The New "Tell Us About Your City" Thread

[katiuska]

Because we haven't done one in a while. and it's been brewing.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1997-2007): We moved here when my dad took a job at one of the plants. Cedar Rapids is pretty much a huge suburb with an industrial sector, having three currently operating food manufactoring plants (Quaker Oats, General Mills, and ADM). Officially calling itself the City of Five Seasons, it used to be a joke back when there were five plants that the seasons corresponded to whichever one was currently stinking up the place, because the smell really does permeate the whole area (ADM being by far the worst offender). Other than that, it's pleasant, if not very interesting.


New York, New YorK (2007-2009): Oh, New York.

The city, especially Manhattan, is full of outsiders who came to New York thinking it would be cool and exciting.

I was not one of those people. I didn't really have any dream of living there, I just ended up there in much the same way that one finds oneself in Vegas. We had a complex relationship: on the one hand, it gave me an endless string of things to be pissed off about, but on the other hand, it gave me an endless string of things to be pissed off about. It's dirty, cluttered, full of assholes, and expensive, which I think killed me more than anything--this is a place which clearly delineates between the haves and the have-nots. It's also pretentious, somehow managing to be too trendy and too backwards at the same time; it's like it's so absorbed in its own New Yorkness that it fails to notice that the world has been moving on in the meantime.

Then again, it's New York. It's got a culture you won't find anywhere else, and it was great to have everything come to you for once. Also: cheap, delicious Indian food. (As an aside: I recommend going to midtown at least once, but residents tend to avoid it if they can help it. One trip around Times Square will teach you why.) Well, whatever. Every experience is of value, and whatever I may say against New York, it is certainly an experience.


Atlanta, Georgia (2009-2010): Sadly, I've never really formed an impression of the place. Actually, I live/lived out north in the boonies, around the area Deliverance took place. Fortunately, I have yet to encounter any rapist hicks by the river banks. Most of the area has tried to overcome that image, which probably did reflect an amount of truth about what people where like there several decades ago.


Iowa City, Iowa (2010- ): And here I am, back in, Iowa, for a myriad of reasons, all embarrassing. If my 14-year-old self knew that I'd eventually live in New York, only to return to Iowa, she'd devote herself to finding out how to punch future me through time for being so lame. And it is lame. But I could do worse. Iowa City has a couple points of interest, being: A) the setting for Bloom Country, b) the origin of No Shame Theater (http://www.noshame.org/). It was one of No Shame's early members that took his Artie: The Strongest Man in the World act to The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Colorado Springs, CO: Can't say much about the "scene" as it were, but the weather was tolerable once you got used to it changing on a whim, it's got some nice scenery, and I managed to grow up without knifing anyone from boredom.

Phoenix, AZ: Hotter than hell and just as full of assholes if the papers are anything to go by. At least the campus provides a relative bastion of sanity and air conditioning.

[bluestarultor]

Weston, WI:
It's sort of small, but it's mashed together with several other municipalities, so together they make a pretty satisfying area. There's no big attractions, but we have a small art museum, a couple small water parks, UW - Marathon County (which is one of the most difficult schools in the state and EASILY the hardest community college to the point Madison takes transfers no questions asked and most students take it up), and Northcentral Technical College. You could live there pretty comfortably your whole life if you can manage to find a job at one of the hospitals or as a teacher, but sadly, jobs are pretty scarce unless you're flipping burgers, working checkout, or operating a small business.


Green Bay, WI:
It's more of a "real" city than the Wausau area, but I haven't seen much of it yet. There's Bay Beach as a small amusement park, a modest museum, the Packers if you have that kind of money, UWGB (of course), another Wisconsin Technical College of some sort, and probably some other stuff that I've never been to.

[Melfice]

Oldenzaal, Overijssel, Netherlands:

One of the few Hanseatic cities that was not located by a large body of water (be it sea or river) due to it being a subsidiary city of Deventer, Oldenzaal received it's city rights 761 years ago, in 1249. This makes Oldenzaal the 45th city in the Netherlands to receive it's full city rights. Not very impressive on it's own, what's amazing is that Oldenzaal beat Amsterdam to it by a good 51 years.

