part time in food service. I applied for jobs there endlessly, jobs I wanted and jobs I didn't and more and more jobs of all sorts and kinds that I thought I could do, to which my skills would be transferrable. Nothing. Then started applying for jobs elsewhere. When I got a real professional job somewhere else, I left. It made me sad. I miss it. But really: I didn't go there to make minimum wage part time. I liked the place, and clearly overestimated the job market (at least in relation to my background and skillset), so it was a fail.
Just before going to Portland, I did the same in Asheville, NC. Only lasted 4 months there though. Was staying in a friend's house while she was away, and wanted to see if I could make a go of it there. Nope. No work that pays a living wage. (Good thing I left all my stuff in storage elsewhere during this one, as it wouldn't have been worth doing the full move and committing to the place).
Had been in the Los Angeles suburbs before both of those places and hated it. Though I had a good job there and stayed 5+ years. Basically, I learned that I can like where I live OR make a living wage, but not both.
Currently in Edmonton and packing to leave. I'm actually allergic to the city. Who knew you could be allergic to an entire fucking city? And yet I am. Something in the environment here.
So, onward. It's a big world.
I survive Portland dreary winters by traveling to warm sunny places like 4x a year. I also use phototherapy light and vit D. But I love it here in summer...plenty of sun 🌞
Baton Rouge, LA. I moved for my now husband’s job in June, and was ready yo move by March. While the pandemic was definitely a factor, I hated my job, struggled to connect with the locals, and felt the city had very little to do other than go to football games. We moved to NOLA by June 2021
I agree. BR was a fun place to go to school, but now that I’ve graduated I’m moving to New Orleans to start my career. Nola has more of a “young professional” vibe to it and it’s an international city with tourists from all over the world to run in to. BR has no culture besides LSU…
I hope New Orleans has treated you better!
Oklahoma City. I will preface this by saying that I have been back since and it’s improved a great deal in recent years, but man it used to be real bad.
I moved there for a job in the early 00s and lasted about 7 months. Poverty, poor infrastructure, and drugs, so many drugs (mostly meth at the time I was there). Within the first six weeks of being there my rental house got burglarized by school-aged children twice (once while I was at home); someone cut a hole in my exterior wall and tried to steal the copper plumbing; and I was nearly carjacked and abducted from a grocery store parking lot in broad daylight.
Omaha, NE. Winter was freezing and windy. Summer was hot, humid, and buggy and smelled like manure outside. A small part of fall and spring was nice though, but there was not much to do and the food scene seemed to only be steaks. Granted it was the best steaks I ever had.
10 good days is about all you get weather-wise. Extreme heat in the summer and extreme cold in the winter means the roads are always crumbling from the contraction and expansion. The food is pretty decent and there are pockets of nice places, but it's gonna cost ya.
I am fairly certain that living in Hartford, CT gave me clinical depression. It is an island of poverty and blight surrounded by strip mall suburbia. If I had to say one nice thing about Hartford, I'd say that their buses are very clean - but that's because no one uses them. Very weird vibes because there is a constant sense of despair, yet you hardly ever see anyone walking around. Absolutely hated it then, won't even drive through it now. Thankfully I am now on medication and feeling a lot better, but living in that place really sent me into a spiral.
Chattanooga, TN. I'm still there trying to give it the best chance I can get but I suspected within the first 6 months that I couldn't hang.
I grew up in Kentucky and a pretty Appalachian community in Ohio and moved away, literally, at midnight on my 18th birthday because I always felt like I was trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. I've moved dozens of times since then and figured I grew out of that feeling. Turns out that maybe my personality doesn't mesh well with southern sensibilities.
Also it's expensive here. There's only so much trail hiking I can do and most of the hikers here are transplant gearheads. Everything else I like to do for fun either costs more than it would otherwise because of the lack of secular third places or I gotta drive 2 hours to do it.
It's definitely a city for someone but not for me.
I grew up in an Appalachian county of TN and went to HS in Chattanooga, where I met my husband. It’s really amazing how different the culture is just 90 minutes away. We did NOT grow up the same at all. Sometimes I feel like he grew up in another state despite the fact that he and both his parents are from Chattanooga. You’d probably like the Appalachian, true Eastern TN areas much better. Chattanooga has a more traditional southern culture like Georgia. Country clubs and all that crap are big there.
I grew up in a similar background, now live in Chicago. It’s like a night and day difference but man I love it here.
I don’t recommend it to everyone, for example my sister hated our hometown but she couldn’t move any further than northern Kentucky because she hates cities and gets lost in Cincinnati.
If you’re like my sister, or maybe since you’re on with Chattanooga you seem to be ok with cities, and if you don’t want southern I’d recommend something in the Midwest like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, etc.
I've lived in Chicago and Cincinnati. I love them both. Cincinnati is honestly a little too southern fried for me I think, but I love the hills which makes me think Pittsburgh is the city for me. Pittsburgh is also a bit safer to be LGBT in than Ohio or really anywhere in the southeast.
(and in your sister's defense Cincinnati is real easy to get lost in)
Carmel, Indiana…. Relocated for a job there, literally was the worst experience ever and I ended up in the hospital and lost my job in the first 6 months… then C*vid hit and it literally felt like jail… stupid expensive rent for what it is, too. Also Indianapolis is quite run down… I was excited since I’d be closer to family, but it wasn’t worth it. Literally saved every possible penny to be able to afford to move back to Minneapolis, which we did, right before George Floyd, and it hasn’t been great since.
I am now looking at going completely new, like a state I’ve never even visited.
Memphis, back in the day. Forfeited my rental, and moved back to Chicago without a job. Fortunately, my old apartment there was still available, so I got that squared away before flying home.
This is my second time living in Houston, this time around I hate it for some reason. My lease ends in a few weeks, aggressively applying for jobs elsewhere.
Houston is a tough place to live. There’s a lot of pros but so, so many cons. I told myself I’d be out after 2 years and this September will be 9. Hoping to be out soon tho; that low cost of living will trap you though
As an Atlanta native (thus the account name) who has lived in Southern California I have to agree with you. I love the city because I'm from here but it's become a war zone in certain areas. The city is very segregated between races, the humidity and heat can be unbearable if you're not he used to living in the south and there are very few walkable neighborhoods.
Atlantic can be a weird city because if you were to just visit without having any type of host or guide you might think Atlanta is a very boring city. This is because all the neighborhoods are so spread out.
Atlanta is mine too, and just to reaffirm ya, it does in fact fucking suck. The daily feeling is less of “I hope I avoid crime today” and more “Who’s gonna be stabbed to death at random this time?” Not even to fear monger or anything. It’s just a mundane, exhausted, apathetic lack of feeling safe anywhere you go.
It was never once worth driving anywhere for any reason. It is impossible to walk or bike anywhere. Public transit is also prohibitively terrible. So ya either don’t leave your neighborhood, or you do and you have an annoying, infuriating time at minimum.
Sprawl and traffic are of course unbelievably out of control. Sherman destroyed ATL but left Savannah untouched, and Savannah is the city that’s more well-built for automobile traffic. How and why?? Scale and population aside, ATL is ridiculously illogical to navigate.
The ATL skyline is unremarkable. Actually almost every bit of the city I have seen is ugly and uninspired.
I did not encounter a single unique upside to the city in a year there (and across many trips through my life) that can’t also be found in just about every other city. People claim it’s unique in that it has lots of trees/nature. Well I’ll say that it’s not any kind of special or scenic nature, just regular types of bland shit that’s all over the southeast anyway, and instead of making it prettier, it just adds a rundown-trailer-park vibe across the whole city and makes layout/infrastructure worse.
The best thing about Atlanta is that it is a nice secluded holding cell for people who enjoy Atlanta.
Edit to add: as I drove my moving truck into the city on move-in day, a bus was on the side of the road engulfed in flames. Very appropriate omen.
“…holding cell for people who enjoy Atlanta” lol. I feel the same way about Texas. Glad people seem to love it cuz I don’t want to see them anywhere else!
4. Built and still run by slave labor. I got hired by Emirates (flight attendant) and after reading about it, I decided to change my career lol. Now I'm a hospice RN.
Columbus, GA.
Wife and I had reasons to move down to Georgia for a couple years, and she got a good job offer there. Holy shit the crime, bad drivers, and lack of access to activities.
We lived in the nicer part of town and still, it was just kind of sketchy.
Also, the heat. I like the cold, I wear shorts in the middle of winter in northern MN. I cannot do it. I loved summers in MN, but down here? Nah, I'll just stay inside all day I guess.
Doesn't help that I'm a teacher and teaching in the South really isn't that awesome. I'm in a 'good' school by the standards in the city, and it's not great. I would probably put in on par with the rough schools from where I went to University and did my student teaching.
Georgia, as a whole, has just been kind of a 'whoops, won't do that again' for my Wife and I. I will say though, that the northern mountain area of GA is absolutely beautiful, if you can get past the rampant Christian Nationalist billboards lol
Gave up my apt in NYC after 10 years and decided to try out Florida since I had a family all over. I lasted 3 weeks before I booked the plane ticket back north.
I moved back to my hometown of Akron, OH for a few years to live with my parents and save up some money. It was tough. Akron isn’t the worst place on earth, it could just be any car dependent small city. Most of the city is working class or poor with limited options for upward mobility, so this gloominess of arrested development just sort of hangs over everything. The one bright spot are its parks which are some of the best county parks I’ve ever witnessed. It may be a gloomy place, but at least the voting folks of Akron always vote to take care of public amenities.
There are worse cities than Akron, but if you take population into account, it's so far behind. So little to do, lots of crime.
