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The answer is Baltimore. Baltimore is cool as shit and still cheap.
"My favourite characters are people who think they’re normal but they’re not. I live in Baltimore, and it’s full of people like that. I’ve also lived in New York, which is full of people who think they’re crazy, but they’re completely normal." - John Waters
Baltimore is super fun, but it’s gonna get expensive fast :( DC types moving in fast
The front range of Colorado is nice. Denver can be done on like $1200~, Fort Collins is like $800-1200, while the art and music scenes are somewhat small they're active and have great venues. If I piss in a circle, ten amazing hikes will get wet. There are PSL and DSA chapters along with a local SRA breakoff and mutual aid militia.
Highly recommended. I'd otherwise only move to the PNW.
edit: It's also the kind of nature that you'll never exhaust. I've been here since 2018 and have barely left one corner of the state. Recently in that corner I found out that there's a whole other wilderness zone with 70 lakes that just got lost between the other two I normally go to within an hour's drive. I can camp in dark sky areas within that hour.
Denver has mediocre public transit (dirty lightrail, buses), is hostile to its homeless population at the level of California, and the air quality is bad because the Rockies trap air. The cowfucker areas around it are Qanon territory. It's pretty white outside of Aurora, and both Denver and Aurora police are corrupt and unhinged departments. To me it feels on par with like San Antonio or Austin. It's a Little Big City and what makes it amazing is the mountain range behind it. The wildfires are also terrifying and can turn the air quality index like 150+ for multiple weeks. One hit an unforested suburb of Denver last December so nothing is safe but they take the place of Midwestern tornadoes or West Coast earthquakes.
If you lived in Denver/Fort Collins/Loveland/Longmont, you'd be about an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park (https://www.nps.gov/romo/planyourvisit/hikes.htm). That place is a cathedral for naturalists, genuinely one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Especially if you're into hiking RMNP is the greatest thing you could ever live next to and I've grown immensely as a person by virtue of it.
That's what I moved here for after visiting the park. Haven't regretted that decision for a moment. The wildflowers are so abundant and ever-changing that I do some hikes multiple times per week and don't get bored of them. Plenty of wildlife even if our predator populations are tame compared to Wyoming/Montana, so you might get to see a bear but you don't have to hike armed. Every ecosystem above 10k' becomes a super fragile alpine wonderland where you see life surviving real extremes to the point that trees grow horizontally. Below that you have fascinating grasslands and canyons with some of the most interesting geology/paleontology in the country. Colorado's a place where you can really form an understanding of nature as process and relationships, in settings which visually humble you even without psilocybin, all while physically challenging yourself to whatever degree you want within day trip distance. Any hobby you want to pursue outdoors is at its absolute best here.
Recently been spending time iding wild flowers when camping and hiking. It's amazing
They're fantastic. A photography subject that exemplifies wabi-sabi and challenges your composition skills and hiking abilities to get the right shot. Next to Sky Pond in RMNP (https://s27363.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Sky-Pond-Hike.jpg.optimal.jpg) there's a big patch of columbines so thick that they scent the air. I'll hike up there before sunsrise, take a couple grammes of psilocybin, and do breakfast while the marmots run around me on a mountain on top of a mountain.
Columbines are my absolute favorites. Was thinking of camping and taking some psilocybin this weekend so that sounds literally ideal. Related I recently found a grove of bristlecone pines when hiking Backcountry and damn those are amazing trees. Want to take a few mushrooms and stare at em.
That's what my ex was paying in the northwestern suburbs. The downtown core is probably more expensive but she was in Littleton with a decent 1br. I'm north of the city and like that area more despite Denver having the good ethnic restaurants and botanical garden. Closer proximity to less crowded hikes.
The air quality is what kills it for me too because I associate it with strokes. During the Cameron Peak fire and even the big Californian ones it rained ashes from a sepia sky. That's god knows what straight into the lungs for weeks on end. I wouldn't buy a house here or live here ten years from now when the fires are even worse, but it's a tolerable tradeoff for the mountains. Living in a town like Nederland or Estes would be the ideal.
The area around Buena Vista is really nice. I love how expansive both South and North Park are.
a local SRA breakoff
Are they actually active? I sent an e-mail a week ago and haven't heard anything back.
I'm not sure what's going on with Front Range SRA after the vote to leave National. When I was active in it there were a couple range days per month and regular business meetings. The instability with National turned me off to them until things are more settled and I have a sense of what they want to be as an org.
Gotcha. i just want someone to go shooting with. It took me like two months after I signed up with SRA to find out that Front Range wasn't part of the org anymore. What a mess.
