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Odine
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Cause why not? Pretty sure I know your genders but throw them in anyway if you want. Mostly I'm interested in where you call home and the things about where you live that you like or dislike. 

I'm 36, male obviously and live in a town called Frome in Somerset, England.

Frome was a textiles town from the  mideaval period onwards, mostly wool, weaving and dying fabrics using a plant called woad which makes an indigo colour. It's built on a river in a valley, which lends a topographic variety which I find really pleasing visually. Particularly in winter months when the fog settles in and hangs over the town and doesn't leave all day. Today it's a pretty cool cosmopolitan town (as far as Somerset goes) with decent coffee shops and restaurants, great organic grocery stores and a cinema that still charges only 4 quid to see a film.  It looks a bit like Edinburgh (without the castle) and on a much smaller scale. But has the nooks, crannies and alleys on various levels like most hillside/valley medieval town that has evolved into modernity would.

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38 (literally had to do math to figure that out just now)/F/Marne, MI.

Marne is a small farming community halfway between the mid-sized city of Grand Rapids, and Lake Michigan. The first white people to live on the land were Masons who settled here in the 1800's. The town's original name was Berlin, it didn't last long, though the fair, racetrack, and Baptist church kept the name. Home to the longest running county fair in the state, since 1855. The fairground also has a half-mile stock car track that has produced some moderately successful NASCAR drivers. Visually, the landscape is "midwestern hilly" thanks to the creek that runs through the area - it's no little stream, it's the basis of our water table. There are lots of areas that people have forgotten for a long time, so it's overgrown and home to large deer herds. The majority of the people are lower middle class Polish Catholic and work in manufacturing if they don't farm. They all still have their Trump flags up.

I work in that mid-sized city, tho, and feel like it's as much home as the farming community. Most people assume it's stodgy because the DeVos name is all over the place and there's pretty much a church for every three people, but it's often compared to places like Austin when it comes to the city's atmosphere. About 20 years ago Founders Brewing opened their first taproom, and now there's a craft brewery on every corner, and they're all good because they have to be in such a competitive market. The city has six universities headquartered and three major satellite campuses, four if you count the hospital system owned by the University of Michigan. There's a large art community that's encouraged by the city leaders. There's also three minor league teams that feed into Detroit. Oh, and weed is legal here. It's not a bad place to be young and hip.

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36, male, Ambridge.

Ambridge, Pennsylvania used to be a bustling hub of various ethnic communities having settled straight off the boat, and has continued its beloved Nationality Days summer food festival all the way up until at least two years ago, as far as I know. However, it is slowly becoming a ghetto with little to recommend it.

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6 hours ago, Iceheart said:

38 (literally had to do math to figure that out just now)/F/Marne, MI.

Marne is a small farming community halfway between the mid-sized city of Grand Rapids, and Lake Michigan. The first white people to live on the land were Masons who settled here in the 1800's. The town's original name was Berlin, it didn't last long, though the fair, racetrack, and Baptist church kept the name. Home to the longest running county fair in the state, since 1855. The fairground also has a half-mile stock car track that has produced some moderately successful NASCAR drivers. Visually, the landscape is "midwestern hilly" thanks to the creek that runs through the area - it's no little stream, it's the basis of our water table. There are lots of areas that people have forgotten for a long time, so it's overgrown and home to large deer herds. The majority of the people are lower middle class Polish Catholic and work in manufacturing if they don't farm. They all still have their Trump flags up.

I work in that mid-sized city, tho, and feel like it's as much home as the farming community. Most people assume it's stodgy because the DeVos name is all over the place and there's pretty much a church for every three people, but it's often compared to places like Austin when it comes to the city's atmosphere. About 20 years ago Founders Brewing opened their first taproom, and now there's a craft brewery on every corner, and they're all good because they have to be in such a competitive market. The city has six universities headquartered and three major satellite campuses, four if you count the hospital system owned by the University of Michigan. There's a large art community that's encouraged by the city leaders. There's also three minor league teams that feed into Detroit. Oh, and weed is legal here. It's not a bad place to be young and hip.

Thanks for the detailed answer! I like!