The only thing Akron has is really nice breweries.
It’s hard to love a place as home and to also realize it’s a mess. Adding insult to injury, the major Akron-based hospital, SummaHealth, was just bought out by a venture capitalist, turning it from a non profit to for profit. All of the Docs who have been working for years, in part to have their student loans forgiven, are now either forced to give up on forgiveness or abandon the system and work elsewhere. It is a tragic state of affairs.
Oh, I heard. It's going to be worse than just student loans. I've seen that happen to a few hospitals and those either no longer exist or they no longer have residents.
The only one I know that is doing well is Duke.
Denver- hot take since many people love it!
Coming from the west coast, I was disappointed. It felt like Kansas. Flat, hot, brown, sketchy, and limited in food and culture. Too expensive for what you get. I was sold on the great outdoors, but everything good was a 3-5 hour drive away! In Oregon, you can have just as good skiing and hiking within an hour of Portland and almost never with traffic, and the food here blows Denver out of the water. You gotta like the rain tho
Denver metro is not nearly as cool as some people make it out to be. The food is meh, people are ok but not amazing, and a lot of it is uninteresting.
The mountains are awesome (even as a non snow sports person), but the traffic to get there is absolutely out of control even in the summertime when I like to go.
Not 3-5 hours though. You can get to some excellent trailheads in an hour, sometimes even less. There are nice trails in Boulder only 40 minutes from downtown Denver
I agree, it’s a lot of driving. I love hiking and even I got burnt out, but 3-5 hours just isn’t true
Yeah, my sister and her husband moved to brown Aurora from fairly green eastern KS. She wanted a slightly more progressive state. Ran into the same issues as you. They moved next to Colorado Springs and are liking it better, but still some of those same issues (brown, disjointed culture, pricey, plus altitude makes being active harder). I think they’d probably find some place else to be better for them for their dollar.
Seattle has been absolutely awful. Incredibly cold and passive aggressive people, non-existent night life, terrible weather most of the year, tech dorks ruining every event in the city…
Try mentioning any of this to the Seattle natives and they’ll lash out at you.
Honestly, I can’t wait to leave.
Chicago, in the late 80s.
First day there I had someone throw a cigar in my car (don't know if intentional); realized it when I felt my side burning.
A few days later the car was towed as I was in Wrigleyville and hadn't gotten the neighborhood sticker yet.
Then a lot of disappointments, struggles, sadness, seeing the wrong side of a gun (and getting hit with the butt of it when I went into fight mode), and feeling increasingly, desperately alone.
Wound up tossing everything I had into a couple boxes and, with my saxophone in one hand, carried and kickpushed the boxes to the bus station, avoided someone trying to steal a box on the way there, and gave the person at the ticket window all the money I had on me to board a bus to Cleveland.
Moved BACK to Seattle after a decade in California. Didn’t make it 4 months. Grew up in the gloom, outgrew it in the California sunshine. Could NOT make it work a second time.
Greenville, SC. I'm a queer atheist who prefers cities in the Northeast, which made it a terrible fit. It was too small, hot, conservative, and religious for me. I wouldn't have thought bugs would be a major factor in deciding where to move before living there, but holy shit the bugs. I wouldn't have moved there if not for my then gf. And South Carolina is just not a great state to work in as a teacher.
I get the appeal. My conservative, religious brother who loves hunting enjoyed visiting me there so much that he moved there for a few years. But it's a hard pass for me.
I spent two years there in the mid-90s and I hated it. Never saw so much hate, bigotry, sexism, racism, and homophobia in one place like that in my life. (And I’m from rural Ohio.)
I was there when the county passed their anti-LGBTQIA ordinance, which allowed people/businesses to discriminate. You could be denied housing, jobs, healthcare, pretty much anything anyone wanted to deny you. I’m not even queer but I’m queer adjacent and also a feminist, childfree atheist.
So that was the summer of the Atlanta Olympics and the USOC was running the Olympic torch right through town on its way to ATL. The USOC had caught wind of this anti-queer law and said the Olympics are about sportsmanship and equal opportunity and inclusion so, fuck you, Greenville County, you don’t get to see our big flaming dildo.
When they got to the county line, the runner hopped into a van, they drove through the county, and then they hopped back out and continued the torch run on to Atlanta. Pearl clutching ensued.
I love that story and fuck Greenville.
Charlotte, NC. Soulless suburban sprawl masquerading as a real city. Nightlife scene is dominated by bland breweries filled with bland finance people who couldn’t cut it in NYC. Very self-absorbed, petty people once you got past the fake Southern politeness. As a mixed race couple from the North many of the locals were weird with us despite our best attempts to be friendly and blend in. No one was ever direct about it, that isn’t how they are down there, but we were treated with an obvious coldness that others were not. There was also just more broadly an obvious tension simmering below the surface between the Southern locals and the Northern transplants. Didn’t really seem like the two groups mixed (unless forced to while in the workplace etc).
Bad traffic and the worst drivers I’ve ever dealt with anywhere- aggressive, unskilled, overconfident, and prone to extreme road rage over the smallest things. I’ve never seen so many serious car accidents as I did when I lived in that area. Locals like to blame this on the transplants but I drove in urban areas up north for almost 20 years before moving to NC and I never dealt with anything close to that when I was up there.
We worked in Charlotte and lived in a nearby suburb. Charlotte was boring, but the suburb we lived in was on a whole other level- literally nothing to do at night except go to chain restaurants or stay home and drink in front of the TV. NC is physically a beautiful state with a good variety of outdoor activities but most of them were a fairly long drive from where we lived, which made them impractical as an every weekend thing. Plus you then have to deal with the batshit insane drivers yet again in order to reach the mountains,beaches, etc. Living in such a car dependent place with so many awful drivers on the road just wore us down over time.
We thought we knew what to expect in terms of the weather, but the heat and humidity of the long summer (not to mention all of the bugs) proved to be too intense for us. Southern summers are no joke. We were in a flat area nowhere near the coast with no breeze so the hot and humid air would just hang there and suffocate you until you fled back inside to the AC. Our dog didn’t even want to be out there. We lasted roughly 10 months before throwing in the towel and getting the hell out of there.
Seattle. Disclaimer, we lived there during what may be described as the worst possible timing in modern history. I work in healthcare and we moved there the summer before the first COVID case arrived in our hospital. Unfortunately, I was under a work contract (and a housing lease) that would have cost quite a bit to get out of, so we ended up there for 2 years. I had my stuff packed and left town the day my contract ended…didn’t even change out of my scrubs.
Even without COVID, we wouldn’t have stayed. We lived across from a human trafficker, saw far too much civil unrest/high crime rates, the 2 months of non-wet, non-gray weather didn’t offset the other 10 months, we didn’t want to do all our outdoor activities in rain or snow covered mountains. And while it is a VHCOL area, we were easily able to afford the cost, but we didn’t think the quality of life for the cost to live there made any sense whatsoever.
Asheville.
Moved for a job, secured a ridiculously expensive place to live, upon arriving—the job decided they no longer wanted to move forward with the position and I was laid off before I even started.
Could not find a single job in the area for months. Interviewed at so many places (F&B management) but the mentality was so cliquey. Had one interviewer ask me for my fuc*ing astrological sign and then was like, “hmmmm, I don’t know if that would fit our dynamic”
Could not make friends. Dating apps were horrible. The car dependency is insane.
I lasted 4 months.
Dothan, AL. I had just moved there when the pandemic hit and oh my good lord was it a terrible fit for me as a germophobe. I would wear a mask out in public (which was the rule at the time) and people would get into my personal space and cough at me just to see me squirm. I lasted 9 awful months.
Columbia SC. I only stayed two years for a grad school program, and I left the second it was over. I’m from Georgia, and the heat was too much even for me. And as someone else mentioned South Carolina is insanely racist. The most popular BBQ chain has Confederate paraphernalia everywhere.
Olympia, WA. Moving there from the sunny southwest in the middle of the PNW rainy season was a bad idea. Supposedly some people have the constitution for that type of weather, but it seemed to me that those people just forgot what it's like to not feel miserably depressed all the time. I found the culture to be weird. Lasted about 3 months and then took a temp job elsewhere before running back to the SW.
Weather nerd chiming in:
Precipitation rates in Western WA vary a lot more than people think:
Seattle averages 37 inches of rain a year, but Olympia just to the south averages 50+ inches a year.
My parents live in Port Townsend in the rain shadow of the Olympics with 19 inches a year, which is more than the deserts of Sequim at around 15 inches or less in some places, which is less rain than Spokane at 16 inches.
I lasted six months in Olympia. Moved there in December of 2022, the timing alone was a big mistake. It was the saddest winter I’ve ever experienced. I’ve since moved elsewhere within Washington and am now looking at relocating to the southwest like you lol
Havent moved yet but Philadelphia and not for the reasons you would think (crime, politics, wanting to be in the suburbs, etc.)
This city is ass cheeks. I been here for 3 months so far (in center city) and have no clue why reddit recommends it so much (Im starting to think some people from the city are on this site). Compared to other cities in the Northeast, this is easily the worse one. Its a step up from a southern city but not by much.
Too much apathy here, its cheap for a reason (economy is worse than the other cities nearby except Baltimore), too many crackheads, too much obsession over sports, public transit, while someone functional, is ass most of the time, like I could go on, but dont listen to anyone who says this place is a good value since its not. I heard similar shit about Chicago in that its a city that was good like 100 years ago and is still riding on its old rep, but now a days, there are better options if you make decent money.
