If you could pack up and move your whole life, where would you go?

probably northern vermont or somewhere in the upper midwest? or much of canada is basically the same as these geographically if immigration is allowed in this hypothetical but i wouldn't want to deal with that personally. anywhere with a cooler climate and a lot of forest.

i've already been thinking about this a bit recently since i've suddenly found myself in this situation. other than the friends part, i have a few of those here but nothing else and it's an expensive place to live

what is it about northern vermont? i've never visited the NE beyond NY/Boston, though a crew of my old friends migrated to maine a long time ago and seem to be living in some kind of nice dream (from my distant view)

also, where is the upper midwest, to you?

everywhere sucks, go inside yourself.

that being said costa rica.

It would depend on what type of painting I wanted to focus on tbh. If I was focused on being a painter in the "art world," I would probably go to upstate NY, where a lot of art world activity is moving / exists and is still fairly inexpensive. ... Because in terms of painting and art (in America) ... NYC is still the center of the art world.

LA is another option ... cheaper than NYC but you'd have to go a ways out before you get to an inexpensive place to live, and Southern California is way harder to get around without a car, as opposed to the Northeast, so your budget would include maintenance of a vehicle. Then there's the issue of studio space ... due to the fact that California has earthquakes and a legal weed industry that has driven up the cost of previously inexpensive industrial buildings where artists historically have found cheap studio space, studio space is harder to come by / more expensive. The desert (Joshua Tree-ish) is probably the least expensive area in SoCal where there is art activity. Also if you aren't that vested in being part of the "art world" and you are into doing desert-y landscape type stuff or other figurative (or semi-abstract) painting that relates to the region, that might be a place to go. If that isn't something you are into, or feel like you wouldn't "get into" if you lived there ... then maybe not the best place.

There's also the weather. Do you prefer snow, freezing and humid, or lots of sun, and very hot and dry?

Have come around in the last 5 or so years that I want to live in the desert, ideally like Albuquerque or similar

too many unbreakable connections and deep roots here to move away now

i will go to the desert

i've never lived in one, but had a transformative first trip to (through, even, just through) new mexico a long time ago. i loved the desert in utah, some of the best weeks of my life. plus i've never lived west of Columbia, MO. time to head west

Takayama, Japan. Without a moment's hesitation.

I could move to the Porridgeville Model Village in West Shitthorpe and my life would still be no more, no less a fresh nightmare from hell, every single day!

xp what is takayama like?

xposts

sarahell my desert musing was in response to you and eric h's mentions of it, but thanks for the rest of your post as well! i never hear anyone else saying this, which probably means it's frowned upon, but i would like to be the best artist i can be and don't really have much interest in the "art world". i am much more into having friends and people i know who paint or make other kinds of art, and hearing what they have to say and what they think, what they're making. in other words, i guess, community (a very small one - even just 2-3 people is huge in my life) is much more important to me than opportunities to infiltrate the art world

there definitely is a community of cool people and artists down near Joshua Tree ... you can hang with Shakey Mo's brother lol. A handful of friends of mine got together and bought a bit of land down there and they have an annual music festival and art installations in a place called Wonder Valley. I haven't been there, but it looks cool.

In the States, the west half of OR or northern NM. If I'm talking ANYWHERE-anywhere, Netherlands, or Ireland, or blown out of an airlock in deep space.

i forgot to make my point - much more important to me than the art world is how inspiring the surrounding landscape and weather and people are

(landscape very much including buildings and urban life as well as the rest)

I've done a few major uproots: central Indiana to Phoenix, Phoenix to Seattle, Seattle to eastern WA and back, Seattle to northern CA and back. Have thought a lot about Costa Rica, and that could still happen, but the greater Seattle area is well suited to me and my current needs/wants.

the Bosch thread keeps reminding me how much I envy his house ... though I would also want a pool or a lake or a creek or be close to the ocean. ... As a native (6th gen) Californian, I think about Oregon, esp. now and through, say, mid-October, but I am self-conscious about how much Oregon hates Californian ex-pats.

I also think about moving to LA ... because so many of my friends have moved there. ...

I think about moving to the humble suburb of El Cerrito so I could have a yard but still be close to where I currently live, and have uncanny valley experiences due to the fact that a lot of El Cerrito looks like the dumb town where I grew up.

I recently thought about moving to lol Berkeley ... big move, 3 miles. The South Berkeley farmer's market is pretty nice.

what is it about northern vermont? i've never visited the NE beyond NY/Boston, though a crew of my old friends migrated to maine a long time ago and seem to be living in some kind of nice dream (from my distant view)

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Sunday, May 29, 2022 12:18 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i have family ties to burlington vt area, spent a lot of time up there as a kid. its nice and isn't going to become unbearably hot or sink into the ocean in the next 30 years

^^ good criteria!

while it is likely I will be dead in 30 years, the thought of holding onto my apartment, which would then be "ocean-front property" has its appeal

I am self-conscious about how much Oregon hates Californian ex-pats.

