Well, although I wasn't born in New York City, half of my family is from here, and I never felt quite as at home anywhere else, especially out in Queens. It feels like I'm returning to my Ancestral Homeland, if that makes any sense. And NYC has changed a lot since I first lived her back in the late 80's, too. More gentrification, more hipsters, more mall-ification, but the New York I love is still there.

From the first time I saw the skyline (late at night, driving north from the airport), I was smitten.

bmarkey, I lived in Seattle for 10 years and that view of the city never failed to my heart skip a few beats. It's glorious.

I grew up in the northwest suburbs, went off to college, then came back to Chicagoland and moved into the city after a brief stay at the parents'.

I chose Chicago because it offered a number of jobs in my chosen profession (journalism/PR/communications/etc.) but was cheaper than New York. I stayed because I love it.

I still love Seattle; been here for 15 years. But I'm starting to feel like my life may be stagnating in some ways, and remembering how I used to move around a lot more. I used to be able to turn myself into a different person by moving. The fact that the thought that maybe I need to do it again keeps popping into my head is telling, although I'm not ready to actually do anything about the thought just yet. It could just be the ramping up of a midlife crisis.

Obligatory thread answer: I moved up here from SF to go to grad school, and really felt that I belonged here.

On preview, Chicago is one of the three options I am considering for a move, the other two being Portland and "somewhere in Europe". The drawbacks so far: Chicago is too cold, Portland is kind of a cop-out since it is very culturally similar to Seattle, and Europe - well, I've never been there, so it's a big unknown to me right now.

I transplanted myself from northern New England (where winter is the default season) to Santa Cruz, California 11 years ago now. At first for college and then I stayed because I haven't lived anywhere I liked anywhere near as much.

Cape Town (South Africa) and Santa Cruz have some similarities and that's probably part of the reason I love it here so much, I'd just come back from South Africa when I got the itch to move west.

Its changed alot, gotten alot more expensive to live here and there seem to be an ever-growing number of homeless people but I still love it here and don't want to leave (though the crazy real estate market may force that departure at some point).

I came to Maine because my wife grew up here, and I fell in love with it when I first visited her here. Even though I was almost killed by an apocalyptic blizzard on the drive up.

It's nice here... feels old and a bit shabby, but centered and low to the ground. There's lots of space. You can cross the street without getting run over. Not too hot in the summer, and the winters you get used to.

Portland, Maine is a lovely city. It's small but concentrated, and it's a good walking city for the most part. Inner Portland has a lot of the benefits of a big city without some of the drawbacks. I love the old brick buildings, the grid of side-streets, and the way water surrounds you on three sides. I love that there are no stoplights on Munjoy Hill, and it's quiet at night. I love watching the boats and kites in the summer.

Man, I really do like it here. Just realized that.

Sorry for my Northwest chauvinism in the post above. I do know there's more than one Portland. I was referring to the one closest to me, the Oregon one.

I'm not among the persons offended by that. Until I moved up here, I didn't even know there was a Portland, Maine.

Portland, Maine is a lovely city.

I remember visiting it a few years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. There was a great used record store where I made some nice finds. It's boho enough to have good bookstores, microbrews and poetry readings, but redneck enough to keep it from become a complete 'latte town' a la Burlington, VT.

There's a long & short version of how I ended up in Asheville. The short version is that my parents moved to a retirement community here shortly before my father died and when he died, I moved down to be closer to my mom. THe long version involves my aunt & uncle who lived up in Jackson County for years & who I visited almost every summer, early imprints of the mountains, etc, an acid trip on Grandfather Mountain in the eighties and so on.

I didn't want to move here. It's been a hippie mecca for years and it's always had a bad rep as a great place to live but an impossible place to earn a living (which is horribly true, I must say.) Then I felt for years like I was being herded towards Asheville. They say there's a vortex here, and it draws people in, and although I scoff at this, I secretly believe it. I am a contrary minded person and when I feel herded I tend to balk - but when I finally did move here I discovered that I loved it, that I felt completely at home, that I could no longer imagine living anywhere else. And, despite the miserable job situation, the insanely rapidly encroaching gentrification, the decimation of the landscape and so on, I still feel that way.