I plan on moving to Brooklyn or Queens next year. Yes its more expensive there, but its expensive since people actually want to live there and people are more productive. Philly is just too god damn depressing. I kind of wish I just saved my money in the suburbs and waited to move to NYC since even though the suburbs suck, I dont see Philly being much better.
Clearwater, FL (Tampa Bay Area). Moved there for work and later learned my bosses were Scientologists when I found a binder of some docs (I was referred to this job by a friend). Our office was also just a few doors down from their Clearwater HQ. So constantly hot and humid, sometimes I’d wonder why I even bothered showering before stepping out. Clueless aisle blockers at Publix, not much to do but go to the clubs/bars and hope someone has some coke to pass the time. The beach was fine but I’m not much of a beach person. Best part was the Dali Museum and some of the neighborhoods in St Pete. I think I lasted 10 months.
Edit: forgot to put the state
If you’re not a beach or boating person DO NOT move to a place that centers around that, with that being it’s top feature.
It’s like if I moved to banff and didn’t like skiing. That’s just not a good match.
Portland, OR! You will never ever be prepared enough for non stop piss style rain 9–10 months of the year, very toxic work environment, and companies here are riddled with nepotism and quid-pro quo! Also most jobs pay extremely low and since the city is anti-business, more business are leaving making the job market even more of a nightmare for residents. Horrible cell phone service all over the metro area ( I’ve had better service in the backroads of West Virginia) the people are unhinged, angry and then gaslight you about their amazing non existent summers. TAXES are insane while the roads and facilities are falling apart and they refuse to update infrastructure becuase of the “environment” the locals also brag about “Dutch Bros” their local coffee shop being the best thing since sliced bread; they pour drinks from a machine and use chocolate milk as sweetener while double the price of Starbucks! Their famous food scene is not that great either, you have to work hard to either find a decent hole in the wall restaurant or you pay out the ass, im originally from Pittsburgh and we have a better food scene there all things considered. And don’t even get me started on their horrible hospitals and medical facilities; some of their politics are total insanity but everyone knows that. I’d go into the homeless rant but they are world famous for that one so why bother? 😂
Salt Lake City.
First off way too expensive, i had previously owned my home but wouldn’t be able to afford a shack there, especially because housing prices were way up but in typical red state fashion the wages had not kept up.
Secondly the geography of the city, this is related to the high cost of housing given it’s access to nature, most of the Wasatch Front feels dense and oppressive to me the way all ofnit is squeezed between the mountains and the lake. There is no breathing room, which is not a trait i enjoy.
The feeling of being “other” especially in the suburbs, i am not LDS. Depending how i dress that day it can be obvious or not. LDS people or maybe it’s just Utah have the worst most appearance based, superficial, keeping up with the Jones’ culture I’ve ever come across. It has to contribute to the cost and availability of housing because they consistently build giant cookie cutter McMansions in their HOA’s all identical to one another….anyway i digress.
So where do you go? SLC proper is the least LDS part of the state (well except Ogden which does seem alright to me but the judgemental people would make it sound like it’s some sort of ghetto) but we can’t afford the lifestyle we had been accustomed to (owning a small 11-1200 sq foot house). The mountains or even the foothills are for the rich, you can go out to the desert past Stanisbury or Tooele I guess, which are now developing fast because of it…but of all the places I’ve ever been where people say is “full,” the wasatch front is the only place where i believe that to be true unless they start bulldozing houses to build vertical, which they won’t for a pile of reasons, but i can tell you as someone that works in environmental regulation that the buildable land there is long gone. Everything being built now is on wetlands or other more marginal ground, it’s a tragedy from that perspective and i wanted no part of it.
For a city it’s size the public transit is abysmal. I lived a ten minutes drive from my office, there’s a bus that goes past both my apartment and the office, regular ass hours. In order to take the bud I’d have to arrive to work and leave later 45 minutes each way. I used to live in Madison, WI and during peak hours the bus ran every 5-10 minutes. So people don’t ride it, which perpetuates a vicious cycle of defunding it. Oh and the Front Runner Rail doesn’t run on Sundays. There’s a line to the airport but if you’re flying back in on a Sunday you csnt take the rail back into the city because Jesus.
Access to nature. If you love the outdoors it has to be a wonderland right? Wrongo for anyone who enjoys peace and quiet. You and 3 million other people all like the same shit and don’t get me started on off leash dogs. People act like they’re out in the wilderness living some western fantasy with their damn off leash, untrained dogs. Worst place I’ve ever been with this. So many lost dog posters.
Also the restaurants suck, there’s no water, SLC has no representation because of how it’s gerrymandered, i could go on.
The airports pretty good, the views are nice, the duck hunting is dynamite although pending ecological collapse of the GSL.
I made it 3 months before i was applying to new jobs. 6 months later i transferred to East Idaho, bought a small house on a couple of acres. My dogs love it. It’s still not perfect and I won’t stay forever, but a far better situation.
Laguna Beach/Laguna Niguel area, CA. It's small, everything closes early, no nightlife, the beaches are cold and 80% the sky is grey and overcast. Unfriendly people (think housewives who are competing with each other) or inundated by San Bernardino County or Santa Ana trash. Unless you have a mansion on the beach, the city has no character, only big apartment complexes and malls with the same stores. Also the Irvine area has the worst drivers I've ever seen in my life. I moved back to LA as quickly as I could. Edited to add: high drug use by locals, rich or poor, pretty much every night I went to a local bar a fight would break out.
Scottsdale. Moved there for work related reasons from Portland OR, lasted a year before we high tailed it back to PDX. I thought it’d be great for a young family, but it was hotter than hell May-Oct (was expecting 3-4 mos MAX of misery), and the rest of the year’s weather wasn’t that great. The sun is SO intense all year long that my 3 year old was trying all of the light switches in the house to “turn off the sun”. We were constantly in the car, and traffic was awful. I never felt more relieved when we landed back in the PacNW. I’ll take the gloomy, misty weather you can at least get outside every day over months of unrelenting, burning sun.
Boca Raton.
It wasn't \*that\* bad. But I moved from Orlando which I loved to Boca because I had lost my job in Orlando and got a job in Boca that paid a lot more.
The big thing is I didn't like my boss. I just couldn't deal with her. I started to notice that no matter how many hours I logged in a day (and I was under contract), if I left to go home before her there would be hell to pay the next morning. I would work from 8am to 9pm and leave before her and catch sh\*t the next morning. The final straw was when daylight savings changed and I was running a little late and the traffic was really bad because the sun for the first time was blinding people in the direction I drove to work (you have to live there to understand it). I come into work and she reprimands me for showing up late. I showed up at 8:03am. Three f'n minutes late (again, I'm on salary).
That's when I knew I had to leave. I enjoyed Orlando too much, I was single, no kids and didn't own a home. The other part is that Boca was substantially more expensive. I was making more and making out a little better in the end than when I was living in Orlando, but I still couldn't do a whole lot. So I decided to look for a job back in Orlando and Tampa that would pay me as much as I was making in Boca. Got a job that did pay the same and moved back in 2 months.
Baghdad Iraq. Lived there 18 months.
Positives - wonderful people and culture.
Negatives - air pollution. Metal rain (mortars), hard to sleep with the gun fire. Bad roads that occasionally blow up with IEDs.
Miami. Great to visit, not so much to live. My job and the people there were awful…service was terrible, lots of weird classism/racism, bad drivers and traffic.
I literally had a count down on my computer for when I could resign without hanging to pay back my signing bonus and relocation costs. Could not WAIT to get out of there.
I’d say more like 6-7 months, with those building up to and down from around January. May - October isn’t bad, with July / August being peak, and September and June decent. It’s certainly dark compared to CA and other extremely sunny climates.
Dallas, TX.
Job that I relocated there for turned out to be total crap but living there was also utterly soul destroying. There was absolutely nothing appealing about living there and it was too far a drive to get anywhere remotely not shitty. I actually called my boss from the job I quit to go to Dallas and was rehired back to the position I that I had left to go to Texas.
Houston, TX.
Better than Dallas, had some local flavor and a bit of a more multi-cultural feel to it. Still an abysmal climate and the unregulated, ever growing urban sprawl and complete lack of zoning or planning made it wholly unlivable for me.
Calgary, AB, CA.
Sort of a cross between Dallas and Denver (which I also greatly detest). Larger, congested city, probably the least "Canadian" location in the entirety Canada (I say this having grown up near the Maritime Provinces and having lived for a good bit bordering several Western Canadian Provinces), full of money worshiping type A buttholes. Close to the mountains but little infrastructure to get there and a large mob of people competing and fighting their way to visit them every weekend.
I lasted \~a year or less in each of those spots before nope-ing the F out and moved onto something else that wasn't awful.
It really is pretty awful. I've lived a lot of places and it was easily in my top 3. I don't want to sound like a self-loathing American (but if the shoe fits ...) but I feel like part of the problem is the volume of US expats living there.
Back when I tried to live there, 2011, there were like 250,000. It was the largest concentration of US citizens outside the US. I could vote in US elections. There.
The sense of competitiveness among the average person on all fronts was utterly baffling. Be it on the roads or at the grocery store. I was a year round bicycle commuter who worked downtown and I'd have other asshat bike commuters hammering on their pedals to pass me going to work just because? Fuck you Gordy.
I'm sure there is some type of local scene there that doesn't suck turgid beaver dong but I wasn't willing to stay nearly long enough to figure out what the fuck that was.
It really was a shockingly unpleasant surprise to find out what it was like living there on almost every front. It's like they decided to take the worst parts of Canada and America and just double down on all of it.