In a way I'm glad to hear this, because it means that the publicity generated around this issue decades ago still resonates in CA. But realistically, since then OR has absorbed so many Californian ex-pats and other newcomers that our population has doubled and the only places clinging to that old animosity are places that have stayed static all this time, mostly the tiny isolated towns in Eastern Oregon that barely survive one year to the next.

This thread is well-timed cuz I'm planning to sublet my place in SF (same apt I've been in for 12 years) and go to NYC for a few months. What can I say, I love ridiculously expensive cities.

No reason I can't do this, still terrified though.

"everywhere sucks, go inside yourself."

Might've been said jokingly but doing the inner work is probably as important, otherwise you are just moving the misery around.

Ten years ago I would have said, money and 'fucking the planet up' permitting, houses for different parts of the year and moving, moving: New Zealand, Reykjavik and, maybe eastern Malaysia. Now I'd happily settle in the south island of NZ. Probably Nelson but west coast would be lovely as well.

no matter where you go, there you are

It's a slogan I know but I basically believe it -- nothing much about your existence is going to change as a result of changing your physical location

You live alone in a town called your skull

I had a chance to hang out with some successful professional artists (painters ) about 3 years ago at a social event in Bethnal Green … It was an under-populated event with generous sponsorship and much free alcohol. It was was eye-opening to me just how hard-nosed and cynical artists are. They talked shop: including swapping details of summer teaching events, which was best paid and most prestigious. And also gossiping about a mutual acquaintance: “It’s tragic. He’s got divorced and he’s got a new girlfriend, a flat at the Barbican and a sports car. He’s so tight that he invited me over to sort out his stereo - and it was unbelievable : his vinyl records were ancient heavy metal”.

In short: would not want to hang with painters.

Somewhere in the south of France. Nice would be nice, or maybe Montpelier. I might actually do this in a few year's time, once my son's through school.

i moved around a fair bit in my twenties. it was cool, and even though i still lived alone in my skull, for a while i was able to say 'wow, i'm in alaska!' and that actually went a fair way

but i also had friends in the places i'd moved, and worked in situations with a lot of people my age (bookstores!)

it's pretty hard to make friends as a middle-aged person, so if you move someplace new where you don't know anyone, i think you have to have a plan to be really outgoing and ready to throw yourself into strange situations. and if you're not ready to do that, you're better off being someplace where you already have friends

that said, i would totally move to canada (well, maybe not saskatchewan) if i could navigate the job/immigration thing

I have dreams of living on a remote Scottish island, writing next to a fire as storms whip up the sea. But I don't have any money or skills, can't drive, and lack of accessible amenities would screw me over majorly. I also can't speak any other languages well enough to move to anywhere that isn't English-speaking (I had a similar dream about moving to an isolated fjord in Norway).

I moved to be where I am, so I'm happy with the city I live in, but rural Italy has its appeals, or maybe the Amalfi coast. Assuming money/work is no object in this vision.

New Zealand

been saying that for the last five years

Probably would move to Amsterdam or Brussels - places that have established and long-standing culture, but also where you feel more easily connected to the rest of Europe.

The trouble with London/England is that it feels too disconnected from anywhere else and its depressing and cynical political culture seems overbearing and inescapable.

There are a number of places in Europe I could happily move to tomorrow, if it were feasible for the family. Planning to leave the UK as soon as I can, even if that's 15 years, too scared of gun violence/ healthcare system to ever consider moving to the US, Asia was good to me but even after a decade it wasn't home.

My primary criteria would be climate (cool but no brutal winters), on the coast, lots of green.

New Zealand, Ireland, parts of France and Italy would probably top the list. Don't really care about Major Cities but being relatively close to a city would be nice.

Foggy cliffs would be good, I could spend a lot of quality time staring out into the misty void.

New Orleans or Italy

I’d fuck w NOLA but I bet it’s changing way too fast for me

...it feels too disconnected from anywhere else and its depressing and cynical political culture seems overbearing and inescapable.

― Luna Schlosser

New board description.

I used to think Joshua Tree would be nice (I don't mind the heat) but I was there in November a few years ago and it was cold! And I figured if it's this cold in November this place must have at least 4 months of this cold. Also windy there, which would bug me after a while, I think. I'm in the LA area now, but a smaller city that fairly self-contained (Pasadena) and I really like it.

