Rebecca and I have talked a couple times lately about where we would like to end up living permanently. I’m going to list my pros and cons of the optional locales and ask you who live in any of them to tell me why you think yours is the awesomest place to be. Ideally we’d like to live in large family centers (Atlanta/Utah), but there are other possibilities.
Utah
Pros:
Family
Awesome outdoors
Lots of little Mormons for our kids to play with.
I love SLC
We’re going to have to make the trek there eventually when everything hits the fan and we need my parents’ 50 yr food storage supply and the Brethren call me to lead the Delta Force River Unit of the Mormon Battalion (hang in there little rotator cuffs; greatness beckons you both). Be honest and tell me that you wouldn’t feel just a titch safer being in Utah when the moon turns red as blood and the 2 prophets are killed in Jeruselam. Lyposuction billboards or not, I’m gonna be wherever Elder Eyring is. I know where I most definitely don’t want to be: Vegas or LA. Good luck not turning into a big tasty salt statue when you’re running away and look back at the mushroom cloud.
Cons:
Having lived away for a while, everytime I go back, I like Utah less and less and notice the following things I didn’t notice before:
Obnoxious culture (style, hair, specific trends and general trendiness, competitiveness, extreme homogeneity, fake women and self-satisfied dudes, feelings of group superiority, materialism, MLM, etc)
Comely but sucky looking people. Go to any Café Rio or Target and you feel like you’re at a UVSC party.
Super worldly
Ugly architecture
Some ugly landscape, but some very pretty
Second worst children names in the world (Right behind Watts, LA.)
Excruciatingly bleak-looking winters
Highland
Alpine
Georgia
Pros:
Family
Pretty and green
All the barter money we can use (even, i'm told, to buy a house, if it’s under 500K)
Cons:
Wife hates it
Humid
Lots of 2-way racism
Evangelicals
California
Pros:
Gorgeous
Perfect climate
Beach
No end of things to do
Constant visitors
Cons:
So Cal- worldiest place in the world. Makos, blues, and the occasional Great White
Nor Cal- Most liberal place in the world. Waterways dominated by Great Whites.
Both-overcrowded, ridiculously expensive, obnoxious cultures
Albuquerque
Pros:
If you own a Hobie or Esprit t-shirt, you’re the best dressed bloke/sheila in town
The best culture I’ve ever experienced. Educated, active, friendly people who manage to be the most accepting, non judgemental, down to earth folks I know of.
Best climate in the U.S., after SoCal. 4 mild seasons, all with clear blue skies.
Very unworldly, unmaterialistic, uncompetitive.
Good base of Normons
Political diversity
Cons:
Ugly landscape
Lack of good rivers/lakes
Hard to get entice visitors. “Oh…Albuquerque. Sure we’ll come. Oh, um, actually our summer vacations are booked for the next five years in Siberia, Ethiopia, Evanston, Darfur, and Vernal.”
Business limitations, given the small population and relatively low collective wealth.
Colorado
Pros:
Beautiful
Great outdoors
Close to family
Cons:
Harsh winters
Expensive
East Coast
Pros:
Beautiful and green
Great architecture
Big cities
Cons:
Poison Ivy
Humidity
Harsh Winters
7 Mormons= 90% chance your girls will be pregnant by 17
The Dirty South
Pros:
It’s neat to see many of your neighbors featured on the tv show “Cops”
Beautiful
Milder winters
Close to family
Good folks
Cons:
Poison Ivy
Evangelicals
Humidity
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I think and talk about this question so much. I don't know what the answer is. If you don't take family into account, I have to believe Southern California is the way to go.
ReplyDeleteWell it seems that Utah has the most pros so start packing! As far as Utah's cons, well winters can actually be stunningly beautiful too, yes they can be bleak and stark as well, but when we get a lot of snow it's amazing. As far as the first con, I think it totally depends on where you live. I mean, sure it will exist, but it's prevalance depends on where you live.
ReplyDeleteSo. cal is overrated if you ask me. It is beautiful, but traffic and prices make it so not worth it, plus as rough as winter can be having 4 seasons is totally worth it.
Ya, So Cal is a tough one for me because it's pros and cons are both so extreme in my book. On the one hand, It's the Garden of Eden, like no other place in the States. On the other hand I think the odds of raising very well adjusted kids there are tougher than in other areas. Not saying that lots of great, grounded kids from wealthy Mormon SoCal families don't come out of the place, because I know quite a few, just that the odds seem a lot harder to me, given the constant premium placed on looks and material things there.
ReplyDeleteAnge, While Utah slips further down the Kook polls as time goes on, I will say that anytime I'm at the old house in the summer between 8-11 pm and smell that smell and feel that warm breeze, I think "Man, I've got to get back here."
Let's hear from some of our Southern Californians. Sedgwicks? Bullsharks?
