picking a place to live

[forgotten_aria]

I have some weird gut feeling about the cities I'm looking at, and I'm pretty sure it's mostly unfounded, but we have a potential lead on a house in Malden and for some reason I'm not excited. I'm not sure if it's just because it's east, because it would require G to use route 1 to commute or because I haven't been many places in melrose. Saugus kind of feel off my radar for almost the same reason and I would love to know why.

I'm going to do a drive by tomorrow to check out the traffic noise from 99, so maybe I can shake the unknown feeling.

EDIT: oops, I meant Malden, not melrose and replaced it.

EDIT2: Malden as a pay as you throw policy, which means you have to buy special trash bags at $2 each. While I like the concept, having to use one kind of bag is vaguely annoying.

Comments

Brainstorming

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

Do you have some crime zone map in the back or your head, are you worried about sea level rising, or is the salt air corrosive?
Maybe it is just because you don't know anything there that you want, like friends, shopping, a great restaurant.

Maybe the architecture, age of the area, community layout or the like isn't quite fitting your template.

Maybe you heard about murders on the News and that name came up too often. We have a few neighbourhoods here that get mentioned frequently when there is a shooting.

Maybe you are concerned that the commuting time will be hard to evaluate for Rte 1.
Those big broad yellow lines on the maps for the main highways do feel like they should be faster, somehow, even if they aren't when they fill up.

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

And sometimes it is just the thought of putting that name in your address. Are you thinking of Melrose Place or something? I really got tired of spelling Suffolk, and there are some street names I won't accept, even if the neighbourhoods seem nice. There was at least one community with real estate for sale that I rejected because it seemed rude enough I was sure I would be constantly explaining that yes that was actually where I lived.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

i'd love for someone to explain to me how the 'pay as you throw' policy does *not* result in people with basements full of trash they can't afford to throw away?

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Well it's not like with normal trash collection there isn't a fee. The "per bag" fee is ideally set so that the average person pays about the same either way. Where I live we have a kind of compromise - one fee for a small can that gets taken once a week or a larger fee for unlimited trash once a week. We're on the limited service. Of course the problem with that if is we forget one week we're in trouble the next... (and I swear nearly half the trash is generated by the guy in the in-law unit. If it was just the 4 of us in the main house, missing a week would rarely be a big deal.)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

My mom's town has the "pay as you throw bags" and she hates it because the bags are ENORMOUS and she generates trash so slowly (due to recycling or reusing everything humanly possible as well as composting) she ends up having to keep it around a long time to fill the bag. She used to just take a couple of small bags to the dump once a week.