Reviews & Comments
Mount Vernon, OH
Could be worse... -
8/3/2007I grew up in Mount Vernon, and while I have moved away, I would not be horrified at the prospect of moving back someday. It does have some problems, but it also has good qualities that should not be overlooked.
The good:
MTV is a safe safe safe community. There is very little crime, you can walk around any part of town at any time of day and nobody will bother you. I've never been harassed by police at any time of day or night as the other poster referred to.
MTV is a beautiful town. It's located in rolling farm and forest country, and there are some lovely historical parts of town.
MTV has decent schools.
The bad:
MTV has little in the way of opportunity for younger people. The loss of manufacturing jobs has hit the town hard.
MTV has almost nothing to do. There are some bars, and if you're an older fella, there are elks and moose and eagles and all the rest, but if you're 30 and not interested in getting smashed every weekend, you're out of luck.
Ellettsville, IN
Bloomington suburb -
8/3/2007There isn't much to do in Ellettsville proper. It's just a little tiny suburb of Bloomington. Fortunately, it does have the benefit of fewer obnoxious late night parties and is close to the wonderfulness that is Bloomington. There is also next to no crime and the housing is much cheaper than Bloomington. Since the completion of the Rt 46 improvements, the commute from Ellettsville to Bloomington has been reduced to 10 minutes or so (Ellettsville 'downtown' to IU stadium parking lot.)
The outdoor life around Ellettsville is magnificent. Within 1 hour there are literally hundreds of miles of hiking trails, beautiful waterfalls, cliffs, hilly terrain. There is a huge reservoir nearby, and generally speaking, it is difficult to find a nicer place to be outdoors in Indiana.
The weather is decent. The Bloomington area, by a freak of geography, happens to lie in a northward finger of the 5b climate zone. This gives it relatively decent winters (for Indiana) and warm summers. The spring and fall are fantastic, and much of the year can be spent outdoors.
Check out reviews of Bloomington for raves about this enclave of culture in southern Indiana.
Fort Wayne, IN
Not bad, not good -
8/2/2007The good stuff:
Traffic is excellent, with a crosstown commute taking 30 minutes or less at rush hour. Housing costs are low. There are some things for kids to do, the Children's Zoo is particularly good.
IPFW (the IU PU branch campus here) is improving dramatically. They have been moving away from a community college atmosphere to a more traditional 4 year college.
The neutral stuff:
The weather is pretty typical of the midwest. It gets cold in the winter, it gets hot in the summer, and it's very pleasant in the spring and fall. Sure, there are long stretches when it stays cloudy in the winter, but that's the midwest and it's just like that. If you have dreams of building a wind farm to generate power, think of this area...
Education varies dramatically based on your location in the city. If you live in the far NE or SW corners, you will be sending your children to some fine schools (those located around Snider HS and Homestead HS.) If you live in the middle... well, don't live in the middle.
Crime - see education
The bad stuff:
There really isn't a lot to do here for families. The city tries (very hard, in my opinion) to have an active family oriented summer season, with numerous weekend festivals and the like, but they tend to be poorly attended craft shows, by and large.
There aren't many jobs here. Plain and simple, unless you're in healthcare or education, expect to work in the service industry. It's a sad fact of life.
It's flat as a pancake and unless you like deer hunting, there isn't much to do as far as outdoors are concerned.
Baton Rouge, LA
Not worth any job to move here -
8/2/2007I hate to write a review that is solely negative, since so many people write nothing but boo-hiss-boo-hiss on here, so I'm going to include the best stuff I can think of as well.
The Pros:
Fishing and hunting are excellent here, though you will probably need a boat to do much serious fishing. There are some areas where you can hike, but none that are within an hour of town. Bird watching is excellent as well. There is nothing extraordinary about seeing snowy egrets in your backyard, or watching flocks of pelicans swim around a lake. If you are able to stand the heat, you can be outdoors for the entire year, as it rarely drops below the 40's. It's a great place for gardening, you can grow lots of subtropical plants and there is a long vegetable growing season.
The local NPR is consistently rated as one of the best in the nation.
There is a very active sports fanbase here, centered around the LSU Tigers.
The Cons:
To all of the people who have posted about Katrina ruining a lovely place to live, I have to disagree. The hurricane just exacerbated the numerous problems that already plagued the city.
Crime is terrible, plain and simple. The low cost of living is offset by things like ridiculous auto insurance premiums due to fraud (mine was $2000 higher per year.)
There is a climate of open racism going in both directions between blacks and whites that has led to the utter collapse of the public school system and virtually every person who can afford it (and many who can't) putting their kids into private school. If you have children and cannot afford private school, don't move here. It's a tremendous disservice to them. (Some of the suburbs have decent to excellent public schools, check them out instead if you are being forced to move to the area.) As a teacher at a private school, I fought a constant negative attitude towards education among my rich, white students; if half of what my public school counterparts told me was true, it's a frightening place to raise a kid.
Traffic is awful, largely due to the city's origins. Because it was built on a swamp, the city's parts were not necessarily directly accessible to one another when they were populated. This has led to a great many roads in the town that really don't lead anywhere. Over time, these have started to be reconnected, but it's still a huge mess, especially following the population boom.