Ditch Your $2500 Rent And Come Climb The Best Rocks In The World

Visited Hattiesburg MS, Jackson MS, Monroe LA, Shreveport LA, and a few others just this weekend. That's true south.

There are 0 whole foods in Mississippi, and why would you build one when there is a 2% chance it will be destroyed by a hurricane within 5 years.

TN is absolutely beautiful. I cannot say much about the people due to lack of experience, but the area is breathtaking. I'll never forget the water down the mountains turning into icicles.

I've learned to visit a city's craigslist prior to visiting the area. You can typically gauge the population by the amount of people using it, items for sale, and types of pets (odd, I know).

Also: Chattanooga has a Trader Joe's, the true metric of civilization.

When you lead your article with the headline ending in "And Come Climb The Best Rocks In The World", you're going to get people commenting on that, linkbait or no.

* Weather - it's ok to good all year round with the season (may-september) being always exceptional. You can climb as much as you want

* Rocklands + Cape Town has the best rock I've seen and I've been to tons of places (mostly bouldering though)

* The sheer amount - it's tons and tons of rock. The only thing that comes close is Utah, even boulder does not have that much rock.

* A little bit of non-climbing activities - safaris penguins, etc. Cape Town is a good tourist destination

* Food is excellent

* Surfing

It definitely gets hot in the mid-summer months, but not nearly as severely as other cities like Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, even DC.

Also, I think calling Chattanooga "deep south" would be a severe misnomer.

eta: I'm not saying this is a universal problem with the south. I'm just saying that I've noticed it there far more often than in other places I've lived and traveled.

i grew up in the south and i have no idea what southern hospitality means. where i lived, the running joke about southern hospitality was that <ethnic group> would hear the sound of you reloading before you opened fire.

if you're nerved out when surrounded by a bunch of well-armed, perpetually drunk, ill mannered, poorly educated and xenophobic people, i would not recommend moving to the south.

You might just be shocked at the level of homophobia, however. When I lived in Atlanta I worked with a couple who once confided that they had enough scary experiences that they quickly told everyone they were sisters when traveling outside of Atlanta.

However, when I visited (~2001), the intense racial geographic separation was jarring. Some areas were literally exclusively white and black respectively. For perspective, I grew up largely in DC proper which is racially divided in its own right, but not even in the same ballpark as ATL. Public transit was abysmal - the metro line from downtown basically ran in 2 directions (N-S, E-W).

People places and things all change. I recently visited Philly and was taken aback at how much it had changed in the last 7 years (for the better, IMHO). That said, I wouldn't hold my breath at Tennessee becoming a great place to live for those outside its demographic mean, although I can make no qualitative assertions about Chattanooga.

1. Highly visible poverty in the city, and frequent crime.

2. Frequent casual racism, even among students at GaTech.

3. Frequent extremest christian advertising, like preachers outside sporting events and aborted fetuses on billboards

4. Religion being a daily part of life for most people I met

There's a lot more that shocked me over the 5 years of living there and dating southern girls, but I still had fun...I just couldn't adjust. I'd never even seen an overt act of racism except on TV when I was growing up.

Also, keep in mind that when I moved to Atlanta, at 18, I'd seen a lot less of the world than I have now. Living in the South changed my perceptions a lot, and I'm now permanently more aware of my surroundings.

The question is really: if I can own a house in Pittsburgh and visit NYC for 3-4 months a year, and still spend less than renting in NYC, does it make sense at all to live in NYC?

But never mind me, I'll probably end up in New York regardless :)

I live in NYC now, (east village), and there are about 100s of restaurant's, shops, bars, cafes just within 5 minutes walk. The diversity is ridiculous. (I don't think anywhere in the world you find so many kinds of nationalities and cousines in one place).