I live in an affluent part of South Carolina. It’s become completely overrun with Trump assholes and degenerates. I don’t know how much longer I can take it. Where can we go?
I don’t want the bitter cold of the northeast or Chicago. I don’t want coastal California, it’s insufferable. What are my options? Why can’t we just be fucking normal?!
There hasn’t been “bitter cold” in the northeast for a decade. Climate change is a bitch. We barely get snow anymore - 2015 was a banger, but it’s been dustings since.
Idk it was -15 in 2020 and 2021 and in subzero in 22 and 23 where I live in IL.
northeast
Ok so where in the northeast is not batshit? Rural PA is the same as here. Same with upstate NY or NH. NYC? No way. Maybe Delaware or something?
You really can’t get bluer than mass ri conn and vt
Southern nh and southern me are basically Boston suburbs. As you go north it gets more red. But not like sc (I have family in sc and outside of the blue cities - ya they are pretty maga stupid). They are more “leave me alone red” as opposed to “my pastor said abortion is bad and I like to make fun of the gays”
I mean there’s maga idiots everywhere-but honestly things might even tip a little too blue in southern New England.
And education is pretty good too.
Can’t help but think you’re overlooking Cleveland. Where we have billboards that have eyebrows. You KNOW what he does! We have romanburger FEED THE HUNGER!!! We’ll talk about how Melt and Barrio lost their way, and how the George family are pieces of shit. Mark from Norton furnature is here for you! Seriously! Now, if you can’t get credit here, you can’t get credit anywhere! Now enjoy this unrequested acid trip, as shit stops making sense, and Gumby chases a mad scientist with scissors through a missmash of full size random characters that sometimes hang your coat for you, and sometimes run you out the store chasing you with hedgeclippers. Where we used to all be in on the joke of the Cleveland tourism videos, but now loathe them as they’ve been taken over by outsiders as a means to mock us.
We also race hot dogs at the baseball stadium, and you can pick your favorite based on condiment. My pick is ketchup, because he’s awesome. Kids love mustard because he “plays by the ruuuules”, and nobody picks onion, because…well, she knows what she did. She’s a disgrace to the city, and the less spoken about the great hobo vehicular manslaughter of '88 said the better.
And so now, I can put either an Indians hat on your head, or a Guardians hat on your head. Seeing as you have no personal emotional ties to the 1995, 1997, and to a smaller extent 2016 Indians, I assume you have no personal attatchment to chief wahoo, so it’s perfectly fine to wear the Guardians stuff. Just don’t be surprised that people 40+ will still wear the old chief wahoo gear. It’s not a sign of racism to us. It’s a tribute to the days of Jim Thome, and Manny Rameriez, and Carlos Baerga, and Kenny Lofton, and Albert Belle, and (as much as it sucks to know how he turned out) Omar Vizquel. We’ll still shit on Jośe Mesa, but really it wasn’t as much his fault as people like to say. Now, regarding Slider, we don’t know what the hell he is either. No one does. It’s best not to think about it. It’s also best not to think about the time Slider was dancing on top of the dugout, and slid knees first off the side and broke his leg. I say it’s best not to think about because it’s really funny, and you’ll laugh for too long of a time.
We also have Cleveland signs, all over the city. By this, I mean just statue like letters, all in white, that are styled the same way, and they say “Cleveland”. Just in case you forget where you are.
Then there’s Big Chuck, and Little Jon. No, not the rapper, but he does have as much bling as a rapper. He own a jewelry shop, but also, he’s like 4’5. Despite his name, he’s not really known for having prostitutes.
And people will come up to you on the street, and start talking to you. You’ve never met these people, but they’ll come up to you like “Hey man, you see the game last night? Shiiiiit, Rameriez knocked out Tim Andersons punk ass!” while you’re like “Uhhhhhh, sure. I’m just trying to carry this refridgerator home.” And then he’ll offer to help. You think I’m joking, but I’m using this as a real life example of what happened to me.
