Re: help! where should we live?
Posted by Anonymous on Apr 14, 2007 · Member since Dec 1969 · 11789 posts
Asheville, North Carolina fits your description 100%. That's where I'm moving and it really has everything you are looking for. There are some vegwebers here currently living there and they all love it (right guys?).....Woodstock, NY is also a place that has everything you are looking for. I would have stayed there a long long time if it wasn't for all that snow! :D
Austin, Texas fits you criteria and it isn't that far of a move. Except it probably has more people than you are looking for.
Athens, GA fits your criteria pretty well, though it is a fairly decent way from OK. Other than that I would definitely recommend either Austin or Asheville.
City of Arcata, County of Humboldt, State of California
It fits your entire list.
http://www.humboldtcountymls.com/search.cfm
from what i've read, Seattle fits all your criteria. However, it is pretty far away so maybe not so perfect. Anyway, I'm moving there with my bf in a month and i am moving there for pretty much every reason you listed.
Austin, Texas fits you criteria and it isn't that far of a move. Except it probably has more people than you are looking for.
San Marcos, TX, betwen Austin and San Antonio and not so very big, would a good choice, too. You'd have a small college town; Texas State University is there. The population, according to the Chamber of Commerce's website, is 41,602. Austin is just a ways up I-35 from there. The weather is beautiful most of the time and there's a lot of outdoor activities available:
www.sanmarcostexas.com and http://www.toursanmarcos.com/
There's some smaller towns in the county, too. Marthamydear (who used to post all the time here) lives in Buda, Texas which is also in Hays County. She has told me that it's a cool place to live. It's population is 3,267.
I live in Uvalde and it sucks. I'm hoping DH can get a teaching job there or in Kerrville or in San Antonio.
Got my bachelor's degree and did two years of graduate school at UGA in Athens and my DH did graduate work there so I lived there a second go 'round. We now live about an hour away and still love to visit Athens. It's a very cosmopolitan place to be as small as it is. And it made VegNew's (I think it was VegNews) list of veg*n-friendly places to live. There are bike paths in some parts of Athens I'm pretty sure and all the other criteria are there.
I will say, though, that just like every other lovely small city, it's growing. It's seriously larger and more populated now than it was in the 60s when I was in school there. Somehow that happens to all great places and they become less great, so you would not be able to move there and think that all your criteria would always be there. Alas. (I guess that's my glass-half-empty thought for the day. :P)
Asheville, NC is close to what you want. It is very bike friendly, but (and I gotta say it's a big but) there are no jobs, persay. I suppose that depends on your field. If you're into nursing, you're home free. There's a joke here that you're more likely to be served coffee by someone with a master's degree than anywhere else in the country (I've also heard that about Austin).
Also, I certainly wouldn't consider Asheville cheap. The cost of living is pretty high for a Southern town (still less than any other region). When we first moved here in 2003, we rented a cute little house 30 miles north of here for $650/mo (at the time I was teaching in Johnson City, TN which is about 55 miles north; Greenville, SC is about an hour south, neither is a bad drive and I have clients in both- but I grew up in Atlanta where you had to drive a long way to anything, so commuting doesn't bother me all that much). Obviously, due to the distance, the biking issue was irrelevant.
I've seen rents for tiny studios in town for $500/mo. Your price range isn't unreasonable by any means if your willing to look outside of town a bit, but then you give up some of the bike friendly access. Asheville is situated in a bowl, so any of the "burbs" (not a great description of reality, these aren't like the burbs in any large city) are uphill from town. Significantly uphill, like 2000 foot climbs, via bike. Not impossible, depending on your tolerance for such things and we've done it, but we live 12 miles north of downtown and I would never commute into Asheville via bike as my daily route. The good thing is most of the surrounding towns also have thriving downtowns. So you can get by without a car, but with significant effort.
Other than those two cautions, Asheville meets all of your criteria and then some. It 's a great area. Oh, one more thing to consider. You didn't mention kids or schools, but if you're looking for a place to put down roots. The city of Asheville has a fantastic community of liberal moms (and many are firends of mine) but the schools are mediocre at best. Schools in the south are terrible in general and Asheville is no different. There are a lot of magnet schools in the county, which improves things significantly, IF you can get your kid into one.
Not trying to be a downer, it's easy to find good things to say about Asheville, just look on the web or ask someone. I'm just giving you the rest.
We'd love to have you here (best to have a job lined up first, though). If you're interested in details on the things you listed as "wants", I'll be happy to provide cause we got' em. E-mail me at {raika at inorbit dot com}
Good luck to you!
You might want to check out Davis, CA. It's the bike capital of the world, college town, veg-friendly. I'm not sure about the price, or how big it's gotten, but it's worth a look.
Davis is nice. It's between Sacramento and the Bay Area, so you're away from it all and close to everything.
I've lived in Arcata, but haven't been to Asheville. According to people who have been to both places, Arcata is Asheville times 10. From looking at pictures of Asheville, I think some of the big differences are that Arcata doesn't have sky scrapers. It's behind the Redwood Curtain and you just don't find stuff like that there. There are about 16,500 residents in Arcata, home of Humboldt State University. My only word of caution is that it may not be suitable for someone with seasonal mood disorder because, even if it's warm, it tends to be overcast. Other than that, I haven't found anything comparable.
