your_town flo i live in a town called hastings, it sits on englands south coast and for some reason i call it home. it is a seaside place that is all full of candyfloss and budget tourists in the summer. i never saw myself living here, growing up as i did just a few miles away but after many years away i've end up here again and now i'm starting to get used to the idea. it is beautiful. we have a castle (or a ruin really sitting on the cliffs above us) there is also a pier, wrought iron and oak, it almost dies with every storm but nobody believes it will ever actually go, teenagers need it to get pregnant under. the light is always interesting and you can smell the sea wherever you are. it is aplace that makes me happy but also furious. 010428 ... DannyH I live in London. London is full. There is no more room. All of life's rich variety is here somewhere if you can find it and then if you can afford it and then if you can take the three hour queue to get in. Still, you can't help the way it gets into your soul and the insanity of the place makes me laugh. I live near Finsbury park which has a boating lake and lots of Hassidic Jews and Japanese people wearing cool sunglasses. They serve the best fry-ups anywhere in the world here and they're always open at four o clock on a Sunday afternoon when you REALLY need one, so I'm staying. 010512 ... Tank i grew up in a small town in surrey, (been to hastings many a time flo) and then moved to london when i was 17 years old. stayed there for 7 years to leave for a new me accross the pond... so i am currently residing in philadelphia and i have to profess a total love of the place. actually, i think the love is more for the beautiful people i have met. this town seems to be full of my own personal angels... 010514 ... silentbob Algona Iowa Where everyone stares at you. It doesn't matter what you look like. They stare at you in their trucks, they stare at you in the the restaurants, they stare at you from their front lawns. So many old people, Florida would be jealous. The kids are ugly. The kids are racist. The kids are mean. There is no room for new ideas or people with unique senses of humor. Too many people's plans include not leaving this shit hole. The response to almost every question is "I dont know." 010514 ... lost Wofford Heights, California a very very small town. well there are a bunch of towns around a lake and in about 8 towns theres not eve 40,000 people probably not even 30,000. most people are old. the kern river runs through and i am a raft guide on it. Its kinda an ok place to live. I am more a city person though. theres some ranches and alot of cowboys and druggies. the kind of people who spend there welfare check on drugs. well thats about all my currently residing town has to offer. 010514 ... sweetheart of the song tra bong My town is 700 miles away. The town I'm in is Exeter, New Hampshire. It is brick-beautiful and littered with "the best and the brightest". Smart kids walking around, kicking rocks, snapping dandelions from the ground, proving math equations on our restaurant placemants with broken red crayons. 010514 ... sammy washington, dc. the district. the center of the universe. current home of w. food from every nation. every nation. 37 different languages spoken in my apartment complex. very beautiful people in very conservative clothing. some wealth some poverty. there are some really really big statues here. murderers mostly, but god they're big and artistic. natural history museum. all the museums. absolutely no hometown feel, which is its hometown feel. i like it pretty good. 010514 ... birdmad Phoenix, Arizona Where summer begins in the second week of April and does not relent until the second week of October. The neigborhood where i grew up was surrounded by cotton fields on three sides and an on-again/off-again river on the fourth From the remaining citrus groves on the south side of town you can smell the orange blossoms in the spring all the way into middle of town. A short distance outside of town in any direction, you can spot patches of wild desert where orange wildflowers sprout up a couple of weeks after the last big winter storm (sometimes, if the weather is right, they'll spring up from the cracks in the downtown sidewalks) What passes for winter here is pleasant and mild rarely dropping below freezing and mostly lingering in the 40F-50F range this place has grown faster than anyone would have predicted trying desperately on some fronts to shake the cowboy image, but just as deperatly in some quarters to cling to it I miss the vast rose fields that used to border the citrus groves on east Baseline road ten years ago there were barely a million people here, now there are close to 2 and a half million sitting here in my