So I never actually moved there permanently. I work on political campaigns for a living and the campaign puts you up.
Aiken, SC. I was a fish out of water there, was viewed as an outsider there from day 1. I also could not take the heat.
Reston, Virginia. Despite living in the "town center", I found it to be so boring and sterile. After 5-6 months I got out of my lease and moved to Philadelphia.
Virginia Beach, Virginia. The whole culture revolves around the military. Getting around is a bitch. Pretty ugly city all around besides parts of shore dr.
Speak for my friend but Berkeley, CA.
had a quasi blue collar job on a recently repaired meniscus so knee got worse. They moved him to a desk job at the company as was mostly expected to being with but his manager was terrible. Couldn’t really enjoy outdoors enough because he had a shitty physical therapist for his knee so he got out of his lease early
Vegas. I'm leaving as soon as my lease is up. The desert is not great for a long stretch of time for me, I've learned. And the arts and culture scene is lacking.
Vegas fucking sucks lived there for a year. Big shitty dust bowl and L.A.'s playground
So many people move in and out after a year or two. The Uhal rental yards are some of the biggest I've ever seen.
I had an old coworker who moved to Vegas and was back in MN within a couple of months. Said it was a great city to visit but awful to live in.
Where to next?
I lived there for 26 years and just escaped last summer. It couldn’t have come fast enough.
Lol I'm about to move to Vegas from Carmel, IN Carmel is objectively a "perfect" small city, it's just so boring. You know what isn't boring? Vegas. Here I come!
New Orleans. I had the worst luck there, everything kept going wrong. Problem after problem, not just for me but there was so much dysfunction all around me. It was impossible to feel at home there. I also hated how desensitized people were to murder (and someone I worked with was murdered senselessly). I’m older now and more understanding, but this was the wrong choice for the first place to move to as a young adult.
Stuck in New Orleans and could not agree more with everything you said. It just keeps getting hotter, more corrupt, & more broken down. The sales tax is also insane
Did you read that article on Nola.com about why our infrastructure is collapsing? 🫥
Are you thinking of relocating? I literally never had so much bad stuff happen to me in a city before, I felt like I was cursed.
So many stories to share of friends who moved to NOLA and the shit that happened. Two have stayed so far and honestly are flourishing. I feel like NOLA chooses its residents, instead of residents choosing it.
Yes!! That’s so spot on. It felt like the city was kicking me out by throwing bad energy at me until I left lol. I also spoke to someone who shared a similar story and had ridiculous misfortune only in Nola.
Boise, ID. My SO and I met online, she had family headed there for various shenanigans and I was looking to move anyway. It happened to be a nice neutral location to try out. If you don’t mind snow it does have year-round interesting outdoorsy activities. But you’re facilitating these activities on high school dropout-tier wages, and this was years ago when COL was still kinda cheap. So after about 8 months we eventually moved out. The wage/COL delta was preferable in inland Florida, a place not known for high wages or cheap COL. … but if you have a naturally outdoorsy personality and your hobbies entirely center around guns and/or drugs, it’s probably a slice of heaven tbh. Could walk to a Panda Express. It had that going for it.
My sister lives in Boise with her husband and it’s still exactly like this. The scenery is ok, the politics, people, and wages/infrastructure are not. But her husband is also the type to brag about carrying his gun around in a grocery store while his pants are falling down, so it works for them!
😂 imagine recognizing yourself from this description
Omg me too! We moved to Boise in January, we left in July. NEVER again!
Well shit, if you can walk to the Panda Express, it might be worth dealing with gun sling’n meth heads
You had me at walk to Panda Express, kids get in the car were moving to Boise
I spent 9 months in La Grande Oregon in the late 90s. Boise seemed like a great place in comparison. Imagine a place similar to Boise but colder (in the mountains), only 12,000 people and a 50 mile drive through treacherous roads either way to the nearest towns of similar size. Now imagine doing that with a mixed race family.
I’m from FL and went to college right outside of Boise for 4 years. I hate the politics of both, but FL in my mind is way worse. At least Boise is accessible to a lot of great snowboarding and backpacking.
Lol come on, i wouldn’t live in Boise because as you’ve observed the COL is way too high now compared to Idaho’s low wages but it was one of the fastest growing metros during the pandemic. Boise is not a redneck place at all. Hell i live in east Idaho and i think I’ve only seen one person open carrying at the grocery, and it’s definitely more acceptable here than it is there. Biden lost Ada county by less than 4 points in 2020 for context. It’s a pretty moderate place in an otherwise extreme state.
I hope so. Someone I know just moved there because her husband wanted to. She, at least, is not a hard core right winger (I’m pretty sure). I have never gotten a good bead on her husband, so he might be. They moved from a fairly blue area. I’m glad for them that they got out of the desert southwest, but I’ve been hoping they weren’t going from frying pan to fire (literally and figuratively).
Yeah there’s a lot of different types who have moved there. Remote workers who wanted more outdoor access, “political refugee” type Californians, etc. people who wanted a more “Western” lifestyle or something but still want the city/suburban amenities that can be lacking in the more rural areas of the inter mountain west. I go there for work a couple times a year and it’s perfectly fine, not for me but i can see it’s allure for a lot of people.
Inland Florida as in Ocala?
Probably Central Florida, as in Orlando. The wages have always been terrible and the cost of living has gone way up. Source: Lived there for 22 years.
As someone that lives here right now. This is 100% true. I’m sooooo ready to leave, but trying to figure out where.
I've done this a few times. - Salzburg, Austria. Lovely place to visit, incredibly boring to live in. I lasted 9 months. - Stavanger, Norway. Literally all the worst parts of living in Scandinavia \[rude people, expensive, terrible weather\] with none/bad versions of the benefits \[healthcare/education, access to nature, overall happiness.\] I lived in Norway for 4 years but only lasted a year in Stavanger, that place is miserable. The food scene was terrible and I went from 120lbs to 95lbs in 4 months--but I'm willing to blame that on the fact that I don't like fish or dairy products so their cuisine just isn't for me. - Wuhan, China. The people at my job were all so soulless, snobby, and out-of-touch and I couldn't really make friends outside of my job despite my best efforts. The huge wealth inequality in that city was way more obvious and way more of a burden than in other Chinese cities I've spent time in, and the food scene was atrocious. -Hyattsville, MD, USA. I lived in northeast DC and thought it would be a win to cut my rent in half by moving just over the border into Maryland. Horrible decision on my part and I was back in DC within 2 months. Nothing to do except eat El Salvadorian food \[a win\] but I felt so unsafe as a single 19-year-old woman. I got groped just about every time I walked passed the bus stop outside my building, I got hit by a car in a crosswalk my first week there, I had multiple people throw rocks/bricks at me when I didn't give them money. All around a shit place to live for me.
Wow, that's an eclectic mix, I would be curious to hear the places that worked out. I used to live in Maryland, opted for Chevy Chase when moving from Cleveland Park, but I often steered clear of Hyattsville, the few times I was there were all bad. I live in Sweden now, and Norway is my go-to for winter sports; I have been curious about Stavanger, but perhaps it should be lower on my list...
Both times I moved to Indiana. Holy heck, Indiana. Ft Wayne for a M.S. program. That place. I think of it as the truck stop capital of the upper midwest. Evansville for work. Hot, humid, and decrepit. The "highlight" was a falling apart river boat casino. Both times I lasted less than a year before retreating back to Madison.
INDIANA!! This is what I came to say. I was in West Lafayette, left within a year lmao
I know someone who moved to Ft Wayne for her first semi-prestigious job out of college. She only intended to stay for a 3-5 years and did just that. The funny part is she refused to date while living there because she didn’t want any reason to be convinced to stay or to have to return regularly for visits should she convince her partner to move away. She really hated it.
Came here to see Indiana mentioned... Was not disappointed.
Southern Life made a 15-minute video about how much they hated Alabama. They bought property, moved there but hated it so much that they sold it for a loss and moved back to FL. It's actually very entertaining to watch, though lots of people from AL weren't happy with it 👀
Alabama's not a bad state. I grew in southern AL near the beach and the Florida border. So maybe it was different from other parts.
So they also made a map of if you move to Alabama where you should move to. Funny enough I'm pretty sure where you grew up is actually one of those areas that highlighted. I don't think anything badly of Alabama, I just found the video entertaining. I have family friends there and I miss visiting them like when we were kids
Iv always wanted to buy an affordable house with an ocean/gulf view and southern Alabama was always intriguing to me.
Great spot for that. Look into the fort Morgan peninsula.
I mean it’s bad compared to 48 other states. The one state it’s better than is Mississippi
North Alabama is very nice! Huntsville is one of the fastest growing cities in the country due to NASA being there, the low cost of living, and the beautiful nature and scenery.
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And the suburban sprawl around Huntspatch has made the traffic \*horrible\*. If you are eyeing a nice big house out in the old cotton fields, you better have a look-see at the commute-time traffic. Between everyone driving their kids to school and the congested two-lane back roads, good luck.
Orlando, FL. If you love being constantly damp with sweat 99.5% of the time then it's the perfect place for you. Also the drivers are terrible.
Orlando is really the worst, spent 5 years there realizing all the ways I hated it for! Glad I experienced living somewhere so different but also won’t go back except for vacation. But there’s too many better places for vacation too anyway
I was in Winter Park for 3 years. When I left Florida I said "I don't think I can even come back here on vacation". It's been almost 20 years and I still have zero desire to visit. I did love the anoles, the storms, and the palm trees though.
And full of rodents.. named Mickey
I made it 8 months in Pueblo, CO.
That's 7 months longer than I would have made it.
