Yes, now comes the time to tell you why I don’t like it here. It’s not that I hate it here. There are some very good things about this city. The first is the weather. It’s sunny about 360 days out of the year. Definitely can’t beat that, and I know I won’t find it at the place I end up. Also, we really have world class dining here. Anything you want, any cuisine at all made by nearly any celebrity chef can be found here. And the shopping. Don’t even get me started on that. I can’t afford to shop.
I have a great job. It’s a small company, but I’ve done a lot in the time I’ve been here. The most important thing is that I have stuff to do all day long and I work with some really great people. These people really are my family out here. We laugh, share jokes, support each other thru the tough times, play horrible jokes on each other, etc. I’ve been here nearly 2 years and I can honestly say I have never had a day when I get up and don’t want to go to work. Sure, I have days when I get up wishing I could sleep a little longer (or a lot longer!) but I never want to play hooky. I have too much fun here.
I have also found a really fun church. It’s a fairly new church, but within the same denomination that I was somewhat brought up in (I say somewhat because I wasn’t brought to church with any consistency as a kid). There are some really great people there, and I don’t like to miss church at all, even though again, there are plenty of times when I’d really like to sleep in.
Now, on to the not-so-fun.
Where do I start with that? Ok, the obvious – cost of living. Now, coming from New England, I’m used to a high cost of living. But I had it good. I lived in a fairly dumpy condo that I got a really good deal on, and even with the extremely high condo fee, the mortgage, taxes and condo fee together were still half of the going rent for a place of similar size, so I had it covered. Car insurance, though considered expensive, was reasonable. Groceries were cheap, and since I spent so much time working in a supermarket I knew the tricks. And other shopping, well I lived so close to tax-free New Hampshire that I’d get confused when paying the 5% or 6% sales tax in the other nearby states.
Cost of living in Las Vegas – if I were to take an apartment in my price range, I’d better make sure my life insurance policy is paid up. So I live with a roommate. We get along, but it’s not ideal. I like having my own space, and I miss it. Plus, unlike New England, ALL apartments are in complexes. You won’t find a homeowner with an apartment over the garage or basement apartment for rent out here. More on that later. Um, car insurance. Yeah. Pet peeve of nearly everyone living here. I thought I had driven with crazy drivers before, but now I make it a habit of driving with one hand on the horn, ready to honk. You gotta here. People are absolutely nuts. My car insurance is double what it was back east, and I’ve still got an excellent driving record, same car, good credit and all those things that keep rates down. It’s insane, and traffic seems to get exponentially worse every day. Groceries are expensive here, plus the selection sucks. I can’t find half of what I’m looking for, but by now I’ve given up on most of it and enjoy those delicacies when I go back for a visit with the family. All my other shopping is taxed at 7.75%, up from 7.25% when I moved here in 2003, and I’m sure it will go up again.
Now let’s talk about character. Vegas has none. Nothing is old except the tourists playing bingo and eating at the buffets. Plus, if you’ve ever seen the movie Fools Rush In, where the characters have to count the houses from the corner to know they have the right one, that’s really what it’s like here. I get so lost in these subdivisions because everything looks the same. Where I come from, you could actually use building descriptions when giving out directions. My dad lives on the street with the big yellow farmhouse on the corner. Easy, can’t miss it. Here, forget it. I’ve never gotten lost in my life until I moved out here and tried to find something in a residential neighborhood.
Now some might argue that the Strip has lots of character. I disagree. The correct word for that would be caricature. I mean, come on – you’ve got a shiny glass pyramid, a castle, and a cartoonish rendition of NYC all right next to each other. That’s not character, it’s a mockery. And all the neon is there to make the masses squeal with delight. The first Christmas I was here, I thought I’d trek out to see all the houses done up like I used to do back home. It was very disappointing. The few houses I saw paled in comparison to the Strip.
How about character when shopping? Nope, not here. Sure, the window shopping on the Strip is real fine, just like on Rodeo Drive or 5th Ave. Off-strip, it’s all big box stores. Sure, there are a few stores that are independent, but they’re all in strip malls. Hard to find when you’re driving by at 50mph trying not to get hit by all the other idiots driving around.
And then there’s the people. This being such a fast growing city of people so eager to move here, you’d think people here would be friendlier. NOT! One person I know who was born and bred here didn’t think it all that unusual that she’s never known any of her neighbors, no matter where in town she lived. People just aren’t that neighborly here. Not only do we all avoid each other like the plague here, I’ve never seen so many people trying to keep up with the Joneses than I have here. This is still a working class town, but boy do I see a lot of people driving new BMWs and Lexus cars and SUVs. It’s rare to see a beater, but pretty easy to spot a Hummer. And they’re all so clean. It’s like you’re a leper or something if you don’t get your car detailed on a weekly basis. With water restrictions, that means shelling out the dough, no backyard car washes here.
What am I getting out of living in Vegas? A learning experience. I know the place I’m heading to next is going to be the same sort of place I left, where everybody knows your name, but people are friendlier. I don’t think I can appreciate that unless I spend some time away from it, and Vegas is about as far from that as you can get.
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