The list I keep talking about. A work in progress.

Yeah, you might not want to read this if we live in the same city. Heads up.
Also, this is a messy diatribe. Really, maybe it's best if we all ignore it. Except for those of you who only know me through the blog.

My ideal city contains:

• useful public transportation (as in, I can use it to get to work)
  
• an Indian buffet
  
• food trucks
  
• a bar with a decent jukebox, played at a volume so I can actually hang out with and talk to the people I'm there with
  
• a used book store
  
• a comic book store that won't habitually screw up my orders/fuck over my library (and their own customers) on Free Comic Book Day*
  
• a record store where I don't have to special order, during the week that their 3rd album comes out, the second album by a big buzzy band
  
• I'd also like it if, if I do have to special order from said record store, if they would actually call and tell me when my order comes in.
  
• Local bands that sound like what I'm listening to now, not what I was listening to several years ago.
  
• (not to say they suck, or that I don't enjoy select local bands, but sometimes you want to hear newer, you know?)
  
• a hole-in-the-wall with cheap falafel
  
• a Stitch'n'Bitch that people actually attend
  
• It would be nice if that bar I mentioned above had booths, too.
  
• pizza by the slice
  
• a familiarity with newcomers. I'm not expecting the Beat Happening song about the new girl in the town, but I definitely don't want the Echo and the Bunnymen song about people being strange.
  
• an understanding that a cute girl can have a good, completely platonic friendship with boys
  
• an alternative freenewsweekly that carries the Jonesin crossword
  
• a nonhippie, nonchain, nonstripmall-located coffee shop, with actual cups, that's open late and on Sundays
  
• Ex-locals that, when hearing you're moving to their town, hook you up with their friends info, so you'll know a few people when you get there.
  
• People who do creative work (artists, writers, musicians, what have you) actually doing that work in the city on a regular basis.
  
• a farmers market
  
• the ability to walk places
  
• people that walk places
  
• a bar with quizzo would be nice
  
• single-and-comfortable-with-it hipsters over 22
  
• people having parties
  
• The knowledge that 3-5 friends on a porch with beer isn't a bad way to spend a summer evening.
  
• Yeah, I'm sure that happens here, but no one ever a)tells me or b)comes when I try to invite them.
  
• When I move to this other town, if I don't know anyone there yet, I'd like for my "Hey I'm new" advances to be met like this:
  
• "Well, some friends and I are going to be at ___ and we'll welcome you into our crew, none of whom knew each other 10 years ago and none of whom are moving away in the next 2 months."
  
• NOT "Well, ___ is a good restaurant/my band is playing tonight, that's something you could do/you should leave."--all said with kind of an assumption that you already have a crew to do those things with.
  
• OR "I'm inviting you to hang out with my friends, but what I'm REALLY doing is showing off to all them this hot girl who made a sexy sexy advance on me."
  
• OR "You think we're hanging out in a group, but my friends think we're a couple."
  
• OR "You think my friends are kind of welcoming you, but really it's just in the ___'s lady friend capacity."
  
• More than one person I trust. (Hey, Melissa--you still there, or do you hate me now?)
  
• an H&M
  
• an art house theater
  
• rents low enough that I can have my own, not-too-shitty apartment
  
• non-chain, reasonably priced stores and restaurants
  
• graduate schools
  
• a hipster-dance-club-type night that's just as much about the hipster peacocking and the spazzing around as it is going home with someone and the slutty girl from your high school's drama
  
• single, childless people my age whose lives are not one big ball of drama
  
• a cheap movie theater
  
• a library who needs a YA-only librarian, and who wants me ('cause, otherwise, why would I leave my library?)

*Why LocalComicStore is dead to me Part B: Did you get a little Wolverine guy on Free Comic Book Day? Not if you lived around here; LocalComicStore saved them to use as a movie theater X3 promotion.