ReplyDeleteChristian, very funny post. I've thought so much about the same questions and decided that the American dream doesn't live in California for the Caldwells. Home ownership is difficult there and I don't want my high school age kids to have to live in a trailer or some condo. There are definitely some cons about Utah, and generally I think that Utah Mormons feel & act superior/more righteous towards Mormons from other places, but there are some good positives about living out here also. That being said, I'm still mostly undecided on where to settle down, but after your reviews, maybe I need to start looking into Albuquerque. (Spelled it right on the first try. Booyah.)
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ReplyDelete(This is Ryan)
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, I think all of your pros about Utah apply to all of Utah, whereas all of your cons about Utah apply only to certain parts or aspects of Utah. Frankly I don't think that there's any part of Salt Lake City about which you can say that it suffers generally from sucky architecture, any more than any other decent city. I think the obnoxious cultural elements you've catalogued are also pretty well confined to certain areas. I definitely don't want to act like I see Salt Lake as superior to all suburban places (I love Farmington too, and constantly consider living there). But just for simplicity's sake, let me make the argument with a focus on Salt Lake:
If Salt Lake in general (let's say that means from the Avenues to, say, Holladay) is any more worldly than another similar city, I must be blind, because I don't see it. Salt Lake City has its own brand of materialism, as will every place, but its got more than its share of happy, humble people living out there lives without excess of pride. As for the annoying people and their hair and blah blah blah, sure they're around, but you don't run across them much in Salt Lake proper.
Now, there are downsides too, of course. It's hard to find affordable places in Salt Lake, though they do exist (and there are plenty in the suburbs too- those suburbs that don't suffer from the negative issues you've outlined, like Farmington). And like I say, Salt Lake types have their own worldliness, but I find it less annoying than the Alpine strain.
I'm trying to say all of this without coming off as superior to these other places. I don't have big complaints about those other places, but I'm trying to respond to your list of cons.
I guess my big issue is with your really pronounced opinion about Utah materialism. I'm not sure where you're seeing all of it, and I know it exists, but honestly, I just don't think it has to be that big a deal in a healthy Utah life. I don't notice it much, and when I do, I do my best to resist (and often I succumb, of course). Regardless, it's nowhere near scary enough to make me ever think twice about living in this great place with all of these great people surrounded by all this great scenery and all these great seasons and my wonderful family.
If we didn't have family here, I think I'd like to live in the Northwest-- Oregon probably. But given the family and the church and a thousand other things, I think Utah is the clear winner over every other option you've listed. Just trust me on this one.
(And by the way, lipo billboards aren't real meaningful to you right now, but you may change your mind in a few years when you're carrying a little more junk in your humps).
I like all the interesting analysis on places to live. With my job I could easily live anywhere in the country. The simple fact is that for me proximity to family is a thousand times more important that any other factor. If Jenn's family and the Phiaps' where in some miserable place like Detroit, Reno, or Magna that's were we'd be now and we'd probably like it there. I think that Jenn and I may not be as independent as the Bells or Caldwells.
ReplyDeleteConsider Dallin: been everywhere in the world, not afraid to live anywhere. Ask him where he'd like to live; answer: back home in Utah. At least that was the case last time I talked to him about it.
Face it Chris, "there's no place like home."
LOL Logan--Detroit, Reno, or Magna.
ReplyDeleteKook, I think you are overrating the influence of Evangelicals. I mean, we live in Nashville for crying out loud and have never had any problems. In fact, to the contrary, I find (many) of them to be good, decent god-fearing folk. Moreover, in terms of having friends for your kids, they are quite good because our values line up fairly closely. Yes, there are some yahoos, but I don't really think there are more yahoo Evangelicals than there are yahoo Mormons, for example.
Also--I think, and this is my personal bias, that growing outside of Utah is really good for your kids. There is an immediacy and even an urgency to life in the Church that I don't think you get in Utah, as wonderful as it is and as much as I love it. Utah is great, don't get me wrong, but I think this is a pretty profound advantage.
Oh yeah by the way, you know Zion's not really Utah, right? So when we make the treck, it's a lot shorter from TN to MO than from UT--and there's no mountains!
ReplyDeleteRy, great points. I agree with all of them about SLC, but still maintain Utah has it's own grody, in your face brand of materialism that's worse than a lot of places in the country, although SLC is different and not as bad.
ReplyDeleteSkew, um, if I had Mama Maria in my family, I would be back there in a Utah minute too. My family just doesn't have as much to offer.
Bird. You make a good point about evangelicals. that was mostly a joke, but they do bug. But they do have their upside too.
I realize I am a little late on commenting to this post, but I would just like to point out that Albuquerque has the most Pro's. Don't move, you'll regret it. (Don't tell Garrick that though!) LOL! :)
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