Maybe, but it also adds a (let's say) $20+$20 to your bill at the end of the night. For a lot of Americans that's not exactly cheap.
"If you can't afford that price for a ride, plus a $50 tip on top for the hard-working driver, you're a piece of scum and you should just stay home."
- typical liberal American
"This is the Free Market at work, and if you can't afford it, you're poor and should just stay home. Poor people are subhuman trash."
- typical conservative American
Well, idk, in my case it was really the transport. In the past I've lived in same area with my friends and we occasionally went to shop, walk together. In covid, I've moved in the opposite part of the city, with bus it'll take me 30 mins to arrive to them, with car, maybe 15-20, but taxi is expensive and I don't own a car+ the hassle to find parking. As result we met only on special occasions like bday or at some spe…
Did nothing else really changed in your or your friends' life? I could say the same about my socialising now and a decade ago. But in reality a lot of other things happened - kids, parents getting old, mortgages and housing to take care of, stable jobs with more responsibilities, more resources (both time and money) spent on healthcare... It all adds up.
No, literally nothing else changed, no kids, no other job(except me, but i would say I more time free after switch). We are about~25yo each so, yeah the distance is the only thing that changed. In the past we lived in 10 min walking distance, now 30 mins on bus that doesn't have dedicated lanes and is getting pretty full pretty often. Like we are still friends and we try to meet on some occasions, but imagine in the past- 'lets go for a walk after work'-'yeah, no prob, meet in 5 mins'. Now it's -'im so tired, i don't think i want today(20-30 mins to destination+ the same to be back home), maybe next time' just thinking about how tiring it is to spend 40 mins total on transport is already killing the will to meet
heh no, America was taught by Hollywood to be afraid of Baltimore (The Wire)
All major cities have areas and neighborhoods that are higher risk and not “safe”. You wouldn’t let your kid there, your partner or yourself go there typically.
I lived in North Philadelphia throughout college and a couple years after. It isn’t a lie to say you are operating at a different level of vigilance. Your behaviors change. So no, Hollywood didn’t tell me anything about North Philly, my experience did.
It’s quite amusing how everyone is saying US cities are safe and great like Baltimore, while they’re also saying “if you mostly stay in the gentrified or well established areas”. Is that even Baltimore then? Or a bubble within Baltimore?
Multiple bookstores in a U.S. town of 2000 people? Is it a college town?
There are a lot of small towns like that in western massachusetts, which are in proximity to the five colleges, but aren't in them. Places like Montague or Shelburne Falls have areas of density in town that you can walk around in and get to things, and then you can drive 20-30 minutes into Amherst or Northampton or another larger town, closer to the universities. I went to school out there and have friends from the s…
For school you may have language barriers, depending what language(s) your children speak. They're entitled to a place at school though. The only barrier to buying a flat or house might be slightly reduced access to loans. I found in Denmark it is easier for a Dane to get a loan for 95% of the house value, but foreigners might only get 80%. EU citizens are somewhere in the middle, depending what the banks think. Lang…
Good to know, thank you! Totally fair on language, I assumed that a person moving to a country will have to learn (or, better, already know) a language. Do kids from other countries tend to be accepted well in schools? I heard that at least in France schools can be very clique-ish and coming from the outside the kid can face significant hurdles. But I am just parroting what I heard elsewhere.
Depends on the school of course. The school of my children has plenty of foreign kids, or kids with foreign parents at least, and that's not a problem at all. But Amsterdam is a bit more cosmopolitan than most places, of course. It might be harder for the only foreign kid in a small village. Or not. It all depends.
With freedom of movement, it's just as easy to move around the EU now. But I don't have to make a trade-off between safety and nightlife. But I've got to admit that Maine looks pretty safe according to https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/charts-and-maps
Not sure if there was much need for snark, I was simply stating some positive aspects of living in the U.S. (becoming increasingly difficult) - would be nice to not have the violence piece thrown in my face. There are also plenty of cities with “culture” and low levels of gun violence here. San Diego, Denver, Portland, Austin for example of bigger cities. Some of us have family and friends here or simply can’t afford…
It's not snark. Safety is a serious issue for me when it comes to my kids. An issue that I don't have to worry about here, but I'd feel quite a bit different if we lived in an area where you have to take the possibility of school shootings into account. It's good to know that's not an issue everywhere in the US, but I honestly wouldn't know in what part of the US it's not an issue; from the outside, it seems they can happen anywhere.
