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Comment by Twirrim | Hacker News Reader

Admittedly this is aggregate for the whole state:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oklahoma

  Overall Rank Out of 50: #43
  Health Care #48
  Education #39
  Economy #36
  Opportunity #38
  Infrastructure #31
  Crime & Corrections #34
  Fiscal Stability #22
  Quality of Life #17

Those aren't great incentives for people with families to want to move. Might be more tolerable for younger folks?

Of course, getting fresh tax revenue etc may be important towards getting those various things improved, and Tulsa might be significantly better than the rest of the state.

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Statewide aggregates are not always super useful. Portland, Oregon is really different from Burns, Oregon, for instance.

The Portland area would dominate the aggregate because they have 80-90% of the population. I mean, how many in tech are going to move to Pendleton anyways? I’ve heard Bend is kind of hot these days, but went through during a forest fire and wasn’t impressed.

Oklahoma is a bit more balanced on population than Oregon.

As someone who grew up in Tulsa and have lived outside of Portland for almost 15 years, I feel confident saying that Portland has gone down the drain in the past few years and is completely overrun with heroin camps covering every inch of public parks and green space. It's still better than Tulsa.

If you’re into heroin I guess it’s better than Tulsa.

If you're into Meth I guess it's not.

Seattle has gone the same way.

I work remotely, in Bend, and am quite happy with it. It's dry enough to be habitable, which the western half of the state where I grew up is, sadly, not. Lots of great outdoor stuff.

Only a little more than half. Portland metro is 2.4M, state is 4.15M.

It really depends on what you call the Portland area I guess. See https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7nz9fq/a_populatio...

I bet your number includes a few people in Washington if it’s the official Portland metro area one.

I'm going by the census definition of the Portland MSA.

Right, then it’s less than 2 million with the remainder in WA.

Urban places are liberal, Rural places are conservative. Same trend everywhere in the US, even California.

You'd think "Quality of Life" would have a little more weight... I mean... what else is there?!

Whoa. The #1 state in this report is Iowa. Hmm. Maybe time to... check out Iowa.

Surely using some index devised by soulless accountants that never heard of snow.

Don’t knock it till you try it.

But stay away from the yellow variant.

Iowa is a good place. Thriving tech scene too in the Des Moines metro. Gets cold in the winter, but not that cold.

Edit: Also great public school systems and pretty low cost of living.

Healthcare? You could plausibly have great quality of life for healthy people, but once you get sick you lose access to it. If you're dead, you probably don't notice the quality of life living people have.

But where are they ranked in BBQ? I moved to North Carolina from SF Bay Area and NC has much going for it ... but North Carolinians think NC BBQ is like top-3 (Lexington style, Eastern style, etc.) -- but I don't see it. I much prefer Louisiana or Texas BBQ. I'll say other aspects balance out the mediocre NC BBQ.

If Oklahoma / Tulsa BBQ is in the top-3 that might make up for a few of the deficits.

According to trip advisor they're not in the top 10.

http://ir.tripadvisor.com/news-releases/news-release-details...

So if BBQ is your criteria, consider Tennessee?

I find Lexington style pretty good, it's pretty similar to Kansas City/Memphis/St Louis at least. I can't stand Eastern style though. Texas BBQ is a league of it's own for me, I try not to compare to it cause I always end up disappointed.

source: I'm from Kansas City, went to school in Tennessee and Texas, now living in NC.

I don't understand, isn't a BBQ a device you put in your garden? How can it differ per state?

(not sarcastic, I'm just a clueless foreigner)

In this instance BBQ is referring to a specific type of food - that is, smoked meats, usually beef or pork, which is then covered with barbecue sauce, which is usually tomato-based. The specific meats, rubs, and especially sauces vary from place to place, and this is what people are referring to when they debate which state or region has better BBQ.

A barbecue could refer to an outdoor grill, but I don't think that's too common in the US. More often, it refers to a party held outdoors in which food is grilled, usually burgers and/or hot dogs.

