Ask HN: What sucks about where you live?
1) Home
- Apartments are expensive. Can get 4x more space in Chicago for same price.
- Difficult to shop for home. Wanted a desk for my bedroom. None of the stores in the city, included Target, offered reasonable-priced desks that could fit. Had to buy online, which came with own issues.
2) Services
- Services are expensive. Want to get your hair dyed blond from someone you saw on Instagram? It's $600 and they ruin your hair.
3) Food
- Groceries are expensive and inconvenient. Get delivery or Whole Foods and pay 30-70% over Trader Joe's price. Or you need to walk/Uber to Trader Joe's, wait in line, then walk/Uber back. Local bodegas? Usually bad quality and high prices (eg watermelon is $25).
- Restaurants are expensive. Entree's in Manhattan are usually $25-35.
- Food isn't uniquely great. I recently went to a well-rated David Chang restaurant in Chelsea. Meh.
- Grocery delivery is usually done by foot. Sometimes this is great, sometimes it leads to food being delivered hours late, warm, and gross. This happens across platforms.
4) Transportation
- Can't have a car in Manhattan. Parking is $600/month in my building. Btw, the doorman gets 50%, so $300/month (yay!).
- Car rentals are quite expensive in the city. Want to rent a van to go camping? That's even worse.
- Uber and Lyft is extremely slow in the city. I generally prefer taxi's since drivers understand how to get around faster. They're also priced competitively.
5) Airport
- Traffic between airports is quite bad. Usually about an hour. Makes me jealous of the 20 min SFO commute.
6) Healthcare
- Want to book a doctor or therapist? Go to Zocdoc, enter your insurance, try to book - they call you in a day saying they're booked or don't take your insurance. Great healthcare providers are tough to find.
131 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadThat's why I moved to Hawaii and never looked back. Working remotely is a lot of fun, and is just healthier, both environment-wise and mentally.
I work from Hawaii remotely too. Downsides to here are entertainment and food. Flying back to LA periodically is helpful for that.
https://www.facebook.com/wetwarewednesday
Event details are usually posted here [1], along with any other tech related events going on in the islands.
[1] - http://www.techhui.com
I definitely think NYC is a great place to visit, but I could never see myself living there.
I love the public transport system but hate so many other aspects of life there.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that about NYC from a visitor, I could afford to buy a place here :)
Seriously though, why do people only seem to say this about NYC? Does anyone say they enjoyed visiting Dallas but couldn’t see themselves living there?
The same thing I like about the city, is the same thing I hate about the city, if that makes sense. Every time you step out the door, it's like an all day adventure. I'm not a very fit person, I don't like working out. So by the end of the day seeing the sights you are EXHAUSTED. Obviously if I lived there, you would not be in tourist mode seeing things daily and traveling to all the boroughs, but being active is very much a way of life there. I don't recall seeing too many fat New Yorkers. Perhaps because they are walking everywhere.
I want to have my cake and eat it too. Here I have the choice of getting in a car, the feeling of alot of space around me, but wish some areas were served better by public transport for those times that I may need it.
Haven't done that in years. There are like 8 places that deliver groceries. I use Amazon Fresh.
So by the end of the day seeing the sights you are EXHAUSTED. As you said, irrelevant.
I don't recall seeing too many fat New Yorkers. Perhaps because they are walking everywhere.
Well...you're not wrong about this, but it's not a burden in daily life. It doesn't feel like you're working out all the time or something. It just feels like you're effortlessly about 20% lighter than the rest of America.
Have you found that to not be the case?
From my 3 years living there I'd say this is spot on. It's pretty bi-modal though, people tend to love it or get completely fed up within a couple years. The key is being able to hop on a plane and go somewhere 2-3 times a year. If you can't afford that it gets miserable.
2) Yes, these things are more expensive, but rent is cheaper for the same size apartment. In our case it was a lot cheaper. As a programmer though, you're in the top 5% anyway, it's all affordable.
