charming place you got here

People from Thunder bay make fun of it.
A lot.
But as a ’sophisticated’ Southern Ontarian, I find it charming.
That may sound like a patronizing description, but it is true, never the less.
Yeah there’s some silly stuff that goes on in a small isolated northern city. This ain’t no Portland Oregon. But in a way, the same things that make a place like Portland so cool, make this place tolerable. It’s the potential that at any moment things could change and the place could turn into a veritable bohemian enclave.
It won’t, but the potential is there.
It’s beautiful in 4 seasons (even though the cold one lasts quite a bit longer than the other 3).
All the junk from the even more isolated and northerly towns ends up here (making for some rather awesome thrift shopping). There’s a general DIY attitude that permeates the place. All the cool kid’s are cool by their own doing. It’s much harder to buy cool at the local store - it takes some work.
It’s a good place to be an artists, or into film, or be in a band. You might not end up famous, but you’ll really get the chance to experiment and grow.
Here you can find some awesome coffee shops, delicious dives, and the kind of regional fast food I personally adore.
It’s cheap to live in, and minutes away from clean lakes and rivers for swiming, fishing, camping and general “getting away from it all”.
Ok, so there’s a few to many sets of bongo drums in this town, and all the young’uns get up and go to Vancouver as soon as they can because they think it’s the promised land. No job’s, no reason to stay in town. But Portland’s no different (just replace that Vancouver with San Francisco).
But this town made my boyfriend, and his friends. And they’re largely successful and super-cool (and currently my personal fashion icons). That alone makes it not a bad place to be every-once in a while.