Part of the year, I live in Dayton, Ohio, which is not what I would call the coolest place ever. Kurt Vonnegut, in his book
Slaughterhouse-5, compared Dayton, Ohio to firebombed Dresden during World War II, except that Dresden has "more open spaces than Dayton, Ohio." It's an okay place to live--I technically live the backwoods/country a ways outside of the city and have to drive about 15 minutes to get to 48, the main north-south road that connects Dayton with Centerville, Spring Valley, Oakwood, etc. I live south of Dayton proper, in the Spring Valley area--there's a decent arcade with a good DDR machine about 25 minutes away, which is where Priam and I hang occasionally. My local friends and I often hang out at Starbucks, either in Oakwood farther north or in the new 24-hour one that just opened up right on where I first get on 48. There are several movie theaters, two malls, and some decent restaurants, but a lot of it is very old hat for me, so I don't get very excited about it.
I live in Indianapolis for most of the year. Indy is great--it generally combines the "big city" feel with the "small town" feel very well. Despite being a pretty big city, it's fairly clean, the people aren't atrocious, and it isn't extremely expensive. There are lots of great restaurants. The best place to play DDR around here unfortunately closes down for the winter season, but the rest of the year it's a great place for it, and they also have a Para Para Paradise machine! The Broad Ripple strip has a lot of bars, other miscellaneous places to eat, a fairly nice music store, and some other places to attract college students. One problem is the fact that the IndyGo mass transit is ass, so going anywhere is impossible without a car. Also, driving downtown can be a nightmare, but that's true anywhere. In any case, it's a pretty cool place to live--in theory, there are a lot of things to do, and it's not as crowded or overpriced as a bigger city like Chicago or New York. Indiana is a lot like Ohio, only slightly more conservative and backwards at times, but Indianapolis is generally an oasis in the middle of the midwest. <p>
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