Sexy old fart Liam Neeson ran afoul of a death merchant in North Carolina by questioning the sanity of being ass-deep in guns:
“There’s too many f—ing guns out there. Especially in America,” [Neeson] remarked. “I think the population is like, 320 million? There’s over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a f—ing disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.’”
Cue the butt-hurt ammosexual squealing:
In a Facebook post, PARA USA said the company now regretted providing firearms to be used in the Taken 3 film.
“While the film itself is entertaining, comments made by its Irish-born star during press junkets reflect a cultural and factual ignorance that undermines support of the Second Amendment and American liberties,” the company said.
“We will no longer provide firearms for use in films starring Liam Neeson and ask that our friends and partners in Hollywood refrain from associating our brand and products with his projects. Further, we encourage our partners and friends in the firearms industry to do the same.”
I’m sure the prop masters for “Taken 14: The Takeout” can just load up at the nearest gun show, no background check required.
Please feel free to discuss whatever.
Mike J
In the earlier thread people noticed the 27% approval the NYPD protests have. In the same poll, 27% pops up again later:
Not serious + no problem at all = 27%.
trollhattan
So ironically delicate, our mighty arms and Freedoms manufacturers and merchants. They should take a self-esteem class, or something.
scav
Charlie’s speach is only so free apparently, for all their pracing about je suis-ing and constitutional righting.
ruemara
Waiting to be seen at the local clinic. This flu or whatever is 7 days old and I’m tired of the ache in my neck ears and eyes. So I’ve been waiting for the waiting period to open n. Which is depressing. I may not get in.
Mike J
What would happen to American culture if it became difficult for Hollywood to make films where every problem is solved with a gun?
srv
Liam lecturing about guns is like Kiefer lecturing about torture.
Perhaps he should go on a lecture series about the dangers of toy light sabers.
Derp.
Mike G
They’re mad because an Irish actor knows with reasonable accuracy the population of the US, something very few of them could remember.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Good first step. Maybe if this happens enough, we can get all firearms out of movies and quit making them objects of desire and cultural markers of “cool”.
Funny how the so-called “Hollywood liberals” wouldn’t even dream of taking such a step. Morally bankrupt whores that they are.
Hey, speaking of the butthurt statement, are we discriminating against the Irish again? That would be kind of epic.
srv
@Mike J: There’d just be more flicks where torture solves the problem.
RaflW
Aww, someone’s got a butthurt. Take your very deadly toys and go home, PARA. In fact, do it now and do it for good.
Saw “Selma” last night. I visited Alabama last summer and it was a very sobering experience to go to Montgomery, Selma, the interpretive centers and museums. Even knowing the history better, and walking the Edmund Pettis bridge, I thought the film viscerally brought home the insane violence of the police, state troopers, and townfolk.
And that f’wad governor, of course.
There’s still some serious haters in that neck of the woods. I gather they tried to put up a statue to a Confederate chieftain just recently. After much hashing about, the Selma city council finally allowed that it could be in the cemetery, but absolutely not on the damn main street. Sheesh.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@ruemara: I have had it since New Year’s. My father (and this starts to be of concern in a guy who’s 70) has had bronchitis from it since Thanksgiving. This one is a nasty bitch of a virus and the vaccine this year was absolutely worthless.
Iowa Old Lady
Every time I’ve seen “Je suis” I misread it at first as Jesus.
Karen in GA
Specifically, he’s the Northern Irish born star of Taken 3. I get the feeling he knows a bit about violence.
I never got the impression that he was directly involved in any violence himself — just that he knew it in a “there was plenty of it and it sucked” kind of way.
Elizabelle
Good for Liam Neeson.
Make the gun nuts and ammosexuals objects of ridicule. In a better society, they would be.
Iowa Old Lady
@Karen in GA: One of the best books I’ve read recently was set in Belfast during the Troubles: Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND. Rocket launchers were in use.
kindness
Let’s see what guns Liam could use.