And before JT I thought the San Luis Obispo area would be great to settle down in, weather and culture-wise, but it's as expensive as LA now.

everywhere desirable in California is expensive now

what if your main goal was to live in an inspiring place to paint, to be around painters, and to spend as little money as possible?

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone),

i forgot to make my point - much more important to me than the art world is how inspiring the surrounding landscape and weather and people are

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Sunday, May 29, 2022 12:58 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

(landscape very much including buildings and urban life as well as the rest)

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone),

KM fwiw you remind me v much of a friend who in his middle age took up painting seriously and moved to Houston, Tx and he seems to have found exactly what you're looking for there. Currently living at Elder St. Artists' Lofts

In Houston you absolutely will need a car, or at least a bike/motorcycle.

I feel like I already live in the place I want to in the US, but I’ve fantasized about moving to Canada, Mexico, Sweden (3 friends of mine have recently moved there), Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, the south of France, and everywhere I’ve ever been in Italy

these fantasies won't come true without a spectacular effort though and I'm not willing to make that

agree with what mookieproof said: "it's pretty hard to make friends as a middle-aged person, so if you move someplace new where you don't know anyone, i think you have to have a plan to be really outgoing and ready to throw yourself into strange situations. and if you're not ready to do that, you're better off being someplace where you already have friends"

also Houston is a godforsaken malarial swamp

Anyway we discussed it years ago and this friend's answer to your question at the time following p much the same criteria was Guanajuato, Mexico

Or Paris, even, for that matter.

Shit, the coffee out of a streetside Nescafe vending machine on thw outskirts of Krakow makes better coffee than any Starbucks i’ve ever been in.

The guy is a fucking idiot

uh the racism part is absolutely true.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Tuesday, 28 June 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Lol no it depends where exactly in Europe you are at.

I’m only going by what I’ve seen and what my non-white friends have told me.

Europe has double the population with less than half the number of people locked up in the US. Whose increasingly run for profit and non-racist prison industrial industrial complex has a demographically disproportionate 38% share of black prisoners! There might be lots of nazis in Europe and shitty racist centre-right governments, but I don't think there is any country whose systematic racism is so brutally efficient at incarcerating black people as in the US.

Europe has never been a racial paradise but it’s notably more difficult for the local whites supremacists to access guns.

having trouble with “more racist,” maybe “as racist in somewhat different permutations” (not that i know from experience)

accusing europe of having worse coffee than america is hilarious

I’m speaking purely of treatment on the street, fwiw. A Black friend of mine said “I was never treated more like an n-word than in Barcelona and Boston”

“Less say in the affairs of the world” eh

I looked this person up & it’s some conservative podcaster so that’s your lens through which to parse “racist” “dynamic” and “free” ie, as xyz says, lol

the mention of boston says it all i think

You can be followed by young children on bicycles in Coventry and in large groups afer school in New Haven. They call out chinks for all Asians.

They probably don't know what they are saying or doing.

The one part of that tweet which is probably true is that salaries in even the richest European countries are somewhat worse than the US.

The Big If is public services and what the trade-off might be in terms of what Europeans get. We all see the horror stories on healthcare in the US.

would Europe let us Americans in? Seriously, as an American, with no significant ancestral ties to any country in Europe, could I actually become a citizen of a European country?

Not unless you’re very rich and can buy a passport from Malta or Bulgaria (Malta is around €750k, not sure how much Bulgaria is). Most other countries at the very least have residency requirements - when Brexit happened my now husband was looking to see if he could get Irish citizenship via me. He can, but we would have to move and live there for about 3-5 years. So, the easiest ways to do it are via “investment” (ie buying the passport) or having a parent or grandparent from some country. The residence requirement for non EU citizens means you need a visa of some description which can range from being difficult to a major fucking pain. However, if you are the non-EU partner or spouse of an EU citizen you can move with them to any country in the EU regardless of job etc and the EU can’t prevent you from doing so. Ymmv but essentially the barriers are greatly decreased and in some cases non existent. Iirc on that last point, up until Brexit that was a right I, as a non-British EU citizen, had over British citizens, which was crazy.

Oh also if you’re an Irish citizen whose only citizenship is that, there are huge delays in getting your passport issued or renewed because of all the British people who’ve decided to take up their ancestry to avoid passport queues*. So even if you do have an ancestry claim it could take years, so that’s great.

*this thinking applies mainly to the likes of Emma Kennedy and not British people from Irish families with a genuine connection who just never got around to it!

thanks for not saying, "sarah, you suck, you deserve to be stuck in America." ... my bff is Bulgarian, I should ask her!

