this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I'm from Kalamazoo. Lived in the sf bay now for the past 12+ years and many other places in between.
Winter is no joke, and drags on for a very long time. Diversity is much less than elsewhere I've lived (esp compared to the east bay), as a mixed race person my experience growing up was so much different than my kids' experience in Berkeley. Kzoo is halfway between Chicago and Detroit so not horrible but any big name concerts or museum shows or whatever require a few hours of travel. Like another poster said, also car culture - nobody walks anywhere nor can you feasibly do so (not just because of winter but also due to the influence of Detroit) and outside of AA public transportation is non-existent. And the job market in general isn't great (if you are working remote maybe it doesn't matter, but at least in tech the salaries are significantly less even in Ann Arbor or Chicagoland area vs California, and the number of opportunities way fewer).
Thanks for the info! I don’t care about access to anything significant. I’m currently in SoCal and quite honestly don’t leave my house much do to being remote and many personal issues. Looking to just make ends meet doing my remote job where my money and sanity can go the longest. Enjoy nature, seclusion and a temperate climate.
@Anissem
I'd say the best places to reside in Michigan are going to be in the lower half of the Lower Penninsula if you want a temperate climate. Doesn't mean winter won't fuck your shit up at least two or three times a year.
Beautiful nature spots are a day trip or long weekend away and quite lovely, though smaller in scale than the sprawling, mountainous naturescapes of California. We don't have anything quite as epic as Big Sur, Lake Tahoe, or the Redwoods here (souece: Michigander lived 13 years in the Bay Area), but we do have some very lovely areas and they're imo much more accessible for the average Joe. Oh yeah and when fall comes in, the color is AMAZING. It's a rather flat state all in all, though. Most places you have to drive to see anything rolling lamdscape-wise. It makes winter with all of the leaves off of the trees rather bleak if you're in sputhern Michigan.
But, there's a lot of interesting lore that you don't really get anywhere else like Great Lakes shipping/shipwrecks, bootlegging hotspots, a fucking shit-ton of musical history, tons of breweries and local agricultural festivals. If you're willing to pick and choose your urban areas, you can definitely find those spaces that have a Californian vibe about them, but they're not really centralized.