Glock – Austrian
Walther (PPK) – Germany
Beretta – Italy
The list is too long to print. Suck it American gun manufacturers. (I will admit to owning Ruger & Browning products)
Warren Terra
Ah, I see the work is underway on Taken Four: A Gobshite.
Chasm
The bit about prop masters is actually not true. They and the prop houses that supply them (the guys threatening to boycott) often deal with automatic weapons, for which they need a special federal license, and they have loads of fake money, so the Secret Service is all over their ass too.
Richard Grant
It is very likely an ironic coincidence that Liam Neeson starred in Gun Shy, a 2000 dark comedy, with Sandra Bullock. Imdb.com described the storyline as “An undercover DEA agent almost gets killed, and to continue with his mission he needs to attend group therapy.” Did not get great reviews but I remember liking it at the time.
RaflW
Just happened upon this in a lengthy and somewhat acidic screed against some so-called “Scandinavian miracle” in the Guardian:
I’m not a social scientist, and I note that correlation and causation are not the same. But, it sure looks to me like access to guns increases the use of guns. I’m sure the NRA would vigorously disagree. But they are paid very handsomely to do so.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
So if anyone cares, I did have the Big Talk with my co-worker and went fine (my boss gave me some good tips about what my co-worker thought was going on that helped me focus). There are going to be big changes to the annual project, but since I’m job hunting (with my current boss’s full consent and knowledge) it’s probably for the best that I not be in the center of the project in case I find something before it’s over.
trollhattan
@srv:
I would be perfectly fine if Ted Levine took the time to publicly state that harvesting human skin to make clothing was NOT COOL and that movies are entertainment and, sometimes, cautionary tales and not instruction manuals nor advertisements for criminal behavior. So, it’s okie-dokie by me if Mr. Neeson cares to remind the impressionable that his movies are, in fact, entertainment and paydays for him, not gun and ammo and ass-kicking endorsements.
See also, too: video games did not give us Sandy Hook.
Linnaeus
Is the Seattle meetup still on? I may be able to go.
trollhattan
@kindness:
There’s a slightly used Uzi in Arizona for sale, presuming it didn’t go back into the rental stock.
Sibelius
Yay, open thread.
Ok, mostly lurk, but need the diversity of opinion here.
Short version: Live in Silly Valley, CA. Was planning a MAJOR remodel to our house in what has been a pretty good neighborhood for the 15 years we’ve lived here. Can’t move anywhere else locally (next step up in house/neighborhood is LITERALLY 1.5m+). Had an incident on Sunday across the street, couple of older teen (18+) boys playing with air pistols on top of their roof while my wife was pruning roses and my 6 and 8 year old girls were riding their scooters on the sidewalk. Wife came in shaken and terrified. I went out and said something to them about being really stupid and how I really didn’t want to call the police…
Woke up yesterday morning with a well crafted board embedded with nails sitting under my rear tire. Had I not gotten into the habit of looking to see what else has fallen off/leaked all over I wouldn’t have seen it and driven over it. The car btw is what I drive the aforementioned girls to school in every day. No doubt it was one of the above referenced gentleman’s action. Called the police, gave my report and …nothing. They wouldn’t even come out. Didn’t actually see them do it so I’m sorry sir there’s nothing we can do. That’s the norm here now. If it’s not still bleeding they don’t have the resources. And these boys know it.
So, we’re reconsidering everything. Spending 3-400k to remodel seems questionable now. Didn’t get much sleep waiting for the motion lights to come on, freaked when the doorbell rang…just kind of feel helpless. I can’t risk any further provocation, and the police were of no help. So, we’re pretty shaken and don’t really want to live in a fortress with private security and cameras, etc. Spoke with several at the girls’ school and that’s what they’ve all done. ADT, cameras, lights, alarms. Not sure how effective all that is. Burglary down the street, the camera got a great shot of the perp. with his face covered and a hoodie, again sorry sir, nothing we can do no way to id from that.
