Nothing .  100% total nothing .  Zero x's Nil  nothing .  13 years ago when I first came here it was trully paradise. Literlly miles of beautiful white beaches and bathtub warm water and maybe 6 people enjoying it all .I mean I would go to the beach in the late afternoon and be the only one there!  Now it's so OVER developed and OVER RUN with tourists you can't even find a place to park, traffic is more stop than go , everyone trying to rape the tourist , its just a bad joke any more . The rent has trippled in the last 5 years but wages have stayed the same , what was $2500.00 an acre for swamp land is now  $125,000.00 ! I'm not exaterating on that either.  I was paying $10.00 for a haircut  2 years ago , it's now $22.00 , the girl HAS to charge that much just to make her rent on her shop. I'm trying to save a few bucks and get the hell outta here as soon as I can . I was looking at Pensacola but Dennis took care of that idea as there won't be any houseing available there for a while. Right now my rent is very low but the property is under contract and should be finalized in October. the owner payed $15,000  for 6 acres of light industrial about 18 years ago , he's getting 1.3 million for it . and half of it is under water every time it rains !  Anyone who was here 6,8 or 10years ago is selling and LEAVING , Heck I'll bet there are only 20 people left here that I know , and were all making plans to leave.  SIGH , They (the greedy developers and the tourist development council ) have litterly PAVED PARADISE and PUT in a PARKING LOT.        

   this one house sold 3 times in a year ,120,000 higherthan the 1st time.  the only fun i have here now is watching houses fall into the gulf and reading letters to the editor from people who moved to "paradise" , after coming here for a week as a tourist , then realizeing it's not a great place to live , and are selling to some un-suspecting "visit for a week tourist" and are taking the money and running as fast as they can .  side note- people who bought a small home here years ago can't even afford the taxes now and are being forced to sell.  "Affordable  Housing" has become a big issue in this area as workers can't afford to live here. It's bad when the city of Destin employees can't even afford to live in Destin , and to top it all off we have a ton of illegal incompetent greasers living 10 in a house ,working for peanuts and sending their money home every Friday. Employers hire them as there is no skilled help left here and their stupid or desperate enough to work on a million dollar home for minimum wage. If you can speak greaser, you are foreman material and that my friend is no joke.

CP, I'm jealous, you're where I want to be.  Someday, we plan to move somewhere like Lake Havasu City in Arizona.  In the meantime, while I have to stay in the midwest, I'll stay in Bloomington.  There's a ton of live music venues, it's a small town, but it's a college town so you get such diverse cultures here.  And, we're only an hour away from Indy, so there's always something to do!  Last night we went to my favorite restuarant, it's this little quaint place called Esan Thai that has authentic thai food for really cheap in a nice french cafe with an oriental feel type atmosphere.  When we want "fast food," we usually stop at a little grocery store type place called Oriental Market, where they make the best gyros I've ever had (I think the owner is Turkish).

there are some beautiful towns like that that I'd like to live too - like Savannah, GA.

I like the weather most about where I live, though.  The fact that you always feel like you're on vacation, the beaches, all the different stuff to do.  It's pretty cool down here.  I especially love the palm trees.

Dave is really bitter!  What!?  He is!!

What can I say that I haven't already said?  Living in the Chicago area is to live in a great cross section of America.  Even way out in the burbs, we still have that neighborhood sense of things.  Your proud of where you are, but equally as proud of where you came from.  You want plain & simple?  We got it.  You want high culture?  We got it.  You want sports champions?

 

 

We ain't got it.  But the Packers still stink!

I live in Connecticut and while no one can afford to live here,(my mil rate is 53... anyone have a higher one?) those of us that do manage to find a bargain get all the gloriousness a North Eastern state can provide.

We have all 4 seasons... 

Crisp cool autumns bursting with bright colored leaves falling from the sky....  

Frosty winters that allow us to snuggle inside with loved ones and drink cocoa... 

Happy spring days with new budding trees....

Lush  Green Summers at the beach....  

In Connecticut, we are pretty well developed....  no big empty spaces in my neck of the woods.  We have lots of theaters, colleges, Casino's, amusement parks, AA sports, and we are close enough to the city (NEW YORK) that we can enjoy everything they have to offer as well for a 40 minute train ride.

I love to visit other places, but home is CT.