office just past the shadow of winged Nike in her weather-vane stance atop the copper capitol building dome 010514 ... carden Burt, Iowa Almost exactly like Algona. closed minded, ignorant people. for example, my neighbor's mum came over and told us one day that a gay guy (heaven forbid some gay lives in HER town) had moved in to town and (gasp) he has AIDS, first thing i said to her was so what, i don't think it matters. but she told us to 'stay away from him'. people like that live in every corner of my town. i cannot stand people like that. wake up to the real world. i'd like to see them try to survive at least one day in a big city. different people are everywhere you look. that's why i miss living in des moines right now. 010515 ... (for your dove) Our town is a town with a lot of DIRT. Dig dirt, fuck boy. 010516 ... sweetheart of the song tra bong Dig dirt. Fuck boy. Boy digs dirt. Fuck. Dirt? Dig. Boy? Fuck. Dig dirt, fuck boy! 010516 ... Glory Box My town strikes a delicate balance between the forces of good (god) and evil (meth). A crazy crooked red line runs through town and the churches nearly outnumber the crackshacks. Acid comes by train, and pot is grown everywhere, the countryside littered with red-eyed teenagers and antsy dealers. There are those that leave, and there are those that live here forever. But mostly it's the irony that gets me. You hotbox your house, and the Christian Alliance next door wakes up with head reeling, lungs burning. We're twined together, judgemental and standardless. 010516 ... jv.hc.hfl bluuuurbbbbb 010516 ... flo i like sound of your town, glory box. good hard narcotics and ole time religion, kind of makes me think of hastings which is also a strange dichotomy, twisted between the old and new, but the barriers here are invisible but known by all. 010518 ... Sol I dont have a town I live near Grantham which is near Lincoln, lincolnshire, England as I look out of any window I can see life (in nature) and barely a trace of the 20th century, ahhhhhhh 010520 ... mitra small one. cosy one. curious people. old ones look at their neighbors. young ones at each other. a spot in a map. no night life. on the increase - rapid, with a lot of mistakes. i like to see every new building. every old one becoming new. i like to see teenagers - funny copies of their dreams. small oldtown, where all faces are familiar. you know where and who is. we don't know each other, but if we meet somewhere abroad - we are "from the same town". french people say "we are a small copy of Paris". 010520 ... Casey Algona: see Silentbob's post I agree with him in every detail. I think he forgot the fact that it is as boring as hell 010610 ... yummyC I'd like to consider Easton, MD my town (summer home w/ Dad), but my once close friends seem to be drifting further and further away from me, and I fear that 'home' HAS become Hawaii. Kona, HI or Waikoloa, HI. We (my mom and I) keep moving back and forth. i don't mind--I like new houses, and I have tons of friends in Waikoloa. You can walk ANYWHERE in Waikoloa from any point in waikoloa. Its an extremely small town, with one grocery store, a movie place, a pharmacy, a dentist office, doctors office, and a flower shop. Oh and this small icecream place. thats all there is there. besides a bunch of dead grass, wind, and houses. Lots of them have really ungly gravel yards, but others are really pretty. eh. Kona is a fully functional town with beaches and things to do. Plenty of stores and shops...movie places. My school. Its a decent place to live. Most of my friends are in waikoloa, though. Eitehr way I'm alright. I would prefer somewhere on the mainland though... like easton... but I can't consider that home. 010725 ... The Truth Bellevue, Washington is the 5th largest city in the state. Located just across the lake is Seattle. The Eastside is highly commercialized, small proprietors lose out to franchises bigtime. I love the city at night, The skylines of Seattle and Bellevue are beautiful. I know of a skyscraper with free underground parking after 2 am, where you can take a series of elevators up to the roof access stairwell, and someone has punched out the ventilation covering, allowing me to walk out onto the roof, that is sooo awesome! (but there is this darn territorial seagull up there that must have a nest because it always dive bombs us.) And 30 minutes away is the cascade mountain range, where I love to snowboard, hike, and camp. The people here are fairly wealthy, thanks to microsoft and boeing, not to mention a plethera of other corporate headquarters in the high-tech corridor. Lots of nice cars amd fancy homes, except for me. I am flat broke. It rains here. Not a lot of rain, just a constant drizzle. The traffic sucks here, and nobody knows how