What do you think of your community?

I live in a great small tourist community. The Lotus-Coloma river valley in the heart of the gold discovery zone that launched the California Goldrush in 1849.

Most of us are on ranch properties of 5 to 100’s of acres and yes, there is a lot of comaraderie in my community.

2 years ago we had a crazy snowstorm that knocked out power for days and snowed a lot of us in.

I was trying to get back to my house that afternoon and slid backwards down the hill on my road. Everyone was spinning out and careening around out of control. lol

It was GREAT! Some neighbors pulled out their ATC’s and big 4 wheel drive trucks and moved us all around, gave us rides back to our homes in their vehicles and one neighbor was passing out baggies of food and hot chocolate while we all waited our turn to be chauffeured back to our houses.

Absolutely my neighbors would help me and vice versa. We all have open door ( barn ) policies and my closest neighbors up the hill from me always tell me to come on over and grab a bottle of wine or a few beers out of their barn/workshop if I run low for any reason.

Living in wine country is great too…we trade a LOT of wine around here. haha

Halloween everyone lines our old bridge across the river with about 100 Jack-o-lanterns and it’s a great sight after dark.

Everyone waves at everyone while driving and you would never wait more than a few minutes for help if you’re stuck on these roads.

Country mountain folk are the BEST! :-)

When I think of ‘my community’, I think about ‘my academic environment’ or ‘my queer community’, neither of which are locatable in any specific place. I am lucky to live in New York where there are enough people you can interact with even if you can’t with some. That’s why I can’t stand small towns – everyone knows you and you know everyone and eventually you are just dealing with all the same people over and over and you can never experience a new leaf, a new chapter, if you didn’t mesh with someone. Here, sure I don’t care to be chummy with my neighbor but there are enough strangers that I know will come to my aid and I have enough friends that will help me, as well.

Okay, if you insist I answer it, I will.
I’m a part of The Intern’s community, so I have nice things to say about it as well. I’m part of a very close, small neighborhood who got together and made mediocre food during the outage. Of course, the food wasn’t what mattered. It was the feeling of togetherness.
And then there are the things that I hate, because even typing the kind of slop that I just did makes me almost as sick as the food did. The public school is full to overflowing with morons of every type. Good thing I have the select few intellectuals on my side, like our friend the intern here. (And hey, when you tackled me in the auditorium in front of everyone, it was not cool. But being publicly humiliated by you was one of the things that made that horrid school bearable.)

@Coloma I like you contry mountaineers too:)
@Simone_De_Beauvoir I wouldn’t mind living in New York. While I love my small town, New York seems close to me, though in a much larger sense.
@jellyfish3232 I’m just that nice to you Ben. You’re welcome:D

I live in a big city, like @Simone_De_Beauvoir. Only mine is about one quarter the size hers is. Here, we are a city of neighborhoods and the neighborhoods are made up of communities and the communities are made up of blocks. Many blocks have block parties during the year and everyone gets to hang out and have a good time.

My block used to block off the street a couple of times a year—Memorial Day and Labor Day, for a picnic, but we stopped doing that a few years ago. Maybe too many people were away for the holidays. We also get together when someone throws a graduation party for their kid. Now most of the kids have graduated from college and no longer live with their parents.

Now when the big snows come, and we are all out shoveling the sidewalks, that’s when the old camaraderie shows up. Another thing that brings folks together are the local restaurants and the park and crime. Meetings get held in all kinds of places discussing crime and entertainment and so on.

There are also the communities that @Simone_De_Beauvoir spoke of. The dance community, the various music communities. Political communities. And so on.

I think it’s a great town. And, for being the 6th largest town in the US, is has more of a small town flavor than I felt growing up in a town of 20K people out in the sticks. People know people here and you always run into them everywhere. That never happened to me in NYC, nor did it happen to me where I grew up. Only here.

Where I live now I have neighbors who would definitely help each other out. We call each other after bad storms, they could come stay with me if they ever needed to. We would all gladly put together food and resources if it was ever necessary. I also have a community of people who are not neighbors, they are actually part of a club I belong to, a circle of friends, who will go out of their way to help each other.

I live in an upper-middle class community where most of the people are preppy snobs who like to keep to themselves. In the event of a natural disaster, I can’t see them coming to my aid. The local government would, almost immediately, but the people who live around me? Meh.

It makes me feel like I’m living in a cemetery. All the homes are nice Mausoleums lined up in rows – but very few visits by relatives.