I FORGOT

[maevele]

Pretzlcoatl gave me a question; What do you love about Madison? What do you hate?

I love a LOT about this city, I love that here I am not a freak, I love that I can get mac and cheese pizza, and himal chuli dal, i love the kids museum, the lakes when they dont reek of dead fish, havin a FREE ZOO even if it is smallish, our radical/protest based city history, willy st fair, glass nickel, organic coffee shops, woodmans, asian groceries, our reputation as a liberal enclave of witches and shit, the frank lloyd wright UU church eta, and being local for wiscon


I hate football saturdays, driving near campus, the fact that I cant afford to actually live in town anymore, the bad rep my old neighborhood has developed, gentrification, the fact that chain stores are popping up all over state street, and the shitty bus service

Comments

[naomikritzer]

This is a test to see if LJ is choking on ALL comments or just the long ones. If it's just long ones, I will come back and post my comment in multiple bits.

[naomikritzer]

I love the fact that the Madison Farmer's Market is an enormous weekly celebration of all that is locally-grown or locally-produced. I mean, I would hate to try to actually do my shopping there, but it's pretty damn cool that it exists.

I also like how compact it is. I mean, I think it's kind of nifty that I can get practically anywhere in ten minutes, which barely even gets me out of my own neighborhood if I'm driving in Minneapolis.

[naomikritzer]

I have a long hate list when it comes to Madison. You'll note I used to live there, and don't anymore. ;-)

I hate the insularity. I hate the self-satisfaction -- I initially said "self-righteousness," but actually it was the smug self-satisfied back-patting that really drove me up a tree when I lived there. I hate the fact that almost nothing ever gets done (see, for example, the fact that it took half a century of trying for the town to build a swimming pool) because everyone in the whole town feels morally obligated to have a deeply felt and extremely loud opinion, with no corresponding obligation to make it an INFORMED opinion.

I hate the fact that the neighborhoods aren't dense enough to support amenities like convenience stores. Almost anywhere in Minneapolis, you can walk to buy your milk; my convenience store is actually a pretty decent tiny grocery store where you could do literally all your shopping in a pinch (it would cost more, and you wouldn't get much in the way of fresh fruit or veggies, but you could do it) and it's so close I can actually have my nine-year-old run down there to pick stuff up for me. My parents' neighborhood had a wonderful nearby grocery store when they moved in, but more and more the neighborhood shopping has turned into things like upscale tchotchkes instead of useful stuff. Minneapolis experiences the same pressures (once, there was an actual butcher shop, dairy mart, and produce mart on the corner near me; the retired couple across the alley can tell me the names of the people who worked there, and those stores have all been gone for decades) but has the density to at least allow for convenience stores, as well as many delightful little coffee shops and things like that.

[naomikritzer]

Almost everything I hate about Madison I could express as something I love about Minneapolis, and why I settled in Minneapolis instead of moving back to Madison after I finished college. I do hate some things about Minneapolis (the five-month-long winters!) but there are so many things I love.

If you ever have money and time at the right time of year, you should drive up here on the first Sunday in May and go to the Powderhorn Mayday Parade and festival. You might decide to relocate on the SPOT, srsly.