And our weather can best be described as “FUCK YOU!!!”. Last week it was roughly 100 degrees, and the past few days it’s been in the 70s. We havent had much snow since covid. Except for that one week last year near christmas where it said “FUCK YOU! NEGATIVE 20 DEGREES AND 3 FEET OF SNOW OVERNIGHT!!!” and we haven’t seen snow since.
So come to Cleveland. We have beer.
That was a wild ride! I used to stay up with my Dad and watch Big Chuck and Little John, and definitely heard Mark’s voice when I read that bit.
You’ve sold me
Philly suburbs!
Come to Georgia. It’s close. We’re a swing state now. We could use your vote.
Georgia keeps impressing me with how much green tech (solar, batteries, etc) are being built out of there too!
Southern Florida? Like the man said: Florida: the more North you go, the more South it gets. Orlando seems mostly OK. Big city, opportunities, and there’s a NASA space center and launch facility not too far.
My mom lives there, and that’s about the limit of my knowledge. I will personally never again willingly live south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Oh, I hear that if you stay out of the little handle at the bottom, Missouri is nice. A friend from there once told me that if they’d cut off that handle and give it to Arkansas, it’d raise the average IQ of both states. Never been there, myself.
Lots of places in Oregon and Washington are great; large swaths are not, but if you’re not prone to SAD, there are great towns in the Willamette Valley: Corvallis, Eugene, and Ashville down on the California border. Also, California is enormous. N California is very different from S California, and the coast is enormously different from the interior. It’s a huge state, and painting it with a single brush is like saying Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania are all the same. It’s seriously about the same area as all those put together, lengthwise, at least. The greater LA/San Diego area alone is almost as big as your entire state. But the Pacific Northeast is wet if you live in the Valley, and there isn’t much in the way of big cities east of the Cascades.
How about Boise, ID? Good size college city, lots of microbreweries, lots of outdoor recreation, pretty great weather if you like hot, but you get snow in the winter, too. Plus nearly half the state is national park; fantastic backpacking.
Most of these places I mentioned specifically lean liberal, although when you venture into rural areas it gets red pretty quickly, like anywhere. An exception is Orange County in CA, which is full of really crazy red-hatters. But it sound like you’ve already ruled out at least part of CA, and “insufferable” makes me think you’re thinking specifically of S Cal.
Eugene is, or used to be, fantastic. Extremely liberal, and not trust-fund hippie style. Decent sized to be entertaining. You just have to put up with the weather and hippies, or whatever hippies have mutated into with successive generations. Pot’s legal in OR, too, if that’s your bag.
Bend, OR is one of the best places in the planet if you’re sporty. It’s high desert, but smack up against the mountains. In the summer, people rock climb and bike. In the winter, they ski Mt Bachelor. There’s fishing and camping, and at one point it had more restaurants per capita than any other city in the US. There’s no humidity. At all. Very pretty town. A 4 hour drive north, and you’re in Portland, OR, which isn’t what it used to be and has been having problems, but is still a large metro area with lots to do and a fantastic science center. 2 hrs West through the mountains is Salem, the capital, which frankly sucks; or or 3+ hours SW is the aforementioned Eugene. A couple hours south is Crater Lake. A couple three more hours and you’re in the N California Redwood forest. Oh, and if you do speed through So-Lame (Salem), another 1.5 hours and you’re on the Oregon coast, so 3-4 hours from Bend to the coast, mostly through a fantastic, amazing mountain range (and then the Valley and then the smaller coastal range).
If you want to stay on the E coast, I recommend the greater Philadelphia area. From there, NYC is a 3hr drive. The Jersey shore is a 3 hr drive. Washington DC is a 3 hr drive. Gettysburg is a 3 hr drive. Williamsburg, VA - possibly my favorite place in the US - is a 4-ish hour drive (depending on DC traffic). Plus, you can get to almost any of the coast cities from Philly by train, if you’re willing to sacrifice a couple more hours. Pennsylvania wasn’t my favorite place to live, but if you can stand living in S Carolina I’m sure it’d be fine for you.