3) You treat certain areas as native reservations, because that's what they essentially are. I did hear stories about obnoxious tourists getting a brick in their windshield. Personally, never had a problem with any of the natives, they were all nice to me. Though I do have an accent, maybe it helped.
4) No island madness for me, I love it. Best windsurfing in the world. Cleanest air in the world (besides maybe the polar caps). Cleanest water in the world. Cleanest beaches in the world. Amazing nature, lots of wildlife. No dangerous / poisonous animals or snakes in the jungle. Great climate, and you do get colder winters.
Learning from life with each passing day. Thank God for sapience.
1) Housing. It's definitely not as bad as other "world class" cities, but it's bad enough that multiple parents are having to help their children buy homes.
2) Opportunity is too good. "Why not move?", you may ask. Well, there's only so many cities in Canada that are on the scale of Toronto for opportunities. Vancouver is one, but it's even more costly. Other cities just don't come close for job opportunities.
3) Our new Premier is a dip shit and actively ruining our province.
4) Access to outdoor amenities isn't so hot. There's some things, but you really have to drive 3-4 hours for the great stuff.
5) Transit is painfully underfunded. We need more of everything, and we need it 10 years ago.
6) City planning seems totally absent. We have 100k people moving here year over year. Entire new neighbourhoods are popping up almost over night, but there's zero planning in place. A prime example is Liberty Village. Getting in out is a nightmare. There are families growing up here without a new school to be found. There are no parks either.
I'm sure there's more. These are the first that come to mind.
- getting in, getting out, and how much farther "out," means. (sprawl)
- post-globalization: chains and franchise businesses make most of it like being stranded in an airport. There are a lot of great niches, but they are rarer and further afield in the sprawl.
- petty crime: bike theft and car break-ins are normal to the point of going unreported.
- street parking: the city is predatory with parking tickets. Mayor shifted enforcement to maintain traffic flow, which was right, but council is addicted to fines.
- local media: they just aren't very good. Its like nobody's asked if newspapers are dying because they are just bad.
- commitment to park maintenance: garbage is common.
- politics: polarized, mainly due to the quality of discourse taught in institutions.
- lots of crappy art: it's a bit of a cringe fest.
Still 10/10 though!
My only nitpick is the quality of career opportunities though I see a lot of new companies coming through like Message Bird, DAZN.
Any other promising opportunities that you are aware of?
Since DFW is so spread out, many suburbs don't have public transportation or limited transportation. I cannot take a bus door to door to my office. I would have to drive to a "park and ride" location to begin my commute. There are no bus stops/lines near my home.
I suppose this would be a welcome change for someone living in NYC. Everywhere takes 15-30 minutes to get to. We don't measure distance in miles, everything is measured in how long it takes to get there. As an example, you can drive for 12 HOURS(!!) and still be in Texas.
Weather:
It's HOT in the Summer. Extremely hot. I'm used to it by now though and it does not bother me.
I am struggling to find other things to complain about.. I like it here but have lived here for a long time and crave change. I want to move to Southern California but know that I would be taking on state income taxes (Texas doesn't have any) and more expensive housing. Why do that to myself..?
Compared to my ~$4000 tax bill on my $250,000 house.
You can dispute the bill and apply for exemptions that are applicable to you, but it doesn't help much.
Dallas is a city of suburbs, sprawl, and strip malls. Looking for an artisan? That'll be 30 minutes driving please. Driving everywhere means people don't have places to walk. And when you do walk, you're walking amongst dangerous, loud, and smoggy traffic.
There's a race for larger and larger homes in Dallas. Those homes take more energy to cool and heat as the seasons shift, and the larger footprint means the sprawl accelerates.
What do people do with the larger homes? They get lonely in them.
Depending upon your outlook, this can also be seen as a positive as the maintainability of very-infrequently-used public transportation in very spread out suburbs can have much higher cost than benefit as opposed to the inner cities. If you crave culture, it's not for you, but if you crave peace and quiet you will be happy (outside of the city of course).
> I am struggling to find other things to complain about...
