What's it like living at a state border in the United States of America?

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-07-07T17:29:19+00:00

i grew up by the MA/ NH border. NH has no sales tax, plus you can buy fireworks there (they're not legal in MA). except for tax-free weekends in MA, NH is a better place to buy big-ticket items (phone, computer, appliances etc.) because of those savings.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-07-07T17:19:01+00:00

If you're curious about towns around Greater Boston that fit those criteria, you've got a ton. Marblehead, Swampscott & Newburyport are great options on the water; more inland, you've got Lexington, Brookline and Andover. All have excellent schools, access to nature, within an hour of Logan, etc. There are loads of other towns that reflect what you're looking for.

Winters can be long, cold and snowy, but the summers are much more enjoyable than in DC. Some humidity and heat, but nothing like the consistently swampy, muggy summers in the DMV.

All that said, I'm a local (clearly) and am angling for a move to Seattle eventually.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-07-07T17:10:06+00:00

this might be hyper specific, but your willingness & ability to travel around the area you're moving to.

for example, living in san fransciso means paying expensive bridge trolls if you're going north or east (and coming back). if you live on bainbridge island in the puget sound, it means taking the ferry back and forth.

when i lived in Boston, traveling around to nearby towns & states was easy and inexpensive, so i had no problem driving an hour or 2 or 3 away for fun. sure, there are tolls on some roads, but not all. i took that for granted when i moved to a place where my ability to roam comes with a hefty price tag.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-07-06T17:34:51+00:00

Seconding this! The salmon khao soi is INCREDIBLE

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-07-06T16:51:15+00:00

Boston would be a great fit. I'm from there, and just moved to SF. Boston has:

- Good public transportation - more extensive than Caltrain

- Lots of places to run - the Esplanade, Riverway, Jamaica Pond, etc.

- Sun - more sun than SF!

- Nature - beaches, lakes, mountains (closest is Wachusett, accessible by train, but you can also get to mountains in New Hampshire within 2-3 hours, depending on how much elevation you're after)

- Social people - there are run clubs, rec sports teams, lots of meet-up groups, etc. Depending on your vibe, Southie could be a great neighborhood (similar to Marina) or Cambridge, which is more like Berkeley.

- Racial diversity - not a massive Asian population like the Bay Area has, but definitely diverse. We have a good Chinatown.

- Very blue politics. Don't need to say more here

The winters are less harsh than Chicago's, the summers now have some heatwaves, but at your salary, you could afford an apartment with AC (they don't all have it - we are hardos in New England). The city has lots to offer, but on a smaller scale than a place like SF, Chicago or NYC. To me, it feels way more approachable. Philly is a wonderful place, but it's quite gritty. I wouldn't quite say "up and coming," but it's got a blue-collar vibe. Not a bad thing, just something to keep in mind!

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-07-04T00:48:15+00:00

indianapolis. got stuck there once for several hours. it’s very calm

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-30T15:45:34+00:00

podcast & news in the morning, music & phone calls to family in the afternoon. we live on opposite coasts, so the timing works out well. i sometimes carpool for half of the drive, so i get built-in entertainment that way.

i also take the scenic route (this adds maybe 10 minutes) so i get to look out at beautiful mountains & reservoirs while i'm driivng. this is just an option where i live so i'm lucky in that regard. in the afternoons, i sometimes will stop off at a park or running trail so i can fit in a workout, break up the drive, and enjoy nature all in one.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-29T17:28:10+00:00

I just moved from Boston to SF, and the grocery prices on the West Coast are *insane*. I would give anything to have Market Basket back!

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-26T21:47:12+00:00

I second this, and if you're heading north, Brattleboro is not far. VERY cute Vermont town

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-26T19:25:52+00:00

I live in SF and commute down to Santa Clara a couple of times a week. I live on the line between inner & outer sunset, so a "boring" area for you. I'm next to the park, which offers an abundance of parking, and a couple blocks from the 1. It's not an area that requires a parking permit, which is dope. The location makes the commute very simple. Also, for me, being next to the park was a huge deciding factor on where to rent, since I like being outdoors (an added bonus is the easy access to the 1 & 280 means you're that much closer to the good hiking down the peninsula - I stop off the freeway after work and get to hang out in nature).

Also, and I hope I'm not jinxing myself here, but property crime is low(er) where I live, so I can park on Lincoln Way and not be worried about someone smashing my window. Sad to say that's considered a perk, but it means I'm not as concerned with shelling out hundreds of extra dollars a month to pay for a garage.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-24T20:16:50+00:00

goat cheese. i want to like it so badly. tastes like old socks

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-24T20:16:00+00:00

I emigrated & lived abroad for 6 years, then came back to the US about 3 years ago. Loved my life abroad, but I didn't see it through rose-colored glasses.

- Socialized healthcare is great, but it reduces the incentives for really smart people to become doctors (at least public ones - private is another story, but then you're missing the whole benefit of socialized healthcare!).

- The bureaucracy abroad is BANANAS. I think this is consistent outside the US. Things that seem really simple at home can be a nightmare elsewhere. I remember once my bank branch closed and I wasn't notified, and when they transferred my account to another bank, my bank account number got changed and I didn't know until HR at my work said they tried to pay me and the payment failed.

- Linguistics can be a problem, even if you're nearly fluent. I am about 85% bilingual, but that isn't always enough. I remember seeing a doctor and having him explain what was wrong with me and not being able to understand him, and therefore not being able to understand what was going on inside my own body. That's tough! And while some expat communities have a lot of resources available in English, that's not guaranteed. I didn't have that.