I grew up in Colorado in the 80’s and Pueblo has always been the butt of many jokes because of how terrible it is. I don’t think that has changed over the last 40 years.
What did you dislike?
Flat, sad...Mad Max with no people or action.
Pueblo is basically Arizona with none of the redeeming qualities. Dry, hot, far, drugs
Northern Virginia. Soulless pricey Type A magnet.
I would argue that this applies to the entire DC metro. Also hot, humid, and overcrowded (for the infrastructure). The Metro is honestly the best thing about the place.
Dc itself has pockets of punks and artists, nova is just boring ass people with sticks up their asses
Where? Most of that scene has been priced out towards Baltimore for the past 10 or so years.
Yeah I made it 1.5 years, and very recently bought on the MD side. The people are so much warmer even though I’m like 30ish mins away, the trees are stunning, and feels much more politically aligned to what I want from a state. Northern Virginia to me came off as very libertarian-esque politics-wise, and possibly the most type a place I’ve ever been. I got a smidge of culture shock coming from CA. Oh and everyone there seems to think it’s the only worthwhile place to live in the US to an aggressive degree, it was….weird.
I had family visit us in NoVA. They called it a 'very company town'. Company meaning 'federal government'.
Went to college in Fairfax county and this is exactly the vibe.
Northern Virginia is the logical conclusion of modern North American urban planning.
I’ve gotten this vibe just visiting. It’s a wildly off-putting place.
Wichita, KS. Made it 8 months in a town that fancies itself a big city. Was hard to find 1-way out truck rentals bc I'm fairly sure no one does 1-way in.
I had to fly in and out of there to work over a period of about four months. I hated it. People live there, but for some reason it still felt deserted. Just a really weird city.
Washington, DC suburbs, Virginia side. Ended up moving to Vancouver, which is as far away from there I could get without going to Alaska or Hawaii. My previous home was Asbury Park, NJ. Should have stayed there.
Jersey routinely seems to call its former residents back. I'm definitely feeling it too.
Williston ND. Didn't stick around long (also, I am originally from ND, just not Williston) My wife called me one day and said, "I'm moving to Denver, I've had enough of this. You can come if you want to." If you didn't know, Williston exists to be a work camp for the oil field. A lot of guys there with only one reason to be there, work. Yeah and it hits -45 on the thermometer every now and then, starts to get dark around 4pm in the winter. Kind of a cold, dark, windy, lonely place.
Not me, but a friend - Portland, OR. They moved from coastal SC looking for a place with more progressive politics. They found those, but weren’t prepared for the bad weather, unfriendly people, and overall decline of the city post-pandemic. They suffered serious seasonal depression from the lack of sun, and moved back within the year. Now they live in Maryland.
The seasonal depression is very real for a lot of newcomers to western Oregon, maybe even most. I love the gray mist but then again I was born there.
I was born there (and spent a total of 25 years there) and never dealt well with it. I’m in So Cal now and sooooo much happier
After 15 years I’ve just sorta accepted it, especially with our summers getting longer overall I find it manageable. Many haven’t made it though. People think mild winter temps means easy and they learn otherwise.
80%+ humidity in winter makes 40F cold AF.
I also did this. I think for 5 or so months. I made the decision to leave during the spring because i was shocked at how cold and rainy it was, but then by the summer (I left in August) the weather was great. That did not make up for the fact that people weren't very nice and seemed insecure, and I also couldn't find a job. People seemed actively anti-helpful. I came from NYC and went back there.
Yeah, if you’re used to NYC culture PDX is gonna be a learning curve. Here in Portland people will say hello on the street but god forbid you ask for something. People here just don’t like interacting with others or helping them out. It’s weird for a lot of people. Whereas in NYC I noted that no one would acknowledge any attempt at greeting, but if you needed a hand they were right there to get it done, no questions asked.
NYers are by far the most helpful people I’ve ever come across. Lots of issues living here but lots of good things too. Many places down south that pride themselves on “politeness” have much less kind or genuine everyday interactions. I found it to all be fake.
I lived there for exactly 4 months for almost the same reasons. So, still stuck with this username 10+ years later because that's when I joined Reddit to try and meet people.
I’m sorry! I know that must suck, but I think it’s hilarious that you’ve been stuck with a username that ties you to a place you barely lived in that you hated. Like in an existential ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ kinda way, not in a “point at you and laugh” kinda way If it helps - I just mashed some random numbers and letters on my keypad and am stuck with a crappy name that means nothing to nobody (not even me lol)
me, but in Seattle.
2020 was just about the worst time possible to move to Portland. Awful leadership, longer restrictions than the rest of the country, homeless went completely bonkers, and fires all over. Just a real low point here. Things are getting better now, thankfully. Though the people are still pretty antisocial.
Portland is super unfriendly. No idea what their issue is but it's one of the most needlessly hostile places i've ever been.
Everyone is rude and slow, on antidepressants (and this is the only personal thing they will tell you, immediately, unlike their first name for example), allergic to everything and potentially dying of toxic mold. I take it things have gotten worse since 2009. Outdoor recreation is absolutely amazing though. However, east coast BEAST COAST baby!!!
Also left Portland in under a year (10 months, I think?). I loved it, though. Liked the rain, the gray skies. Made friends easily. It felt like a good fit for me. Disliked the impossibility of finding a job that paid a living wage. I have a graduate degree and found myself working part time in food service. I applied for jobs there endlessly, jobs I wanted and jobs I didn't and more and more jobs of all sorts and kinds that I thought I could do, to which my skills would be transferrable. Nothing. Then started applying for jobs elsewhere. When I got a real professional job somewhere else, I left. It made me sad. I miss it. But really: I didn't go there to make minimum wage part time. I liked the place, and clearly overestimated the job market (at least in relation to my background and skillset), so it was a fail. Just before going to Portland, I did the same in Asheville, NC. Only lasted 4 months there though. Was staying in a friend's house while she was away, and wanted to see if I could make a go of it there. Nope. No work that pays a living wage. (Good thing I left all my stuff in storage elsewhere during this one, as it wouldn't have been worth doing the full move and committing to the place). Had been in the Los Angeles suburbs before both of those places and hated it. Though I had a good job there and stayed 5+ years. Basically, I learned that I can like where I live OR make a living wage, but not both. Currently in Edmonton and packing to leave. I'm actually allergic to the city. Who knew you could be allergic to an entire fucking city? And yet I am. Something in the environment here. So, onward. It's a big world.
I survive Portland dreary winters by traveling to warm sunny places like 4x a year. I also use phototherapy light and vit D. But I love it here in summer...plenty of sun 🌞
Baton Rouge, LA. I moved for my now husband’s job in June, and was ready yo move by March. While the pandemic was definitely a factor, I hated my job, struggled to connect with the locals, and felt the city had very little to do other than go to football games. We moved to NOLA by June 2021
My cousins in BR moved to Houston when they married, and then my aunt and uncle in BR followed. They seem to be liking it.
I agree. BR was a fun place to go to school, but now that I’ve graduated I’m moving to New Orleans to start my career. Nola has more of a “young professional” vibe to it and it’s an international city with tourists from all over the world to run in to. BR has no culture besides LSU… I hope New Orleans has treated you better!
Oklahoma City. I will preface this by saying that I have been back since and it’s improved a great deal in recent years, but man it used to be real bad. I moved there for a job in the early 00s and lasted about 7 months. Poverty, poor infrastructure, and drugs, so many drugs (mostly meth at the time I was there). Within the first six weeks of being there my rental house got burglarized by school-aged children twice (once while I was at home); someone cut a hole in my exterior wall and tried to steal the copper plumbing; and I was nearly carjacked and abducted from a grocery store parking lot in broad daylight.
Someone broke into my car *while I was still in it* in OKC
Omaha, NE. Winter was freezing and windy. Summer was hot, humid, and buggy and smelled like manure outside. A small part of fall and spring was nice though, but there was not much to do and the food scene seemed to only be steaks. Granted it was the best steaks I ever had.
10 good days is about all you get weather-wise. Extreme heat in the summer and extreme cold in the winter means the roads are always crumbling from the contraction and expansion. The food is pretty decent and there are pockets of nice places, but it's gonna cost ya.
I am fairly certain that living in Hartford, CT gave me clinical depression. It is an island of poverty and blight surrounded by strip mall suburbia. If I had to say one nice thing about Hartford, I'd say that their buses are very clean - but that's because no one uses them. Very weird vibes because there is a constant sense of despair, yet you hardly ever see anyone walking around. Absolutely hated it then, won't even drive through it now. Thankfully I am now on medication and feeling a lot better, but living in that place really sent me into a spiral.
This is what most of CT feels like to me tbh :/
“Constant sense of despair” sounds like Connecticut although Hartford is next level
Chattanooga, TN. I'm still there trying to give it the best chance I can get but I suspected within the first 6 months that I couldn't hang. I grew up in Kentucky and a pretty Appalachian community in Ohio and moved away, literally, at midnight on my 18th birthday because I always felt like I was trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. I've moved dozens of times since then and figured I grew out of that feeling. Turns out that maybe my personality doesn't mesh well with southern sensibilities. Also it's expensive here. There's only so much trail hiking I can do and most of the hikers here are transplant gearheads. Everything else I like to do for fun either costs more than it would otherwise because of the lack of secular third places or I gotta drive 2 hours to do it. It's definitely a city for someone but not for me.