Was the town originally called Berlin because the mason settlers were originally German? Or was it one dude who called it Berlin cause he was German? I've heard of Grand Rapids before, probably because I've seen a film set there or something. Is Ann Arbor fairly close to you? I know Iggy Pop grew up there so that's pretty sweet. Michigan sounds pretty cool, cept for the Trumpers but hey ho. Is it part of the "Rust Belt" as it's called, or is it just Detroit in the Rust Belt? Regardless, it looks like a pretty part of the world.

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There clearly had to be Germans who settled here, but the names in the graveyard are all very English sounding, so they may have gotten Ellis Islanded when they immigrated. Considering they changed the name to Marne, there were definitely still German ties in the area once the world wars started. I’m not sure when the Polish immigrants moved into west side Grand Rapids, but they all went west-but-not-as-west-as-the-Dutch considering the current town demographics.

Ann Arbor is about a 2 1/2 hour drive and there’s no train system, so it’s not someplace we visit all that often. We’re technically rust belt I guess since so many people make auto parts for a living around here, but we consider ourselves midwesterners... we’re half way between Detroit and Chicago, but we feel more Chicago if we feel anything. Probably because so many Chicago people have summer homes here.

It is a pretty state, it’s a coastal state in the center of a huge land mass, so that makes for some unique features and culture. Snowboarding was invented in Muskegon, a city on Lake Michigan... when you can surf and ski all in one place, why not do both at once?

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38/F/Snohomish County, WA

Technically, I live in unincorporated Snohomish County, but within the area that the city of Mill Creek could annex. They won't, though, because poor urban planning has resulted in such a high density that they'll never make enough from property taxes to break even on providing fire, police, and other services to us. But I live 1 block outside of city limits, which saves me $1-2k on car tabs every year. Not sure you could convince me to move into a RTA tax zone. There is a wide socioeconomic range out here. There has been an emphasis on low-income housing as of late, which has a lot of people (who think they have a lot of money but don't) all worked up. The uppityness is starting to wear on me. We have an older community and many people who have lived here for a long time are finding themselves unable to afford this area. Part of me wants to move out to exurbia but then I would be dealing with Proud Boys and Trumpers.

Other than that, Snohomish County is known for having the first case of COVID-19 in the US,  and for being the Florida of the west coast. My stepmother-in-law swears that every weird news story happens in Snohomish County, WA. She's not wrong, there's a lot of weirdos.

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38/F/Cypress, TX 

Cypress is a booming suburb of Houston. We live about as far away from Houston that you can get and still consider yourself a Houstonian. It's where all the engineers employed by the oil & gas industry settle to raise their kiddos. This area, especially our neighborhood, is mostly upper middle class WASPs, and they're just as racist and Trump supporting as you would think they would be while also claiming to be "good, safe people". On the whole, I enjoy living close to Houston. There's a lot to love about this city - NASA, sports teams, the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, etc. - but I absolutely hate the neighborhood we're in now. Within a year or so, we're packing it in and moving (back) to Austin. Both of my parents and both of my siblings with my nieces and nephew all live in the northern parts of Austin. My mother-in-law, sister/brother-in-law and nephew, and all of my 1st cousins all live in the north part of San Antonio. So we're going to move to south Austin into my husband's grandparents' house. Then we'll be about 45 minutes from the Austin peeps and just over an hour from the San Antonio peeps, just far enough to see everyone as much as we want but to prevent unwanted drop-ins. 

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5 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

37/m/San Diego, also known as America's Finest City. The only thing I don't like about this place is the cost of living. We'll end up leaving someday, probably, maybe, but I hope not. Sometimes I really want to though. It's a fantastic city though, for many many reasons.

Go on then, if you have time I'd like to hear what makes San Diego great! 

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36/M/Melbourne, AUS 

Melbourne is Australia’s 2nd most populated city and hands down the best. When people compare it to a US city, it seems to mostly be compared to San Fransisco. . .not sure how accurate that is since I’ve never been to SF, but some context I guess for what you might think Melbourne is like. 

