Yeah, cost of living is insanely low. It's really not a bad place to live but not a place you'd want to visit.

i do like this harmony korine existence, most of the time

good question. it's cheap.

jesus christ $500

Honest question - what the does a $500/mo mortgage get you size/br/ba/neighborhood wise? Did you drop a 20% downpayment? I mean, shit fuck!

yeah i need to know

That's about where my mortgage is too. We have a 1050 sq. ft two bedroom/1 bath plus a finished basement (which we did ourselves). It's an old house (1926) but it's in good shape.

I'm 10 minutes from downtown Indy but live on the near east side which, while not a dangerous area really, it is one a lot of people shy away from (i.e. "it ain't just whites livin' there"). We paid just over $100k for our house in 2006 and that's on the pricey side for our neighborhood.

i live in yorktown which is a small town on the outskirts of the dying rust belt community of muncie.

my house is 1500sq ft, 2 br, an office, 1 bath, full backyard with room for a garden. it's a small working class neighborhood, very quiet and secluded. the district is serviced by one of the "better" county schools in the area

pros: cost of living, central location (even though it's not on top of a major metropolitan area, chicago, detroit, cincinnati, columbus, louisville and nashville are all less than a half days drive away), family is here

cons: quality of living, very homogenous culture, red state, not a very monied state, not real interesting from a geographic/topographic standpoint, seasonal extremes

one of the area's biggest exports seems to be transplanted hipsters, just behind corn and soybeans. in my days on the road, there wasn't a single major city without at least a tiny cabal of east central indiana hoosiers living in lofts and making ends meet as baristas or photographers.

it's a strange irony that i spent over a decade trying to get away from this place, and now here i am, chauffeuring my son to all the spring carnivals and shit that i used to go to at his age.

i'd still like to make "the big move" at some point, but for now, i have opened my eyes to the sad romance and spectacle of this place, my very own tupelo

basically 500/mo will get you a little pink house with enough left over to buy a chili dog to suck on

Aside from my status as a heavyweight and dandy about town/ lack of tattoos, we live a pretty similar existence, Tooks. I guess the difference in markets is probably that I live in a capital city, which historically has a VERY monied side to it. Lots of old land(slave) owners, etc.

We also live right in the middle of town, in one of the few semi- integrated middle class neighborhoods. And still, I pay right at double what you do.

without sounding conceited, it's almost an "in it and not of it" perspective

round peg in a square hole, life story, etc

I have taken a "can't beat em join em" philosophy, and now try to get away with saying the worst shit in American history this side of Father Coughlin or Geo. Wallace at the country club, just to see who agrees with me. It's the appeaser/subverter duality of my personality forged by having to move around the world constantly making new friends and seceretoy hating every one of them and resenting and admiring both the toilers and the exploiters.

politics seems the natural career path for you then

Yeah, when you believe in nothing save your own superiority and peace through superior firepower, yet can convince people you completely agree with them, it really is a nice fit.

Good talk, man.

always good when a thread makes a pit stop at the after-hours bar

Menos hipoteca, mas hamburguesa.

im gonna catch up this weekend

last nights was pretty much everything we expected

I fully expect at least three iterations of "Shera's got crabs!" Will pair nicely to the previously common "enough meat for two mouths" patter.

we're working hard on this margaret cho board persona, don't worry

So, you're a lesbian?

still depressing

New burger place opened by me:
http://www.backalleyburger.com/Menu.html

This one looks good:
Knead A Big Burger -- 1/2# beef, pastrami, fried egg, onion, lettuce, tomato, horseradish, mustard

yum.

at least you own. I pay over 4x Toots mortgage to rent.

Same.

no shit. South Florida is fucking ridiculously expensive. Asheville 2012 baby.