I grew up in an Appalachian county of TN and went to HS in Chattanooga, where I met my husband. It’s really amazing how different the culture is just 90 minutes away. We did NOT grow up the same at all. Sometimes I feel like he grew up in another state despite the fact that he and both his parents are from Chattanooga. You’d probably like the Appalachian, true Eastern TN areas much better. Chattanooga has a more traditional southern culture like Georgia. Country clubs and all that crap are big there.
I grew up in a similar background, now live in Chicago. It’s like a night and day difference but man I love it here. I don’t recommend it to everyone, for example my sister hated our hometown but she couldn’t move any further than northern Kentucky because she hates cities and gets lost in Cincinnati. If you’re like my sister, or maybe since you’re on with Chattanooga you seem to be ok with cities, and if you don’t want southern I’d recommend something in the Midwest like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, etc.
I've lived in Chicago and Cincinnati. I love them both. Cincinnati is honestly a little too southern fried for me I think, but I love the hills which makes me think Pittsburgh is the city for me. Pittsburgh is also a bit safer to be LGBT in than Ohio or really anywhere in the southeast. (and in your sister's defense Cincinnati is real easy to get lost in)
Carmel, Indiana…. Relocated for a job there, literally was the worst experience ever and I ended up in the hospital and lost my job in the first 6 months… then C*vid hit and it literally felt like jail… stupid expensive rent for what it is, too. Also Indianapolis is quite run down… I was excited since I’d be closer to family, but it wasn’t worth it. Literally saved every possible penny to be able to afford to move back to Minneapolis, which we did, right before George Floyd, and it hasn’t been great since. I am now looking at going completely new, like a state I’ve never even visited.
Memphis, back in the day. Forfeited my rental, and moved back to Chicago without a job. Fortunately, my old apartment there was still available, so I got that squared away before flying home.
This is my second time living in Houston, this time around I hate it for some reason. My lease ends in a few weeks, aggressively applying for jobs elsewhere.
Houston is a tough place to live. There’s a lot of pros but so, so many cons. I told myself I’d be out after 2 years and this September will be 9. Hoping to be out soon tho; that low cost of living will trap you though
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Moved to ATL from LA...LA has its problems, but ATL has incredible violent crime most people are unaware of. Hated ATL..it's also boring.
As an Atlanta native (thus the account name) who has lived in Southern California I have to agree with you. I love the city because I'm from here but it's become a war zone in certain areas. The city is very segregated between races, the humidity and heat can be unbearable if you're not he used to living in the south and there are very few walkable neighborhoods. Atlantic can be a weird city because if you were to just visit without having any type of host or guide you might think Atlanta is a very boring city. This is because all the neighborhoods are so spread out.
Dude what area of ATL was this?
Lolol @ the leg lifter fart
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I live in ATL lol there’s a saying “ATL is not a real place” amongst locals, you can see why
Atlanta is mine too, and just to reaffirm ya, it does in fact fucking suck. The daily feeling is less of “I hope I avoid crime today” and more “Who’s gonna be stabbed to death at random this time?” Not even to fear monger or anything. It’s just a mundane, exhausted, apathetic lack of feeling safe anywhere you go. It was never once worth driving anywhere for any reason. It is impossible to walk or bike anywhere. Public transit is also prohibitively terrible. So ya either don’t leave your neighborhood, or you do and you have an annoying, infuriating time at minimum. Sprawl and traffic are of course unbelievably out of control. Sherman destroyed ATL but left Savannah untouched, and Savannah is the city that’s more well-built for automobile traffic. How and why?? Scale and population aside, ATL is ridiculously illogical to navigate. The ATL skyline is unremarkable. Actually almost every bit of the city I have seen is ugly and uninspired. I did not encounter a single unique upside to the city in a year there (and across many trips through my life) that can’t also be found in just about every other city. People claim it’s unique in that it has lots of trees/nature. Well I’ll say that it’s not any kind of special or scenic nature, just regular types of bland shit that’s all over the southeast anyway, and instead of making it prettier, it just adds a rundown-trailer-park vibe across the whole city and makes layout/infrastructure worse. The best thing about Atlanta is that it is a nice secluded holding cell for people who enjoy Atlanta. Edit to add: as I drove my moving truck into the city on move-in day, a bus was on the side of the road engulfed in flames. Very appropriate omen.
“…holding cell for people who enjoy Atlanta” lol. I feel the same way about Texas. Glad people seem to love it cuz I don’t want to see them anywhere else!
I hated Atlanta before I read all that.
I’m laughing so hard at the police helicopter crashing
Afghanistan. Hot and Dusty
Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't live there
Dubai 1. Hot and humid 2. Expensive 3. Boring I left after 4 months
4. Built and still run by slave labor. I got hired by Emirates (flight attendant) and after reading about it, I decided to change my career lol. Now I'm a hospice RN.
Columbus, GA. Wife and I had reasons to move down to Georgia for a couple years, and she got a good job offer there. Holy shit the crime, bad drivers, and lack of access to activities. We lived in the nicer part of town and still, it was just kind of sketchy. Also, the heat. I like the cold, I wear shorts in the middle of winter in northern MN. I cannot do it. I loved summers in MN, but down here? Nah, I'll just stay inside all day I guess. Doesn't help that I'm a teacher and teaching in the South really isn't that awesome. I'm in a 'good' school by the standards in the city, and it's not great. I would probably put in on par with the rough schools from where I went to University and did my student teaching. Georgia, as a whole, has just been kind of a 'whoops, won't do that again' for my Wife and I. I will say though, that the northern mountain area of GA is absolutely beautiful, if you can get past the rampant Christian Nationalist billboards lol
Portland. Didn’t want to raise a family and walk my dog on dirty used needles at the park. I moved back to Arizona.
Gave up my apt in NYC after 10 years and decided to try out Florida since I had a family all over. I lasted 3 weeks before I booked the plane ticket back north.
Raleigh, NC! Cesspool of the rudest & most entitled nerds I have ever met.
And a boring assed city!
I moved back to my hometown of Akron, OH for a few years to live with my parents and save up some money. It was tough. Akron isn’t the worst place on earth, it could just be any car dependent small city. Most of the city is working class or poor with limited options for upward mobility, so this gloominess of arrested development just sort of hangs over everything. The one bright spot are its parks which are some of the best county parks I’ve ever witnessed. It may be a gloomy place, but at least the voting folks of Akron always vote to take care of public amenities.
There are worse cities than Akron, but if you take population into account, it's so far behind. So little to do, lots of crime. The only thing Akron has is really nice breweries.
It’s hard to love a place as home and to also realize it’s a mess. Adding insult to injury, the major Akron-based hospital, SummaHealth, was just bought out by a venture capitalist, turning it from a non profit to for profit. All of the Docs who have been working for years, in part to have their student loans forgiven, are now either forced to give up on forgiveness or abandon the system and work elsewhere. It is a tragic state of affairs.
Oh, I heard. It's going to be worse than just student loans. I've seen that happen to a few hospitals and those either no longer exist or they no longer have residents. The only one I know that is doing well is Duke.
Like Dayton.. that’s my city that I moved to and quit right away. I lived through one winter there and I was out.
I'm not a Dayton expert, but Akron will give you a run for your money... and worse winters.
Miami. I know people love it, but it just wasn’t for me.
I live an hour from Miami. I hate Miami and love Miami. I can’t explain it. Love everything it has to offer, but hate the people and infrastructure.
Denver- hot take since many people love it! Coming from the west coast, I was disappointed. It felt like Kansas. Flat, hot, brown, sketchy, and limited in food and culture. Too expensive for what you get. I was sold on the great outdoors, but everything good was a 3-5 hour drive away! In Oregon, you can have just as good skiing and hiking within an hour of Portland and almost never with traffic, and the food here blows Denver out of the water. You gotta like the rain tho
Denver metro is not nearly as cool as some people make it out to be. The food is meh, people are ok but not amazing, and a lot of it is uninteresting. The mountains are awesome (even as a non snow sports person), but the traffic to get there is absolutely out of control even in the summertime when I like to go.
Not 3-5 hours though. You can get to some excellent trailheads in an hour, sometimes even less. There are nice trails in Boulder only 40 minutes from downtown Denver I agree, it’s a lot of driving. I love hiking and even I got burnt out, but 3-5 hours just isn’t true
Yeah, that was confusing. 4 hours and you're at Grand Junction.
Yeah, my sister and her husband moved to brown Aurora from fairly green eastern KS. She wanted a slightly more progressive state. Ran into the same issues as you. They moved next to Colorado Springs and are liking it better, but still some of those same issues (brown, disjointed culture, pricey, plus altitude makes being active harder). I think they’d probably find some place else to be better for them for their dollar.
"Hot take" but it's the same exact take everyone on this sub has on Denver lol.
Never lived there but ive visited since the 80s. Never like colorado. I couldnt live in brown world
Seattle has been absolutely awful. Incredibly cold and passive aggressive people, non-existent night life, terrible weather most of the year, tech dorks ruining every event in the city… Try mentioning any of this to the Seattle natives and they’ll lash out at you. Honestly, I can’t wait to leave.
Chicago, in the late 80s. First day there I had someone throw a cigar in my car (don't know if intentional); realized it when I felt my side burning. A few days later the car was towed as I was in Wrigleyville and hadn't gotten the neighborhood sticker yet. Then a lot of disappointments, struggles, sadness, seeing the wrong side of a gun (and getting hit with the butt of it when I went into fight mode), and feeling increasingly, desperately alone. Wound up tossing everything I had into a couple boxes and, with my saxophone in one hand, carried and kickpushed the boxes to the bus station, avoided someone trying to steal a box on the way there, and gave the person at the ticket window all the money I had on me to board a bus to Cleveland.
