Hawaii if flying didn't feel risky(virus) and logistics were easier. The 2 week quarantine makes a hard move harder. I'm not sure I actually want to be in a hotel. I am "settling" lol for Santa Cruz. I really thought I wanted to live in so cal for awhile too but watching the reactions to blm and covid makes me second guess that. Actually made me really unsure where I might want to live. Also thought about Florida in the future.
but based on tayo42's initial comment they'd probably regard FL on the "worse" end of the spectrum. It's fair to say much of Florida is Orange County, CA on steroids (with all of the rage and none of the potential covid prevention benefits)
Yeah that was probably weird wording on my part. I meant Florida was also a contender in the future, but due to recent events it's not really any more.
Born and raised in FL, my family has been here since the 1600's and my personal opinion is most of FL is a festering poop hole. Pretty much the eastern seaboard is gone, from Florida city thru Miami up to West palm, is a mad house of thousands of cars who all think they have the driving skills of Dale Earhart. Many times Miami has been voted the city you are most-likely to have someone blatantly steal your parking spot. Police corruption their is bad and there is limited mass transit. If you get into a fender bender you will need to get a picture of the other persons licence plate as fast as possible as there is probably a better than 50% chance they are going to flee the scene of the accident.
Moving up from there you have the no-mans land of the beach rich that spans from Jupiter to Sebastian. This is a nice area, has a bit of a drug problem but not that bad. But if you don't like the rich socialite yacht club type, there is not much in this area.
From there you get into what I consider to be one of the worst areas of FL and that is Melbourne and the blight pretty much runs all the way up to Jacksonville. It is littered with Meth heads, Oxy, joblessness, economic depression and suburban blight. Think a run down suburbia of central New Jersey in FL and that is pretty much what it is. The only city in that swath that is nice is St. Augustine, I got married there and honestly it is the only city on the east coat that I would consider moving to.
Central Florida is pretty much all the same as Miami with the exception of Police corruption, the cops there are generally pretty decent. The one bad thing about Central Florida is the shear sprawl of it, no mass transit and every bad driver in the world wants to go to Disney so they bring all their different ways of bad driving to Central Florida for a grand demolition derby.
North FL and the panhandle are nice, but you have to be the type that can deal with the people there. They are ultra-conservative but generally have a live and let live attitude. For example, say 2 gay guys went into a diner in NF, they would most likely be greeted with some kind of slang like what will you have fruitcakes and stuff like that, Think being welcomed in by Andrew Dice Clay with a southern accent. Manytime's these people think they are generally being funny, but what you won't see is them following them down the street, harassing or assaulting them. But if you trigger it is not the place for you, they will say sexist, racist, and homophobic stuff a lot of times just as jabs to see if they can ruffle your feathers. But they would not go and burn down their house just because they are gay, black or lesbian. That being said, they like their sleepy little towns sleepy so if you started instigating for change, you might ruffle some feathers in that area. Point being, it's nice, it's quaint, the people are not hate mongers, but they are also not politically correct. They kind of live by a motto of don't cause a problem and their won't be one. If you can live in those parameters, North Florida is a nice place.
Now and I hate to even put this on the net, the real gem of FL is the west cost. It has it's pockets of blight like Polk and Hernado county but pretty much all the way down, you will find beautiful, old Florida towns, where the people have the old Florida attitude of live and let live. Of note some of the really nice places are Cedar Key, Hommossassa, Crystal River, Tarpon Springs, Tampa (the only big FL city I would ever consider living in again), Sarasota, Ft. Myers, Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte. If I went back to the mainland it would be to the west coat. That being said, I live in what I consider to be the best part of FL, the Keys.
I'd add Saint Petersburg, FL to the nice list, may be include in your Tampa post since it is part of the Tampa Bay region, but St Pete is a nice city, very progressive and liberal, lots to do, nice art scene and lots of restaurants. As any place in Florida, the heat may not be for you, the summer months are hard but if you adjust your schedule to early mornings and late afternoons is generally a nice place to live. There is some local startup scene here but i've met lot of remote people on coffee shops around here before COVID-19. There are decent amount of tech meetups as well.
Yep lived there in the early 90's, it was a little rough back then but it was still a cool place to live, I did kind of wrap it up with my generally Tampa area along with Clearwater, I really don't make a distinction between the 3, until you get north to Tarpon Springs or south to Ruskin, it's kind of all the Greater Tampa area.
Speaking as someone in Hawaii, there isn't a lot that's great here. Predominant anti-intellectual culture, high COL, Amazon Prime can take up to 2 weeks, etc. The best thing is definitely the nature and safety, though
Based off the responses I got I should written a longer post. I figured with Hawaii it would never be a place to live forever, but maybe a year or two. Spend time checking out all of the islands. Actually getting like really good at surfing. A lot of the stuff I read make it sound unreasonable to actually settle down for a long time there. Family is no where close, not really a great place raise kids?well it's probably fun but not setting them up for success. North shore was an amazing time when I visited... I don't need hip restaurants and nightlife I'm over that.