I used to travel a lot for work over the last couple of years, called London home for a good year and would have been longer if not for COVID where I had to rush back to Australia when borders were starting to close. Literally flying across the world in March was one of the most surreal experiences I’ll ever have - getting a taxi from Victoria London to Heathrow on a Friday morning, it was exactly 28 Days Later. The airports on the other hand were a polar opposite, everyone flying home to their respective countries. Everyone, everywhere was going through the exact same thing. 

Anyway, point of that is seeing how the world responded made me very proud of the response of our leaders here and I appreciate there aren’t many people who can say that about their countries. Melbourne ended up being the only city in Australia to suffer an outbreak, and we went through months of very heavy lockdowns to bring down the numbers. For nearly 2 months starting in September, only one member of the house could leave for shopping or one hour of exercise, we couldn’t go outside 5KM of our house (2m?) and a curfew from 8pm onwards and we had a military border preventing us leaving the city and infecting the regional areas. But now we’ve been at 0 active cases, 0 deaths and 0 new cases for one month. 

So it has been a tough year but I’m genuinely proud of my city. And right now, that’s what I like most about it. We also have some pretty good pubs. 

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41/m

Littleton, Colorado (suburb of Denver).  World famous for Columbine High School.

Denver is awesome, but getting too crowded, especially the drive to go skiing on the weekends is insane.  I want to move to a ski town in the mountains (one of the few rural areas in the country that are prominently liberal).

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15 hours ago, Cerina said:

38/F/Cypress, TX 

Cypress is a booming suburb of Houston. We live about as far away from Houston that you can get and still consider yourself a Houstonian. It's where all the engineers employed by the oil & gas industry settle to raise their kiddos. This area, especially our neighborhood, is mostly upper middle class WASPs, and they're just as racist and Trump supporting as you would think they would be while also claiming to be "good, safe people". On the whole, I enjoy living close to Houston. There's a lot to love about this city - NASA, sports teams, the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, etc. - but I absolutely hate the neighborhood we're in now. Within a year or so, we're packing it in and moving (back) to Austin. Both of my parents and both of my siblings with my nieces and nephew all live in the northern parts of Austin. My mother-in-law, sister/brother-in-law and nephew, and all of my 1st cousins all live in the north part of San Antonio. So we're going to move to south Austin into my husband's grandparents' house. Then we'll be about 45 minutes from the Austin peeps and just over an hour from the San Antonio peeps, just far enough to see everyone as much as we want but to prevent unwanted drop-ins. 

Hey, your cousins probably live pretty close to me. I'm up in NC SATX. With that said:

34/M/San Antonio, TX

I'm originally from Southeast Texas, but came to SA, TX after a stint on active duty where I lived in Turkey, Alaska, and Florida. I used to be a regular Nightly visitor back in high school (02'-05'ish), prior to all that adulting.

SA is a pretty nice place. It's hot, (like Houston and Southeast Texas), but without all the humidity and oil and gas fumes. It is known as "Military City, USA" which is a well-earned nickname since it's the home of US Air Force basic training as well as the Alamo and the very large Joint Base San Antonio. Being veteran-heavy, the city is a political and racial melting pot, so it makes for a nice, polite, moderate place to live. Between the military and Hispanic influences, its very family-oriented, and lacks the huge, ever-expanding, downtown area like Houston or Dallas has. The city feels more like a really big suburb than a booming metropolis. The nightlife is boring, and its a pretty sleepy town after sunset, so if you ever visit, don't expect to party too hardy. Its a nice place to visit if you just want to slow down, eat barbecue, have a beer, and relax with friends.

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62/female/Mountlake Terrace WA

I was born in NW PA and moved to Seattle in 1984. I lived in Renton's May Valley, Kirkland's Houghton Park, on Phinney Ridge, Maple Leaf (where amazon is now), in Tacoma's North End and now am just over the King County line in Snohomish County (I like to say "I put the HO in Snohomish") just off Lake Ballinger in a 'hood I refer to as East Edmonds.

People here are mostly Democrats/liberals/very PC and very protesty. There are people here who own sea turtle costumes. Most women don't wear heels or makeup daily, most men are sensitive and hands-on fathers, it drizzles almost every fucking day and is almost always 52 degrees and cloudy outside and natives here get hot and complain about it when it gets over 75 degrees. Everyone here wears flannel at some time or another. Intermittent wipers on cars are a necessity, umbrellas are looked down upon.