For me it's the best of several worlds: I can get from a vibrant downtown to surprisingly deep wilderness in 25 minutes. The schools are good, the people are interesting, the scenery is beautiful, the climate is mellow, and I love my little brick house.

this is where the prison is.

jonmc-

Yeah, exactly. It's the pickup-trucks next to VWs next to BMWs that keeps the city's energy in the right place.

I moved to Melbourne to do my PhD. It's a nice city to live in. Good bars and restaurants, the weather's not too bad and the public transport is good. Also Australians are great people on the whole.

Still, I wouldn't live here if I didn't have to. It's too dry, and there's just not enough character to make me love it. And there really is no decent beer to be found (although the wine is good).

I'd rather be living in Auckland, which is kinda sad since I probably won't be for some time. Still, chances are I will be able to move to Germany or the UK or maybe Texas in the next few years. I like the idea of living in Europe, though it's limited by Mrs nomis' requirement that we live in an English speaking country (yes, Germany counts).

The first time I visited Seattle about 18 years ago and I fell in love. I knew I was home. It took me another 12 years or so to move there but I did it (December 1999). I visited Seattle again in early 1999. Getting back to San Antonio after my holiday I had a vision of doing the same damn thing 30 years in the future - living in Texas, working at the same damn job with the same damn company and realized I just couldn't do it. I quit my job of 15 years, cashed out my 401k and went for it. All I had going for me was a bedroom at my brother's place and a guy in Vancouver (BC) that I hadn't yet met. There wasn't a job waiting for me, I had limited funds and I went for it anyway.

People who knew me must've thought I was insane. I was (and am) extremely shy and, to the untrained eye, unadventurous.

To this day I have no idea how I got up the courage to move but I'm eternally thankful to that wee bit of bravery I dredged up from somewhere that I did.

I live in New York City because my husband got placed at NYU in his residency match for pathology. Then because I had to take a job with a minimum 3 year contract, he had to apply for a fellowship here. We will be finished with this place mid-2008 and plan to move back to NZ, either Auckland or Dunedin.

That said, I really really like living here. I'm very pollyanna-ish about where I live though -- I have yet to hate anywhere I've lived. Downtown Baltimore rocked, as did Sydney and the few places in NZ I lived (all for different reasons).

I was born into the seaside swamps of East Texas. Before I started school, my folks relocated to Central New Jersey, where my mother grew up. I lived in Ocean Grove for a few years, four blocks from the beach, and had the run of the town as a scrappy kid. Then we moved to Red Bank, NJ. The Red Bank of my childhood is still my model of an ideal town: preserved 20th-century architecture, a river, public transportation connected to both the big city and the shore area, big enough to be interesting, small enough to know a lot of people, a thriving downtown.

Went to college in New England. Right afterward, I went to work for an environmental education program in Central Mass. In the woods. It was beautiful, and for two years I lived a crunchy life with other young hipsters, drinking around campfires every weekend. From there i moved to Philly, where I stayed 3 years. I didn't like it at the time, though I probably would like it now. I made the mistake of not living downtown. I lived in a neighborhood that was more for boomers and young parents, and it was, well, boring.

I had a yen to head back to New England. New Jersey was growing out of the question because it was no longer affordable and was becoming overdeveloped. My former hometown is now a moneyed person's boutique shopping destination. Ugh. So I went to Mystic, CT, where I worked and stayed for several years. My life there was in many ways idyllic: great friends, good social network (if small), and lots of sailing on Long Island Sound.

I moved to Portsmouth, NH, where i presently live, for a job. I hated to leave Mystic and found it wrenching. But within a month, I fell in love with Portsmouth. It's got a laid-back, Northern-New-England vibe. A glorious four seasons. A beautiful preserved downtown with active bars, restuarants, bookstores, and coffeeshops. There's theatre and live music. Beaches are nearby, and my walk home crosses two bridges and yields striking rocky-shore coastal scenery. Boston's an hour away, and Portland's just 45 minutes. The city is progressive.