to drive. We have some of the best weed in the world. The people seem pretty educated, and there are a lot of artists in every community, but they all still fixate their greedy litty eyes on money. I wish we had more churches. Seattle is one of the most unchurched areas of the country (only 23% go to church). Washington state has every type of terrain. Metropolis, small towns, Deserts (the entire east half of the state), Lakes, The Puget Sound, Rivers, Snow-Capped Mountains, Volcanoes, farmlands, Indian Reservations (with casinos!), Forests, A Rain Forest, The san juan Islands where it is always sunny, a lot of large islands all interconnected by a ferry system, And a coastal region, but the last time I went to the ocean, it smelled like piss. On a sunny day here, it is the most beautiful place on Earth. 010725 ... unhinged medina ohio it's halfway between cleveland and akron. up in the northeast corner of the state. i've lived in northeast ohio my entire life but there is something strangely rural about medina. it used to be a farm area, but now it's turning into a suburb so the transition can be startling at times. the traffic is very bad because of the population boom and they are building a high school that will be the second largest in the country when it's done. doesn't look at all like the place i graduated from but i guess that's what two years of being away will do to a place. high school was interesting in medina because the socioeconomic range is so wide. welfare kids and doctor's/lawyer's kids and everything in between which made for some pretty ridiculous and ignorant social scenes. we have a restored town square with a gazebo in the center of it and it's quite quaint and cute. it's the best to drive down route 3 around christmas time with a blanket of snow on the ground and see all the farmhouses with their lights. the best description of the town is it's a good place to raise kids. 010725 ... Gollum Harrisontucky, yes precious, cars on the lawn. Wretched, nasty children in diapers, wretched children. Michigan, no my precious, we do not like the hillbillies. 010725 ... Allie my town is by far the smallest. Our high school only has 600 people. but all our sports went to state last year (except golf) and we get scholarships for any college in state, so it's not like we're spewin out white trash okay? so stop making fun of Philomath Oregon. Thank you 010725 ... yummychuckle Waikoloa doesn't have a highschool. or a middle school. or a preschool. 010726 ... punk as fuck or an old skool 010726 ... kingsuperspecial My hometown is Burlington, Vermont, though my mom sold the house I grew up in and my dad lives out in the country with his new wife. Burlington is a mid-size college town, a lot like any other college town (Madison, Austin, Berkeley), with a fair amount of diversity, especially considering it is surrounded on three sides by rural folk and stoic east coast dairy farms and not much else. On the third side is Lake Champlain, one of the deepest fresh water lakes in the world. The lake has a monster in it, much like Lock Ness, though I’ll admit I’ve never seen it personally. The liberals in town refer to Burlington as “the west coast of the east”. The lake is on the west side of town, and Vermont is on the western edge of New England, and it’s one of the more progressive places in the country, so I guess I see the analogy. Please DO NOT mistake Vermont for New Hampshire – those people are much more uptight and meaner than Vermonters. In Burlington we had a socialist mayor for years, who is now an independent in the US. House. Jeffords, who recently defected from the Republican party and became in Independent, is also from Vermont. He has been a Republican for more years than I can remember, so if he left the party things must be getting pretty bad. In Vermont they have two seasons; this winter, and last winter. Anyone who lives south of Vermont is a “flatlandah”. In Vermont there is an accent that is strange, sort of like Maine but not as bad. They usually drop the ending “T” sound in most words, and carry the vowel sounds. They say ‘hoit” to say hello, and “yut” for yes, but yut has about 8 other meanings. They invented snowboarding in Vermont, or at least the sport as we know it today got it's big push when Jake Burton started making boards in a tiny shop in southern Vermont. My brother Josh started snowboarding when he was about 10 years old I think, around 1983. He had and his friend Matty L. had a Burton Backhill they shared, it was made of wood and had no bindings. They would walk 3 miles across town to this giant hill that led off the edge of a highway down into a swamp. They would go every day after school and he would get home late but my mom didn't care because Burlington is nice and