I wouldn't trade my nyc studio for a McMansion back in bumfuck SC no matter how much you offered me; and I think there must be a large population that shares that sentiment.
Please don't drop slurs into HN comments. Your comment would be fine without that bit.
Had we been speaking in person it would likely have been obvious that you didn't mean it as a slur. But the bandwidth of online communication is so much lower that there's no capacity for such error correction even in one-to-one cases, let alone when hundreds of people are reading what you write.
With an attitude like that, I certainly hope you never do: neither you nor your new South Carolinian neighbours would enjoy it.
I live in a condo now, but I miss living in a house and not being able to hear anyone but my family. I miss playing in the back yard as a kid, and roaming around the neighbourhood on long summer evenings. There are many nice things about cities, and there are many nice things about suburbs, and there are many nice things about rural areas too.
I think you can guess where I stand on the matter. You couldn't pay me enough money to relocate to Manhattan or San Francisco.
Funnily enough, that's what every suburban Walmart feels like.
I thought you were talking about cars at first.
At the start the excitement and glamour masks the near subliminal, slow, consistent erosion of inner coherence that nyc produces in humans. But in time accumulated erosion will become evident.
Your insides will be knotted up and tightly coiled, and you won't even know it, because humans can get used to almost anything.
Your fellow denizens are experiencing it as well, and many cover and compound the feeling with excessive alcohol consumption, and status seeking.
One day a tipping point will be reached. But you will think to yourself, "but if I leave nyc, where will I go? Where else is there?"
The city is a parasitical mind virus that takes over your decision making, in order to extract rents from you.
But there is still a faint penumbra of humanity inside of you. And it will want out. But you will be scared. FOMO, and a feeling that outside the city you will be socially isolated.
Well I am here to tell you that cool small towns and cities are out there. They have enough smart and interesting people to easily fill up your Dunbar number limit.
You can only really know and relate to 150 humans, we don't need 7 million surrounding us, and online dating apps have changed the social scene in small towns and cities. There are plenty of young women (or men) around you, even in smaller towns with an older median age.
Your range will have to increase, but for that we have cars. In nyc it can easily take an hour and a half to travel five miles via public transit.
tldr; it's not binary between nyc and bumfuck suburbs, and even many small 'boring' towns have a lot more culture, singles, restaurants and bars than you would think, or at least more than I thought.
My feelings on moving back to a small town halfway between NYC and Boston as a still fairly young single are probably best expressed by the Grateful Dead in their song Shakedown Street:
"Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart. You just gotta poke around."
Like, there's a very large chance I'll end up moving to SoCal if I'm ever forced to leave Texas (which might actually happen next year), but I have no desire to live in NorCal even if you paid me seven figures.
It does get cold outside of the Bay Area, but the Bay Area is one of those special areas of California for temperature (along with San Diego).
I, at least, agree with you when it comes to SV proper. At this point in my life, I wouldn't take any amount of money to live in rural South Carolina OR San Jose.