So I'm really glad to be here. in fact, every move I've made was in some way a very positive experience. Every now and then, it's good to shake things up and live somewhere different.

Two places I'd still like to live: NYC and Martha's Vineyard.

PS: I don't live in Seattle now, but I still consider it my hometown. I'm content with living in the Greater Vancouver area. And hey, it's still the Pacific Northwest - bestest place ever!

I've mentioned this before, I think, no....I'm sure.... but I used to live in the Northwest. I grew up in the Tacoma area, went to college in Olympia, and moved to Seattle after school. I love the Northwest intensely* and have strong connections with a lot of people out there despite having been away from it for going on seven years, and having nothing but a string of low-paying jobs out there. * Yes, I probably would marry it.

However, there were only a couple of grad programs that I felt fit what I wanted to do at the time, so I ended up living in the south side of Chicago for a while. I also enjoyed that city, but I had to cut my budding relationship with it short since after graduation we immediately moved to New York (my partner already had a job in NY lined up).

We struggled our first year in New York, but I've been surprised at how much I also love it. I never thought I'd move here. I always thought that if I moved from the NW it would only be to San Francisco. It'll be very hard to leave this place, but I suspect we probably won't stay (though I am holding out for putting off the decision/move as long as possible).

I have hopes that I'll make it back to the Northwest, but I fear that I've idealized much of it in the time away. I'll probably miss New York to the point of doing that once I've left and begin the process of pining for it.

I would also move back to Chicago.

Yeah, exactly. It's the pickup-trucks next to VWs next to BMWs that keeps the city's energy in the right place.

Exactly, I love gay-friendly cities, progressive politics and the arts, but I don't trust a city where you can't buy Cheez Whiz and malt liquor or watch pro football in a bar.

Also, both Portland's minor league baseball teams have cool logos. I used to own a Portland Beavers hat, I don't know where it went.

I think the greatest threat to a livable city isn't so much a monoculture, but one that isn't invested in the idea of a city as a complete cultural ecosystem. Having "lived" in Annapolis, I am very aware of the ability of rich outsiders to transform a community into a service station for momentary pleasures. This is what I'm always afraid of, wherever I live.

the teams in question.

I used to love living in Baltimore but I began to hate it; I'm not sure why. I realized there was a problem when any time I left for vacation and came back my heart would sink when I crossed the state line and I'd think, fuck, back in stupid Maryland. Now when I'm driving home and I start heading up the mountain to Asheville I'm happy; my heart lifts, I love seeing the mountains getting closer and bigger and knowing that I live way up in the clouds.

on preview

the ability of rich outsiders to transform a community into a service station for momentary pleasures

selfnoise, that's what I fear is happening to Asheville, a very fast and toxic transformation into Aspen. I hate it; a lot of us hate it, but I don't know if it can be changed, if it's too late, or even how to go about making it stop. One night in the bar my friends and I came up with a plan to mug each other regularly & report it to the cops every time, thus driving up the crime statistics and scaring away the rich baby boomer retirees who are buying up all the real estate & turning downtown into disneyland, but we never did it and I doubt it would work anyway.

(as a sidenote: I was sort of irrationally annoyed when the Seadogs became a Red Sox farm team. Suddenly it was hard to get tickets.)

I came to Chicago from the West Coast ( California and Nevada - one is silver and the other is gold) almost 8 years ago for a passel of reasons, the shortest of them being a scholarship to the art institute. I fell out of love with school but deeply and obsessively in love with the city. There's sausage murders, mobs of all sorts and colors, tricky sticky politicking, whole wards of ill repute, shiny jazz bands, uprooted country boys, touchy feely aging greek perverts, meats ground up and shunted into natural casings, things! in brine!, indian silk shops on devon, cranky unhelpful chinese herbalists, mean mean koreans all over albany park, friendly polish guy who runs the deli by my house who'se wife hates me for no fucking reason......yeah the list is long and the list is why i stay.

come visit me!

on preview it seems i am made glad by unfriendly people and food i can't/won't/don't eat. weird.

