And that's not a bad thing at all. People all want to live in the suburbs when they get older, though that may have been a Boomer transition as younger people are flocking back toward the cities and gentrifying the hell out of them. I think Columbus may be the future in that sense; it's one of the twenty largest cities in the country, but really only because it's spread out so far. There aren't towering apartments all over the place like in places like New York and the population density isn't high in a place like San Francisco. It's just a decent amount of people spread out over a huge area.
There's OSU in the middle with High Street and the Short North. The Short North, Downtown and the Arena District feel comparable to something you'd find in a more stereotypically "cool" city like Brooklyn. But then if you go two blocks either way, you find a highway on one side or two family houses on the other. That's not something you're going to find in Brooklyn. The development in a bigger city extends farther out than just a few blocks east or west. Granted, High Street is extremely long but every urban or semi-urban district is at least in part on High Street as far as I know.
It's like if everything was on Metropolitan Ave in Brooklyn. Things would get boring after awhile if there are no other options, and I think that's what's happening to me. The bars are of a pretty high caliber Downtown and in the Short North, but there aren't a huge amount of them and there isn't much else to do. If you only went to them once a month or so, it'd be fine but there isn't much else to do in Columbus proper.
You *can* find things to do that you find in other bigger cities like adult sports leagues and classes and groups outside of Ohio State, but they're often out in Gahanna or Upper Arlington or something like that. And as a bum who doesn't drive a car since I never really needed one in New Jersey, that isn't exactly pleasing to me. There's no reliable mass transit besides buses and calling them reliable here would be giving them way too much credit. Newark, NJ should be burnt down and forgotten about by our children, but at least they had a reliable light rail.
I think that'd fix a majority of Columbus' problems I personally have. There's stuff to do like going to the zoo or going to a Crew game, but it's all so spread out that it's hard to get to if you don't have a car or don't want to drive a car, which a lot of people are showing they don't want to do in cities like San Francisco and Portland.
With OSU in session, and still being a student here, many of those activities are provided for, but once I graduate, why would I stay when I could find a city with those things closer together. I know that might not matter to other people, but this is my personal account that probably nobody will read so deal with it.
The food also isn't my favorite. I'll put the good in first. Hot Chicken Takeover is probably one of my top 5 favorite restaurants I've ever been to. Cane's is fantastic in its own way. Places like City Barbecue are better than any you're going to get in NYC. Thurman's was amazing. But there just aren't enough hole in the wall places where I can get takeout. Everything on campus is a chain of some sort for the most part and everything in the Short North and Downtown besides street meat and the North Market seems to be a sit down place. There are exceptions obviously, but this really wouldn't be a problem if those sit down places were amazing. But of the ones I've had, they don't really taste any better than Chili's. Press Grill was the weirdest pizza I've had since I accidentally went on a date to a goat cheese pizza restaurant. Mac's tastes like TGI Friday's and there isn't any good chicken parm to speak of, so I have to make it myself.
That said, Yau's Chinese and Portofino's Pizza are pretty good. But there are probably more hole in the wall places literally called Hole in the Wall at Rutgers than there are from the University District down to the Arena District, which is a problem for me.
This is all just state of consciousness rambling and I don't mean for any of this to be taken as an affront toward Columbus or Ohio (though the pizza is awful here and just a tragedy); many of the things just aren't what I'm looking for in a place I want to stay in long term.
And I think this is the best time for me to get out of Columbus...2016 that is. Once I graduate and presumably will have no reason to stay here (like what made me go to Newark for law school), I would with the school's help be able to focus for a year or so on finding somewhere out west I want to go depending on how much I like the cities I visit over the summer.
I can see how concentrated they are, see if I need a car (which I'm not opposed to in the long run, I just don't want to be dependent on one), see what kinds of food they have and ask people I know who are living there how it is.
I don't know, I'm usually not very good at expressing emotions in words and this all probably seems either dumb or crazy, but I just want to find a city with the things I like. I might just end up back in NYC, though it's being gentrified into just a rich person's playground, if that hasn't been happened completely yet. I know a few people in Seattle and have a semi-friend moving to Portland. I have family in LA and know someone in Austin. I guess I'll just see how they like it and see if it fits with what I'm looking for.
I'm just very sensitive about where I live after being stuck in Newark, NJ for 3 years and hating every second of it. Where I live will probably be just as important to where I work as I don't want to be stuck by myself with nothing to do like I have been for a lot of this summer since there aren't really too many people at work to talk to and most classmates aren't here or don't want to do anything a lot of the time, which is their prerogative since they probably have more obligations than mine like [null set].
Anyway, I've still got a year for Columbus to convince me. I feel a lot like Dwight Howard in LA for his one year I'm giving the place a chance but it has to convince me to stay long term.
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