I’ve always wanted to leave this place, but the girls are in a good private school they love, wife has a high paying job that she hates with a terrible commute. I’m the “stay at home” dad. Probably well past employable at this point. I’ve learned to be risk averse with two little ones and I don’t know what’s riskier, staying here or dumping it and leaving for the unknown.
So after that ramble who’s HAPPY with their city/town/suburb/state? We really don’t have much quality of life here, costs are horrible, traffic is nightmarish and there’s really no public transport alternative to where the real jobs are. So many think that this is living the dream and I frankly have never seen it here. Weather’s “great” if you like no seasons at all. I’m more or less a misanthrope and keep to myself mostly so friends/family aren’t a big consideration for us leaving here.
Don’t think I can do the south, wife would veto it out of hand. Already did SoCal (UCLA grad, go Bruins, but never again) I lived in Mpls. years ago and I liked it, wife didn’t care for it. Thinking Chicago burbs, PNW (but don’t think rain and I agree), know nothing about the east coast and that might be too much culture shock for all of us anyway.
So just wanted to poke the hive and see who thinks their quality of life is unbeatable.
Thanks for letting me rant.
NonyNony
Eric Holder has just done something that civil libertarians have been wanting the Feds to do for decades.
I’m a bit surprised – if the WaPo reporting is correct this is a big deal and a fairly radical shift in policy (though it could be easily undone by the next GOPer in the White House). I always thought that Holder was a bit more small-c conservative than that.
Also – be ready for police departments to scream bloody murder about this cutting into their budgets, since they were padding their funding with asset forfeiture money. They can use state laws, but like it says in the article the state laws often involve the money going into the general fund for the state instead of directly to the departments, so there’s less incentive for bad cops to use those laws.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Sibelius:
Have you ever lived in the Midwest in the winter? Not just visited, but actually lived there for the whole season? I ask because, if you haven’t, I would be very wary of moving everyone to the Chicago area. Believe it or not, we know a couple whose 15-year marriage broke up over the course of an Illinois winter — she was a So Cal native and she just couldn’t take being housebound. It didn’t help that they had to move there in October, which meant there was no time to have her nursing license transferred, explore the area, meet new people, etc. before everything was locked down by snow and cold. It can be done, but you would need to time the move to be done in the spring so everyone can adjust to the move before they have to start waking up to front doors you can’t open because they iced over during the night.
Personally, since I hate ice and cold (I did grow up in the Chicago area but got the hell out), I would be more inclined to head to the PNW since there’s some cold and snow but it’s nowhere as severe as it gets in IL or MN.
I really think the city of Chicago is a wonderful city and I love to visit it when we go see family every summer, but I just can’t take the cold and snow.
RaflW
@Sibelius:
How long ago? What were her dislikes?
I’ve lived here 19 years — previously, in reverse order: Austin TX, Houston TX, London UK, Ft Worth TX, Houston TX, Pittsburgh PA, Tulsa OK, Westchester county NY, Geneva Switz. (FYI I’m 49 years old).
So, after an absurdly peripatetic youth/adolescence/young adulthood, I’ve been happily planted here 4/10ths of my life.
I’ve seen Minneapolis and the metro area really come along. It was hard here at first, can be socially cold at first. But the culture is opening up some, and there are lots more transplants now who are not Minnesota cautious (aka ‘nice’ aka passive agressive).
We have a moderately real LRT system, a downtown core with 10,000 people living in it now (t’was a ghost town after 6pm in 1995), great museums, music, beer, food, and lakes lakes lakes. Yeah it snows. But with climate change, we’re likely to be winners.
Not to be cavalier, I think climate change is the global crisis of our century, but the truth is we’re likely to see a bit less adverse effects than, say, California. No one knows of course, but at least in the next decade or two, our winters are less bad and the summers are a bit more hot/humid but decent.
Job market here is very good, btw. Housing is quite cheap compared to CA.
Come back. Life is good here. Your wife hates her job and commute. You have dangerous gun nuts across the street. How bad can Minneapolis be if that’s her/your life?
