What is the best or worst part of where you live?

I love being in a rural county, buying fresh, local produce, being able to leave my doors unlocked, being able to have my dog come and go as she pleases.

However, it’s isolating for my girlfriend, who must depend on me or others for transportation, and I miss Manhattan, the greatest city in the world.

The BEST part of where I live is that this is the house my parents built when I was 3 years old. The circle has come fully around & now it’s our home again. This is a small town of only a little more than 400 people, so I know a lot of my fellow residents, of course. Also the town 7 miles to the south where I work & go to church, I know tons of people there, too. That part I love.

The part I hate is that there’s nothing here. We have to go to the town to the north 15 miles away to do any shopping. And then after you get there, that town lacks a lot, too. We’ve moved back up here from the Dallas area & I terribly miss the opportunities, the shopping & the restaurants there.

So there’s good & bad here. I’ve just learned to cope.

I have very poor cell phone coverage in my own home. My phone is in roaming mode most of the time when I try to call or text someone. It’s not that coverage doesn’t extend around and past my house, it’s that we’re just in some kind of dead space or zone where it doesn’t work very well. Bummer.

Columbia, MD

Best: There’s one of everything you could ever want here (restaurants, shops, vendors, ethnic cultures).
Close to both Baltimore and DC
Lots of trees, parks, natural surroundings

Worst: Too much community regulation
Taxes are astoundingly high
A lot of the houses look the same
A lot of the “natural surroundings” are man made, such as lakes
Everything closes early
There are a gazillion cops, which could be a “pro” but it’s actually excessive. I think “taxes” every time I see 8 cops tending to a broken traffic signal.

Also, more specifically, I hate our neighborhood. We’re actually in one of the not-so-nicer areas. Our neighbors to the left are completely ghetto, and you can take whatever negative connotation you will with that term.

I just bought a retirement home in a very rural locale, so I can compare that house, and where I currently live.

What I like:
Where I currently live, the traffic is noisy and quite busy.
Where I will retire, there is no traffic noise, and is quite serene.

What I don’t like:
Where I currently live, we are close to the grocer, the movies, restaurants, and hospitals.
Where I will retire, all that is at least a 25 mile drive.

It’s all a trade-off.

i live in dallas, tx
what i like:
lots to do: music, raves, parties, etc
what i hate: traffic it’s so bad…

I moved to a rural community a few years ago after being a suburban child for my entire life. I like the small-town sense of community, where I see my students and their parents outside of parent teacher conferences. People seem to really care about each other, and there’s always someone around to lend a hand.
On the other hand, people are always watching. Everyone wants to know everything about you, and it’s very difficult to avoid personal contact. Not that I’m a hermit, but there are times when you don’t want to see 20 people you know while grocery shopping. Ah well, what can you do?

I live on about 100 acres of woods, & I love it! Plus I am only a 10–15 minute drive from the grocery store. If I want other shopping I’m 30–35 miles from a mall. Don’t go there much, though.
I don’t like that there is a homeless shelter so close. The property it’s on abuts ours in the woods & we have had a lot of trouble w/trespassers. They don’t do any kind of background check, & there have been people in there with warrants out in other states, as well as the fact that the county sometimes puts people in there if the jail is full up.

@ccrow Oh, yikes! That sounds scary!

I like that it’s semi-rural. we can’t see into our neighbors’ homes, but they’re close enough if there’s an emergency we could run over there. I like the view of the trees out the front and back windows. I like that it’s usually quiet. I like that I’m close enough to a highway to access it easily, but not so close that it causes excess traffice.

I don’t like the poor cellphone coverage, the potholes we get in the winter & spring and the gas that costs 10 cents more per gallon than it does 8 miles down the road.

@ccrow – YIPE!!! That would be very scary.

The best part is a great infrastructure with safe water and food, good schools, high-tech jobs, innovation, excellent doctors, social security, free elections, pluralism, cultural activities and so forth.

Worst part, a bit too cold and too much rain from November till February.

Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

The best part: Lake Huron

The worst part: Chemical Valley stinky

I love Los Angeles: the city has great weather, cultural diversity, art, music, beaches, great food, beautiful people…

What I dislike about Los Angeles: traffic, industry people, heat waves, fires, drought, cost of living

Did I mention traffic?

The best part: Chicago is at least 200 miles away, and although there are about 400,000 people in these five cities clustered around the Mississippi River, it still has that small town feel. We have enough variety of restaurants and shopping places to keep most people happy.