safe and we didn’t have a dad to yell at us. I stared skateboarding around then, back in the days of Lance Mountian, Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerreo, and BEFORE Tony Hawk. Nobody had ever done a kickflip-ollie and nobody had ever done a McTwist. crazy. Now I don't skate anymore because I dislocated my shoulder on Jeff Brushie’s 1/2 pipe and had to get surgery. Plus, I can't ollie to save my life. It seems to me skater kids now are all kind of mean, like they have to be these ultra tough guys all the time, and that puts me off a bit. Now I live in Oakland, CA. I love it. There are a lot of nice neighborhoods, and a lot of scary neighborhoods. If you find the paces in between, you can get a nice place for the scary neighborhood price. We live near Rockridge, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Oakland, but our rent is cheap because there are crack houses nearby. My friend got shot with a 9mm while riding his bicycle about 4 blocks from out house, but about 6 years ago and it’s not as bad now. I have a neighbor named Roy, who has lived on our street for 30 years, since he was 6 years old. He doesn’t have a job and I loaned him $4 the other day so he could buy a soda. That seemed like a lot for a soda, but I didn't question him. He'll pay me back the $4, every penny, in about 8 months or so. Until then he will remind me twice a week that he owes me $4 and he’d going to pay me back. Roy used to smoke crack, but now he just sticks to weed. A friend who grows gives me some, but it is genetically purified California chronic and I can’t touch the stuff, (its about 10,000 times more powerful than necessary for most human brains) so I give it to Roy. Roy says he’s “got my back”, and one time he helped me move a half cord of firewood into my house and wouldn’t let me pay him for the work. California is good, though people are a little flaky sometimes. People from the east can notice a difference, and people from the west have never been to the east and don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about. I think California has a bad reputation, probably because of all the rich assholes. Too bad, because it's incredibly diverse and beautiful, and there are billions of things to see, smell, think, and do. It’s also crowded, hectic, and expensive. My house in Oakland is number is 666, and although I do work for the devil, my duties are largely ceremonial. I have two cats, Banjo and Ulysses, who are four months old. I have a garage with 3 motorcycles and I also have a convertible named Lily. I road race a Honda RS125 and got a third place this year in AFM Formula III. I’m single and lonely a lot and sometimes I have a hard time sleeping at night but I’m taking Zoloft so at least I’m not depressed like I used to be. We don’t thunderstorms in the summer and I miss that, but we don’t have mosquitoes either. To dispel some California myths; it’s not always sunny here, and most people are not tan and muscled and walking around in a bathing suit. Apart from the coast cities the whole state is full of trucks and farms and redneck cowboys. Even in LA you don’t see many movie stars, and when you do they look like real people and are shorter than you think. There are almost no palm trees; they are not native to California and are mostly planted around L.A. Except for the most south part of the coast the ocean is cold; you have to wear a wetsuit even in the summer. Not everyone in California surfs, in fact most people don’t. There are not earthquakes very often, and most of the time they are really little and you can’t feel them at all. Also, not everyone in San Francisco is a homosexual. By the way, nobody refers to San Francisco as “San Fran” and nobody calls California “cali”, either. Just so you know. California is great and I’ll probably stay my whole life, because the winters are mild and there is so much to explore. That’s probably a lot more than anyone wanted to read. 010726 ... constance briefly Centerville A real nice place to raise your kids up Centerville It's really neat! Churches Churches And liquor stores 010727 ... kinkazoid i live in a town called sandwich, illinois. its not that small actually we have lots of stores, and food place and what-not. theres about 750 kids in my highschool. this town is very boring (im starting to think that every where is boring) the movie theatre is expensive as hell and thats pretty much the only thing to do. most of the kids here start smoking cigarettes at like age 10-13 and start smoking pot about age 13-15. but i think most of the potheads stop about age 17 or so, then they start drinking. we have cops and stuff, that actually care if you do something wrong, you cant get away with anything (even though me and my sister have partys