Liquor laws, bar laws, and gambling laws are some. But in the scheme of things, yes, very few things to complain about.
- Traffic is terrible, combined with subpar public transit compared to north-eastern cities.
- housing is far more expensive than it's worth, if you don't want to spend upwards of 500k-1m your commute will be at least an hour.
- Culture is lacking. Fewer good music and performance acts than in the NorthEast, or even what I saw when I was in colorado. Less alt scenes than I was used to (unless you're in a select handful of very strongly represented subcultures)
- Strong cultural/personality friction for someone who grew up in Philadelphia. Things that are acceptable/expected here are unacceptable there, and visa versa. (E.g. talking to someone you don't know in a supermarket, driving habits)
- COL in general seems pricy (e.g. 20$ work lunches considered "normal" and 6$ beers at restaraunts) but that could very well just be inflation since I left the east.
To avoid sounding 200% a pessimist, I would be remiss to say that what I _do_ get is 2000% more nature than I ever got back east. The longer I've lived here the more I've questioned whether the tradeoff is worth it, but thus far it's kept me going. Great skiing too, if you go north a bit, comparable with vermont more or less.
Driving comes in many forms, but some examples are: You'll regularly have people sitting in the middle lane of a highway _stopped_ waiting to merge into a slowly moving merge lane. Back east you'd have likely been rear ended by an 18 wheeler if you tried that. (same for merging onto a highway). Hard-stopping at yellows is something else I've had to be aware of out here.
You might have first experienced this in the Seattle area, but it is by no means unique geographically. This kind of personality that wants to be offended by everything and everyone is proliferating everywhere.
>if someone talked to me back east I'd probably give them a funny look, a very terse answer, and try to end the conversation ASAP
This sounds a lot like the Seattle Freeze, which has been a long-standing reality. I guess I'm (pleasantly) surprised by your approach of smiling more and seeking to talk to people. Keep it up, it's something we've needed in Seattle for a long time.
As Microsoft / Adobe / whoever else was here in the 80's and 90s money rolled in, Seattle started a cultural shift. I went away to the midwest for college between 1996-2000 and never quite adapted to the shifts. Today I'm there a week out of the month or so and I don't even recognize it; it's not the city I grew up in, in any form.
The weather. We get everything from -30 degree weather and raging snowstorms in the winter to unbearably humid 100+ degree weather in the summer.
Apart from that I don't have any serious complaints. And even though I complain about the weather it probably helps keep the cost of living down. Especially once you get to the suburbs (or even the outskirts of Minneapolis proper) housing is shockingly affordable for an urban area on the scale of the Twin Cities.
Nobody has an easy time looking for good healthcare in the US. Call your insurance provider and ask for doctors on your plan, and ask people who live nearby.
Why in the world would you get your hair dyed by an Instagram celebrity? I wouldn't hire Jared Leto to cut my hair just because his looks nice. If you mean a stylist you saw on Instagram, you probably want to read reviews or get references from a stylist if they're going to charge that much. It's also not difficult to take a train to a borough for cheaper, quality services.
Manhattan sucks if you have unrealistic expectations about living there. Downvote me for negativity if you want, but your list seems like entitled whining, and this is honestly ridiculous.
On the other hand, what I would have said sucks about Manhattan are the politics and corruption that stifles the ability for poor people to live there. What sucks are actual food deserts. What sucks is the low-level stop-and-frisk that continues to discriminate against people of color. And, on the lower end of complaints, the deteriorating subway system that still works, but not nearly as well as it used to.
His post (and this thread) is a good resource for weighing the pros and cons of moving to any city. Many people move to NYC with ridiculous expectations of living their dream and become despondent when they realize the subways smell like urine and the people can be as cold as the weather.
Most of the people in NYC I've come across have been fairly nice or neutral, although that could be entirely dependent on the neighborhood. Having said that, just the other day we saw a guy in a taxi get out and yell at a student struggling to get onto a special education yellow school bus. That was pretty heartless.
NYC isn’t easy but it’s not anywhere close to as bad as OP is making it out to be.