Honestly, you might consider Minneapolis. It does get cold in the winter (-50F is the coldest I’ve experienced), but The Cities are fantastic, full of Art Deco architecture, and end-summer temps can hit the 100’s. In September, any of the literally over 10,000 lakes are bath-water warm. And we don’t have copperheads. The great lakes are close; we’re practically in the center of the country, so flying anywhere in the continental US is a 4-hour flight or less. The Cities are very progressive - again, you drive an hour outside and it’s Trump signs everywhere - par for the course - but within The Cities it’s quite nice. And the bike paths are incredible; miles and miles, and much of it completely off-road - at some point they took all the old industry rail lines and turned them into maintained bike and foot paths. It’s really quite remarkable. And the metro system isn’t half bad, for a US city. The humidity gets oppressive, but, again, you’re surviving S Carolina so I don’t think that’d be a problem for you.
A classic!
“insufferable” makes me think you’re thinking specifically of S Cal.
Ohhhhh okay, thanks makes sense then. Southern… yeah I get that perception.
Lotta coast in California, nothing insufferable about Mendocino or Santa Cruz etc. (though can complain about anything and some will be very valid)
Come to Finland. I have absolutely zero clue about what party my neighbours vote. Hell, I don’t even know who my friends of parents vote.
I would love to move to Finland.
I genuinely want to move there if trump wins. Could someone who only speaks english function there?
Most Finns speak english pretty well, especially ones that are under 40 years old. However finding a job as someone not speaking Finnish can be a struggle. Fluent english skills alone aren’t something most companies would see as a big advantage as most people fresh out of school can pretty much do that as well. Finnish is a difficult language to learn but you don’t need to be perfect at it either. A foreigner willing to even try and learn the language is hugely appreciated. My russian neighbour knows like 30 words but that’s enough to get thru most conversations one needs to have with a neighbour.
Hello neighbor! NC will welcome you. It’s purple here. Rural areas are not so great but closer to the bigger cities (Charlotte, Raleigh, Asheville, Greensboro/Winston) are nice.
Sorry about your sanity.
Came here to say Asheville as well
I’m not from the US, so I don’t know how accurate this is, and I also don’t know if this thing has ever been updated (I found it a long time ago), but there’s this tool that might help with deciding: https://www.whereshouldilive.co/
That seems like an overly tedious way of entering your preferences. Why can’t I just rank a handful of factors (cheap housing, beaches, climate, politics, diversity) and give them some weight?
You could even make the ranking of the factors in the current style (“snowy winters are [much] more important than beaches”). That would reduce the cognitive load of comparing 3 vs 3 properties many times in a row.
You can do just that. Before you begin the quiz, there’s a link to skip the quiz and directly enter your preferences.
Amazing, I’ve missed that 🤦
Apparently I should live in Denver - no idea if that’s actually good though.
What I need is one of these for places worldwide…
It said I should live in San Francisco which is interesting because I already do live there.
Well, should you live there?
I wish there were more cities in America with public transit and lots of bars. Or else I would move.
NYC public transit and nightlife is amazing. It’s pretty dirty once you leave the financial district though. Unfortunately I’ve heard that SF is pretty dirty these days too. Is that true? It used to be my most favorite city in the world, but I haven’t been back in 15+ years.
I am both surprised and not that I got Denver, CO. I’ve been told before by someone that they initially thought I was from there the first time we met.
I got New York, but I just moved out of New York. Was born and raised there, but I don’t think I’m going back.
I’ve got Washington, DC.
45 minutes outside of Portland, OR in any direction will get you somewhere just as rural as the place you left in SC, only with better weather and sane laws.
Accurate, but be careful because once you go 2+ hours outside of Portland, OR you will likely find yourself once again among cognitively challenged folks…
Heck, 10 minutes past Portland city limits and it’s Dodge Rams and Trump flags.