When we lived in Bridgeport we had the Bridgeport Bluefish who played in a stadium abutting railroad tracks (the conductor would toot the whistle as he passed)and a power plant. We also had the New Haven Ravens (since disbanded). A friend of pips was dating one of the players, so we'd see 'em sometimes. During the seventh inning stretch, Rally The Raven (the team mascot) would race little kids around the diamond. If they were losing, he'd pick 'em up and carry them over the finish line.

I can just picture that kid in therapy twenty years down the line: "I'm on a grassy field. There are men in uniform watching. I'm being made to run along a white line and then this big black bird snatches me up! What's it all mean, doc!?"

New Haven is kind of an urban mess. I used to work in a magazine store on the border between the ghetto and the Yale area and the inhabitants of both were competing to see who could drive me batshit insane first. NH is both hoity toity about Yale and burdened with an inferiority complex for not being New York or Boston. Bridgeport is basically an industrial city without much industry left, and is a nice unpretentious land of dive bars and greasy spoons.

Why I would move to Chicago (even though the weather sucks): I'm a big city girl and I love the big Eastern cities that have a lot of history (one thing we're kind of short on out West), but it feels more humane to me than the Coastal East (yes, I lived in NYC for 5 years). Also because my dad has decided to stay in Cincinnati (where I grew up and which I flat-out refuse to move back to), and if he eventually needs to go into some kind of senior care, I would be close enough to visit him more frequently.

I love this thread. Portland Maine, Asheville, Portsmouth--three great cities I would move to in a heartbeat.

But instead I live in Carthage, Missouri. I came here for a job--I'm a historian, and tenure track jobs are few and the competition fierce. That was ten years ago. I've come to like it. Midwesterners have wonderful manners, I'd never heard so many pleases and thank you's growing up in Connecticut. I am on the edge of the Ozarks--they aren't quite mountains really but they are beautiful, and the least appreciated natural area in the U.S. On my way to work I take the backroads and regularly see deer, hawks, turkeys and one time an owl.

And it is corny to say, but you can make a difference in a small town. I serve on the local museum board, write grants for area teachers, work a bit in local politics. It feels good.

At the same time, my heart is the Pacific Northwest, and I apply for jobs out there regularly. But after ten years here, the change is not going to happen. But with summers off, I still get plenty of time hiking in the mountains.

I was born to live in New York and I've wanted to move here as long as I can remember. (When I was little, it felt so unjust that I was *forced* to grow up in SoCal. In fact, I still feel envious when I see kids that live here.) Though I can appreciate growing up by the beach, I was not a Californian: I'm bitchy and aggressive and cynical; I can't think of the last day I didn't wear black; I hate cars and love public transport--it just didn't make sense.

I moved back east for college when I was sixteen and I've never looked back. I graduated 28 May and was in a U-haul here 1 June. When I leave, I just want to come back, and the sight of a filthy A-train pulling into Howard Beach station at six in the morning can make me cry when I come off the red-eye. The weather is appalling, everything is small and expensive, there are always too many other assholes in the way and I could never go anywhere else in this country (though New England does have its charms).

Every year I spend here, it's like the city changes all over again. No matter how I change, it's always there with what I want. Plus, the subway runs twenty-four hours and no matter how drunk I am, I can always get home. I can never be complacent: there are too many people fighting for the same thing. It's just awesome. Every single day.

Oh, and Miko, we should totally swap lives for like a year. I'd love to move back to New England again for a bit.

Dame, I have to say, when I was in college I felt the way you still feel about New York City. For a kid from Cincinnati, which is a cultural nowhere, especially a queer left-wing kid, it was heaven. I took advantage of all of its arts and strange places, and I think it was a great place to be a young adult, and I think it was a big part of turning me into who I became as an adult. But by the end of my five years there, I was totally burned out and stressed all the time, running on constant adrenaline and feeling dirty. It had run its course and it was time to go. I still love big cities, and there's no city like that city, but it was the end of that relationship.