Oldenzaal isn't a very big city, housing around 31.000 people.
There's really not a lot more I could tell you.

Oh, right. Oldenzaal had the first skatepark in the Netherlands. Impressive, yeah?

[Viridis]

Lafayette, LA: Nice restaurants and festivals. College town, mostly.

Ethel, LA: A hole. If it appears on your map drive around it instead of through it.

[DarkDrgon]

Ranch Santa Margarita, CA- a little town in southern Orange County. you can see my old house on occasion if you watch those god awful housewife shows. Boring town filled with boring people, but close to the beach.

Manalapan, NJ- a suburb that's about as far from Manhattan as you can get but still reasonably commute. our claims to fame are that we are on MTV a lot, first on High School stories for a class prank, and now because It's the town that the Situation is from.

yeah, I live in boring places. Gonna be in queens next year though, so there's always that.

[Wigmund]

Fayetteville, AR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayetteville,_Arkansas) (1990-2004/2008-present): lovely town populated by academic liberals, retired hippies and spillover from the University of Arkansas. Nestled on the edge of the Boston Mountains (part of the Ozarks), the scenery is lovely - especially during fall when the leaves change color. Third largest city in the state (behind Little Rock and Fort Smith) and largest city in the Northwest Arkansas Metro Area. I've lived here since I was 6 (well, Fayetteville and one of its bedroom communities, Farmington).


Rogers, AR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers,_Arkansas) (2004-2008): Another large city in the Northwest Arkansas Metro area, lived there when I worked for JB Hunt, the trucking company, and Consumer Testing Labs doing product testing on clothing for Walmart. I hated living there: highly conservative and an obvious social segregation existed between the rich, poor whites and Hispanics living there.

[Fifthfiend]

The Bay Area in 12 words or less: San Francisco owns, Oakland is a shithole, Walnut Creek is a mall.

[katiuska]

My friend from the Bay Area lived in Oakland near the end of his stay, just so he'd be really ready to move.

Phoenix, AZ: Hotter than hell and just as full of assholes if the papers are anything to go by. At least the campus provides a relative bastion of sanity and air conditioning.

The one time I visited Phoenix, I sort of liked it against all reason. It helped that it was unseasonably cool, so it was 70 degrees and beautiful the whole time.

I'm told that it's generally like this like 2 days out of the year.

[Nique]

Portland, Oregon

Pretty much everything good about Seattle you can get a reasonable facsimile of in Portland with 45% less douchiness. Good coffee places (but still way too many Starbucks), Good and occasionally great local food, music scene, Kumuricon (http://www.kumoricon.org/)(V. Seattle’s vastly superior Sakura-Con). Portland is divided into 5 pretty diverse sectors. There’s the 4 quadrants - NW, SW, NE and SE Portland, then what used to be the city of ‘St. John’s’ is now North Portland.

North Portland is mainly residential so there’s not much to do aside from some good places to eat - tons of coffee places pop up all the time, a really good theatre pub (http://www.mcmenamins.com/226-st-johns-theater-pub-home)(part of a great local chain) or buffalo wings, or just some greasy spoons, that sort of thing. South West and South East are mainly commercial /downtown area, so there’s lots of shopping and theatres like the Schnitz. One place you need to stop by is Powell’s ‘City of Books’ Bookstore and basically you can’t not come out of there transformed into a huge book nerd.

North West Portland is the worst. Here you have the pretentiously named ‘Pearl District’. It is essentially a place for the affluent hipsters or yuppie on the go. Ok, well, actually there are some neat places there but it is very trendy and it bugs me except for we have, like, 13 gelato places within a 4 block radius.