The worst part: Too many big city weirdos moving here to try and force us to conform to their big city ways. Fortunately, there are no laws against declaring open season on tourists and militant vegetarians. We have a saying around here, “If you want a vegetarian salad, you’ll have to scrape the pound of ham off the salad we serve you.”

Yeah. Don’t let those homeless people have food and shelter.

The best part is it has some of the opportunities of more propserous cities but still has that midwestern feel to it. There’s places for artsy stuff, bars and clubs, ballet, concerts, etc, and my absolute favourite is the festivals – the jazz and ribs fest, the ohio state fair, the african-american festival, the asian festival, the irish festival, and it goes on and on and on.

The worst part for me, is that public transportation sucks for such a large city and since I’m physically unable to drive I don’t have anything to do a lot of times. I feel cut off from a lot of the interesting things that happen here, finding a job is much harder, and I hate being dependant on others. especially since my dad lets other people believe i don’t drive because i’m lazy and don’t want to work

The best part of where I live: almost all the trains in the city, aside from the 7 line and the various shuttles, are within 6 blocks of my home. One of the top 3 Italian restaurants and the pizza parlour considered the best in New York is within 5 blocks. The Promenade and the Bridge are right there. There is plenty of good, fresh food and shopping. It’s got old houses that have been around since the Revolutionary War, which I find very cool, as a history buff.

The worst part of where I live: at night, unless all you want to do is eat or go to a wine bar, there isn’t much to do around here. It’s a very quiet and family-oriented neighborhood. I leave this area for other neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, Carroll Gardens or Park Slope when I am looking to have fun. The most fun places around here are Floyd, which has a bocce court inside the pub, and Last Exit, which is a bit of a dive. Both these places are several blocks away and a hike from the nearest trains, so my friends never want to go to them.

The best part is that it raely rains. The worst part is that it rarely rains.

Ft. Collins, CO

Best Part: Beautiful landscape with mountains close by for snowboarding, hiking, camping, and kayaking. College town with a ton of unique restaurants and bars. Lots of people, so its always easy to find some activity going on. Local sports teams, including a few minor league hockey teams close by. 300+ days a year of sunshine.

Worst Part: Way too many hippies.

Best the city and sprawl are relatively new and modern so the roadways and highways are pretty fabulous, traffic is heaven compared to where I moved from.

Worst Mecca for strippers and Meth addicts.

New Jersy- Good part is that we don’t get hit by many natural disasters like tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. bad is our taxes, insurance are too high.

The best part about here I live, is the people, I live in a family friendly neighborhood, where everybody on my block watches out for each other.
The downside of living out in Aurora, CO is the unpredictable weather.

I live in my own version of Paradise. I have a wonderful pool in my back yard, a delightful court yard in my front yard and a new picket fence. I am only one mile from every store I could possibly want to shop at; home improvement, craft, grocery, bank, mall, veterinarian, thrift store, and on and on. The weather consists of two seasons, warmer and cooler, and I love it that way.

The only thing I don’t like is that it is nowhere near the ocean, but even that is mitigated by the fact that I am 15 minutes from Folsom Lake State Recreation Area. and 20 minutes from the American River Parkway and the Sacramento River.

Best part – surrounded by starkly beautiful scenery, virtually uninhabited bush country, waterfalls in the wet, sandy pools (some even safe to swim in, but not many) in the dry. 60,000 year old rock art. Relationships with indigenous people. Fantastic fishing, people come from all over the world to fish for the big barra. Unbelievable tracks for trail running or off road bicycling.

Worst part – beautiful beaches but water full of crocs, 250k to any kind of civilization such as a restaurant open after 6 at night, no movie theaters actually no anything, no tennis.

Solution – soon moving back to Queensland, close to Townsville after 5 years in the bush. I can’t wait, close to a vibrant art community, a community college where I can take a welding course, close to a beach (with crocs being a very rare occurrence) and a river and good fishing there too. Did I say I CAN’T WAIT!

@tinyfaery if that was directed at me, you didn’t read my post closely enough. I object to having people in the shelter who are not actually homeless, but have come here from another state in order to avoid arrest; also that the county puts people in there instead of in a cell. I object to my safety being compromised. There have been incidents here of people who were staying at the shelter trespassing, B&E, and even assaulting locals. I have no objection to the shelter being there for people who are truly in need.