You're thinking of a grill, which is used to make the BBQ. As for how it differs from state, I think it's the recipes for the BBQ that differ (some places use vinegar, others use ketchup).

But it's about the habits in people's backyards right? Or about restaurants?

Pretty sure they are comparing BBQ restaurants which are definitely a thing, and differ in style from state to state.

As you’ve implied, if you’re cooking the meat yourself in your backyard then you can do any style you want. I believe “true bbq” can be considered more time consuming than just throwing meat on a grill, and would involve the use of a smoker and perhaps other equipment. It’s not just grilling meat.

Different regions in the US have very different barbecue styles. There's a vast array of different ways to long-smoke meat over wood, and a vast array of ways to sauce and prepare it after it's been cooked.

Since good barbecue often takes years of experience, 16+ hours to cook, and produces more food than a small family can eat, it's a cuisine that is frequently outsourced to restaurants. So the kind of barbecue which dominates an area really has an impact on the kind of barbecue you can eat in that area, unless you've got years of experience, hours of spare time, and either a big enough family or enough freezer space to cook your own barbecue regularly.

I'd say it could be both. I'm honestly not the best person to ask as I'm not really a BBQ aficionado, perhaps someone else could chime in.

In Tulsa, barbecue bologna is a local specialty. It's delicious and definitely worth trying it if you're in the area.

Moved from Oklahoma City to California. Never going back.

If you're religious, right-wing, and don't care about having outing options, then Oklahoma is the place for you.

I'm guessing you've never driven through California.

https://sports.yahoo.com/barbershop-owner-apologizes-says-no...

California is a lot more Red than you think.. I've seen tons of Confederate flags here (which doesn't even make sense).

I've never seen a Confederate flag in California, and haven't really encountered any noticeable prejudice from small town / rural Californians in my travails through Northern California. Nothing like Oklahoma.

Are you in an interracial relationship? I grew up in a small town in Illinois so I know what rural towns are like. I've definitely walked into bars and restaurants in rural Northern California and have had the entire place stare at us while we got seated. Felt exactly like rural Illinois.

I have family members who are openly gay and I know places in Northern California I would _never_ take them.

I also know of areas around the North along the coast where you can end up in a fist fight if you're an outsider especially from the Bay Area. That's less a red vs blue thing and more of a "I don't want outsiders in my town" vibe.

If you go where the tourists aren't going you'll encounter some interesting things.

No, I'm not in an interracial relationship and not gay either. I do look Muslim though.

I'm sure there are places like this in NorCal, as you attest, and I haven't encountered them because I go mostly to the places where tourists go (while I tend to avoid the most popular tourist destinations in the state, my travels have still been for camping purposes, which means the places I go to are not strangers to outsiders).

But the mere fact that I can live and travel in the state without encountering this kind of stuff is precisely the point. In Oklahoma, there is prejudice anywhere you go, even the towns and cities.

(In fact, the main group of people in Oklahoma whom I remember being inclusive towards me were actually rural / very-small-town farmers)

And when did you make this move? OKC has been undergoing a renascence of sorts over the last decade and barely resembles the rest of the state. The tech scene is really taking off and diversity is expanding rather rapidly. There are a lot of great people working hard to make a difference here and just because you like one place over another doesn't mean that other place has to be bad, it is fine to just be different.

I ask this out of genuine curiosity since I can't pick a definitive meaning: outing options? Is that ability to go somewhere or the ability to be publicly gay? My confusion is the first two adjectives tend to imply not pro-gay.

I guarantee that if I spent more than one week in Oklahoma or Kansas, I would get into a terrible political argument with the locals. I can only bite my tongue for so long.

Yes, I’ve heard they’re prone to gross generalizations out there, and that’s pretty intolerable.

Note that I didn't say what my politics are, you're making a big assumption there.

Things can change:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/opinion/kansas-laura-kell...

Kansas is surprisingly much cooler than Oklahoma

You left off teen fertility rate.

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