Some stuff I like to do:

Food
Saburos (http://saburos.com/menu.html)
The Original Hot Cake House (http://portland.citysearch.com/profile/8454307/portland_or/original_hotcake_house.html)
McMenimins (http://www.mcmenamins.com/)


Arts/Theatre
Arlene Schnitz (http://pcpa.com/events/asch.php)
Portland Arts Museum (http://www.portlandartmuseum.org/)

Scienceing!
Oregon Zoo (http://www.oregonzoo.org/)
OMSI (http://www.omsi.edu/)

Scenic
Japanese gardens (http://www.japanesegarden.com/)
Rose Garden at Washington Park (http://www.washingtonparkpdx.org/)
Pittock Mansion (http://pittockmansion.org/)

People Watching
Ride the Max (http://www.trimet.org/)
Pioneer Courthouse Square (http://pioneercourthousesquare.org/)

[Fifthfiend]

Also Pete's Brass Rail and Car Wash in Danville makes the best hamburger in the world, but only on Friday/Saturday evenings.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Portland, Oregon

I've always wanted to visit the Northwest states sometime. My sister's going to college just outside Portland, so I figure I could mooch off of her if I ever go

[Nique]

Portland is really the best city for mooching off people. It's not really that expensive to do stuff here so you're really looking at a trading a minimal amount of guilt.

[katiuska]

Pretty much everything good about Seattle you can get a reasonable facsimile of in Portland with 45% less douchiness.


Yeah, that's basically what I've heard. I've only seen Seattle for all of like a day, though, so I can't say much one way or the other. I will say that I don't think I could love a city that names its stadiums Qwest and Safeco.

Portland, however, is pretty awesome.

[mauve]

!!! OMG fellow Oregonians!! :dance: I thought I was the only one!

Portland is pretty cool, from what I've seen in my few visits. I like the Portland Art Museum, but then I'm weird like that.

[Savage Thinking]

So Asheville, North Carolina is a pretty rad place. As a visual person, the sights to see, whether it be the just mountains or the Biltmore Estate for example, are always amazing and never gets old.

Also, I recently learned of a barbeque place called 12 Bones, which I hear is amazing. When I see the line of people practically wrapping around the place, I'm gonna have to take their word for it. Also the president ate there (http://ashvegas.squarespace.com/journal/2010/4/23/president-obama-and-first-lady-at-12-bones.html), which is pretty cool.

[Flarecobra]

Escondido, California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escondido,_CA) 2009-present. That Wiki article should tell all you really need to know.

Camp Pendleton, CA (Intermiddently) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Pendleton,_California) 2004-2008, left on occation for deployments.

Naples, Florida (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples,_Florida)1984-2004, place of my birth. And my old High School was on Newsweek's list of top high schools back in 2006. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barron_Collier_High_School)

[Torque]

Winnipeg: We might not kill you, but we probably will
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/10/23/manitoba-homicides.html

Winnipeg: Your car is only your car until it's someone elses.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/09/05/auto-theft.html

Winnipeg: Our police might not shit kick you nearly to death, but probably they will
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_QJ5k15I1U

Winnipeg: Where the police have the right to pull you over, and inspect your vehicle top to bottom without cause, or warrant.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/cruisers-curse-police-checks-99298379.html

Seriously... great fucking place to live.:rolleyes:

[Loyal]

Somerville, MA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerville,_MA)
It's pretty much a satellite city to the more important Boston. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston,_MA) A lot of the people who work in Boston live in Somerville due to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority connecting us. There are at least three main streets running the length of Somerville, and by my last count there are at least three McDonalds along the length of the biggest.

There is always some sort of construction going on both here and especially in Boston. Always. Expect to see at least one road resurfaced every month.

Due to the incredible density of colleges in the area, winter is always a fun time, especially for mechanics and taxi drivers, as out-of-state students unused to the cold and driving in icy conditions make a mess of their cars.

[Tev]

On the Splendorous Mediocrity of Springfield, Illinois...

Where to start? As far s state capitols go, Springfield is on the smaller side. For the most part you can get to anywhere in town from anywhere in town in under fifteen minutes if you know how to juggle the two major roads with the one highway that basically circles the city.

