Escaping Suburban ARSE Hellscape

repat chronicles 6 comments

I have moved. I escaped the suburban ARSE hellscape.

Here are hints to where I now live, based on my priorities.

  1. Big, walkable city.
  2. Low climate risk.
  3. Purple state.

Walkable

I have lived in St. Louis without a car. But it’s not easy. There are too many places public transit doesn’t reach. And some of the transit stops are dodgy at night. As a single twentysomething it’s OK, but I wouldn’t do it with a family in tow. So I’ve moved to one of the few truly walkable cities in the United States.

Low Climate Risk

Nowhere is risk-free given heavier rainfall from warmer air leads to devastating flooding. But my new city has a low risk as defined in my last post on climate migration: east of the continental divide, north of the Confederacy and miles from a coast.

I’d also rank St. Louis as low risk and poised for a boom when the population shifts north. But last summer we went camping at a lake when the temperature hit 104 with standard Missouri humidity. Swimming offered no respite, even the water was hot. We moved somewhere a few degrees cooler.

Purple State

One of the problems fueling division is geographic segregation. People are moving to be around likeminded people, so they don’t talk to the other side. I don’t want to aggravate national division, but the tension is real. My son grabbed an AR-15 at a friend’s house. In my friend’s defense, he doesn’t have children. But it makes you wonder, why live around that if I don’t have to?

You get tired of feeling like an alien when the conversation turns to guns, climate or whether Trump won the 2020 election. I don’t want my children infected with this new conservative hostility to education. As a parent, I have tremendous influence, but the village they grow up in does too. I know, I grew up there. And I want something better for my children.

Where am I?

Based on those three criteria, can you guess where I am?

Here’s another hint. Of America’s few walkable cities, this is the only one accessible by the middle class.

Still need help?

When I say “big,” I mean it’s among America’s top 10 metro areas.

For “low climate risk,” the state has no ocean coastline.

More?

It’s not just politically purple in the sense of governorship and state legislature. It has swung for Democrat and Republican presidents in the 20th century.

That should be more than enough. For those poorly educated about the United States, here’s the clincher.

I’ll be writing about life as an outsider in America’s original capital.

6 comments

  1. When I saw your email on this subject, I gave it 3 minutes of thought.

    At first, I thought maybe Miami, Florida. I read you always wanted your children to know both Spanish and English and maybe, with a bicultural family, that would be the ideal city. Perhaps even better for business with shorter and more economical flights to Peru? And, despite having Ron Desantis, it is purple in federal elections. But then you said no to climate risk areas so Florida is out.

    Obviously nowhere in California if we´re aiming for a purple state.

    I remember you said something in a previous email or maybe an article about entertaining the idea of retirement in a bigger city like NYC or Chicago when the kids were grown up or something. I don´t remember how you phrased it but something like that.

    NYC? Too blue as the state is never red even in federal elections.

    Chicago? I´ve been there. It can be walkable to a degree compared to other cities. Less climate risk. But when was the last time Illinois has been red? So maybe a pass on that unless you are calling it a purple state because the rural areas outside Chicago are red but Chicago is blue. Purple that way?

    But Philadelphia obviously hits the mark. I´ll be honest in saying I thought Chicago initially and assumed you were giving a generous definition as to what is purple but then learned it was Philadelphia because you tweeted something that made me look at your Twitter and saw you changed your location to Philadelphia.

    Didn´t know Philadelphia was walkable but I guess it fits the profile at least of having less climate risk than say Miami and being in a purple state still.

    Hope things are going well over there.

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    1. Chicago was a close runner-up. A major advantage it had over Philly was we could easily get back to STL for holidays. But for all the talk of it being a pedestrian city, it’s really only walkable near downtown in my experience, and those neighborhoods aren’t modestly priced. Philly is walkable almost everywhere in the city and some would argue even a few inner-ring suburbs, although the latter of those aren’t modestly priced.

      I’d argue Illinois is bluer than New York, although they have elected more Republican governors in my lifetime. But I always point out to people calling New York a liberal hotbed that they’ve elected non-Democratic mayors FIVE TIMES, spanning 20 years in my lifetime. Last time Chicago elected a GOP mayor was 1927!

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    1. HA! I’ve tried many now, but strangely not the two icons. The best cheesesteak I’ve had, recommended to me by natives and likely can’t be topped, is a little place outside the city called Mama’s. A proper post on Philly food is warranted: roast pork, tomato pie, scrapple, water ice!

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