Just Plain Cool
Kinetic Sculpture Race: http://www.kineticsculpturerace.org
Environmental
Campus Center For Appropriate Technology: http://www.humboldt.edu/~ccat
Northcoast Environmental Center: http://yournec.org
Arcata Marsh & Wildlife Sanctuary: http://www.humboldt.edu/~ere_dept/marsh
Music
Redwood Coast Jazz Festival: http://www.redwoodjazz.org/index2.html
Blues By the Bay: http://www.bluesbythebay.org
Regae On the River: http://www.reggaeontheriver.com
Food
Farmer's Market: http://humfarm.org
Co-op: http://www.northcoastco-op.com
Wildberries Market: http://www.wildberries.com/
Rentals
http://humboldtrentals.com
i second Davis, California. it's a nice little college town with plenty of veggie options. i don't know if it's entirely liberal however, but my idea of liberal is probably different from most peoples since i grew up in oakland/berkeley.
i'm not sure how short a "short commute to job" is. Eureka, a more conservative town (by northcoast standards), is seven miles south around the bay. Eureka's population is about 40,000 and is the largest city in the county. However, it is the county seat and a lot of people drive to Eureka for services, so there are more job opportunities there. If ten miles is a short commute, adding Eureka to your job search area would expand your opportunities.
Times Standard (Eureka's paper): http://www.times-standard.com/
Arcata Eye (Arcata's newspaper): http://www.arcataeye.com/
Yellow Springs, Ohio might be a good thought, too.
Upside - Very liberal town (in a pretty conservative state). Some veggie restaurants and stores. Fairly close to Dayton, Fairborn and Xenia for job options, as well as jobs at the college right in town. Beautiful hiking at John Bryan State park. Small, relatively cheap. Home of Antioch College and close to Wilberforce College. :)
Downside- not to close to Oklahoma. :-\
Welllllllllllll, the town I live in, my hometown that I just left Houston to come back to meets almost none of your criteria, but after living so many places it's one place I always come back to. It's called Sherman its 55 miles North of Dallas, roughly 30,000-40,000 people, pet friendly, a nice 3-4 bdrm brick home in a nice neighborhood will run you tween between 800-1100 a month, several parks, semi veg friendly, no whole foods stores but most of the grocery stores carry at least the basics, soymilk, tofu, fresh produce etc. We are roughly 10 minutes from the Oklahoma border straight up 75 north, Not necessarily a college town though we are the Home of Austin College.... N e how may not be what you are looking for, but I can't wait to raise my kids here!
~Cristina
a nice 3-4 bdrm brick home in a nice neighborhood will run you tween between 800-1100 a month
Forget Arcata, I want to move there!
ive heard alot of great things about Ashville....unfortunantly as things get more popular...what made them specials starts to die
Davis, well...pretty much anything near Sacramento is a crap hole IMO, but probably because I grew up there
How about Eugene Oregon?
i second Davis, California. it's a nice little college town with plenty of veggie options. i don't know if it's entirely liberal however, but my idea of liberal is probably different from most peoples since i grew up in oakland/berkeley.
well, i'm pretty much the opposite of that. growing up in oklahoma and living in dallas, liberal seems to mean having only one pro bush sticker on your giant truck. anywhere on the spectrum closer to berkeley than dallas would be great for us.
we've thought a lot about austin, since it wouldn't be that far of a move. it's still quite a bit larger than what i'd like for the long term. san marcos is supposed to be really great for hiking, etc. so maybe i'll look into that. i think i'd really like to get out of texas, though. not that there is anything wrong with texas, it's just not where i see us living permanently.
i'd have to say that arcata and asheville are at the very top of the list. arcata seems to have the smallishness that we would love. i'd also really like to live somewhere heavily forested. asheville seems more doable job wise, but we definitely won't be moving anywhere without something lined up in advance--or some serious savings. i also love how close asheville is to the appalachian trail, but arcata is along the california coastal trail. really, either way the hiking would be amazing.
thanks for all of the help! i'm going to look into all of the cities that you guys mentioned. they all sound very similar to what we are looking for, so i guess mason could start applying for jobs in all of them and let fate decide!
I've always heard people who've lived in California and come back to Austin say that Austin is like a "little chunk" of California transplanted into Texas. They're the most liberal city in Texas and probably the most veg-friendly. The ideal thing I think would be to live/work in a surrounding town and be close enough to come in for shopping, education and entertainment. As for trees, the hill country area has more than enough for me! Then I grew up in the flat South Plains area and too many trees freaks me out. I like being able to see 50 miles standing on the ground and 75 miles if you stand on a tuna can! ;D
Cristinadawn, thank you for the info about Sherman. My DH was asking me if I thought it'd be an OK place and I told him I didn't know. Now I can give him the OK to apply for teaching jobs there! I did a massive research project on Olive Oatman and we visited Sherman to see her grave. The town has an interesting history. I hope it's not still as racist as it was in the 1930's when they burned their courthouse down to kill a black man accused of raping a white woman. I like the idea of being only 55 miles from Dallas but actually I'd like something a little warmer. A good paying job is the main necessity for my DH now so I'll bloom whereever he transplants me to. 8)
(Didn't mean to hijack your thread tofuttibreak.)
Davis, well...pretty much anything near Sacramento is a crap hole IMO, but probably because I grew up there
How about Eugene Oregon?
That's true about Sacramento. :) I'd suspect that if you lived in Davis, your husband would probably end up commuting 15 miles to Sacramento for work, which defeats the purpose of living in some cool little town.
Oregon is a good choice, but I'd choose Portland. They have an entirely vegan market there, Food Fight Grocery. If you find a town where coffee shops offer organic, fair trade, shade grown coffee, you can find vegan food options in the store and at restaurants, and there's a good local music scene you'll do well. Portland has all of that, but the population is about a half a million.
Well, I personally love living in Sacramento! I grew up here too. :)
Well, I personally love living in Sacramento! I grew up here too. :)
Awesome! When I'm in Sacramento, it's in the downtown area for meetings. I've tried driving around to find things to do in the evenings, but haven't found anything really cool. Do you have any advice on grocery stores with vegan options or restaurants or... ?
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