The city is just big enough that you can exist in your little section of town without having to venture far to find a store and a handful of eating establishments. This can create some rather disconcerting instances when your friends ask why you've never tried out that awesome Mongolian place across town that you never even really knew was there even though you've lived in this rather small city for almost a decade.

Politics technically happens here. At least this is where we keep the usually empty Governor's mansion as well as various state lawmaking buildings. For the last few state administrations we've had governors who decided living in Chicago was the way to go. Granted most if not all of them are in jail right now so.....yeah. Our current president is from Illinois. If you ask him how often he visited the capitol you'd have to remind him first that Chicago only thinks its the state capitol.

We have schools. Three public high schools and two catholic schools in town, and one "rich kid" school in what is a town, but could more generously be called "the gated suburb of Chatham." Also we house a community college as well as the University of Illinois (not to be confused with the much better funded, better known, and more accomplished Southern Illinois University).

Anyway, that's about it. It's not bad for a hick capitol in the middle of a state that can literally measure its affluence by how far north you fall on the state's latitude.

[Torque]

All of your towns suck because none of them are literally on the verge of killing you or taking your stuff at any given time.

[Tev]

All of your towns suck because none of them are literally on the verge of killing you or taking your stuff at any given time.We call that the Northeast Side in Springfield.

[Torque]

We call that the Northeast Side in Springfield.

Oh.... we have one of those too!

The area (The Winnipeg North end)has long been acknowledged as the most socially deprived part of the city of Winnipeg. Parts of the area, especially east of McPhillips Street and south of Mountain Avenue are marked by high drug use and its associated crime and gang violence. Since the 1980s, attempts to revitalize parts of the North End have been made with limited success. Serious concerns include crime, poverty and the deteriorating housing stock in the older parts of the area.

[rpgdemon]

Somerville, MA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerville,_MA)
It's pretty much a satellite city to the more important Boston. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston,_MA) A lot of the people who work in Boston live in Somerville due to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority connecting us. There are at least three main streets running the length of Somerville, and by my last count there are at least three McDonalds along the length of the biggest.

There is always some sort of construction going on both here and especially in Boston. Always. Expect to see at least one road resurfaced every month.

Due to the incredible density of colleges in the area, winter is always a fun time, especially for mechanics and taxi drivers, as out-of-state students unused to the cold and driving in icy conditions make a mess of their cars.

I saw Jonathan Coulton in your city. It was habitable.

Edit: As for where I hail from? Far far away.

[katiuska]

All of your towns suck because none of them are literally on the verge of killing you or taking your stuff at any given time.

New York, New YorK (2007-2009)

I never had anyone try to mess with me, but my sister-in-law almost got shot in the face once (the shots weren't directed at her, the guy was just firing in random directions like a jackass). It was about that point that they decided to move to a neighborhood that didn't have gunfire every night.

[Torque]

I saw Jonathan Coulton in your city. It was habitable.

Edit: As for where I hail from? Far far away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjMNNpIksaI

[Specterbane]

Like I said in another thread (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=38712)...

Cincinnati, OH get a bit of a bum rap as being the capital of boredom but there are SOME things to do. The art museum isn't too bad to check out, and they've got the 2nd oldest zoo (http://www.cincinnatizoo.org/) in the US. Aside from those things there are lots of things to do if you've got friends to hang out with and everything's about 20 minutes away from where ever you are thanks to the highways. The only other plus is that the cost of living is relatively low so it's not a bad place to live.

All of that being said it's not very interesting and the sports fans are as wishy-washy as the weather (to put it in a non-redundant manner), and I'm not going to complain at all if I have to move somewhere (anywhere) else. So there's enough to do to get by, and it's not a bad place to grow up; but at the end of the day it's still boring.

[rpgdemon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjMNNpIksaI

Way to blow my cover.

[Torque]

Way to blow my cover.

The green skin, pointy ears, and the way you always speak in backwards grammar sorta gave it away a long time ago.

[rpgdemon]

The green skin, pointy ears, and the way you always speak in backwards grammar sorta gave it away a long time ago.

Big jerk, are you!