This entire post is nothing more than a chance for OP to bitch about his frustrations with NYC. And I get it, I really, really do. But his complaints are overblown.
The very fact that his building has a garage and a doorman is a good indication that his experience is not representative of the entire NYC experience, and that he’s probably trying to live a lifestyle that just isn’t compatible with NYC and he’d probably be happier elsewhere. This city isn’t for everyone.
People drive extremely bad. Like when I say bad, I'm not talking about US-level bad. It's universally bad bad. I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and people drive there better. As a reference, I lived half a decade in the Bay Area, and compared to Bostonites, people there are driving experts. But what's so bad about people's driving?
They're fast all the fucking time, even in streets they're supposed to go 20, people try 30-40 if they're alone. Insanely dangerous.
They completely disregard bikers. They try to force pass you all the time, if they can't, they honk. People yell at bikers. The fact that biking is very popular in Boston doesn't help.... Very dangerous.
People disregard crosswalks, I can never reliably get cars stop on crosswalks without waiting a few minutes so that traffic slows down and then someone finally decides to stop for me.
Also, I'm a biker, I don't drive (I don't even have a drivers license in the US, I hate driving, but I know how to drive and have drivers license in other countries), if it matters.
No, it is not a different topic. Please explain. I biked in Berkeley and SF for ~5 years and never had a single problem. I bike Central Square to Kendall Square every day now and can't bike without feeling I'm actively being attempted to get killed. Nobody respects bike lanes here, and if I ever have to use normal car lane (because there is an asshole in the bike lane) people start yelling at me, honking at me, or try to pass me very fast. And this is Cambridge, I can't even begin with Boston where there are no bike lanes; biking in downtown/Fenway/Beacon Hill feels like running in a mine field.
I've biked in a lot of places in the world: Paris, Koln, Berlin, Istanbul, the Bay Area etc... and never felt as unsafe as I feel in Boston.
There is hardly anything that really bothers me, the streets and walkways are sometimes dirty and of course everything is kinda crowded all the time, but hey, that's a property every city has.
- A lot of weird and bizarre people on the streets (talking with themselves, bad hygiene etc.)
- Not much respect for old people and pregnant women in public transport (young people will block only elevator, most of the time nobody will offer you seat etc.)
Still there are many more other things which make living in Vienna quite good experience.
2. Traffic (pretty terrible, some areas rank worse than part of notoriously bad cities like NYC).
3. Weather - really a double-edged sword. We get 4 seasons, which is nice. But, summer can be pretty miserable (very humid). And winter is cold, but not cold enough for lots of snow (lots of icy mix instead).
But, really, we're an hour from the mountains, three hours from the beach, and employment is pretty good. So, I can't really complain.
Public transport: shockingly bad, both expensive and time consuming, our city is 5 towns, all of which link through one meaning any journey requires 2 buses and usually an hour or more all to travel around 4 miles. there is no tube/tram or other option
Jobs: there just arent any
General life: most major stores have given up on the city, the high streets are becoming increasingly filled with empty shops that serve the sole purpose of housing the staggering number of monkey dust addicts living in the doorways
this city is dying and at this point there is little that could be done to save it, we are the Detroit of the UK, once the centre of industry in the UK, manufacturing was revolutionised here, the place was so important its the only place in the UK that is a city without a cathedral (generally a city has to have a cathedral to be considered a city but it was given special status due to its industrial significance)
Stafford isn't the best place in the world, but I regret that decision so badly, moved to Brum recently and I couldn't be happier. Everyone here complains about it but I'm really enjoying not having to deal with Hanley or Shelton on the regular, still got friends up there so I'll go and visit occasionally but it's a horrible place to live in my experience.
Used to live in Hanley, just opposite the Emma Bridgewater place.
