Chicago. Huge city, tons of lefties. Actual socialists in city government. Cost of living is tolerable. Really good food.
Honestly, anywhere in the city you'll be fine. Stay away from the far northwest or southwest, bc that's where all the cops live. And people tend to forget that Chicago was essentially the birthplace of the American labor movement. Look up the Haymarket affair. Currently 6 of our 50 Alderpeople are DSA members, and PSL is strong here, too. Affordable, but cool neighborhoods are Old Irving Park and Avondale, less affordable, but still cool are Logan Square, Andersonville and Ravenswood and if you'd prefer the south side, Hyde Park or Kenwood, though the Obama complex will be in Kenwood, so maybe less cool in the fututre. The suburbs I generally wouldn't recommend, with the exceptions of Oak Park and Evanston.
anything is better than the flat floppy grease-slick cardboard they make in NY (that they tell you to FOLD to eat!!!) and every generic italian-themed restaurant that each town within a 200mi radius of NYC has three of.
if you have to fold it to eat it, it's a taco, not a pizza.
There's no need to put down NYC pizza to talk up that lasagne Chicagoans call pizza
midwest pizza scene is best pizza scene. you get chicago (deep dish AND thin), detroit, NY, whatever. switching it up is easy as fuck. it just sucks when you go to an area and the pizza is just so mono. ill stuff my face with NY pizza too.
We hardly eat deep dish pizza. Idk why people think that’s the only pizza we eat. I have it maybe once a year.
Oh yeah lol. I tell people if they want Chicago food they should get an Italian beef sandwich or a Chicago style hot dog.
oh man italian beef is the one thing i really miss not eating meat anymore
Wow pretty accurate description of what it felt like to live in ny
Yeah, I'm applying to grad schools soon and this is the ideal place I'd want to end up
Olympia WA. The evergreen state college is a hotbed for radicals, and it was the center of the hardcore scene for a while, so there's a lot of anarchists.
For sure a white bubble though...
I heard Olympia sucks lmao. I have a friend who went to Evergreen state and he was the only brown dude there while the whole Weinstein fiasco happened. He wasn’t particularly bothered by it but all the white people were being overly sympathetic. I’m pretty sure he’s a radical but said he felt like you’re walking on egg shells when talking to people.
Him and his wife said people are not particularly friendly either.
Baltimore is close to WV, cheap, and has lots of leftists. Baltimore isn't like most cities on the east coast, it's cheaper to live in the city than in the suburbs and even decent neighborhoods are relatively affordable.
Baltimore is a big scary talking point for racist chuds. They claim that the DemocRat party destroyed the city by enslaving the black population with welfare, leading them to a culture of dependency and crime. People that live literally like 8 min from downtown never go there and act like it's Escape from New York or Mad Max. The city has a crime problem for sure, but it's mostly gang members killing each other over drug disputes and other crimes related to drugs. Large swaths of the city are essentially The Hood ™ but tbh, it's completely fine during the day and there shouldn't really be any reason for someone who doesn't live there to be there at night. It's still affordable to live in "nice" neighborhoods (and no I don't just mean white, there are nice black and diverse neighborhoods here).
Personally I love Baltimore because it's in a sweet spot between the rust belt cities that are cheap but have no signs of life and the gentrified shitholes that are bustling but completely unaffordable. There is gentrification here but it's slow because there is still a massive stock of unoccupied homes. It's got a kind of working class ethos and isn't a snooty town like DC or NY which I obviously like. I don't feel weird just looking like a bum when I'm being lazy and going to buy cigs in ratty sweatpants and slides. It's a pretty non-judgemental place. I don't know much about the Anarchist scene because I'm not one but I know they're everywhere here. Their graffiti is all over my neighborhood and they pull big stunts like painting over the mayor's very prominent billboard with abolish the police/cancel rent. I know that PSL, DSA and IWW are all active in the city and probably other groups, I've seen CPUSA events pop up around the corner from me. I know it's not radical or anything but I'm pretty sure the DSA-backed Green Party candidate for city council is going to win, I see her signs all over neighborhoods in her district including huge ones.