Definitely don’t keep going into Idaho
That’s Greater Idaho
If you wany a rural setting you’re probably fucked.
If you’re looking for a SC kind of ‘city’ I would suggest perhaps Colorado, or something like Bend Oregon, or Spokane Washington. More isolated cities without large populations and also surrounded by that rural character.
Colorado is great, just don’t move anywhere near Colorado Springs unless you wanna help turn it purple. The city is a Republican enclave full of defense contractors and wrapped around the Air Force Academy and a Space Force base.
Portland or Seattle would for those criteria well as long as you don’t mind rain. Both very progressive cities, weather is generally mild (rarely above 85, rarely below 30, usually less than 2 weeks a year with snow).
Was going to suggest this. Portland is rough to move to right now, it’s very popular, so costs have been climbing pretty fast. But there are some decent suburbs, Milwaukie, Tigard, Beaverton, Vancouver.
Costs is the key thing. People know it’s nice, so people move here, and costs go up. Expect 2000/month rents, and that’s the low side in some areas
And though it’s nice, we still have our Trump bubbles around town, and then pretty much everything outside of the metro area.
Also all the homeless camps everywhere.
I was just thinking yesterday how the rest of the country’s conservatives look at Seattle as a burning liberal hellscape, but we actually have a lot of conservatives here. What do the conservatives here think when fox news says that capital hill is still under riots?
If options were no object, Pacific Northwest is beautiful and temperate
SC doesn’t have any blue bubbles? I’m in Texas and i only know about 5 people that i think are probably trumpsters.
Closest I have heard of is Greenville, and its surrounding area is definitely red.
This NBC link on the 2020 presidential election is somewhat surprising, though. Maybe the US Senate results, as they narrow that potential blue bubble down to either Richland county or tiny Allendale.
Only blue bubble I know of is Charleston? But I promise you the white people there aren’t blue voters.
Durham or chapel Hill? We got lots of libs over here.
Atlanta, Denver, somewhere in Virginia, Maryland, or DC, or possibly Ohio or Pennsylvania. There’s places like Austin and some places in Florida that might have cool people, but the state government is trash.
I saw Greenville recommended, and this is anecdotal, but last time I was there visiting friends, we (visibly queer) got followed around by this crazy guy with a metal pipe making all kinds of death threats. I love my friends but that sealed the deal for me on not wanting to live there. There are some neat places there ngl, the sex themed desert restaurant was a fun place for a queerplatonic hangout, but in general it’s not exactly going to be a refuge from Trump supporters.
Speaking of Virginia, stay in the north half. Down here in the southern part is maga fucks as far as the eye can see.
One down the road just put up a huge Confederate flag and two large trump flags. Instead of fixing their collapsing roof. Priorities I guess…
I wouldn’t recommend any place that votes red, even if you live in a blue city, because the state’s laws still apply to blue cities and sometimes are even made specifically to make blue cities worse
Pacific Northwest
There are a number of blue cities in the Midwest. What’s the lowest temp you want? I live in Lincoln, Nebraska and it’s pretty great: nice weather most of the year, low cost of living, blue city, tons of parks. Only downside is dealing with red state bullshit from the state government.
Lincoln’s nice though I have found Omaha a little more affordable, same great purple people, same crappy state government
Omaha is a lot less left-leaning in my experience. It’s very purple. Lincoln is solidly blue.
I just recently purchased a house in Lincoln. Just quickly looking on Zillow for Omaha and home prices look to be very similar to what I was seeing here in Lincoln. Property taxes in Omaha are also a fair bit higher than Lincoln.
There’s other stuff too, like lower crime rate in Lincoln, better/more parks, LPS being generally a lot better than OPS, etc.
I guess it ultimately depends on what you’re after. If you want something more big city, then Omaha obviously has Lincoln beat. But for a more relaxed pace of life and for raising a family, Lincoln is where it’s at.
