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ChainsandFreedom -> RE: What do you love/hate about your home town? (12/29/2007 12:52:54 PM)
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I (male 1/2 of this profile) spent most of my life growing up in Ithaca New York. Do I miss it? you bet.
would I move back? Not on my life.
LOVE: that I can actually read a novel in public without calling attention to myself.
That I can debate politics loudly in the town commons or participate in a march without ending up on some police watch list.
The small city rewards the healthy. You can walk anywhere in twenty minutes if you're used to hills.
You can also be in the bottom of one of several sixty foot georges surrounded by rushing water and trees from any point of the city for the same twenty minute walk.
It's small enough that you can easily recognize most of the other people who grew up there your age every time you leave the house and have a personal relationship with all of them.
It's a large enough college town that there's constantly new young, intellegent people to meet.
You can drive out into the stars without traffic and light pollution.
the state parks and the hiking. wow. pretty.
that you can be gay and hip, or just happen to be gay and a member of such-and-such church.
the prevalence of poetry mic's, art, and local music.
the prevalence of prayer-flags and buddhist monks.
the freedom to live in america, any way and with any politics or lifestyle you choose, without constantly having your patriotism put on trial.
The local pot (when I was younger) is much preferred to the alchoholism so rampant in most of the rest of the western world.
WHAT I HATE:
most of the local youth are potheads untill their late twenties or thirties who's personal and professional lives are permantly stuck in a state of 21ness.
how afraid of change such a 'progressive' city can be
That such a small, conservative, one-newspaper, mono-social company town constantly pats itself on the back for being progressive.
That the main employers, Cornell and Ithaca College, charge well over a hundred grand for four years tution, and cornell is constantly investing BILLIONS in new construction, yet they take full advantage of paying their employees the bargan basement, upstate new york wages.
that the majority of university/city/hosbital (most everyone 'professional' ) employees make under 35K.
that the majority of locals who stay in town end up working in the service industry for under 10 an hour despite being educated in a very competitive school system
that most young locals can't even AFFORD to spend their adult live's anywhere within three hunderd miles of their parents.
That a quarter of the apartments on craigslist say 'grad students only'
That the cost of living rises far faster than the national/upstate ny average every year because half the population is college students who can either afford it through loans or who's parents can, while the working families get pushed further and further out into the boondocks to make rent.
that the town fancies itself 'diverse', yet almost all the non-white people live in a very few, very defined, much poorer neighborhoods
that people hate places like Starbucks or national corporations for being part of some corporate conspiracy, so that patronize lower-paying health-care-lacking local alternatives in the name of libralalism
that all the hip young people are either irresponsibly broke or subsidised through their parents so that they dont think about things like low wages or lack of health care being a problem at the places they consider hip and egalitarian
that you can't say that about the local economy, or even wear nice clothes and shave every day, without being considered a conservative asshole that needs to "lighten up", despite the local pride at being such an 'diverse, enlightend and egalitarian town' - being proactive in ithaca definatly means bleating the same thoughts as the rest of the sheep
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