- Low/negative growth
- Massive lack of talent/quality education
- Free healthcare = Long waiting lists = Losing family members for totally curable diseases
- Everything is overly regulated, lawyer bills piling up
- Traffic in Copenhagen is a nightmare
- The hightaxes means high wages = expensive products (+42% EU average)
- Government fees on everything. My electricity bill: Usage: 800kr, after taxes 4.500kr. Gas, Usage 10L @ 5DKK/L = after Taxes 100kr. Cars are 150% taxed, car at 100k = 250k selling price, etc etc. Fun fact: We have a tax on air if, and only if, you blow it into ice cream.
Can you please elaborate more about that particular point?
From my own research, it seems that most (if not all countries) with socialized healthcare have it worse than the US or other countries that supposedly have the wors because healthcare is not affordable and/or provided by the government.
The waiting times in DK were at one point so bad that it was mandated by law, that certain timeframes for treatment must be respected, but this is rarely possible. I had one family member diagnosed with cancer i november, treatment started in february, death was in september. Another just last week, was hit by a heart attack, something blocking the arteries. She received some pills/nitro and was told she needed a scan of the heart in order to fix the problem, and that she should come back in a month or so. We're hoping she'll make it that far.
I can't say how much worse this is than in the US, but it seems to me that the problems the US face in terms of steep pricing are also the result of government regulation.
Couldn’t agree more on health care long waiting list mostly due to limited health care professionals.
- Entertainment - not much to do. There isn't a 'young urban professional' vibe that many cities have. No pro sports teams, etc.
- Jobs. Healthcare is the biggest employer, there's not a lot in tech. What does exist is mainly in the Windows world, which is not helpful for a linux guy. Lastly, the wages aren't good. I'm lucky to work remotely for a coastal company, but realize I'm a hostage of sorts as I won't be able to find similar work nearby.
- Weather. There's not much of a spring or fall anymore. It seems to go from freezing to scorching and back.
- Allergies. We are consistently ranked in the top 3 for allergies, and mine are terrible.
All in all, housing is cheap, people are nice, and there's some charm to the city. That said, I plan to finally leave next year for somewhere with better weather and job prospects.
1. Homes - Many apartment buildings are 75-100 years old which comes with a whole slew of issues - Buying a condo or apartment in the city is difficult due to Illinois taxes and the states shit financial situation
2. Outdoors - Chicago has a fantastic lake front and some public parks that are nice but there is little to no, "outdoory" things to do in the city or even near by outside the city. The state is flat so there's no elevation hiking to do. There's no real forests. It's prairie land. Frustrating if you like the out doors
- It's easy to get into a routine that is comfortable in Chicago and they have that be drastically altered when the weather changes. This happens in a lot of cities but Chicago it can change your whole life due to the cold and things being less walk able when it's freezing outside.
3. The Cubs - Chicagoians love sports. Cubs fans tend to be the worst of the fans in the city. If you happen to forget the cubs are playing and have to go through Wriggly on a game day you're in for a bad time. Need to use the red line on game day? Good luck.
Other than that Chicago is incredible. More people should move here. If it wasnt for the lack of mountains I'd probably never leave. Can someone tell me what sucks about Denver before I pack up and move?
Train transportation is directed at getting you into the loop, and not so great if you want to traverse to other parts of the city. Want to go from Pilsen to Lincoln Park? You'll probably drive. Pilsen to Wicker Park? I doubt you are going to take the bus, so you'll drive there too.
The advantage of it being flat is that you can cycle to those places, but that option doesn't work 4-5 months out of the year.
- Large and growing tech community. Every year, I see job postings from new companies in the area. Google, FB, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft all have sattelite offices. Plenty of options to choose from if you're in development, IT, finance, etc. Lots of non-profit organizations as well. Good universities in Boulder, Denver, Golden, Fort Collins.
- Cost of living was certainly higher than my hometown, but much more reasonable than many coastal cities. Not sure how it compares to Chicago specifically. Housing and rents have been rising rapidly over the past few years. I've seen two bedroom appartments listed for around $1600 - $2200, but that's still a fraction of what we would have been paying in the bay area.