Shooting here is miserable with all the chuds. I have to go to one particular isolated stretch of Pawnee National Grasslands just to avoid them. It's also the same place the SRA uses for range days for the same reason.
Philadelphia. You can easily get a 1 bedroom under $2k a month (mine is under $1k, and it's in a pretty wealthy area), plenty of art, and Fairmount and Wissahickon are huge parks with lots of nature.
i've been considering moving to Philly next year for a lot of those reasons. Plus there's trains going up and down the east coast and that's really cool
And since Amtrak is subsidized in the northeast, Amtrak is cheap as shit. I'm going to a dance event in DC soon, it cost me $38 total for a round trip. I get to laugh at the suckers who are driving to it, which is most of the people in my scene.
And it certainly has its flaws, but SEPTA is one of the most comprehensive public transit systems in a city in the United States. Especially since some Regional Rail lines connect with NJT.
Being able to take cheap trains to the MoMA and other museums in New York would be :chefs-kiss:
If you’re fine with winters, Milwaukee is way under 2k/mo, its right on lake michigan, lots of parks, music and art scenes, and the 2024 RNC is gonna be there in case u want to [redacted]
Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are both really pretty with some great kayaking on lakes which extend beyond the horizon. I like Milwaukee. There's a neat socialist infrastructure legacy there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_socialism
I won't tell you Chicago is flawless, but if your looking for under 2K, it is absolutely doable for some decent places! Plus there's tons of lefties there. Obviously thriving art and music scene, the only thing that might give you trouble is proximity to nature. There is an awesome state park in southern IL, but the suburban sprawl takes up a lot of immediate space around city in all directions.
That's a fair point. Not really sure how to handle that one. Glad you had a good time!
Midewin is 40 minutes away and has a reintroduced bison herd. Super cool place still unknown.
I have been following CityNerd on YouTube, and he has nice lists about underrated cities that have excellent transit if that's important to you. The ones that caught my eye were Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, and they seem cheaper than Chicago, NYC, and Philadelphia.
The Hartford, CT metro area has cheap rentals, and a good art/theater scene. It's a few hours train ride from Boston or NYC. It's worth checking out.
Greenville, SC also has a nice rental scene and is an hour drive from beautiful Appalachian mountains. Less theater stuff, but decent things to do. Asheville is gonna have art/music about an hour away but it's ridiculously priced right now.
St Louis is also a very good city with cheaper rentals. Decent airport, good community vibes, extremely cool music/art scene, definitely worth checking out.
Cleveland is on that list and I quite like it. Great access to nature, too, with Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Lake Erie. It's cheap as hell, and if you live in the right spot you can go completely car free.
Just got back from st. Louis, was pleasantly surprised. The food was great, the nightlife was pretty awesome if you like blues, some of the largest most beautiful parks I've ever seen. People seem super friendly, even more than my home Midwestern city. A little too much Jesus around but St. Louis is pretty alright.
The view from the expressway was pretty hit tbh. But the city is actually pretty bikeable/walkable it seems, at least in the areas we visited
The one place in the continental US with decent radio stations.
Leaning into the nature part here.
Eureka/Arcata, CA
Missoula, MT
Spokane, WA
Santa Fe, NMDid not expect to see Arcata show up here. Can vouch: it's amazing; one of the most beautiful places in the world. I do worry it's gonna burn up soon though :deeper-sadness: And while I think there are plenty of leftists around (I wouldn't really know, though; I was a lib when I was there), there's also a ton of really really crazy people (think hippie antivaxxer types).
this right here. lots of outright fasc types in super northern CA too growing up around there I remember seeing both klanners and neonazis.
Isn't that basically due to the emerald triangle (the weed growing)?
Pittsburgh has problems and is very cloudy/rainy, but fits a lot of the categories you laid out. Good art and museum scene. Tons of local nature, still.
Someone else mentioned it also but I'll say Tucson, AZ
Pros:
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cheap: $1500 would get you a long way and you can do lot less than that.
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great outdoor: surrounded by easily accessible mountains, wothen a couple hours there are stunning sky islands many of which have very few people. See mt Graham, the chiricahua, organ pipe NM, etc
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food: for it's size it has way too many good restaurants and bars
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monsoons: they're cool folks.
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culture: there are really interesting art scenes and such though sometimes hard to find. But local southwest art is rad.
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close to phx: when you need a bigger city
Cons:
- summer: too hot. Obviously. Make sure you have AC or camp on Graham all summer lol
- smallish: if you want a big city feel well the whole metro area has 1mil so not exactly the biggest. Also means fewer shows and tours stop in
- mediocre transit: the bus system is fine and reliable but not gonna be as extensive as you want
Don't do Phoenix it's all the bad but worse and less of the good
Nice ya it really does. What I like about it is that it has a bit of everything. Top of mountains you get stunning pine forests with views down into the basins where you can see the other mountains sprout into their own sky islands. And the Sonoran desert is a special place. Really cool especially during sunset.
