I’ve Made a Horrible Mistake

I’ve made a horrible mistake. When considering cities to move to in my wonderful Locations Spreadsheet, I completely neglected one of the most important factors when evaluating a city.

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What the Hell?

For those of you lucky souls in the western US, you may not be very familiar with cicadas. In fact, I met someone from Portland last year who had never even heard of them. Consider yourself lucky if that’s you. The photo above is a map of the periodic cicada broods that live in the Eastern half of the country. Depending on the type, they only emerge every 17 or 13 years, but when they do, it’s a scene from a biblical-themed horror movie. In fact, one of my secret reasons for wanting to leave DC is GETTING THE FUCK OUT before Brood X emerges in 2021. I do not want to be around for that shit.

Unfortunately, it looks like quite a few of my potential cities are in a cicada death zone*. And while I still really like the idea of moving to Cleveland, I might have to set a calendar reminder to plan on moving by 2032, before Brood V shows up. I’m only partly kidding. Maybe I’ll go to Minneapolis or Boise at that point–the only cities in my top 5 that don’t have cicadas!

*Yes, I know that they aren’t dangerous, they don’t bite, and they aren’t poisonous. I also know that they’re a huge ecosystem boost in years when they do emerge. But also? They’re giant-ass bugs that fly straight at your face and get caught in your curly hair, making you seriously consider just shaving your head and calling it a day. And they leave their weird shells stuck to tree trunks like tiny little corpses. I don’t do bugs, and I especially don’t do bugs that swarm so heavily it looks like the whole damn ground is moving. I am not exaggerating. It’s horrible.

But Seriously, A Housing Update

Ok, I’m going to stop talking about bugs now. Especially since when I shared this concern with Lyra, she (very unhelpfully) replied, “I feel like you should talk to your therapist about the implications of making major life choices based on cicada broods.” And now I’m rethinking our friendship.

Anyway, other than obsessing about bugs from hell, I have actually been productive on the house-buying front. I go to Cleveland this weekend to scope out neighborhoods, and I’ll also meet with a realtor that I really like. I’ve been thinking about ways to narrow down my neighborhood/potential house list, and I’ve been using two primary methods at the moment.

Maps are Underrated

Originally, I asked Lyra to buy me a Cleveland street map if she saw one out and about. She pointed out that no one actually uses maps anymore, so she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to find one. So, I combined my need for paper with my 21st-century sensibilities…and bought one on Amazon. This had an important purpose (which, now considering, I probably could have achieved via Google Earth, but that would have been less fun!).

On this map, I marked all of the neighborhood hubs that had high WalkScores and seemed to be good cultural centers. Then, I used my handy compass to draw 1-mile radius circles around those neighborhoods. Cross-referencing that map with my Favorite Houses list, I eliminated any houses that weren’t at least close to one of those circles. That knocked a solid 20 homes off the list right away, and based on how I end up feeling about each of these neighborhoods when I visit in person, I might be able to eliminate others. At the very least, I know which areas to concentrate on visiting during my trip.

Factoring in Demographics

Then, my mom pointed out that some of my Favorite Houses were in neighborhoods that leaned a little more…mature. I don’t want to be in a place where all of my neighbors are either retired or married couples with kids…that’s not quite my scene yet.

So, I listed out Cleveland zip codes and then used this website to assess the demographics for each. This includes salary breakdown, age breakdown, and number of people in household. I don’t have really strict criteria here, but I did eliminate neighborhoods that skewed older. It was also kind of fun to look at all of the different subgroups that they break the population into. Some of them have hilarious names, and they have scarily specific indicators for each. Creepy, but useful for my purposes! Here’s a screenshot of some of the “Younger Years” subsets. Turns out Arlington is the #1 city in the country for “Connected Bohemians.” That’s your fun fact of the day.

This tool is geared much more toward marketing/political campaigning, but it did come in handy. By cross-referencing my preferred zip codes with my Favorite Houses list, I knocked another 40 homes off the list. And this is all before I’ve even spent time in the city! I’d call that pretty damn productive.

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With all of this preliminary work done, I can’t wait to get to Cleveland and start seeing the areas in person. I think that’ll make it so much easier to move forward in this process with confidence. I don’t get back to Arlington until next Wednesday, but fingers crossed I have time to at least write a short update about the trip for next Thursday!