- Purple state, if the local politics matter to you. Blue in Denver/Boulder, red in Colorado Springs, more or less purple in the suburbs. There's a pretty broad spectrum of people to connect with. There have been quite a few measures on our state ballot that passed that I've been happy with.
- Traffic on I-25 and I-70 sucks during rush hour. It's a high growth area, so it seems to get worse every year. It's no worse than any other major metro area that I've visited though. Population density is quite low, so you often end up driving longer distances but with less congestion than you would have in many cities.
- Lots of outdoor activities in the mountains (but weekend traffic on I-70 is attrocious because everyone does this)--skiing, hiking, camping, etc. Lots of music, art, cultural events, museums downtown. Lots of good concerts at Red Rocks.
- There are large (and growing) populations of homeless people in Denver and Boulder. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as SF or NYC, but it has definitely been getting worse, especially as housing prices have risen. If you rent, it's easy to get kicked out for a missed payment. Heroin and opiate addiction is a problem throughout parts of the area.
- There are major sporting events here (Broncos, Rockies), but I've never been interested in attending them. I hear tickets are hard to get. Shrug.
- Weather is pretty nice, but it's quite dry. Forest fires can be a problem during the summers (mostly in the mountains), but that's the only kind of natural disaster that I've been worried about since I moved here. We can get a lot of snow during the winter, but the roads are well taken care of, and we get a lot of sunshine when it's not snowing. Makes for some excellent powdery ski conditions.
- Major airport (DIA) with direct flights to most other major airports in the US, which is nice. It was built out of the way, northeast of Denver, but it's a large airport and traffic isn't bad on the express way (toll road).
- Misc: Food and services usually seem pretty reasonable to me. Uber and Lyft are all over the place.
No place is perfect, and it's all about tradeoffs... but life is good and I have no plans to leave Colorado any time soon.
- I-25 traffic is crazy bad, even compared to the 405 in West LA. Really, it's no joke.
- Politics isn't really purple in Co, per se. It's a western state, so it's more libertarian than republican, sorta. People are independent as a rule. I think it's something about the long drives and the mountains that keeps up a love of open spaces and a comfortableness with being alone and out of range of emergency responders. That said, as a western state, all the noise in politics really comes down to one thing: Water. Red v Blue is quaint when it comes to the mountain and the eastern ranchers over water rights. There are no fights in Co politics, just squabbles. But with water there is only war.
- If you want to go skiing anymore you need to wake up at 4. The drives are too long now to sleep in.
- Broncos tickets are crazy hard to get and expensive. Rockies tix can go for $4 often.
- You also have to watch out for tornadoes here too. Not so much close to the mountains, but you will get them in Aurora and at DIA. Wildfires and that death-sweet smell are a part of life now (asthmatics beware).
- DIA TSA is crazy long at times, usually, it seems, whenever I am there :(
- Food isn't bad for the middle of the continent. The Asain dishes (sushi, curries, thai, szechuan, etc) aren't bad, but I'm not singing about them. Mostly it's chilies, peaches, and buffalo steaks (in terms of unique foods).
- DIA: I normally get through in like 2 minutes, gotta precheck!
- One addition: Very little racial diversity
I agree on the food is mediocre and the time to leave to ski is freaking early!
1) Overpopulation. Especially in England, especially in Southern England. One of the highest population densities in the world, and it really shows on the roads, trains and in how compact everything gets built. (Unlike the Netherlands which has similar population density, there are far fewer people on bicycles due to worse infrastructure.)
2) Unwise immigration policy that has ruined many of the most affordable parts of cities that would otherwise be desirable places for young people to live.
3) Stagnant and outdated culture. It's kinda pathetic in the 21st century that there's still a monarchy and unelected House of Lords. And that people actually defend it on the basis of "tourism". Also, the FPTP electoral system for the House of Commons creates an environment in which only majority/conservative viewpoints get represented politically. In the UK I felt like the political system was run by older generations for their own benefit only; there is very little of a culture in the UK of caring about or investing in the young. The tuition fees debacable is only the icing on the cake of this cultural tendency which runs pretty deep.