ETA: re above comment. My partner went to grad school in Chicago for 3 years (part time, always January). He *hated* Chicago winter. Damp & windy. I think our sharp dry cold snaps are deeper, but less awful in a way than Chicago’s great-lake influenced winter. And the real cold just doesn’t last like it did 20 years ago. All IMO of course.
srv
@trollhattan: I wonder were all these people got their gun fetishes that didn’t exist when I was a kid.
Enjoy your Rambo gear.
trollhattan
@srv:
Zombie Charles Bronson would like a word.
srv
@Sibelius: Fly John Cole in for a few weeks.
RaflW
@srv: Hah!
Let’s crowdfund a road trip for him in his Subie!
Linnaeus
@Sibelius:
First off, I’m sorry that you’re dealing with all that and I hope that your family is safe.
I live in Seattle now (have done so for the past 14 years) and I lived in Oregon for three years prior to that. I have to say that the Northwest is a pretty good place to be (some of the plaudits it gets are a little exaggerated, IMHO, but that’s a minor issue). Yes, it does rain here fairly regularly between November and May (sometimes into June), and it can get gloomy in that time, but you may be able to adapt to that. Summers are great: upper 70s to low 80s on average, sunny, and pretty dry from July through September. I don’t know what your wife does for a living (and what you may decide to do if you go back to work), but if it’s IT-related, the job market here is red-hot. Housing costs are also increasing a lot here, but they’re still cheaper than where you are now by a considerable margin. There’s plenty to see and do both outdoors and in the metro Seattle area. Politics and culture here would probably be pretty consonant with what you and your wife would want (if that’s a consideration) – Seattle is a pretty progressive city (with some exceptions, but that’s another story). I don’t have children, so I can’t speak much about the schools, but there are some very good public and private schools here based on my observations of the students that I tutor.
The only other place I could speak about is Michigan, where I grew up. Now, I like it there too, but I suspect that I’m in the minority here at Balloon Juice. Job market there isn’t as good as in the Puget Sound area, the winters are colder and the summers hotter (like you, though, I’m a four-seasons kind of guy). Housing costs would be much cheaper, and the metro Detroit area does have some good school systems. If you want to get out and about, Chicago is a 4-hour drive west, and Toronto is about a 4-hr drive east. Going “up north” in the summer can be a lot of fun and checking out the lakes is really cool.
So, that’s my $0.02.
Mike in NC
Saw a billboard for an upcoming gun show a few days ago. A year or two ago I saw a billboard advertising the same gun show, only with a warning at the bottom: GET YOUR GUNS WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
So progress, huh?
Betty Cracker
@Sibelius: No advice on where to move (I live in Florida, so what could I possibly say?), but I would urge you to avoid making any big decisions until you put some time between yourselves and the recent incidents with the idiot teens. A traumatic event can skew your perspective.
Also, do the idiot teens have parents you can speak to? Or are the parents assholes too? Sometimes I’ve found an angry mom can take the starch right out of a neighborhood tough guy.
Good luck with whatever you decide!
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
They misspelled “YER” and “YEW.”
Our “Biggest” local wintertime GUNZ show for decades was the “Gun and Doll” show but Barbie has since gotten her skinny butt kicked to the curb. Either the Little Lady don’t need the extra attraction to tag along any longer or they just needed the table space for MOAR GUNZ ‘N AMMOH”
Marc
Sounds like the next Taken movie needs to have an unarmed Neeson straight-up wrecking a bunch of ammosexuals while they’re busy shooting themselves and each other in the foot, groin, etc.
trollhattan
@Sibelius:
Sorry, but is “Silly” Simi or Silicon? I’m slow.
Options depend hugely on your wife’s profession, your flexibility to reenter the workforce &/or hang out your own shingle and your family’s attachment to the general area. Sounds like you’re prepared to completely uproot, since jumping neighborhoods isn’t financially feasible (hello, Prop 13).
Santa Rosa area a possibility? Not cheap but it’s past the Bay Area’s core. Am in the capital area myself, which is affordable and has its charms, other than the summertime heat. Willamette Valley is nice if Puget Sound is too wintertime dreary, and Portland is always fun. Am very left coast biased, so that’s all I’ve got.
