We live in a country the size of Western Europe with climates ranging from tropical to frozen tundra most of which are full of cheap land and housing if you don’t mind living a bit out of the way… and you picked Texas?
When a longtime Californian leaves California, they make a big stink about it like it's a zeitgeist and parlance of our times. And they only move to Portland, OR or Austin, TX. There have been a few to move to New York City, but that is seen as selling out. Lastly, a handful to Colorado but no one has an opinion on that therefore they are ex-communicated until they return to either California, Portland, or Austin.
do you "recommend" any hilarious biker bars in the SF Bay Area? I only know one and it had a Pabst vending machine in the back. I didn't have a patch or a rider or really any black leather so I never checked it out. Or a motorcycle. Or have ever been on a street legal motorcycle.
Don’t go to biker bars, there’s a couple pullouts in Oakland Berkeley where people tend to stop and chat.
The warehouse in Port Costa is a known hangout though.
Yeah thought that should be obvious. Not every republican is a white nationalist but these people made no secret about their vote, or their belief in great replacement theory, or their views that non whites aren’t fit to hold government office.
> Lastly, a handful to Colorado but no one has an opinion on that therefore they are ex-communicated
No, I did it and there is a big stink about us showing up in Boulder or Denver in large numbers and driving up the price of real estate enough to know we are persona non-grata amongst 'natives'--which is to say those who moved there in the late 90s or early 2000s and reaped the most benefits from said real estate spikes. It's a trope, and if you lived there or spent time there you'd know that.
I personally moved back to EU, after living in various countries for four years, and was way better received than most of the US--I'm Californian and lived in HI and CO. Granted, I was well welcomed by my local community in the startup World, but outside of that it was clear you were the scapegoat for all that was going wrong.
Personally I think the crux is that housing is less constrained in the EU and lower salaries keep things from getting completely out of hand, and their aging population coupled with significant Covid deaths meant their was an excess in vacancy and several of them sought to attract digital nomads (albeit with lengthy and tiresome processes) with attractive visa programs in order to cash in the WFH diaspora.
It is a beautiful place, I'm visiting there with my wife now, we come several times a year. It does have issues though, education is lacking, there is a real lack of opportunity so you'd better have a good remote job, not really any international flights in and out, you have to hop to a bigger airport like DIA or one in California, and it's pretty monocultural.
I left CA for TX about a decade ago. I like the heat but it became unbearable. Worse yet, COVID and Trump made the people unbearable. (Doesn't matter which side you're on, everyone forgot their manners and won't shut up about things.)
We left after almost 10 years. We're in NH now. There are still people who won't stop talking about their personal politics but it's a lot fewer. There are signs during voting season but that's most of it. People here seem to be genuinely friendly and not Bless Your Heart "friendly."
I wouldn't go back to CA without a major change in the economics and I'd never go back to TX because it's just going to get hotter and people will likely just keep getting worse.
Eugene or Portland Oregon, Pittsburgh area, northern Ohio, Maine, Santa Fe or Albuquerque, Colorado Front Range, Madison Wisconsin, maybe Milwaukee, maybe West Lafayette Indiana, maybe Chattanooga, just off the top of my head.
The maybes are places that were nice to visit but I don't know very well.