4) Government services such as healthcare and education vary enormously in quality from region to region, and the quality is usually pretty poor by international standards. The wealthy get private health insurance and send their children to private schools, which aren't an option for those not able or interested in paying twice.
5) Housing prices. Even engineers can't buy houses in the South. Also, a lot of the housing stock is fairly old.
6) Surveillance state and general unwarranted cultural paranoia. CCTV capital of the world.
7) Failed welfare state (there are A LOT of homeless, and a big underclass population) and failed labour movement (the only jobs which have unions are public sector jobs).
1) Very poor air quality in winter due to inversions.
2) The local popular religion (Mormonism) has an outsized influence on legislation, so there are weird laws surrounding alcohol, business on Sundays, use of downtown property, etc. Outside of SLC proper people assume everyone is Mormon, and one's religion (or lack of it) can affect job opportunities, etc.
3) The city is extremely car-centric, with large blocks and narrow sidewalks. there are few places where it is pleasant to walk or linger outdoors.
4) Public transit is not great, but still better than some US cities. This seems to be slowly improving.
5) Homeless communities are concentrated around a few service locations, so certain parts of the city can seem overrun and unsafe, especially public parks. Panhandling is everywhere.
6) Local culture breeds busybodies; neighbors will complain to the city if they deem your grass is too tall, etc. There is also a lot of casual racism; for example, neighborhoods with a majority Latino population are considered "bad" despite having no higher crime, attractive houses, etc.
Gripes aside, SLC is mostly a great place to live. There is beautiful scenery, reasonable housing, lots of restaurant variety, and so on. But nowhere is perfect.
This really annoys me as someone who loves the state of Utah.
People who don't really know about the Mormons and Utah think that it's just some quaint thing like the Amish in Pennsylvania or whatever. They don't realize that the Utah government is essentially a theocracy controlled by the LDS church, which dictates every aspect of society in the state. It makes the place completely unlivable for normal people who would otherwise love to live somewhere like SLC for the same reasons Denver is great (winter sports, outdoors, scenery).
Do you see this ever changing?
Probably not in my lifetime, unless the state's efforts to attract big technology business (the "silicon slopes" initiative) draws enough people from out-of-state to seriously dilute the local population. But Mormons as a whole have a lot of kids, so it's a curious competition.
I would not describe the government as a theocracy. Liquor stores aren't open on Sunday and you can't buy full strength beer in the grocery store. Other than that the differences living here vs. elsewhere aren't huge.
Yes.
> You meet a lot of Mormons and you can often tell who they are, but they are very nice and it doesn't seem to affect day-to-day life much at all.
Well, I didn't say it affected my day-to-day life, I said that it affects local legislation.
> Liquor stores aren't open on Sunday and you can't buy full strength beer in the grocery store. Other than that the differences living here vs. elsewhere aren't huge.
You can't buy liquor (apart from the low-strength beer) from any stores except the state-owned ones. The state strictly limits the number of liquor licenses they give out to restaurants and bars, and the rules surrounding the use of those licenses are strange and ever-changing, such as the "Zion curtain" that forbade bartenders from making drinks in view of the public. The strongest drinks bars/restaurants are allowed to serve are weak, 1 ounce of liquor per drink if I recall correctly (it may be 1.5). For a while they had that weird "sidecar" exception that allowed the establishment to sell you an extra ounce of liquor on the side the customer can mix in themselves. Servers are not allowed to serve you an alcoholic drink if you have one unfinished. Restaurants cannot sell you liquor unless you also order food. And so on.
There was a law (it still may be in place) that forbade car dealerships from being open both Saturday and Sunday. Since no dealer is dumb enough to close on Saturday, this was an obvious effort to force those businesses to close on Sundays.
The state has been very amenable to big land deals with the LDS church downtown, deals they would not have made with any other entity. For example, the City Creek project.
The church strongly influences legislation on things like medical marijuana and gay marriage. For certain people, those influences would very much affect day-to-day life.