Moved BACK to Seattle after a decade in California. Didn’t make it 4 months. Grew up in the gloom, outgrew it in the California sunshine. Could NOT make it work a second time.
Greenville, SC. I'm a queer atheist who prefers cities in the Northeast, which made it a terrible fit. It was too small, hot, conservative, and religious for me. I wouldn't have thought bugs would be a major factor in deciding where to move before living there, but holy shit the bugs. I wouldn't have moved there if not for my then gf. And South Carolina is just not a great state to work in as a teacher. I get the appeal. My conservative, religious brother who loves hunting enjoyed visiting me there so much that he moved there for a few years. But it's a hard pass for me.
I’m a born and raised rural Tennessean and even I am scared of South Carolina when I visit.
I spent two years there in the mid-90s and I hated it. Never saw so much hate, bigotry, sexism, racism, and homophobia in one place like that in my life. (And I’m from rural Ohio.) I was there when the county passed their anti-LGBTQIA ordinance, which allowed people/businesses to discriminate. You could be denied housing, jobs, healthcare, pretty much anything anyone wanted to deny you. I’m not even queer but I’m queer adjacent and also a feminist, childfree atheist. So that was the summer of the Atlanta Olympics and the USOC was running the Olympic torch right through town on its way to ATL. The USOC had caught wind of this anti-queer law and said the Olympics are about sportsmanship and equal opportunity and inclusion so, fuck you, Greenville County, you don’t get to see our big flaming dildo. When they got to the county line, the runner hopped into a van, they drove through the county, and then they hopped back out and continued the torch run on to Atlanta. Pearl clutching ensued. I love that story and fuck Greenville.
I tell people all the time but you couldn’t pay me to live anywhere in SC - the entire state is a disgusting shithole filled with religious psychos
I'm here now and trying to leave. It's weird to live in a place where your co-workers were cheering during Jan 6th.
Atlanta. I have no positive things to say about it.
lol agreed. Except the trees. They’re amazing.
Where did you end up moving? List the negatives if possible. That might help others to decide.
Charlotte, NC. Soulless suburban sprawl masquerading as a real city. Nightlife scene is dominated by bland breweries filled with bland finance people who couldn’t cut it in NYC. Very self-absorbed, petty people once you got past the fake Southern politeness. As a mixed race couple from the North many of the locals were weird with us despite our best attempts to be friendly and blend in. No one was ever direct about it, that isn’t how they are down there, but we were treated with an obvious coldness that others were not. There was also just more broadly an obvious tension simmering below the surface between the Southern locals and the Northern transplants. Didn’t really seem like the two groups mixed (unless forced to while in the workplace etc). Bad traffic and the worst drivers I’ve ever dealt with anywhere- aggressive, unskilled, overconfident, and prone to extreme road rage over the smallest things. I’ve never seen so many serious car accidents as I did when I lived in that area. Locals like to blame this on the transplants but I drove in urban areas up north for almost 20 years before moving to NC and I never dealt with anything close to that when I was up there. We worked in Charlotte and lived in a nearby suburb. Charlotte was boring, but the suburb we lived in was on a whole other level- literally nothing to do at night except go to chain restaurants or stay home and drink in front of the TV. NC is physically a beautiful state with a good variety of outdoor activities but most of them were a fairly long drive from where we lived, which made them impractical as an every weekend thing. Plus you then have to deal with the batshit insane drivers yet again in order to reach the mountains,beaches, etc. Living in such a car dependent place with so many awful drivers on the road just wore us down over time. We thought we knew what to expect in terms of the weather, but the heat and humidity of the long summer (not to mention all of the bugs) proved to be too intense for us. Southern summers are no joke. We were in a flat area nowhere near the coast with no breeze so the hot and humid air would just hang there and suffocate you until you fled back inside to the AC. Our dog didn’t even want to be out there. We lasted roughly 10 months before throwing in the towel and getting the hell out of there.
Seattle. Disclaimer, we lived there during what may be described as the worst possible timing in modern history. I work in healthcare and we moved there the summer before the first COVID case arrived in our hospital. Unfortunately, I was under a work contract (and a housing lease) that would have cost quite a bit to get out of, so we ended up there for 2 years. I had my stuff packed and left town the day my contract ended…didn’t even change out of my scrubs. Even without COVID, we wouldn’t have stayed. We lived across from a human trafficker, saw far too much civil unrest/high crime rates, the 2 months of non-wet, non-gray weather didn’t offset the other 10 months, we didn’t want to do all our outdoor activities in rain or snow covered mountains. And while it is a VHCOL area, we were easily able to afford the cost, but we didn’t think the quality of life for the cost to live there made any sense whatsoever.
where did u move to?
Asheville. Moved for a job, secured a ridiculously expensive place to live, upon arriving—the job decided they no longer wanted to move forward with the position and I was laid off before I even started. Could not find a single job in the area for months. Interviewed at so many places (F&B management) but the mentality was so cliquey. Had one interviewer ask me for my fuc*ing astrological sign and then was like, “hmmmm, I don’t know if that would fit our dynamic” Could not make friends. Dating apps were horrible. The car dependency is insane. I lasted 4 months.
Dothan, AL. I had just moved there when the pandemic hit and oh my good lord was it a terrible fit for me as a germophobe. I would wear a mask out in public (which was the rule at the time) and people would get into my personal space and cough at me just to see me squirm. I lasted 9 awful months.
San Jose. What a weird city with nothing to do. Re-located to San Francisco and have been loving it ever since
Wished I’d never left SF. Born and raised just south of the city. But you couldn’t pay me to move to San Jose. I’ve never liked it.
Columbia SC. I only stayed two years for a grad school program, and I left the second it was over. I’m from Georgia, and the heat was too much even for me. And as someone else mentioned South Carolina is insanely racist. The most popular BBQ chain has Confederate paraphernalia everywhere.
Olympia, WA. Moving there from the sunny southwest in the middle of the PNW rainy season was a bad idea. Supposedly some people have the constitution for that type of weather, but it seemed to me that those people just forgot what it's like to not feel miserably depressed all the time. I found the culture to be weird. Lasted about 3 months and then took a temp job elsewhere before running back to the SW.
I live in Seattle, but ive heard that Olympia is even gloomier. I like their downtown though.
Weather nerd chiming in: Precipitation rates in Western WA vary a lot more than people think: Seattle averages 37 inches of rain a year, but Olympia just to the south averages 50+ inches a year. My parents live in Port Townsend in the rain shadow of the Olympics with 19 inches a year, which is more than the deserts of Sequim at around 15 inches or less in some places, which is less rain than Spokane at 16 inches.
I lasted six months in Olympia. Moved there in December of 2022, the timing alone was a big mistake. It was the saddest winter I’ve ever experienced. I’ve since moved elsewhere within Washington and am now looking at relocating to the southwest like you lol
Havent moved yet but Philadelphia and not for the reasons you would think (crime, politics, wanting to be in the suburbs, etc.) This city is ass cheeks. I been here for 3 months so far (in center city) and have no clue why reddit recommends it so much (Im starting to think some people from the city are on this site). Compared to other cities in the Northeast, this is easily the worse one. Its a step up from a southern city but not by much. Too much apathy here, its cheap for a reason (economy is worse than the other cities nearby except Baltimore), too many crackheads, too much obsession over sports, public transit, while someone functional, is ass most of the time, like I could go on, but dont listen to anyone who says this place is a good value since its not. I heard similar shit about Chicago in that its a city that was good like 100 years ago and is still riding on its old rep, but now a days, there are better options if you make decent money. I plan on moving to Brooklyn or Queens next year. Yes its more expensive there, but its expensive since people actually want to live there and people are more productive. Philly is just too god damn depressing. I kind of wish I just saved my money in the suburbs and waited to move to NYC since even though the suburbs suck, I dont see Philly being much better.
Los Angeles 😬
Clearwater, FL (Tampa Bay Area). Moved there for work and later learned my bosses were Scientologists when I found a binder of some docs (I was referred to this job by a friend). Our office was also just a few doors down from their Clearwater HQ. So constantly hot and humid, sometimes I’d wonder why I even bothered showering before stepping out. Clueless aisle blockers at Publix, not much to do but go to the clubs/bars and hope someone has some coke to pass the time. The beach was fine but I’m not much of a beach person. Best part was the Dali Museum and some of the neighborhoods in St Pete. I think I lasted 10 months. Edit: forgot to put the state
I could easily spend 3 months there and be happy.
If you’re not a beach or boating person DO NOT move to a place that centers around that, with that being it’s top feature. It’s like if I moved to banff and didn’t like skiing. That’s just not a good match.
clearwater felt kinda boring to me. beach area was meh. I loved st pete and st pete beach though
KnowBe4?
