Greetings From PA
By Brian
Dempsey
Well, after 48 years, i finally made it out of
Cleveland. In a way it feels weird, but mostly it feels great. Like taking
that big shit you were holding onto for nearly half a century. Let me
explain......
First of all, as most of you reading this have heard,
my new football team just won the Superbowl. 48 years in Cleveland and not
one championship. Well, I guess you could count that female basketball team
years ago.... You have no idea how nice it is to root for someone who
actually wins once in a while. It's not life changing or anything, but it's
nice. You, on the other hand just traded Coco Crisp for a pitcher with a bad
arm and cash, and with that went the Indians' 2006 season before it even
started.
Secondly, I have not seen a pothole or an orange barrel
since I’ve lived here. Not a one! I have no idea how they do it, but they
do. We have virtually the same weather, but our roads are nice, well marked
and clean & dry on the worst of days. And remember, we have a lot of hills
too. Actually, the whole damn place is built on hills. How do they do it? I
don't know, but why can't Cleveland?
It's also nice to live somewhere where we have real
bands that have actually done real things. Not Michael Stanley... I mean
artists like Live and Fuel who are from the area here. So are Coinmonster
and The Clarks, as well as Carsickness, Left End, Glass Harp and many more.
Not bad for a small valley town. And one other thing.... our local bands
don't "pay to play". They get paid or they don't play. What a concept!!
Let's see what else... Groceries are about half what
they were in Cleveland and most of our stores here are open 24 hours. No tax
on clothes. Great radio stations that are not Clear Channel or CBS but
locally owned and play what they want. Great independent restaurants. Tons
of fast food places, too, if you're so inclined. Oh yeah, and the world's
largest shoe store. Imelda Marcos would be in heaven.....
But what brought me here, besides my girlfriend, is the
housing. You can find really nice homes in safe neighborhoods for 40k and
up! No kidding. 40k in Cleveland wouldn't get you a ghetto house or a bad
condo in Lakewood. Amazing! You can actually work 40 hrs a week and have a
life here.
Now the downside.... No major concerts nearby. You
either go to Pittsburgh, Erie, or back to C-town. No lake. We do have
Pymatuning which is very nice, but it's not a real lake. And the worst is
the medical community. Cleveland sucks, too, but this is the worst. You damn
near have to beg to get a doctor to take you as a patient here, and the area
hospitals are a joke. If anything really bad happens, they have to fly you
to Pittsburgh by helicopter. And they do tax the crap out of us and charge
for garbage pickup and stuff like that.
But all in all, there's virtually nothing I miss about
Cleveland save for a few friends. It was the worst place I’d ever lived full
of the shitiest people I'd ever encountered. Bad weather, bad sports, bad
music, bad race problems, corrupt local governments, that "east side, west
side" thing, the worst roads in the country, horrible air quality - the list
goes on and on....
Jeez!! Why do any of you still live there? I don't get
it. I didn't move to San Francisco or Hawaii or some paradise. I just moved
an hour and a half up the turnpike and it's different world! That must tell
you something......
Now I didn't write this article to gloat or to make you
feel bad, but rather to help you. The thing is, I'm 48 years old now. I'll
have about 30 years left on this earth if I’m lucky, and I’ve wasted 2/3 of
my life in that shithole on the lake. I'd hate to see you do the same. If
you're young and healthy and intelligent and talented, get out while you
still have a life! Don't sit around trying to “change things” like I did.
They don't change there. It never changes and you will waste your life
trying. I'm telling you as a friend, get out and go anywhere else. Life is
too short to make a lifelong “mistake by the lake”.
Brian Dempsey
Bad513@netzero.net
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