sometimes and we live in town and never get caught) i work as a checker at the grocery store in town so i know almost every person in this town. most of the older people are nice, and younger people are assholes, the junior high kids all want to get in fights mostly the girls do the boys dont fight as much. at school you cant get away with anything, we have cameras and dogs come in to sniff lockers like twice a month or so. there are allot of teenagers with babies, i think that if there were acually things to do like a mall, or free minigolf or free movies, or a water park, or amusement park here that people would smoke, drink, or have sex as much, cuz they main reason they do it is cuz they are bored. well thats what i think anyways...im rambling 010728 ... florescent light I went to Eisenhower Park to play frisbee with my friend it's 10:30 at night not too late but the park is pretty much closed and we're the only car parked in the lot we're having fun throwing... and catching we notice this van full of people in the parking lot next to my friends car he is driving in a cirle around my friends car we think maybe it's a cop but the vehicle doesn't stop moving so we continue playing throwing...and catching thinking nothing of it about 7 minutes later I look over again and the van is still circling my friends car it must've circled at least 7 times already I start to get a little nervous so we stop playing frisbee and walk back to his car my friend is a male, but not very big or tough I don't feel 'safe' with him and as we near his car, we are about two feet from it this big big big big big big dude gets out of the van and looks right at us and he says 'have a goodnight' all wierd and stuff by now I'm sure he is going to pull a gun out and kill us both or hit us over the head with a tire iron then steal my friends keys and make off with his car but instead my friend says 'have a goodnight' and we get inside of the car, and drive off and those guys were still in the lot when we left 010729 ... black-dyed gel product Wow, I was at Empire Discs around that time, which is right by there. If I had known, I would of ran over there with my peoples and taken care of that dude. 010729 ... yoink is full of mules and hipfaced tomcats 010729 ... Photophobe I live in a suburb of sydney called coogee. As a kid I remmber always wanting to live in coogee; it had a beach and a bunch of cafes and a pool hall and a nice pub and a cinema and an arcade and it was near my friend jeremy's house. Now that I finally live there, its not quite how I remember it, really. The beach is nice, sure. But the cafes are overpriced. The pool hall is full of homies, and is incredibly busy all the time. The pub is full of tourists. Having a cinema nearby is kinda cool, but I WORK there so it changes the nature of it a little. I haven't stepped into a games arcade for a couple of years, and haven't frequented one for a couple more. And I see jeremy just as much as I did when I lived a half hour's drive away. What I never noticed as a kid: That coogee is a prime tourist location, particularly for British Backpackers. There are about 10 hostels within a 5 minute walk from my house. I've got nothing agaist brits, don't get me wrong. But I LIVE in a tourist location! Every day at least one person asks me "what the best way to get to..." either (a) sydney harbour, (b) bondi beach or (c) an internet cafe I'm sick of it. I want to go back to newtown, my old home. 010731 ... Yankee Doodle Gollum Brits? We kicked their asses! 010731 ... bijou kansas city, missouri known for great bbq and blues. no doubt about that. lots of great music, if you like blues. not much for the kids, there truly is no punk scene here. maybe just as "orange_county aint the breeding ground for blues", kansas city aint the breeding ground for punk. lots of great artwork and art musems, there must be a thousand independent galleries here plus the monumental nelson art gallery. right now we are being subjected to the "cow parade". personally i think it's fucking innane. is that the word i want to use? any way, if you do not live in a city that has been paraded with cows, heres what it is. a business pays for the display and maintenece of a life size plastic cow decorated/painted by a local artist. all we have seen in the paper lately is blahblah everyone loves these cows, except for all the people vandalizing and stealing them. there is even a "cow ettiquete" guide. besides the current cow situation kansas city is a great place to live. not too expensive, really fucking hot summers and really fucking cold winters. i'm talking a temperature range from negative 8 degrees to 108 degrees. 