Lancaster

I have lived in more than a dozen places in my life - small towns and big cities in several different states - and Lancaster County, PA tops them all for the WORST place to live - in every conceivable way!!! The cost of living is VERY EXPENSIVE. I travel all over the country and Lancaster County, PA has some of the highest gas and food prices of anywhere! I can buy gasoline in a neighboring county for 50-cents a gallon less. There are no good places to shop - all chain stores, same as the food - every fast food franchise in the country, but no good food. (Amish cooking sucks, and they re-use dirty water. Blecch!) It tries to sell itself as a tourism destination, but it is not. There is NOTHING to see or do here, (in the entire county), traffic is a nightmare, and no one ever returns to visit a second time. It reminds me of South of the Border. Stop, get gas, eat bad food, and keep on going. Housing prices are high, rents are ridiculous, and the locals are uneducated, rude, and armed!!! The police and prosecutors are corrupt.... VERY selective in who they harass/prosecute. You can be related to a state representative (or Amish) and get away with murder (literally), or be on the bad side of a corrupt police chief and get tickets in the mail for infractions that never occurred. The municipal judges - most of them ex-cops - are just as bad. It is also racist, homophobic and misogynistic so...unless you are a white male redneck... you really are not welcome here (unless you are a tourist and they are taking your money). Neighbors are rude and have no respect for anyone's property rights except their own. Very, very full of themselves. Many of mine do not work and spend the day cruising around the neighborhood looking for or causing trouble, themselves. Crime is very, very high, but city leaders downplay it, of course, so they don't scare away tourists. Police officers do not have to live in their municipalities and police chief's don't have to live in the county! So, they don't. What does that tell you? You won't find any of this in the local newspaper, either, because it is the exact opposite of what a news media outlet should be. It is subjective and biased, and only covers "happy news" (read: stupid stuff), because the family that owns the paper own everything else, too, and - basically - run the county. They wouldn't want to print the truth and lose money. And money is the ONLY thing that talks in Lancaster. Forget about being wired to the rest of the world - cannot even get a GPS signal downtown, and the city just wasted 5-million dollars of taxpayer money on a fly-by-night broadband supplier. Just to top everything off, you can't even take a nice drive to get away from it all because the entire county smells like horse $&I! four months out of the year - so bad that you have to pull your car over or risk blacking out behind the wheel from the fumes.
Oh...and the fresh produce? Big deal...a fruit stand here and there with bland tasting fruits and veggies that reek of manure. How quaint. I get tastier corn at Walmart than I do at the stand on New Danville Pike.
If I think of something good, I will come back and edit. Otherwise, my review is this...in a nutshell: There is NO reason on God's green earth to live in or visit Lancaster, or any part of Lancaster County, PA, unless, of course, you can't sell your house because no one else wants to live here, either. It is a dump, in the truest sense of the word.

Where to start? Lancaster is one of the cleanest places you'll probably ever be. The saying "The grass is greener on the other side of the fence" completely applies except that it's true. Living here for a while, the thing I got appreciate the most was the greenery and the farms all around. Also because of all those farms, it's really not hard to get actual fresh produce. Another thing that is great is all the handmade things made by hipsters, locals and the Amish. In the downtown area is a piano that is attached to the ground and someone regularly comes and tunes. It's really old and many people have signed it and dated that piano to years back. It's a little distracting if you try to sit down and play it because of dry paint on the keys and all over. Still, it's an experience if you can find it. The streets downtown are little hard to walk with the cobblestone rock here and there, but anywhere else is fine. Also, the streets that aren't downtown are very windy and great to drive. There are people who take bicycles to work instead of driving and with the hills, it's great exercise. With this great opportunity though, you still have to exercise good judgment and caution. A friend of mine wasn't paying too much attention and was run over by a tractor. He's okay, just his arm is a little damage done permanently. Otherwise, the people are very friendly and there are a lot of kids around. The local parks offer lots of events and concerts along with fireworks occasionally.