A story I like to tell to give a general feel of the culture of the city, when lockdown was first starting I was chilling and watching TV and I saw a bunch of cop sirens out front. I looked out and cops seemed to be harassing a guy they pulled over for no reason. Immediately a couple neighbors were out there filming them. Then my roomate and I went out and all of us were yelling at the cops to let him go, then more and more people from the block came out and were shouting at them to let him go so the pigs called for backup so we couldn't de-arrest him. One neighbor was a lawyer and got the man's info and have him his number and another girl got his family's info to let them know what happened. It wasn't like we freed him but it was wild to have the whole block either come out or shout out the window at the pigs, openly calling them pigs to their face lol.
If you do consider it, I can tell you what neighborhoods are like
Charles Village is a good area that's quiet and young, lots of JHU and MICA students mixed with working class and PMC folks. Pride usually starts in Charles village, and some protest marches start there. If I had to guess, most of the activist population lives there and in adjacent neighborhoods.
Mount Vernon is the gaybourhood. It's more expensive than Charles Village and has more stuff going on (restaurants, gay bars etc). I'd say it's a bit more bougie but the northern part is mostly young students.
Station North is between the last two neighborhoods. It's a little less polished than both, more diverse and lower income. It's the kind of neighborhood where basically everyone is between the ages of 18-50, with the older folks being poorer. Virtually no kids live there and there are lots of events around here. Artscape happens here every summer which is the city's largest art festival and one of the largest in the region. You can easily walk to/from here from the other neighborhoods I mentioned.
Remington is and white working class neighborhood that declined in the 90s, stagnated for years and now is starting to be gentrified. It's West of Charles Village, and is mostly quiet and the houses are almost entirely 2-3br rowhomes. It's more expensive to live here just because there aren't a lot of apartments but it's still not expensive for what you get. A lot of young married couples buy homes there, which are usually in the $150k-250k range. A couple nice spots including R. Haus and 29th Street Tavern.
Hampden used to also be a poor white neighborhood originally based around mills along the Jones Falls, it has basically been gentrified by now with probably 15% of the population being the native "white trash". It's a part of a unique series of neighborhoods in the middle of the city that are secluded by a large park and highway on one side and JHU and a small river on the other. Hampden, Medfield and Woodbury seem like their own small milling town that you'd see in the mountains of PA except they're smack in the middle of the city. Very interesting places but the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the city. Hampden is always jumping while Medfield and Woodbury are more residential, cheaper and has more of the native blue collar white folks.
maybe Humboldt county california, then?
liberal, cheap and not too far from high tech
Pacific NW is nice, but I've lived here all my life.
Small towns around Portland have some working class commies like old IWW folk.
Be careful with the PNW. It's nice but has a long history of white supremacy and neo-nazis.
Seattle or portland if you want to live in a city with an actually substantially sized leftist movement. There's a reason why the BLM protests lasted for longer and remained more radical in these cities than anywhere else.
Richmond VA is pretty rad and would be a relatively closer move depending on where in WV you are. It's mostly black and white so not quite as multicultural as some bigger cities but there's definitely lots of class diversity. Hell of a lot more affordable too. Decent music scene and great art scene since VCU is right in the heart.
Most towns with [state name] university in them will be surprisingly good. And some will be surprisingly affordable. Plus if you're already thinking about finishing a degree, the university would be right there.
Everything is so expensive in the big cities. Now with COVID and increase prices in commodities as a result of the recession, there's absolutely no excuse to move into a city.
I'd recommend a rural small town. It's cheaper living and that beats having to deal with how expensive the cities are.
There’s pros and cons, and if you can find me a liberal rural area with lots of left leaning folks I’ll add it to the list. I’d rather die with other leftists than surrounded by chuds I have to “tolerate”.
Oh boy, hate to break it to you but outside of the utopias of liberal big cities, you're going to learn that most of America has chuds everywhere.... No one is saying you have to deal with them. Most of us living in rural areas, keep to ourselves.
I'd much rather live out here, instead of a big city where the taxes are more expensive, price of commodities more expensive and it's next to impossible to afford anything. Don't bother anyone in the rural country, and they won't bother you. Don't feel safe? Get armed and do firearm training. Easier to do that in the rural areas anyway than the big cities where they have extreme gun control laws.
West Virginia's gonna be in relatively okay shape as the climate falls apart, so you might wanna stick around.