Tough situation! I’d get the house appraised as-is and look at your equity on departure as a necessary first step.
SiubhanDuinne
@Iowa Old Lady:
Yeah, me too. Even after three or four days, I kept seeing “Jesus Charlie,” and I kept thinking, “Hey, wait a minute, Jesus’s last name isn’t Charlie, it’s Murphy.”
Cckids
@Iowa Old Lady: Me too. I also wondered, the first time I saw there was another Taken movie, if this time his dog got snatched.
Sequels. Bah.
Bill Arnold
@Mike J:
It is a fundamental constant of human nature. Pollsters use questions like these to calibrate their polls (*). Just saying.
(* /joke)
Bob In Portland
Here is another, perhaps easier, explanation of the pipeline wars as seen through the prism of a leftist viewing the NY Times’ reportage on this.
Knowing the open-mindedness of BJers, I’m sure you’ve probably already read it.
RSA
@Sibelius: Good luck! I wonder if the 18+-year-olds will be moving out before you could? Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
I’ll put in a good word for the Triangle area of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill). It’s south, but not deep south, something I’ve heard a lot of people say. Reasonable cost of living, job prospects, weather… Overall not a bad place to live.
TR
For a bunch of macho, tough he-men, the ammosexuals sure do have delicate feelings.
They better keep the safety on, because they seem like the kind who’d jump up screeching at the sound of a slammed door.
mtraven
@Sibelius: Sympathies. I live in Pacifica, which is usually somewhat cheaper while still being in range of most Bay Area things. And generally pretty chill, but we ended up with a house full of sketchy drug users/dealers after our neighbor died and left it to her no-account son. We’ve put up with all sorts of crap over the last six years or so (nothing life threatening, and we’ve managed to avoid direct confrontation). The cops are on their case at least and the property is due to be foreclosed on soon…so I guess we are in a better situation than you.
If you stay put I’d suggest calling your city representative if the cops aren’t helping. Local realtors are also useful resource in cases like this, they have a strong financial interest in keeping neighborhoods desirable.
trollhattan
@TR:
We’ve recently been lectured here that safeties are actually DANGEROUS because people might rely on them only to have them fail and discharge and ventilate the owner and therefore, also, too, no safety is actually safer than an actual safety.
–Book of Armaments 5:23. Amen
TR
@NonyNony:
I can’t wait to hear from the wingnuts how this proves Holder is a jack-booted power-mad federal thug.
TR
@trollhattan:
Really? Eh, Darwin at work.
trollhattan
@RSA:
Something that occurs is a title search of the house in question to determine whether its owned or rented. If rented, contacting the landlord can be quite useful. If owned, then knowing that helps determine whether the losers will be there over the long haul.
Our local problem house at one point had FOUR generations under one very crowded roof. But we waited it out and when great-granny, the actual owner finally died the loser granddaughter leveraged the hell out of it with loans, failed to make payments and was foreclosed on. By that time generation 5 was being spawned, so things were That Close.
trollhattan
@TR:
If it’s in comments it must be true. That’s how HODOR gets by.
catclub
@NonyNony:
This. I also noted this is a BIG deal.
Sibelius
Thanks all for your comments.
I lived through 3 Mpls. winters. I walked from the warehouse district to the U in snow, ice, rain…and even got stuck (stupidly) trying to make it home before a tornado brushed by. The winter weather wasn’t a problem for me I like snow much more than rain, but that was 10 years and better knees ago. The summer though, ugh. Humidity kills me. I think if you weren’t born in it it’s really tough to adapt. Wife was lonely, I was in school most of the time using long study time to make up for a lack of brain power. I loved that we could walk to downtown, see a movie, have dinner etc. without reservations or waiting in lines or having to get in the car and drive. She walked to work in the skyway and seemed to enjoy it. She didn’t have anything to occupy her aside from work. The people can be a little cold to outsiders and especially those from “Cali”.