I'm here, was born here (like my parents and 3/4 of my grandparents), and hopefully won't die here, but in Europe somewhere or Montreal or somewhere else as wonderful as here.

OK, but why are you there? Why do you stay? That's the question.

Not tryin' to get all existential or anything.

i'm comfy here--it's home--and the rest of the world all runs here so that makes it even better. I'm actually looking to leave but not that terribly hard. I stay because my whole life is here--my friends, my work, my industry, etc...

I've lived here (Monterrey, Mexico) my whole life. All my family and most of my friends live here --and those who leave usually come back.

I love it here. It's a big city (around 5 million), very safe, the people are great. It's a 2 hour drive to McAllen, TX and a little over 3 hours to South Padre Island.

The weather's not so bad, although it does get VERY hot in summer --at least 43° C (110° F) every day for several months and sometimes much hotter.

I don't intend to ever leave permanently, but would like to live somewhere else for a couple of months; if not somewhere else in the country I'd love to go either in Germany or New York. I've never been away for more than six weeks at a time and even that was too long.

The only big problem here is traffic; people who are usually very nice go insane behind the wheel (including me), it's like road rage sets in the moment you get in your car. When it's raining, a 15 minute drive takes at least 40 because there are so many accidents. Good thing it rarely rains.

I grew up in Canada, mostly in Ottawa (although under the age of 5 I also lived in Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto).

I lived there until I was 10, then moved to New Hampshire. I love Portsmouth so much--we lived in central NH, in the boonies, and Portsmouth was a haven for us. I also looove Boston and originally planned on going to college there, but couldn't afford it. NH is beautiful, and great for summertime visits, but is mostly depressing to live there because there aren't a lot of good jobs and even less culture.


I graduated high school, my mom moved to South Florida. Since I didn't have much else to do, I moved down here to and went to college. I love the weather during the months of January--April, and that's about it. There's very few redeeming qualities about this state, and I'm itching to get out of here.

Mostly, I just need to work and save money so I can move. I have a lot of good friends here that are like my family (my mom moved back to NH 3 years ago), and they are one of the few reasons I haven't gone insane living here.

Late night posting = many errors. Apologies.

I live in Karlskrona, a town in southeastern Sweden, because of my job: if I didn’t work here, I wouldn’t live here. I had never visited Scandinavia before I started working here. I stay because they keep extending my contract, and because I haven’t found a better job yet. Having said that, part of the reason I haven’t found a better job is because I haven’t been looking that hard, which disinclination, in turn, is partly down to simple inertia: we’ve accumulated so much stuff since moving here that I dread the thought of having to move it all. It’s not such a bad place to live—it’s a picturesque place on the sea that is very pleasant in summer, if a tad grim in winter. The thing I dislike the most about it is its isolation: the nearest decent-sized city is two and a half hours away, far enough to deter casual excursions. The best things about the place are the clean air, the low crime-rate, etc.: stuff I hardly notice unless I travel elsewhere.

I met my husband in New Orleans, which we both really, really loved. He was from Greece and had gone to school at Louisiana State in Baton Rouge. The city was wonderful, I had a great career going there, but the crime was brutal. There were murders on two different streets where we lived in the Quarter, in both cases just steps away from our door. There was a shoot-out in front of our building; and our apartment was robbed so many times... I don't even know the actual count. And aside from this, the heat was really beginning to wear me down...

So we decided to move to my husband's home town, Thessaloniki (photos of Salonika by me here) Greece's second largest city - a fascinating place drenched in history. (Quote from greecetravel.com: "Thessaloniki has given Greece some of its greatest musicians, artists, poets and thinkers." this is true.) We felt all shiny and superskilled (which we were), and figured all we had to do was show up and people would start throwing money at us to work for them. We were not correct.

I don't have the room here to explain all the interesting "why"s, but Greece is quirky, and it's definitely not what-you-know but who-you-know here, and you have to insinuate yourself into that system. Mr. taz had some good connections from his youth, but it took quite a few long, hard years for him to become Mr. Must-have Sound Man here... And for me, well - no huge calls for English language writers and editors here, so I do other things - web sites, some teaching.

