I agree in unrealistic principle, but then reality sets in. The US needs more workers. If you look at the current population, much of it is a big bubble of old people. Urban types will cram together, and there is still loads of room. The entire population of the Earth could fit in an area the size of Yugoslavia with a population density equal to Orange County, CA.

Room is not really a problem.

For about 15 seconds before we reached critical mass and exploded.

Hate to say it, Ducimus, but having lived here in the hell that is the Bos-Was corridor all my life, I'm heading out to SoCal - either Diego or the mountains - as soon as I can. I'll probably be renting for the rest of my life, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be a miserable old East Coast prat for much longer.

Having been to LA, San Diego, and now San Francisco (limited travels in CA, I realize), I have to say I like SF the best by far. Urban, but still felt townish in some ways. Looked like you could get out away from the city, too, but still be able to visit (though I think the Bay area tends to be expensive, or if not as expensive, not where you'd wanna live).

For the west there is always the mountain states. Far less crowded, but you'll get a fair bit of winter north of New Mexico (and a decent amount in northern NM). Also way cheaper.

Having lived for a short time in Monterey (Ft Ord) I have to say California is beautiful but I would never want to live there. Too expensive and the population is too nutty for my tastes.

We do? And here i thought we had more workers then we had jobs to go around. :88)

Retiring baby boomers as i recall. Id add on to that, but i think i'll let it go . :haha:

Have you tried living around Orange county Ca? I have. Hell, im through that area, every stinking day. Every hear of the "orange crush"? How about that joy of joy's called the 91 freeway? Every try renting out here? In Anaheim, you can expect a single room apartment to run you 1300 dollars a month. And that price quote is from 2 or 3 years ago. Since rent ONLY goes up around here, and NEVER goes down, i shudder to think what it is now.I also shudder to think what rent will be 5 years from now. I've lived in apartments for the last 11 or 12 years, i have NEVER seen rent stay the same or go down. ONLY UP UP UP UP UP U UUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!

*cough* s'cuse me... had a spastic moment there.

The thing is, i remember how southern california used to be. And i see how it is now. I have a point of comparison, and i don't like the changes.

Hell from the sounds of things you might like it out here. As far as I'm concerned,, you can have it, and everything that goes with it. Hopefully i'll be long gone in the next few months. :woot::salute:

I freakin' loved Diego, esp Old Town, but the whole area just seemed pretty casual, and the food just couldn't be beat. Best carnitas I ever had down in Old Town - as my son put it: "What do you expect? The people making the food only got there that day." (So not-PC, but hey, he's a SFC and headed for his fifth trip to unfriendly climes - he's earned the right.)

As to NM, well, I'm sure you remember some of what we spoke about a few months ago, regarding your home "mountain," so believe me, the Missus and I have spoken more than once about living there or in Santa Fe; that said, her work is - likely in the next two-three months - taking her to LA. Without going into to much verboten detail, suffice it to say that it involves Hollyweird, so living in NM would be a bit of a hellacious commute.

Still, I'll take my chances out there. I mean, I'm already used to living with nuts this close to DC. At least in Southern California, I won't be dealing with normal residential nuts and transplanted political ones. Shoot, if anything, living this close to DC has well prepared me for dealing with nuts, sorta like learning to drive in Boston prepares a guy for driving anywhere (but Italy, from what I hear).

Heh... Well, yeah, I did like it out there. As crazy as it may sound, it seemed to be far MORE sane than the area I'm living now. Was it busy? Yeah, it was that - but at least it moved, even if slowly at times. Out here, if you're not out of the city by 1600, you might as well work the next two hours - you'd get home at the same time either way, but with less risk of incurring combat damage and/or wounds along the way. These people are lunatics.

If you want to live an hour out of DC, I know of a house that might be going up for rent... LOL

There is a lot of film making going on in NM over the last few years. A large studio here in ABQ, and shooting all over. I saw one of the Breaking Bad guys at the zoo a couple weekends ago (our kids were playing on the jungle gym).

But yeah, a bit of a commute (though my brother in law in CT spend more than the 1.5 hour flight from here to LA some days to get much less far on I-95 :) )

My observations are merely from a tourist POV. I like SD better than LA or Pasadena, that's for sure. I just like SF more. To live it would be hard, though. I doubt I could find a place I'd consider "acceptable" in SF for under several million bucks, and since we don;t have several million bucks for a house... :)

If money were no object, I'd like SF best, put it that way. In the real world, I'm all for the flyover states, as long as they have mountains.

What I liked best about the mountains in Southern California was the fact that it's doesn't get mind-numbingly cold, you still get snow, you're not that far from being someplace warmer - summers seemed comfortable without being East Coast 900,000% humidity, and winters seemed fairly negotiable, whereas out here, six inches of snow and you'd think it was The Day After Tomorrow or something.

Heh, yeah i guess. Last time i went hiking i didn't have any crampons, and ended up falling on my ass about 4 or 5 times coming down the mountain. Snow melts during the day, and refreezes at night, creating some pretty slick ice on the trail.

You might enjoy's these pictures i spliced together. The trailhead is about 30-45 minutes from where i live.
http://www.ducimus.net/one.jpg
http://www.ducimus.net/two.jpg

Lovely panoramic views of smog, eh? lol

EDIT:

I should note, that even hiking, is no escape from the congestion here. In order to even get a place to park your damn car, you have to get up and be at the trailhead before first light, or you might not get a parking spot. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Oh, and forget about seclusion either, you won't find much of that on the trail, at least not the local ones.

EDIT 2:

Here's the F'ing trailhead parking lot. Welcome to F'ing, disneyland, even in the great outdoors.
http://www.ducimus.net/trailhead.jpg

Our trailheads with parking lots also get crowded sometimes. Course that's for the Sandias. Father afield from the city it's pretty empty.

I hear you, Duc, but consider this: Out here, we can have the smog, without any other redeeming qualities. It's all a case of greener on the other side of the fence.

Seclusion isn't so much an issue for me; I've already mostly given up on that, especially if the wife's work does what it looks like its about to. So if I can't have seclusion, I surehell don't want it here.

I grew up in CT, so I think there is a false sense of seclusion in places due to forests, etc. In the West, you are either secluded or you aren't. I am not really, since I can see houses out the windows, but it's at ;east spread out from me.

Ahhhhh Yugoslavia, the memories :DL

Would that be the pre 1991 Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) or post 1991 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (ZRJ), renamed Serbia after Milosević. Because SFRJ was big, seven billion people could live there but denser than Bangladesh :DL