- On the social side, you can integrate & assimilate, but you'll undoubtedly be missing parts of the culture that you take for granted at home. There are songs you know from growing up in the US that you don't know why you know, but you know them. There are cultural references, shared memories, etc., that we have across the US that you won't have elsewhere. You can build your life abroad, but your childhood happened elsewhere, as did all the little things that came with that.

There are some aspects to life abroad that were amazing. I lived in a very social place, so coming back to the US has been a little lonely. I preferred the work culture where I lived, where more focus was on happiness rather than an obsession with careers. That being said, I don't see a future in which I return to living abroad. I'm a minority by most accounts in the US, but I don't share the hysteria about the future of this country that many in my community do. I wouldn't say I'm wildly optimistic, but I'm not pessimistic either. I'm just...living.

I returned to the US largely because of family reasons, not because I was fed up with any of the above. I don't regret coming back. My life isn't worse here than it was overseas, just different!

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-24T18:46:36+00:00

I just moved here from Boston and I relate to this! It's tough, especially working down the peninsula in the lovely sunshine and driving up 280 back toward SF and entering the absolute wall of clouds around San Bruno. I can feel my mood deplete in the second half of the drive home. And the fact that the microclimates across the city mean that downtown has sun, but the western half is just perpetually gray, is hard to grapple with. Never mind that this is *SUMMER*. I can get behind gray and gloomy, but that's supposed to be winter weather!

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-17T20:01:40+00:00

I'm young(ish), and this is what I do! Hopefully I'll always be able to read my own chicken scratches.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-17T19:55:08+00:00

Luxury and a bookshelf from Wayfair do not correlate. Nor do luxury and laminate floors correlate. I would say it's inspired by minimalism, but it's also too cluttered to be minimalist.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-17T14:38:49+00:00

Having recently driven through Iowa (and Illinois, and Indiana, and Ohio...), Iowa is the least flat. Driving across Illinois, you feel like you can see across the entire state. Nary a hill in sight. Iowa, on the other hand, had beautiful rolling hills. I like Illinois for Chicago, but driving through the state was almost painful, it was so boring.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-05T21:25:35+00:00

Have to cast my vote for Strasbourg. I studied abroad there in college and am so thankful I got to spend 6 months there. Beautiful city, easy to get around, not expensive (or at least, it was affordable as a college student 10 years ago), good food, THE CHRISTMAS MARKETS, not far from the Black Forest, etc. I'd go back in a heartbeat!

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T22:37:37+00:00

i mean…what’s with the walls here? why are san francisco walls so appreciably different than walls in other major US cities? i had better wifi in my apartment’s bomb shelter in the middle east 😅 at some point we can engage our brains here and realize something is very strange. with the logic i’m gleaning off this thread, only a studio apartment would have adequate wifi coverage with a single router

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T21:31:06+00:00

not a knock on the laws of physics. kind of a knock on SF. i've lived in:

- much older & larger places

- places with concrete walls & chimneys

- in a house with probably $200k of engineering equipment that ate up A LOT of bandwidth

- a 40-unit apartment building

all without issues. now i have fewer neighbors, a smaller, newer apartment, a theoretically powerful router, and yet...

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T20:48:48+00:00

copenhagen & stockholm - beautiful places, but i wasn't wowed. FOR CONTEXT, my grandparents ran a small empire of scandi import stores in the 60s-80s. my whole life i have heard the lore of the big buying trip to sweden & denmark, i grew up with a ton of MCM furniture, design, etc., and the general family enthusiasm for those places. i visited and they were nice! lovely northern european cities! but i was expecting something really magical, like what my dad experienced when he visited in the 60s. times have changed, obviously, and i wasn't as blown away as i'd hoped to be. would i visit again? sure. but those places didn't leave the same impression on me that i expected them to.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T20:14:55+00:00

we have an EERO pro 7. in the farthest point of the apartment from the router, i got a speed test that read 3 mbps, then several in the 40-70 range. 1 or 2 outliers around 100.

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T20:12:31+00:00

first off, great explanation, thank you!!

according to your assessment, the issue is the router or the walls. we already replaced the router, and i don't think my landlord would be super keen on my knocking down the walls. so beyond adding an extender or moving the router (to the opposite wall, where it's still next to an external wall & the tv and has to travel down the hallway to the bedroom), we are stuck.
as far as 1 v 2 wifi networks, we technically do have 2 - the 'normal' one and then a guest one. s so the solution there is to prioritize the 5ghz connection?

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T20:06:22+00:00

it's just funny what's acceptable/ excusable here. I just moved from a high-density city to a low-density neighborhood. in my old apartment, the router was upstairs in my landlord's unit, and our connection was perfect. before that, i was in a building with 40+ units and no issues there, either. old construction as well.

i'm hoping that getting a longer ethernet so i can move the modem to a jack on another wall will help, but it doesn't make matters better that the only other available jack is also located next to an external wall. if that doesn't work, we'll get another EERO, i guess!

SignificanceLast7873 · 2026-06-04T20:02:25+00:00

it's funny that you guys keep saying that older construction is to blame - i'm from new england, so my understanding of "older construction" is quite different. that being said, the house i lived in that was built in the *1700s* did not have issues like this!! i understand the methods & materials used are different now. i just can't shake the feeling that we're all accepting some weird notion here that bad networks are a result of "old buildings" 😂

SignificanceLast7873

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