010801 ... kuleilani Honalulu, Hawaii outside my window is a brick wall, covered with vines covered with flowers the color of the sun. my street is cracked and patched a hundred times. the water is warm the weather is warm the sky is blue. the roads twist and turn up the hillsides, you can smell the plumeria driving by with your windows up. 010801 ... burden We keep the kids happy at the recreation center. 010804 ... paste! park city, utah just moved here last month. a little ski town like aspen, colorado. home of 2002 winter olympics, woopty-fuckin-yee-ha! it basically sucks, everything is phony like disneyland. everyone is rich and snobby. today, they are charging $5 to "get into" a local public art festival on the main street of town. charging to see local "art", which consists of homemade jewelery and landscape paintings. at least the mountains and weather are nice. altogether not a bad summer vagabond choice; day--stay inside and read and colloborate with my homeys, night--get high, sneak onto the golf course, look for comets and whatnot. 010804 ... The Repeater i could never understand why one line of houses in charleston is any more special than any of the other houses in charleston. why is this line of houses a tourest attraction and why is it the subject of so many refridgerator magnets buttons and postcards? all of the streets in charleston have houses that look like that. all of the buildings in town are painted technicolor. i was told that once the houses of rainbow row were like brothels since they are very near the harbor for the sailors and traders and one day someone bought the houses and fixed them up and made them into nice nonbrothel type houses. i cant count the number of transformations in houses that occured in charleston over the centuries. what is now the ghetto used to be one of the nice parts of town. you can tell by the remains of the signs and the decaying archetecture. many of the nice homes in the rich parts of town were once whore houses or drug centers or whatever. hence my problem with the facination over rainbow row. you want to see some amazing houses and transformations go up north king street.(but only in the daytime) and see the age see the buildings of old stores see the houses in the neighborhoods and try to imagine how fantastic they once were. Charlestonian Girl 010808 ... sweetheart of the song tra bong I love Charleston. I don't care about the past of Rainbow Road. I want to rent a floor out on one of those houses and sit on the balcony with the wind whipping my hair around, watching the ocean and stars and ships. 010907 ... ilovepatsajak i live in a town that manufactures plastic pink flamingo lawn figurines and where people look from their cars at others who are walking down the street. everyone i know has lived here their whole life. 011111 ... SuicidalAngel My town is Duluth, Mn. The summer is beautifull, our beach on Lake Superior looks like the ocean, without the salt and big waves. Now, when you think of a lake, I know what you're thinking (unless you've seen this), but this is no water pit, it's huge. We also have the board walk, and motels lining the beach, that usually have parties. Our summer starts.. hmm mid June, till end of august. The winters get COLD, colder than alaska because of the lake. With the wind chill, it's gotten to 60 below one time. It usually stays around 30 below in the winter. We have long cold winters, and thatz what sucks about this town! We usually go snowboarding, snowwheeling, sledding (yeah!) skiing, ice fishing, lake parties... ya know shit like that, to keep us busy in the winter. Most people that move here, from somewhere else, usually get fat, because they dont know what to do with themselves all winter long. It's mostly swedish, norwegin, and German people. We do have a slight accent, but no Fargo shit! Only the older people talk like that! Fargo is in North Dakota anyway! Uhh thatz my town! 011111 ... flo I have a new town, and it is the same as the first. (see first entry this blathe) Folkestone is just up the coast from hastings and fits the same demographic and smells and looks the same. It has seaguls swooping and fucking and screaming all night (this means i can sleep late in the mornings because when you live near the coast peace and quiet go out of the window) There are smackheads and teenage fraggles and i kind of like it. Imght build another home here, and i might not. 011206 ... ClairE I miss you. Seth just came into my room today, looking for ideas on how to "express" his hometown in his final paper for geography. He is from that beautiful place, the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. So I pulled out my Tom_Robbins Antoher Roadside Attraction to try to help him out (beautiful description in there), but soon drifted into discussing my own town. Right now I live in Poughkeepsie and although the