I'm a big city gal stuck in a small city town. I live in South Jersey, where it takes a 5 minute drive a 30 minute walk, 15-20 minute bike ride. There's housing developments everywhere and big city is Philadelphia. And sorry, I find Philadelphia boring, especially since I use to live 20 minutes outside of NYC. There's pretty nothing to do around here and it's pretty depressing.
Transit: I won't even get started on the horrid transit system. Granted, I'm happy that we even have one, but it's still pretty bad. Sometimes the wait time between buses can run from 30 minutes to 1 hour if you don't catch it at the right times. The bus stops are in the most random and sometimes unsafe places. One stop is on a back road with no streetlights. Yeah... not cool or advisable to stand at all because no one would know you were there.
Schools: You get bused. Luckily, I didn't go to schools down here, I stayed up North until I graduated high school (we moved down here in my senior year in 2005 and I refused to change schools when I was a senior). And the schools that you go to from your area are about a 30 minute or so drive away from the actual school in another town.
Things to do: If you don't have a car or know someone with a car, good luck finding something to do. Especially in the winter. Summer isn't so bad cause all the pools are open and a beach is anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour away. Versus when I lived in North Jersey, it took about 3 hours or so to get to Wildwood, NJ... that depending on traffic on the NJ Turnpike and Parkway. Other than that. Eat. Spend money. There's tons of shops and eateries that you can try. Lots of diners and fast food joints that you can choke one. Malls in almost every "major" South Jersey city; i.e. Deptford, Cherry Hill, Moorsetown, etc. Me? I get stuck bike riding around my development for an hour, unless it's summer and I get dragged to the development's "residences only" pool by my younger brother. Yeesh.
Other than that there's nothing really to do without a car. Seems that teenagers and young adults tend to hang out around the parking lots of Target and WaWa (which has amazing coffee). The roads here can be confusing. They name their streets after the cities that they'll eventually run through, however, that can be tricky. Sometimes there's the city and then there's the township. So you can easily make one wrong turn and end up in Backwater, NJ if you don't know where you're going or aren't paying attention. Most of my family would turn down the wrong street when visiting cause there's the street name that's ONE light separating each other. It's insane. Oh yeah, I live about 1 hour and 30 minutes away from my family as well as my boyfriend. Hmph.
So after my long rambling about how much I can't stand my town, what about you, Escapist? Have you ever, or still do live in a pretty suburban area? Where you have to drive everywhere to get anywhere? Tell a little something about where you live and what you do for fun.