This is what I can remember off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. Like I said, it's mostly a good place to live. But the church currently has too much influence in government.
> the Utah government is essentially a theocracy... which dictates every aspect of society in the state. It makes the place completely unlivable for normal people
Which is a pretty strong claim and does not seem grounded in reality. Especially when you consider many "normal people" from the rest of the US have moved to Utah in the last few years. People seem comfortable making unsupported claims about Mormons in ways they would find abhorrent if similar unsupported claims were made against other minority cultural or ethnic groups.
Don't get me wrong, the Mormons were very nice, and tried to be inclusive (there would be a conversation, and some Mormon thing would come up, and someone would ask me "did you understand that", not in condescension but just to make sure I was included). But you're in a strong minority, and it can feel uncomfortable at times.
Note, however, that Salt Lake County isn't nearly as bad. It's "only" 50% Mormon.
My corollary to #3: Traffic can be pretty bad - not LA bad, but much worse than I'd like. (Nobody on their deathbed ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in traffic.)
And my #7: Air pollution. Salt Lake City sits in a valley. That valley traps pollution and, in winter, sometimes fog. (One horrible winter - I think 1981-82 - we had fog get trapped in the valley in winter, and for 59 days, the sun shone for a total of 15 minutes. It was very depressing. Still, that only happened one year; most years are not anything like that bad.)
- Murder capital of the US. Although the murders are often gang-related, it's a proxy metric for the amount of violence and crime in the city, any many innocent people are affected.
- Very bad public school system.
- Very high property tax rate, especially for what you're getting (see: comment about public school system). At 2.2% the rate is higher than NYC and matches that of some of the nicest areas Maryland and New Jersey with superb school districts. It's a huge deterrent to purchasing a home.
There a lot of good things about Baltimore, too, but you didn't ask about them. :)
I moved to Lower Merion, a 1st-ring suburb of Philadelphia. What sucks here:
1) can't walk anywhere. Some people can but we can't. Even when they can, it's not like they have choices of places, mostly.
2) Poor diversity. It's almost all white. It was sad to leave our son's great public school in NYC to come to a similarly great public school in PA, with 95% white classmates. But we are able to find small pockets of diversity--like in his karate class.
Each city is a trade-off.
BUDAPEST:
- low salary (not competitive) compared to other cities
- hard to achieve good savings rate b/c overall salary is not very high
- reasonable selection of tech startups/companies to work for (SAP, MS, MoSt, MSCI, IBM, LMI, Prezi, etc)
- most of these have secondary/engineering offices there, not the HQ
- top FAANG companies not available
- cost of living is low, so you will live very well off your salary
- if you can negotiate a western salary in BP, it'll be a good deal
- city life is excellent, best of the 3; if you're <35, you'll have a great time
- low cost flights across EU
- don't do a startup here, there's no local market/VC money (I tried)
- ignore the politics
- least diversity of the three cities
- weather is great
.
LONDON:
- highest salaries in EU, 2-3x compared to BP, 25-40% lower than in SF
- cost of living is very high (but not as high as SF)
- hard to achieve good savings rate with family
- good savings rate achievable if single, if you optimize
- excellent selection of companies to work for (FB, Google Deepmind, lots of others)
- city is very big and dense, 10M people
- lots of commuting, like sardines if you take the tube (solution: go at 10am, leave at 6pm)
- excellent culture (eg. museums are free entry)
- Brexit is unclear
- lots of diversity
- weather not so nice
.
DUBAI:
- high salaries, income is not taxed at all
- very high standard of living, at a reasonable cost of living (cheap compared to salaries)
- can live very comfortably (nice car, wide roads, best food, shopping)
- outstanding savings rate achievable
- get very hot (40-50C in the summer), nothing to do, have to be inside
- weather and beach is perfect in the winter at 25C, when it's freezing in Europe
- lots of expats
- a lot less tech companies to work for than in the other 2 cities
- top FAANG companies not available
- laws, customs, rights, social structure very different than in Europe/US, can be uncomfortable/frustrating
- lots of diversity