scene sucks ass, the landscape is just like home. I live on the Hudson River, which is like a vein running down the arm of New York to the city, or a zipper. I love the river, even though it is dirty and should be untouchable. I like sitting on the edge of it and not being able to go in. I also love the mountains that run through my county--somewhat glorified hills, or little approachable first time adventures. You can make it to the top of any mountain in, at the very most, two hours, and look out over the river or to other towns or just into the woods. Kids complain that Rockland County is inbred and that they can't wait to get out--luckily for them, NYC is easily accessible. I hope they find their happiness someday. I found it the summer before senior year, when I realized how green my home is. I live in a very nice town. There is a lot of silliness as to the way the village is run (yes, it is technically a village) and the population fighting and problems that need to be addressed, but one is only a little scared walking alone at night, on certain corners that jut right out onto good parts of town, and only if you are a small girl. It is an artsy town. My aunt, who is from California now, called it a college town and we were confused, until we remembered the seminary school up the hill. And, yeah, there are kids from all over living up there, but my town is high school kids and neo-hippies with young kids. It is the place to hang in the county, because it has more priceable (?) stores than trendy Piermont. It is supposedly known for its antiques. We have a lot of tourists, who don't ask questions but who wander around in expensive clothes and drag along kids on weekends. Especially at street fairs. Bicyclists wake me up sometimes on Sunday mornings. I live on Route 9W (which I know up for a couple of counties, almost to its end, and down into New_Jersey), and we get a lot of traffic and trucks that go bump right in front of my house and ambulances going to the hospital where I was born on the next block. Bicyclists are always in the town of a number of bookstores and expensive clothing stores and pizzerias, and we always curse them for riding tandem. As my friend Geoff has said, "If you can make your way [driving] through town, you can drive." I parallel park nicely, too. Our library is pretty and so is our post office. There is history not in the way there is in the South, with all its Civil War ghosts, but friendly and brightly colored history. I live in the "Washington slept here" region. If you look out on the river you can see where the famous chain stretched across. I really can't wait to go home. 011212 ... bijou m. i like yours. 011212 ... Grievance A small disengaged cultural cesspool, with beauty everywhere for the open minded, so missed by most living there. It's liberty is pretty, and, it's "pretty when it's faithful". But it's beautiful if you find _it_. A semidesert that looks like a parachute from a helicopter. (that's how it got it's name: Parachute). An hour to Highland climate, an hour to the desert. Diversity spreads in all directions. Space is thrown around in reckless abandon, and everyone loves the thoughts of their tradition. Away from time. A cesspool, drowning in it's own glory, and being eaten by corporate sensations. A strange sense of loving glory always surround the thought of your_town. 011212 ... natasha Miami, Florida...need I say more 011214 ... blown cherry Randwick. Not offically my home town, but I spent years 2-5 and 18-22 there, and intend to go back asap. Randwick is my place. Walking distance from EVERYWHERE. Always people around. Late night supermarket, 24hr corner shop. Right around the corner from uni. There are ALWAYS ppl at uni. Across the road were swings. I need swings. I NEED swings. Walking distance to Coogee beach. I've done some of my best calming down by that beach. That beach got me over my first hearbreak. That beach housed my second heartbreak. That beach is metres away from my current heartbreak. I ache for my home like nothing else. Who'd have thought one could ever wail and sob wildly over the lack of blue carpet? 020304 ... lady lunchbox warfordsburg, pa. i think i have the smallest town out of all of you guys. only about 300 kids in my high school, which is 7-12. 