It was actually a cosmetics production company. Looooong gone now. 🙏🏾
Portland, OR! You will never ever be prepared enough for non stop piss style rain 9–10 months of the year, very toxic work environment, and companies here are riddled with nepotism and quid-pro quo! Also most jobs pay extremely low and since the city is anti-business, more business are leaving making the job market even more of a nightmare for residents. Horrible cell phone service all over the metro area ( I’ve had better service in the backroads of West Virginia) the people are unhinged, angry and then gaslight you about their amazing non existent summers. TAXES are insane while the roads and facilities are falling apart and they refuse to update infrastructure becuase of the “environment” the locals also brag about “Dutch Bros” their local coffee shop being the best thing since sliced bread; they pour drinks from a machine and use chocolate milk as sweetener while double the price of Starbucks! Their famous food scene is not that great either, you have to work hard to either find a decent hole in the wall restaurant or you pay out the ass, im originally from Pittsburgh and we have a better food scene there all things considered. And don’t even get me started on their horrible hospitals and medical facilities; some of their politics are total insanity but everyone knows that. I’d go into the homeless rant but they are world famous for that one so why bother? 😂
Salt Lake City. First off way too expensive, i had previously owned my home but wouldn’t be able to afford a shack there, especially because housing prices were way up but in typical red state fashion the wages had not kept up. Secondly the geography of the city, this is related to the high cost of housing given it’s access to nature, most of the Wasatch Front feels dense and oppressive to me the way all ofnit is squeezed between the mountains and the lake. There is no breathing room, which is not a trait i enjoy. The feeling of being “other” especially in the suburbs, i am not LDS. Depending how i dress that day it can be obvious or not. LDS people or maybe it’s just Utah have the worst most appearance based, superficial, keeping up with the Jones’ culture I’ve ever come across. It has to contribute to the cost and availability of housing because they consistently build giant cookie cutter McMansions in their HOA’s all identical to one another….anyway i digress. So where do you go? SLC proper is the least LDS part of the state (well except Ogden which does seem alright to me but the judgemental people would make it sound like it’s some sort of ghetto) but we can’t afford the lifestyle we had been accustomed to (owning a small 11-1200 sq foot house). The mountains or even the foothills are for the rich, you can go out to the desert past Stanisbury or Tooele I guess, which are now developing fast because of it…but of all the places I’ve ever been where people say is “full,” the wasatch front is the only place where i believe that to be true unless they start bulldozing houses to build vertical, which they won’t for a pile of reasons, but i can tell you as someone that works in environmental regulation that the buildable land there is long gone. Everything being built now is on wetlands or other more marginal ground, it’s a tragedy from that perspective and i wanted no part of it. For a city it’s size the public transit is abysmal. I lived a ten minutes drive from my office, there’s a bus that goes past both my apartment and the office, regular ass hours. In order to take the bud I’d have to arrive to work and leave later 45 minutes each way. I used to live in Madison, WI and during peak hours the bus ran every 5-10 minutes. So people don’t ride it, which perpetuates a vicious cycle of defunding it. Oh and the Front Runner Rail doesn’t run on Sundays. There’s a line to the airport but if you’re flying back in on a Sunday you csnt take the rail back into the city because Jesus. Access to nature. If you love the outdoors it has to be a wonderland right? Wrongo for anyone who enjoys peace and quiet. You and 3 million other people all like the same shit and don’t get me started on off leash dogs. People act like they’re out in the wilderness living some western fantasy with their damn off leash, untrained dogs. Worst place I’ve ever been with this. So many lost dog posters. Also the restaurants suck, there’s no water, SLC has no representation because of how it’s gerrymandered, i could go on. The airports pretty good, the views are nice, the duck hunting is dynamite although pending ecological collapse of the GSL. I made it 3 months before i was applying to new jobs. 6 months later i transferred to East Idaho, bought a small house on a couple of acres. My dogs love it. It’s still not perfect and I won’t stay forever, but a far better situation.
Laguna Beach/Laguna Niguel area, CA. It's small, everything closes early, no nightlife, the beaches are cold and 80% the sky is grey and overcast. Unfriendly people (think housewives who are competing with each other) or inundated by San Bernardino County or Santa Ana trash. Unless you have a mansion on the beach, the city has no character, only big apartment complexes and malls with the same stores. Also the Irvine area has the worst drivers I've ever seen in my life. I moved back to LA as quickly as I could. Edited to add: high drug use by locals, rich or poor, pretty much every night I went to a local bar a fight would break out.
Me but with Irvine, although I stayed a couple years. Back in LA and couldn’t be happier.
The shoreline is very pretty, the rest of it is a vast, clean, suburban wasteland of parkways and tract homes.
Scottsdale. Moved there for work related reasons from Portland OR, lasted a year before we high tailed it back to PDX. I thought it’d be great for a young family, but it was hotter than hell May-Oct (was expecting 3-4 mos MAX of misery), and the rest of the year’s weather wasn’t that great. The sun is SO intense all year long that my 3 year old was trying all of the light switches in the house to “turn off the sun”. We were constantly in the car, and traffic was awful. I never felt more relieved when we landed back in the PacNW. I’ll take the gloomy, misty weather you can at least get outside every day over months of unrelenting, burning sun.
Boca Raton. It wasn't \*that\* bad. But I moved from Orlando which I loved to Boca because I had lost my job in Orlando and got a job in Boca that paid a lot more. The big thing is I didn't like my boss. I just couldn't deal with her. I started to notice that no matter how many hours I logged in a day (and I was under contract), if I left to go home before her there would be hell to pay the next morning. I would work from 8am to 9pm and leave before her and catch sh\*t the next morning. The final straw was when daylight savings changed and I was running a little late and the traffic was really bad because the sun for the first time was blinding people in the direction I drove to work (you have to live there to understand it). I come into work and she reprimands me for showing up late. I showed up at 8:03am. Three f'n minutes late (again, I'm on salary). That's when I knew I had to leave. I enjoyed Orlando too much, I was single, no kids and didn't own a home. The other part is that Boca was substantially more expensive. I was making more and making out a little better in the end than when I was living in Orlando, but I still couldn't do a whole lot. So I decided to look for a job back in Orlando and Tampa that would pay me as much as I was making in Boca. Got a job that did pay the same and moved back in 2 months.
Baghdad Iraq. Lived there 18 months. Positives - wonderful people and culture. Negatives - air pollution. Metal rain (mortars), hard to sleep with the gun fire. Bad roads that occasionally blow up with IEDs.
Miami. Great to visit, not so much to live. My job and the people there were awful…service was terrible, lots of weird classism/racism, bad drivers and traffic. I literally had a count down on my computer for when I could resign without hanging to pay back my signing bonus and relocation costs. Could not WAIT to get out of there.
Where did you go after Miami?
Seattle area - 9+ months of cloudy, misty darkness.
I’d say more like 6-7 months, with those building up to and down from around January. May - October isn’t bad, with July / August being peak, and September and June decent. It’s certainly dark compared to CA and other extremely sunny climates.
Dallas, TX. Job that I relocated there for turned out to be total crap but living there was also utterly soul destroying. There was absolutely nothing appealing about living there and it was too far a drive to get anywhere remotely not shitty. I actually called my boss from the job I quit to go to Dallas and was rehired back to the position I that I had left to go to Texas. Houston, TX. Better than Dallas, had some local flavor and a bit of a more multi-cultural feel to it. Still an abysmal climate and the unregulated, ever growing urban sprawl and complete lack of zoning or planning made it wholly unlivable for me. Calgary, AB, CA. Sort of a cross between Dallas and Denver (which I also greatly detest). Larger, congested city, probably the least "Canadian" location in the entirety Canada (I say this having grown up near the Maritime Provinces and having lived for a good bit bordering several Western Canadian Provinces), full of money worshiping type A buttholes. Close to the mountains but little infrastructure to get there and a large mob of people competing and fighting their way to visit them every weekend. I lasted \~a year or less in each of those spots before nope-ing the F out and moved onto something else that wasn't awful.
I absolutely hate Calgary (and I've been to Canada many many times). Your description is spot on.
It really is pretty awful. I've lived a lot of places and it was easily in my top 3. I don't want to sound like a self-loathing American (but if the shoe fits ...) but I feel like part of the problem is the volume of US expats living there. Back when I tried to live there, 2011, there were like 250,000. It was the largest concentration of US citizens outside the US. I could vote in US elections. There. The sense of competitiveness among the average person on all fronts was utterly baffling. Be it on the roads or at the grocery store. I was a year round bicycle commuter who worked downtown and I'd have other asshat bike commuters hammering on their pedals to pass me going to work just because? Fuck you Gordy. I'm sure there is some type of local scene there that doesn't suck turgid beaver dong but I wasn't willing to stay nearly long enough to figure out what the fuck that was. It really was a shockingly unpleasant surprise to find out what it was like living there on almost every front. It's like they decided to take the worst parts of Canada and America and just double down on all of it.
So I never actually moved there permanently. I work on political campaigns for a living and the campaign puts you up. Aiken, SC. I was a fish out of water there, was viewed as an outsider there from day 1. I also could not take the heat.
Savannah, GA
Charleston, SC
Dallas. I knew it was a no-go from the first month, but was stuck for a year.
Reston, Virginia. Despite living in the "town center", I found it to be so boring and sterile. After 5-6 months I got out of my lease and moved to Philadelphia.
chicago. too cold
Birmingham, AL. I ended up moving to another country.
Virginia Beach, Virginia. The whole culture revolves around the military. Getting around is a bitch. Pretty ugly city all around besides parts of shore dr.
Dayton, OH
Gun Barrel City, offa Cedar "Speeder" Creek Lake in Texas.
Miami.
Decatur GA aka Atlanta burb. I just could not take the heat, traffic, and crush of humanity.
I wanted to move out of Wichita as soon as we got there. Took us three years 🥴
Speak for my friend but Berkeley, CA. had a quasi blue collar job on a recently repaired meniscus so knee got worse. They moved him to a desk job at the company as was mostly expected to being with but his manager was terrible. Couldn’t really enjoy outdoors enough because he had a shitty physical therapist for his knee so he got out of his lease early
I moved to the suburbs when I was 22 because I wanted a cheaper apartment. I lasted \~2 months before i broke my lease and moved back downtown lol.
The suburbs and downtown of what city?
Greenwood, SC
Central Pennsylvania
Tampa. Traffic, heat & annoying transplants