Lmao it’s not up to me, there are tons of worse people living in Europe I assure you!

(Bulgaria’s a steal at €512k btw). However, I only know about this cos I’m constantly seeing ads for it on Russian-owned livejournal so there’s possibly a bit of a queue.

my wife has irish citizenship but it's pretty white over there, no?

Much less so than it used to be.

cool we should visit sometime

maybe her mom knows someone! (her mom used to live in the same apartment building as my friend, so I got to know her ... she is hilarious ... I have many stories about N's mom, but not for this thread)

Bulgaria is nice, I've traveled around there a but, but it's absolutely hemorrhaging population, especially in rural areas

would Europe let us Americans in? Seriously, as an American, with no significant ancestral ties to any country in Europe, could I actually become a citizen of a European country?

Many countries will allow freelancers/self-employed people to move there. Germany has a self-employed visa, Sweden has one...it's a bureaucratic pain in the ass, and expensive, but it can absolutely be done. About a month ago, I talked to an immigration lawyer about moving to Sweden. He told me that their menu of services, to prepare and process your application, costs between $6-15K. You have to be able to prove that you have enough money to live in the country for two years (about $30K) and show a viable business plan (which they help you prepare), and the application process — from submitting your forms to getting a thumbs-up or thumbs-down — takes about a year. If you get approved, you get a long-term residency permit, and once you've lived in the country for five years without breaking any laws or whatever, you can apply for citizenship.

can I do this for England?

I'm only half joking when I ask, why would you want to? With so many other options available...

appreciate the summary info about the logistics of this

if you don't want to be a citizen and you're employable there are plenty of options in europe. not necessarily easy/good options, especially if you have a family.

because the English appreciate their big bottomed birds? idk

i'm going to try to move from a red state to a blue state in the next 5 years which feels daunting enough.

apologies if discussed upthread, but many of the usual bug out locations when this topic comes up (e.g. NZ and canada) make immigration difficult to impossible for people (or families) with disabilities or other health conditions.

colorado would be a big improvement and feels approachable. i don't exactly love it but probably denver. the western slope is beautiful but overall more conservative than where i am currently, even though it's in a liberal state. it would be more difficult being out there i think, unless i want to go the recluse route.

Colorado is my pragmatic answer, but "another planet" if we're talking ideal situations.

if you don't want to be a citizen and you're employable there are plenty of options in europe. not necessarily easy/good options, especially if you have a family.

I recently read that Estonia is actively seeking expats. They have what's called a "digital nomad visa". I've seen pictures of Estonia; it's pretty. A guy I know, originally from NYC, lives on an island there now.

*immigrants

(xp) I imagine it's fine if you don't mind Putin breathing down your neck.

Southern California, at least until it runs out of water.

I like the Estonian PM.. but it's a pretty tiny country, like 1.5 million or something

I have an American born-and-raised friend with Estonian citizenship because a grand or great grandparent grew up there; her two children (also born in the US) also have it but her husband does not. They’re apparently pretty open based on family lineage due to having so few people.

This family’s lived there on sabbaticals and fullbrights for extended periods on two occasions now but he actually got deported last month due to some visa screw up. So they’re not just taking everyone and I don’t think it’s trivial for him to actually get citizenship there despite being married to one but long term residency might be easier.

I’d be a brain in a vat thinking it’s seeing Husker Du at Goofy’s Upper Deck…forever.

Was very disappointed to find out that I would have qualified for Canadian citizenship via my grandmother (native, so my dad would have been automatically eligible) if I had applied before 2009.

I'd like to say a medium-sized island in the finland archipelago but as a californian I would probably wimp out on the brutal winders, oh well

last i checked, my own best chance for eu citizenship would involve (somehow) accessing a mess of birth & marriage certs going back a century, getting them professionally translated into italiano, explaining the part about the bigamy and aliases, and accidentally dropping generous bribes on a lot of desks

It would have been cool to early gotten some nice land around Taylorsville lake area, somewhat in driving distance to Louisville for work before the money hit town. It's really nice there and will be getting completely transformed into a big money house place especially with the new Ford electric plant.

I like to think I could hang with a place with more winter, but I don't know that it is reality unless I got a snow blower.

Welcome to Portugal, the new expat haven. Californians, please go home

Just found about United States. Had no idea. Unfollowing now

— Alex Peter (@LolOverruled) July 5, 2022

xp some family friends actually packed up and moved over to that exact city in Portugal. went to visit them in February and it looked like Portugal's version of the French Riviera.

I have no idea what the Austrian immigration options are but I've really enjoyed the time I've spent in Vienna. Good walking city with lots of public transportation.

New Zealand