I may have to move to Florida's mid Gulf Coast soon as my dad died 3 years ago and my Mom is now all alone.

I love cats and sunsets and vodka and hate mean people, left lane campers and most beer.

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34/M/Toronto.

Things about where I call home that I like and dislike? I try not to make those sorts of judgments about where I live, man. Every day is a gift! That's why they call 'em days! Right now I'm just scared because the numbers of people w/the plague keeps going up and up. I understand this is far from merely being a local problem but it's still plenty disturbing!!!!1!

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51/m/Winston Salem NC

Winston Salem is where RJ Reynolds tobacco and Krispy Kreme doughnuts were founded. Home of the NC School of the Arts, with a whole bunch of famous alumni. Lots of art and cultural stuff plus some pretty good restaurants and breweries. Wake Forest University.  

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37/m/St . Peters, MO. Suburb of St. Louis.

 

Been living here in the STL area for over 11 years now. The first few years, I lived in STL County, and in those few years, had one house break in, 4 car break ins and was help up at a 7-11 and robbed 100ft from my home. Me and the ex wife had enough of that shit, and moved us and the kiddo to the suburbs. Been living in the St Charles County area ever since. St Louis County leans heavily liberal and St Charles County leans heavily conservative. The divide in the Greater STL area is pretty fascinating to say the least. 
 

Never had any issues with crime these last 8 years or so until this past summer when my car was stolen out of my driveway. Was found abandoned and totaled in a derelict neighborhood in downtown St. Louis, about 30 miles away. Apparently they were rolling blunts in my car for the 2 days they had it because they had the cup holders filled with tobacco and clips from the cigarillos.


 

Im looking to move anyway. The ex wife lives in Ofallon, so I’m looking to possibly get a new place in that area. It’s 10-15 minutes further west from STL. Anything further way from STL is a good thing. Once my kid turns 18 and is off to college, I plan to move back to either Lake of the Ozarks or in a much more rural area than I am now.

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20 hours ago, Odine said:

Go on then, if you have time I'd like to hear what makes San Diego great! 

The weather. 

13 hours ago, Darth Kid said:

Hey, your cousins probably live pretty close to me. I'm up in NC SATX. With that said:

34/M/San Antonio, TX

I'm originally from Southeast Texas, but came to SA, TX after a stint on active duty where I lived in Turkey, Alaska, and Florida. I used to be a regular Nightly visitor back in high school (02'-05'ish), prior to all that adulting.

SA is a pretty nice place. It's hot, (like Houston and Southeast Texas), but without all the humidity and oil and gas fumes. It is known as "Military City, USA" which is a well-earned nickname since it's the home of US Air Force basic training as well as the Alamo and the very large Joint Base San Antonio. Being veteran-heavy, the city is a political and racial melting pot, so it makes for a nice, polite, moderate place to live. Between the military and Hispanic influences, its very family-oriented, and lacks the huge, ever-expanding, downtown area like Houston or Dallas has. The city feels more like a really big suburb than a booming metropolis. The nightlife is boring, and its a pretty sleepy town after sunset, so if you ever visit, don't expect to party too hardy. Its a nice place to visit if you just want to slow down, eat barbecue, have a beer, and relax with friends.

Probably! My aunt, uncle, and MIL all live right behind or near The Forum. The SIL and cousins are a bit more scattered. 

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15 hours ago, Spider-Man said:

Yeah, it recently froze back over too. lol

Gawd, I do not miss that. I meet my wife up there. Its 32 today in San Antonio, and she is loving it. I, on the other hand, am a creature of the sun.

You'd have to damn near put a gun to my head to get me to live up there again. Four years was too long.

  

10 hours ago, Cerina said:

Probably! My aunt, uncle, and MIL all live right behind or near The Forum. The SIL and cousins are a bit more scattered. 

Ah cool. I used to live on that side of town, over near The Forum. I live over near the 1604/281 intersection now though. Just Southeast of that, inside the loop.

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