Re PNW, we do have family there and she has contacts from former co-workers in Portland and Seattle. It’s the rain for me. I really think I’d go craz(ier?) Wife is an IP Paralegal, so we’d need to be near that sort of action, which is almost exclusively urban. Silly Valley BTW is what we call the Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, San Jose area. Mostly because of the insane housing costs. Rent for a house here starts around 3500, and anything decent in San Jose (where I live) is approaching 4-5,000. We have tons of equity in our house, which means we would be able to afford, well, our house and nothing more here. Never really was crazy about Santa Rosa or Sacramento, just too much of the downside of SF Bay Area without much up.
I know we shouldn’t be rash, but we are so close to submitting plans to the city, our arch. just retained a structural engineer for the final calcs and stamps. Sunk costs are irrelevant, but there’s many thousands we need to spend to get further along so I told the arch. to press pause for a few days while we have a think. There might be some portions of the plans we could salvage for a more modest upgrade, but I think our choices are either buying a year or staying through high school. I don’t want my 2 girls to get too much further along and then uproot them. They really love their school.
I don’t think (hope?) there will be any further issues, but who knows anymore. I can’t wrap my head around playing pew pew on the roof or putting a spike board under a car someone uses to drive children around in. I really just can’t believe what people are capable of for something so slight to me. Guess I “dissed” the wrong punk.
Thanks again for letting me ramble. It’s all a stream of consciousness for the last couple of days and the wife is stuck in tears mode when we talk about it.
gene108
@RSA:
Seconded.
Grew up there. Mom still lives there.
Good public schools, good infrastructure, easy commute to three very good universities – two of which are state funded – and when the kids hit high school and they want some super snappy references for papers they can hit the college libraries for whatever they can find and copy.
Lavocat
Conservatives throw the best tantrums.
My favorites are when they hold their breath until they get their way.
Patrick
@RaflW:
I just took a glance at the article, which to me is a rather interesting one. It looked like the author took a lot of liberties with the facts.
As an example, yes Finland has high number of gun owners mainly due hunting. However, very few of the murders in Finland are committed by guns.
In Sweden and Finland, 45 and 42 percent of all murders were committed with knives and other sharp instruments, while only 17 and 16 percent were committed with firearms
http://sciencenordic.com/alcohol-behind-finlands-high-homicide-rate
But I do agree with your general statement at the end, ie access to guns increase the usage of guns.
Sibelius
@mtraven: Howdy neighbor, That situation is pretty common here. It’s a neighborhood of OLD people. They die, or move into assisted living and the children move in or put it up for rent and it takes 3 or 4 people to afford the rent and each one has a car. Everyone I’ve talked to has similar stories in their neighborhoods. At least we know what we’ve got to deal with now.
Oh, and RSA why would they move out? Mom seems to pay for rent, car “Vape” supplies etc. They don’t work, go to school or anything but hang out. Pretty cush life for an 18 year old boy. It seems to be getting common these days, even my own sister’s son is among that age and life style. Never going to grow up it seems. My girls ask, Daddy, why do they just sit around in their garage all day, don’t they have anything to do?
I love my girls. Speaking of, it’s bath time, or as we call it “spa day”, bath and a bribe, er I mean movie!
Howard Beale IV
@RaflW: I moved here in 2008, having lived in Chicagoland for close to 13 years and before that a born-and raised Detroiter. Ain’t that bad, outside of the Minnesota state bird (mosquito) being the size of Buicks…
trollhattan
@Sibelius:
Your ability to sell the house to “equity refugees” might go up considerably having plans, specs and permits in hand. San Jose friends of mine rented a house then in while having theirs gutted and basically doubled in size, a process that took at least two years as well as the two complete moves. They’d have preferred to move just once, so long as it was in the same general area.
Take a look at the Sac region, lots of legal work here. And yes, it may well just blow over but having young kids amplifies everything tenfold.