Mr. is very happy with his work, but money is hard, and I'm just, like, kind of housewifey (bad housewifey, but you know...). So, why do we stay? Here's what I love: This city is in this strange sort of time warp in which, while we have, for instance, broadband internet, we still have all these independent little shops and restaurants, so I can do my shopping and totally avoid the supermarket if I feel like it. And I almost always feel like it. We can get wine and liquor from the cava, bread from the bread shop, meat from the butchers, fresh fish from the fishmongers, coffee from the coffee place, cheese and yogurt from the cheese shop, spices from the spice shop, etc. I am surrounded by these fabulous outdoor markets selling excellent farm-fresh produce. So I have olive oil and cheese and fruit and vegetables from the surrounding countryside, wine from Crete, fresh baked bread, fish from the sea... the same sea that I can see from my balcony. Everything that I've described above is in easy walking distance from where I live, and public transit is easy and cheap. And so are cabs, so we don't even own a car.

Things here haven't been institutionalized and regulated and sanitized and franchised to death - yet... And it may be that this is one of the last little windows of opportunity to live in a world like that.

There are hundreds of wonderful little charming, affordable tavernas where you can sit outside and eat fanfuckingtastic food - and nobody ever, ever rushes you to vacate a table. Ever. Clubs stay open all night, restaurants usually stay open 'til 1 or 2, or even 3 a.m. If I wake up and look out the window at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, most of the people I see will probably be on their way home from Friday night. Places that go dead at midnight give me the creeps.

There are four, distinct, delicious seasons, beautiful sunshine that pierces your heart, and where we are, on Thermaikos Bay, the weather never gets overly harsh in winter. And when it gets too hot in the summer, I know I just need to hang on a little longer and the season will begin to turn. As beautiful and fun as New Orleans was, the nine months of summer got to be pretty gruesome for me... And worrying about crime pretty much 24/7 was just too much.

Right now I'm sitting here watching the snow (the first of the season) fall on the charming little square behind our building... in a few minutes, I'm going to walk down there and buy bread, wine, and salad greens - and all those shopkeepers will greet me and smile because they know me... and that's just a really nice situation for me.

There are two books that lead me here to NYC: The Westing Game and I'll Take Manhattan. The former was because my favorite character Turtle wanted to be a stockbroker and for the longest time I suffered under the delusion that the book took place in NYC (it doesn't). The latter was because it was about the daughter of a publishing magnate who took a struggling magazine and made it the toast of the town. The first book made me think about NYC as a goal for college, the latter made me think seriously about being a writer and publisher--okay, as seriously as you can get while reading a trashy romance novel.

But ever since I read those books as a pre-teen and teen, NYC burrowed its way into my brain and stayed there through my decision to stay home in California for college because my then-boyfriend and love of my life didn't want to leave California after going to school in Seattle and hating it. (Ironic aside, after we broke up, he married and they moved to Washington state when he joined the Navy.) It became my goal when I finally moved out of the house and quit my job with Disney after I spent my four years post graduating from college doing anything but writing and publishing. I got to New York but not NYC in 2003 when I worked as an associate editor for a magazine in Rockland County. And it was finally my reality after I got fired and moved into a crappy apartment in Brooklyn to save costs.

Jonmc can attest to the fact that I currently don't get paid well here. I live with my ex-boyfriend to save money and that's been very stressful, as some of you read in a post I made before Christmas. And my social life is slowly picking back up after I self-hermited after one of my closest friends died in September.

So why do I stay? Because even as I make the long trek in from Englewood, NJ where I've been helping out a friend who has a broken leg by taking him to work two days a week, I still get excited when I see the NYC skyline and the possibility that someday I will have my own small, modest publishing house and I will be a success here.

"What time are we upon and where do I belong?"--Witch Baby. I'm from LA, but live in New York. The place I felt most at home was Massachusetts when I didn't live there.