43 kids in my graduating class. absolutely no nite life at all. no major fast food chains here. only cows and trailors and old couches on people's front lawns. *sigh* i hate it here. i'm moving so far away some day. for right now, i'm moving to shepherdstown, wv, where i go to college. i'm not coming back to my house to live anymore. not even for the summer. when i graduate in two years, i'm moving to d.c. god, i can't wait! 020323 ... younty not younty_town 021016 ... Jeca Nutrioso, AZ (in the summers) not the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from there-- tiny town of less than 500 people 20 miles from the nearest grocery store and 114 from the nearest mall. i bike the 17 miles out to the Casa Malpais archaeological ruin-- when i can sit on those cliffs without a living soul around me for miles watching the thunderheads roll in, people buzzing around Springerville, or sitting in the ancient observatory and watching the setting sun align with the doorways... oooooo, man... that is HOME, as surely as the volcanic rocks bake through my shorts. cool you're from PHX, birdmad. i moved from there when i was 11. 021024 ... devalis Shaker Heights, OH. Smack dab in the middle of Denial. They talk about how everything is so integrated and how we're so very diverse and they're so proud of it. Yeh, we have lots of people of different races here, but we're very much segregated. We're not half as smart as they think we are. In the top 5 education-wise on the east-coast? FEH! And it's boring. 021025 ... minnesota_chris St. Paul, Minnesota. About two hours south of Duluth (see Suicidal_Angel, above). Headwaters of the Mississippi River. Home of Prairie Home Companion, the Dale Warland singers, Summit and Pigs Eye beers. The area has the Mall of America, Fort Snelling (the reason Minnesota is not a part of Canada). Minnesota has 10,000 lakes... closer to 15,000. Minnesota has good schools, low unemployment and a high life expectancy. We act like everyone is the same under the surface here. We have tons of immigrants, especially Hmong and Somalians, and Vietnamese in the 70's and 80's. We smile at strangers, which always make the New Yorkers who move here very nervous. I wish I could say I enjoy being here. 030416 ... x i don't know what my town is anymore 030417 ... god not many llamas 030417 ... god i live in the mall 030417 ... Rotten77 This place is so fucking repressive sometimes I swear I can't stand it and I just wanna lite up (and I don't even smoke--I don't WANT to smoke really--only when I'm here) or drive around downtown pumping songs full of swearing that just freak everyone out and I know it's immature and I hate it that I feel this way like I have to lash out or rebel like some jr high kid but that's the way u feel living here cuz everyone else acts like they are 90 and you just can't handle it anymore! But then, when I moved, I missed it.(?) It's sorta like a trap and sometimes I worry that I'll never get out. 030417 ... where i should be The beach, the sun warming your back next to the waves, the ocean, scary and beautiful, acceptance, freedom, peace, fun. 030417 ... FireNRoses Obelisk, Pensylvania You know you're from Pensylvania when... You have an uncontrollable urge to buy bread and milk when you hear the word "snow." Know that Yuengling is pronounced "Ying-ling," and believe that it really is a premium beer Can pronounce (or spell) "Schuylkill." Or even better have been SWIMMING in it You know what Lebanon bologna and Scrapple are made from but you STILL love it. 030728 ... falling_alone i will never be able to spell "Schuylkill," but dont say i just did because i copied and pasted that. i haven't been swimming in it, but unfortunately i've tasted the water... don't go in the water. mmmm...scrapple. 041022 ... . . 050601 ... tombe_seul Lafayette Hill, PA. I live in a town where i thought there were 2 "f's" in the name for the longest time, and a walk down the main street takes 3 minutes in the car but a half hour for me to walk, where all the kids hang out at the wawa and vino's pizza at night, there are lots of trees and parks, and everyone seems to know one another, my mum works in a dentist office thats right up the street and when it snows she walks and i work further down the road and the hispanic men in their landscaping trucks stare or wave at me, we have 4th of july parades and the entire town lines the street and still its so close to my house, afterward we all walk down to Miles Park and get free hot dogs that are always cold and root beer which i hate but for that one day i love it, and there are fireworks almost every night around that holiday, i live in a town where almost everyone seems richer than me and jewish because we have a synagogue right around the corner it seems, we have 2 main shopping areas with about 10 stores each and 1 that constantly changes owners with malls surrounding us in everydirection, my preschool was a presbyterian church and my fondest memories are playing in the graveyard searching for bones again right up the street, so was my grade school/church but i was never allowed to walk home which would take 10 minutes compared to the 40 minute bus ride i always had to take. 050711 ... . . 100621 what's it to you? who go blather from