> We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. That's not specific to cities. My wife grew up on a farm, where neighbours lived a hundred meters away, and her brother had an entire chunk bitten out of his leg by a neighbour's dog. I grew up in a village, and I was terrified of some of the dogs th…
Oh yeah CPS came and determined we weren’t neglecting our children when some busybody called on us. It was annoying. Then she lost her job and had to move away, which I definitely didn’t feel any sense of schadenfreude from. We ended up buying her an Apple Watch with cell service and the complaints stopped. I think us letting our daughter roam free has changed the general mood of the neighborhood and I’ve noticed far…
Access to friends is probably the biggest reason I prefer dense urban environments. There’s something magical about being able to step out your door and be within a 10-20 minute walk of close friends or family. It invites casual get togethers like Saturday afternoon coffee or an after work drink. Living an hour or two apart kills these opportunities. I recall walking through Vienna one weeknight evening and being ama…
My own data point: When I was little all my friends were in a radius of 10 minutes walking time. When I grew up but I was still living with my parents that expanded to about one hour walking or public transport, or bicycle, or car for the very few friends I had outside my city. That didn't change when I moved to my own place. Most of my friends were between 40 and 60 minutes away. The closest ones, within 5 minutes,…
I consider everything longer than 15 minutes a lot. 80 minutes away by car is enormous, that's 160 minutes to your friend and back, even 40 minutes is a lot. It just kills spontaneity and increases work. I don't want travel for 40 minutes after an exhausting day, I want to meet a friend in a 5 to 10 minutes time, 20 max, and complain about how stupid my day was while enjoying the last rays of sunshine (at least in the summer...).
In 40 minutes I could have already met a friend after 10 minutes and talked 30 minutes and start to head home again!
Not sure if there was much need for snark, I was simply stating some positive aspects of living in the U.S. (becoming increasingly difficult) - would be nice to not have the violence piece thrown in my face. There are also plenty of cities with “culture” and low levels of gun violence here. San Diego, Denver, Portland, Austin for example of bigger cities. Some of us have family and friends here or simply can’t afford…
It's not snark. Safety is a serious issue for me when it comes to my kids. An issue that I don't have to worry about here, but I'd feel quite a bit different if we lived in an area where you have to take the possibility of school shootings into account. It's good to know that's not an issue everywhere in the US, but I honestly wouldn't know in what part of the US it's not an issue; from the outside, it seems they can…
cool. just saying- consider yourself fortunate as I was born in one of the most violent cities in the world (Baltimore) to an over-bearing mother who had a very hard time with me leaving despite the riots, corruption, and nightly gunplay I could hear ring out from my row home. We are quite close but she didn't speak with me for months when I moved.
I do sympathize though. I do not have kids (yet) but our move from TN > Maine is definitely partially motivated by the fact that I said I would absolutely never raise a child in the south due to gun culture and archaic legislation in general. For example most states in the south still allow school teachers and administrators to hit children- most of this happens in Mississippi and TN, then basically other states where lots of poverty, christianity, or mormonism are.
There are a lot of small towns like that in western massachusetts, which are in proximity to the five colleges, but aren't in them. Places like Montague or Shelburne Falls have areas of density in town that you can walk around in and get to things, and then you can drive 20-30 minutes into Amherst or Northampton or another larger town, closer to the universities. I went to school out there and have friends from the s…
I don't think that's a sufficient condition. I too am from a New England town that was incorporated more than 200 years ago. But it doesn't have the density or the amenities that you're describing. (I wish that it did!)
Yes, we have more Art Museums than anything we need in our daily lives. What I like about it is the lack of access to high consumption. What is bad is that the large chain stores killed the local businesses and then realized the market is too small to really care. Jbullock35 how about some clues about your town so we can try to guess.