RaflW
@Howard Beale IV: For me, it’s not so much the size of ’em, but how damn many & persistent they are. Though living 2 blocks from the Walker & on the 4th floor, I have to admit to having hardly a bite on my balcony.
It’s the annual trip to north of Two Harbors that is the love/hate thing. Love the canoeing, the camping, the birch trees and wood smoke. Hate hate hate the bzzzzzzzz in the ears. Ah, well. Won’t keep me away, but I told my friends no.fing.way when they proposed moving the camping trip from mid-August (lower mosquito count) to July 4th (insane. Only did that once in 19 years…)
Howard Beale IV
@RaflW: I’m in Northern Ramsey County and the skeeters aren’t all that bad up my way when summer comes around-don’t know why.
Tree With Water
Old Liam is going to have trouble sleeping tonight. What with his career being in ruins, and all.
ally
I’ve lived in Sacramento and the Bay Area (the latter for 21 years). Am glad you’re not considering Sacramento. Sadly, it has more crime problems than anybody wants to admit.
(And I too would be driven bonkers by the rain in Seattle or Portland. Seasonal affective disorder is REAL.)
This might sound crazy, but what about selling your house and just renting a place in the city or neighborhood of your choice for a while? That can be very freeing. It could give you breathing room while you look around.
My husband and I sold our house of 12 years last October and eventually found a great house to rent. It feels like a heavy load (taxes, endless maintenance, neighborhood issues) has been lifted from our shoulders.
Sibelius
@ally: @ally: Hi ally, we’d thought about that, and in fact we’ll have to rent something (likely an apt.) if we do the work we intended. But renting a house? Out of the question at the price now. Closer to their school it’s 5,000 for a house (several k more than our current mtg). Further away commute gets worse and cost doesn’t improve much. Our neighborhood is actually in an “ideal” location midway between wife’s office and girls’ school. It’s why we planned to remodel it (aside from the 1.5m step up to buy into a bigger house/better neighborhood).
I’ve never been intrigued by Sacramento. I don’t even like passing through it. Seems even more soulless than San Jose. I really wish I could raise my girls somewhere with soul.
tybee
@Sibelius:
don’t come here. tiny job market. it’s deepest, darkest dumbfuckistan. summers are hot, long and humid beyond your worst nightmares. redneck and insect infested and both bite. it rains more here than it does in seattle.
also, teens move away eventually.
Sibelius
@tybee: I experienced one summer at Seabrook Island. Sweating on the beach was an odd experience for this Northern California boy. We wear sweatshirts if not parkas to our beaches year round.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I would have to co-sign.
I was at work today, and the co-workers were all joking how we couldn’t wait for the heatwave this weekend:
It’s going to hit 35.
If you haven’t lived in the cold.
You don’t know how to appreciate it when it hits 25, and what a relief that is.
I grew up here, so I get it. I don’t think someone used to California would get it.
Gretchen
Sibelius: That sounds awful. I live in the Kansas City suburbs and like it a lot. We once lived in Chicago, and couldn’t afford a two bedroom apartment when our baby was born. We moved to Omaha, and tentatively asked if we could afford one there, and the realtor laughed and said “honey, you could buy a house for that”. I don’t know that I would recommend Kansas now while Brownback is conducting his experiment, but you can get a nice suburban house in a good school district for $200-300,000. Sure, salaries are less than more expensive places, but the cost of living is much less. Lots of interesting restaurants, great symphony in a new state-of-the-art performing arts center, blues clubs. It’s a really nice place to live. I just saw my nephew last week, and he asked what my house looked like. I showed him a picture, and he was practically sick. Not because my house is so fabulous, but because it’s so fabulous and spacious compared to what he can afford in London. I know a couple of people who have really great houses because they reinvested what they made when they sold their California houses.
Gretchen
Sibelius: I’ve called the suburban police twice since I lived here, both times just wanting to ask a question. They were at my doorstep in five minutes both times. I protested that it wasn’t necessary that they come over, but they insisted. Really, there are other places where life isn’t so hard. I’d be terrified at he thought of idiots with guns living across the street.