Smooth like Kinja

"LastFirstMI is my name" (donstone13)
11/13/2020 at 23:39 • Filed to: None

Kinja is old, cantankerous, and inflexible enough to be on its third wife. Meanwhile the great OPPO migration continues:

DISCUSSION (8)

fintail > LastFirstMI is my name
11/14/2020 at 00:52

That fancy-tired SEC was spotted no more than 10 miles from where I am now.

LastFirstMI is my name > fintail
11/14/2020 at 01:24

Yeah I’m one of those people the locals hate for moving here and ruining everything. Your property values are going up, you’re welcome! At least I didn’t move here from California...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > LastFirstMI is my name
11/14/2020 at 07:40

Don’t forget about ‘The Hyphen’ as well! A lot of us folks are planning on posting to both! Our longer-form, more professional style stuff to The Hyphen AND DriveTribe, and more usual stuff to just the hyphen :)

https://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-current-various-life-rafts-post-1845599665

LastFirstMI is my name > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/14/2020 at 12:35

Thanks, I was just looking for this!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > LastFirstMI is my name
11/14/2020 at 13:17

No worries! I am trying to repost it once a day until the ‘end’

Let me know if you get in over at The Hyphen! It’s got a few finicky registration and email issues going on atm, but once you are in, you’re in ! :)

fintail > LastFirstMI is my name
11/14/2020 at 13:44

Although I am a native to eastern WA and have family ties to this city, I wasn’t born here either, spending much of my life on the loathed west side (of course, many east siders don’t understand without the west side tax base, areas outside of a few cities in this region would still be in the days of soddys and dirt roads). I don’t consider myself a real local as well.

Spokane has a lot of potential, unfairly maligned for a long time, and I think more people are seeing it. I was lucky enough to find a decent job here not long ago, and jumped at the chance to move back to a drier climate with less of a rat race. The place needs some influx of new minds to help it progress just a little - I don’t think it will take much. It also needs some income growth, which often accompanies a little in-migration, to keep up with housing price increases (although compared to Seattle, everything here is still a screaming bargain). Now if you were a Californian moving to the Puget Sound, I’d give you some grief :)

It also has a very easy street grid and numbering system. I could read the sign in your pic, and instantly know where it is. Whenever I move to a new place, I make it a point to learn the streets and numbering scheme.

LastFirstMI is my name > fintail
11/14/2020 at 16:28

My wife and I had been looking to move to the mountain west for several years, and wanted to find a smaller city that hadn’t boomed yet. Imagine Portland, SLC or Denver 20-30 years ago. We looked at Boise, Albuquerque, Missoula, Spokane, even Bellingham. I loved Missoula and Bellingham but the job prospects weren’t as good. We like Spokane so far- the food scene isn’t great yet but I think that’ll grow with the West Siders moving in. Having 4 ski mountains within a little over an hour drive , an easy commute, and housing prices that aren’t cheap but aren’t West Coast insane yet, it’s a hidden gem. It’s funny when people here complain about traffic; we were previously in the DC-Baltimore area, where traffic is another beast entirely.

fintail > LastFirstMI is my name
11/14/2020 at 17:19

I compare Spokane in some ways to Seattle maybe 40-50 years ago (maybe without the comfortable wage working class jobs, but those have vanished everywhere). Big enough to have almost everything, but not overwhelming, and relatively affordable to many. Even with the recent price increases, housing here is likely still a solid bet. Traffic backs up here and there, but until you’ve spent time on the 405 corridor around Seattle, or in areas you like you mention, you haven’t seen traffic. I haven’t seen any really terrible non-construction related jams here yet.

Funny, I went to school in Bellingham, and left for job prospects - it’s a thing there, if you want to move up, often you have to move out. This place could also maybe be called a larger Bellingham, but real estate in Bham has gone batshit lately with WFH Seattle metro types moving north. I think the purple political reality here, along with the weather, and distance to “Cali” might keep many of the hordes at bay.

I have low demands for food, so I am fine with what’s here - and some parts of town have been a hipster magnet for several years, so there’s plenty of local beer and related food. Maybe my biggest gripe is poor traffic controls (sometimes questionable light sequencing, too many uncontrolled intersections in residential areas), and rough roads.