Can't Wait to Leave This Place
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12/23/2017
I've been here in New SoCal for a little over a year, and I'm seriously counting every day till I can leave. I've traveled all over the country and lived in quite a few places on both East and West coasts, and this town has the most obnoxious people I've ever encountered. It's the essence of white entitlement, or what happens when you let too many former frat boys and girls and jocks spend daddy's money on a McMansion. If you have an ounce of creativity, sensitivity, spiritual inclination, heart or soul, you will be out of place here. It's mainstream, conservative, uptight, bitchy, and completely lacking in community. People are rude and look right through you if you don't walk around looking like you just came from the ski lodge or the gym. It's like living in the Aryan REI catalog. They're rich, snotty, and arrogant, and have nothing better to do with their lives than drink beer, smoke weed, and flip houses. I've been trying for 15 months to find even one restaurant with good food and have not. There are maybe 2 art galleries and zero opportunities for creative activities with any sophistication. And there is no real city or decent college anywhere even close to here. Portland is 3 hours away, and often inaccessible during winter snows. Local cheerleaders love to say that people in Bend are "so friendly," and I just shake my head. It must be because they've never lived in other parts of OR, which truly do have kind and friendly people. You read their bumper stickers saying, "Be nice, you're in Bend," as they practically run you down on the crosswalk.
I live on the west side near downtown, and in 2017 we had almost an entire year of nonstop construction and noise in every direction, along with disgusting, torn up streets you could hardly even walk down. I've bought boxes of earplugs and 4 sets of noise canceling headphones just to not completely lose my mind. I grew up 20 minutes from midtown Manhattan and it was quiet as a church compared to this dump. The mindset here is build the hell out of everything and growth, growth, growth. There's no plan or guiding vision except exploitation and greed--and you can see it written all over people's ugly, pinched faces. The day I get out of here will be, without a doubt, the happiest day of my life.
Moving | ,