Definitely check pics of organ pipe NM and one I just remembered... Aravaipa Canyon. That's a magical world.
God I'd love to be a lizard. And ya those cacti are huge. Massive twisting arms. Really impressive. Hiking aravaipa is great. Just wondering through a cool canyon stream in ankle deep water. Finding little sand barges and places to rest. Lovely
This is true. I did consider adding that as a con. Plenty of other engineering jobs there are also secretly Raytheon anyway. But if you can find one that's not... Well Tucson is worth.
Not only outdoor adventure available... But not a good idea Multiple checkpoints of armed guards. Check the underside of your car when you drive in and search it. Etc.
That is a con absolutely. It makes me sad too because I kinda wanna retire there. I just cling to the hope the southwest will wise up and people will move away. Then Tucson will be a small funky southwest community of 100k that can get its own water.
Yes this is a fantasy but let me have it.
I lived there for about 10 years, and love it to death, but another con is how asinine developers have been destroying big chunks of downtown/4th ave to build those overpriced ugly fucking student apartment complexes
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Heard that Chicago is pretty affordable still, not sure how true or not that is, but the Great Lakes are cool
Detroit, maybe Pittsburgh
Worcester or Springfield MA are still pretty affordable I think, basically any second or third largest city in a small state
Kansas City is decent and affordable, minimal public transit though. The nature is near is all prairie, but it's there
Ditto Omaha and OKC, probably the case for most mid sized Midwestern cities
College towns are probably not a bad bet either (e.g. Ann Arbor, Rochester, not sure I'd recommend florida right now but Tallahassee is pretty great and close to the border if you need to flee the state). Lawrence KS is pretty hip and shockingly leftist (home of the John Brown Gun Club)
I would not consider OKC. It has very little going on culturally and the little nature that’s close to the city is pretty underwhelming. It’s also major chud territory. The entire region basically lives on the oil boom/bust cycles.
I actually just left a comment about Chicago before reading this. If you can handle getting out of the city/burbs, then it can check all your boxes!
i have friends in omaha and nebraska’s about go full bible belt with their next governor and omaha is currently selling itself off to land developers. i would not recommend it.
Yeah I split a little less than $1800 for a one bedroom w/ my partner so $900 each a month in a very accessible area of queens. Your best bet is to go through a broker honestly. I know it’s tedious, but what ends up happening, at least in my experience, is that a lot of old school landlords who are just content to have the property managed for them and don’t care to advertise heavily end up having prices a few hundred bucks lower than what you might see online from somebody trying to fill a newly renovated apt.
Yeah online is though because you’re only seeing what ends up being advertised by people savvy enough to be online. Obviously there are some ridiculous rents in NYC, but I pay what I pay for a building that’s pest free, one block from the subway.
The big benefit of NYC is that anything you’d want to do is accessible, even if it’s just for a day trip. I actually feel sometimes like I take for granted where I live considering you could have a completely new experience every single day
You can get a studio for less than that, maybe a 1br if you're lucky, or if you have roommates you can get a big ass 3-4br for like $900-1200 each. You won't be in Manhattan but who cares, the trains go everywhere at all times.
Toughest part would probably be nature because the city is so huge, but there are trains that go to beaches and state parks and stuff within like 60-90 min of the city
Plenty of places in deep Queens/Brooklyn that are less than an hour from Manhattan by train that have decent rent. Jackson Heights/Flushing is the most diverse place in the United States (and potentiality the world) and you can find studio apartments for around $1k.
Bellingham, Washington (Cheap, cool, near nature)
Albany, New York (Less of all of those things, but still all of those things)
Annapolis, Maryland (If you count the docks as nature)
I guess you can find shit in Bellingham under 2k/month but rent is exploding there. It got on some list of best cities to retire and now every boomer and property management company is trying to suck up all the real estate.
Dude you can visibly see it, too. They're building everywhere up here. I will say under 2k is extremely doable here, though. My partner and I live in a pretty spacious 2 bedroom for 1,600 just a couple minutes from downtown. We came from SD paying hundreds more than that for a much smaller, shittier place.
Like I said elsewhere in this thread, that's going to change quickly, but right now it's okay. I really dig it here, though.
Bellingham is like a weird mix of Astoria, Oregon and Seattle. More hippie than hip but overall not bad; I wouldn't call it cheap though
Lol yeah, even the local baseball team has a hamster as their mascot.
