Posted on 09/16/2007 9:20:10 AM PDT by lowbridge
Four tales of city dwellers who fled New York
More New Yorkers leave the city every year than move here, a trend highlighted in a population study released last week.
The report showed that in 2005, 300,000 people left New York, and only 200,000 arrived from across the U.S. and other countries to replace them.
The results prompted the Daily News to ask: Why did you say goodbye to New York?
Here are the stories we heard:
He's getting more bang for his bucks
Carlos Thompson and his wife owned a house in Brooklyn and made a decent living as graphic designers, but for years he wanted to escape the city's crippling expenses and the threat of terrorism.
Research led Thompson, 36, to the Charlotte area, where the mortgage on his five-bedroom house costs $1,000 a month - a third of what he was paying in Brooklyn. Plenty of other urbanites have relocated to the same area. His broker and builder were former New Yorkers.
"I'm getting a lot more for my money and saving at the same time," said Thompson, a Trinidadian native and the dad of a 7-year-old daughter.
"I do miss my Caribbean food, but other than that, I wouldn't trade it back."
Salary plus kid didn't compute
The first time the Bogens tried to leave New York, it was a bust.
The couple, high school sweethearts from Kentucky who came to New York for college in 1995, fled to Nashville after 9/11. But instead of finding solace, "we spent a lot of time at home watching TV," said Bonnie, 30.
They moved back in December 2002, scoring a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment for $750 a month. They joined a church and planned to raise a family.
But after their son, Matthew, was born last year, the Bogens slowly realized they could not afford to stay on the salary Josh, 28, made as an NYU computer programmer. They soon returned to Nashville, where they're about to buy a $180,000 house.
Bonnie said she misses New York's street life and diversity, but she's learning to like Nashville, where they're close to their parents, and her husband can come home for lunch. "I think that we have a good balance here," she said.
Bureaucracy drove her away
If you had told Ann Marie Hughes a decade ago that she'd be living in Iowa today, she would have laughed.
Even though her husband grew up in Dubuque, Ann Marie, 38, was a Brooklyn girl from birth. But their plans changed when the couple's third child, Teddy, now 5, developed severe autism. Ann Marie couldn't navigate the city's sluggish bureaucracy to help Teddy and couldn't work while she cared for him.
The couple made the tough decision to send Ann Marie to Iowa with their children while Dan, also 38, stays with relatives in New York for weeks at a time to toil as an ironworker.
For the most part, it has paid off. The family cut their $1,300-a-month housing expense in half, Teddy got help right after the move and the kids can play outside the way Ann Marie remembers doing as a child in Brooklyn.
"I'm living the way I wanted to live in New York," she said.
I left New York for good after only one day there.
bump
“I’m living the way I wanted to live in New York,” she said”.
I just shook my head when I saw people pushing babies in strollers, through the graffiti and the bums and the trash, while looking at nothing but concrete. What a way to grow up.
You couldn't pay me to live in NYC.
I love to visit NYC. For 2 days at a time. Then I’m ok for several years. I really love NY outside the City. It is absolutely gorgeous. Hiking and camping at Lake George, the Finger Lakes, the Hudson River Valley. The humidity is killer but the scenery is wonderful!
Hey, you be 300,001th to leave before Osama nukes NYC or Obama (Or Hill, Bill, whatever Dem) wins the Presidency and surrenders NYC to Osama...
No low, the authoress of this sappy piece left town immediately after publication. However, in fairness to the jerkette, she did keep the idiotic piece somewhat racially balanced. OTOH, there is no sympathy experssed for alternative lifestyles here. Her bad!
Suffice it to say that one can buy many acres of fine bottom land in America for the same amount of money it costs to rent a one-room studio in any part of town in which one's self or family is at least at minimal risk of being killed and eaten by the hordes of Third Worlders that make most of the NYC of today as attractive as the slums of Lima.
Ever seen Seinfeld? Unless the gang inherited their apartments from Mom and Dad, you're looking at $2500 a month in rent. To live next door to Kramer? I don't think so.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I left over 27 years ago. People who left before me say the same thing, after you’ve been away a few years, you can’t understand why anyone would want to live in such an unpleasant place. (Massachusetts, despite its silly politics is a very pleasant place. In the summer.)
That's just something people do naturally. I just moved to NY from WA state about five months ago, and I'm doing the same thing. I have to look hard to find good microbrew beer, the average convenience store in the NW has a better selection than the most upscale market here in Rockland County, good thing I made it to Captain Lawrence Brewery yesterday to fill up my growlers! In a land where people think Dunkin' Donuts coffee is great, you have to look harder to find espresso that is not overburned Starbucks.
I've enjoyed a large amount of cultural and culinary activities since I've been here, and the best part is being near the lady I moved here for, so I'm happy. But I still fill my suitcases with Northwest wine on visits back to see my folks!
A lot of people around here are indeed moving to the Carolinas, we intend to do the same after she can retire with full medical benefits from her job. I do like the country lifestyle that you get outside of this area.
My Husband is a Clinton Fan who wants to move back to Manhattan, specifically the Upper East Side and I choose otherwise, any suggestions to persuade him in changing his mind????????/Just Asking - seoul62........
Dump him (just kidding)
I know love is blind, he is my opposite but I love him and he is a good father and partner, despite our political differences./Just Asking - seoul62..........
I am led to believe that is because many of the most obnoxious residents go north for the summer, or concentrate themselves on Cape Cod, where the damage they do can be controlled, or at least confined within the Commonwealth's borders.
I am led to believe that is because many of the most obnoxious residents go north for the summer, or concentrate themselves on Cape Cod, where the damage they do can be controlled, or at least confined within the Commonwealth's borders.
Or NYC math.
And their all going to North Carolina!
Enjoy it while you can down there!
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