[Darth SS]

All of your towns suck because none of them are literally on the verge of killing you or taking your stuff at any given time.

I live in Saskatoon, the city with the highest violent crime rate in Canada, as well as the second highest murder rate. You don't go to the West side.

Aside from that, I think it's a very nice place. There's lots of arts festivals going on throughout the year, and Folk Fest is a great time. The city itself is actually quite beautiful in many places, and it is in that tweener size where it has most of the amenities of a big city but it won't take two hours to drive from one side to the other. I like it.

[Torque]

the second highest murder rate.



second place is just first place loser

[POS Industries]

So Asheville, North Carolina is a pretty rad place.
And one kickass local music scene, if I do say so myself.

For instance, RBTS WIN is playing at Foursevenfour Haywood with Social Espionage next Saturday. Y'all assholes in the area should go check it out!

[pochercoaster]

Toronto can suck my non existent dick. (Well, it's the setting in Scott Pilgrim, so I guess that makes it okay.)

We have lovely things like garbage strikes that last for weeks, G20 summits, bedbug infestations and really ugly architecture. (http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1015438&postcount=16) World class city indeed.

[Liquid Snake]

I live in Washington, DC.

I guarantee you that my city is filled to the brim with more assholes than yours. After all, here we have the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and every federal agency you could possibly imagine.

On the bright side, we have some bitchin' museums.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Toronto can suck my non existent dick. (Well, it's the setting in Scott Pilgrim, so I guess that makes it okay.)

We have lovely things like garbage strikes that last for weeks, G20 summits, bedbug infestations and really ugly architecture. (http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1015438&postcount=16) World class city indeed.

Followed the link, saw the picture of the art museum on the bottom, and it looked so familiar I had to do some research. Turns out the guy responsible for that also designed the new Denver Art Museum building

http://i607.photobucket.com/albums/tt155/Harbrgrphx/DenverArtMuseum.jpg

I can feel your pain, though to be fair, it's not like the old building was much better.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/DAM_-_1971_Bldg.jpg

Man, I miss Neoclassicism. At least that shit's coherent and might still look good 50 some years from now. This stuff's the equivalent of a twenty-something party girl getting a tramp stamp without realizing how bad it's going to look when she's a grandmother of three.

[katiuska]

That reminds me, Cedar Rapids has the Tree of Five Seasons, which I swear to God looks like a steel toilet brush.

http://www.drpjlaw.com/Assets/Images/tree.jpg

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/487/around11.jpg

Incidentally, that there is Playtime Poppy, the happy little ear of corn.

I live in Washington, DC.

I guarantee you that my city is filled to the brim with more assholes than yours. After all, here we have the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and every federal agency you could possibly imagine.

On the bright side, we have some bitchin' museums.

Also: some amazingly awful commuter traffic.

It was pretty spectacular riding in the tour bus lane and passing like five miles of completely jammed freeway.

[POS Industries]

I live in Washington, DC.

I guarantee you that my city is filled to the brim with more assholes than yours.
inb4 someone from LA.

[Nikose Tyris]

This is my city; and it's fine. It's where I spend the vast majority of my time. It's not perfect; but it's mine.

[Torque]

That reminds me, Cedar Rapids has the Tree of Five Seasons, which I swear to God looks like a steel toilet brush.


Five seasons?? But... but that's like.... one more season than really exists! One more is INFINITY times bigger than zero more...
THE WORLD WILL END!

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Clearly the fifth season is Hockey Season. This is Canada after all.

[Azisien]

Canada only has two seasons: winter and construction.

[Torque]

Canada only has two seasons: winter and construction.

I'll drink to that.

[Loyal]

Apparently Boston is also the number one city for online dating. (http://local.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=25397214&gt1=24000) :wtf:

[bluestarultor]

Five seasons?? But... but that's like.... one more season than really exists! One more is INFINITY times bigger than zero more...
THE WORLD WILL END!

Technically, Arizona has 6 seasons. In no particular order: Spring, Fall, Summer, Winter, Fire, and Water.

Or at least that's a good way to remember the rainy and drought seasons. :D

[Torque]

Technically, Arizona has 6 seasons.

would you assholes stop dividing by zero!! I like the world as un-ended as possible since I currently reside within the world.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Technically, Arizona has 6 seasons. In no particular order: Spring, Fall, Summer, Winter, Fire, and Water.

Or at least that's a good way to remember the rainy and drought seasons. :D

Or as I call it, "Fuck, it's Hot" and "FUCK, it's Hot"

[katiuska]

The five seasons of Cedar Rapids are spring, summer, fall, winter, and "the time to enjoy them."

...I got nothin'.

[Hatake Kakashi]

Moses Lake? We have four seasons here, too. Warm, Burning, Cool, and Sick. In the Burning months of June through August, the temperature constantly hovers in the low 90's with spikes of up to 118 degrees. During the Sick months of November through February, temperatures in range of 10-30 degrees are common, with dips of -20. Warm and Cool are the only decent times of year here.

Also, do not drive anywhere in Moses Lake if your insurance is not paid up. Every day in Moses Lake, we have a festival called "Share The Roads With Retards Day." This is often celebrated with random drivers pulling licenses out of their cracker-jack boxes/ass cracks, and believing this makes them immediately fit to operate a motor vehicle. They will then plague the roads with sudden turns (and no signals), failure to yield right of way to traffic that has it, speeding whenever the limit is above 35 MPH, driving 15 below the limit when it's less than 35, making the noisiest tuner cars possible by either placing the exhaust parts in the wrong order or forgetting them altogether, driving the fugliest Dually pickups in existance and requiring at least four parking spaces to wedge their fat asses into. Multi-lane changes are encouraged, as well as illegal u-turns.

And then there are the commercial aspects of the town. In this town of 30,000+ people, we have.... Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has already driven Gottschalks, Food Pavilion, Market Foods, Super One, and K-Mart out of town. Granted, this is also because the managers of each of those businesses were complete imbeciles. But yes, this leaves Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, Home Depot, Lowe's Hardware, Tru Value Hardware, and Goodwill for major shopping outlets. We have one movie theater which houses 8 screens, none of which show anything other than crap at any given moment. I fault Hollywood as much as the theater for this, as Hollywood doesn't seem capable of producing much more than crap these days. Our restaurants include two Burger Kings, two McDonald's, Taco Bell, five (count 'em) Subways, Quiznos, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Papa Murphy's, Domino's, Golden Corral, the local meat-market that is Michael's On The Lake, Michael's Corner Bistro, Taco Time, J's Teriyaki, the Super China Buffet II, and numerous bars and sports bars. We once had a couple of decent places for those of us trying to find culture in this backwoods hole, but The Noon Moon (really groovy open-mic coffeehouse) and Griffin's Bakery (awesome baked goods, sandwiches, espresso, soups, and salads, all made from scratch in a relaxed internet cafe) have shut their doors.

This is the kind of place where people come to die, and I can hardly wait to escape it, hopefully in two years with my transfer to the University.

[Torque]

God bless this motherfuckin' city. I'm glad our police are busily cracking down on this
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/05/15/dustin-lafortune.html
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Man-reportedly-set-ablaze-in-back-lane-102689594.html
...instead of this:
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/winnipeg/2010/07/26/14837361.html

WARNING: THE FIRST LINK CONTAINS A PRETTY SHOCKING IMAGE. IT'S NOT NSFW IT'S JUST... REALLY BAD.

[Amake]

I did a report about my city in German once. It was titled "Umeå: For those with more time than money". To repeat myself, we have a museum of local history, a museum of energy (more like a permanent science fair), a forest full of sculptures surrounding an old mental hospital and not much else.

I guess what's cool about this place is just going around the vast, untamed wilderness and take in its quiet peaceful majesty. But you might need at least a few weeks to do that properly.

For a city of 111 000 people, of which like 60% are university students, it's really quiet. Which I like.

[Torque]

sounds quite pleasant, actually. I like the concept of a 24/7 science fair.