Micheal wrote:
What is wrong with Aberdeen?
It's a great place to be from. Not a place to go to.
Economy is terrible, local leaders have made awful choices about the direction the city should go. Instead of courting new industry or taking advantage of it's port facilities, it was decided to court tourism, except almost all of the old buildings that gave the city character have been torn down, burned down, allowed to decay beyond use or replaced with generic retail stores. Long time industrial mainstays like Weyerhaeuser have pulled up shop completely. Used to have a very cool Scandinavian heritage vibe, now has more of a migrant worker and crazy can't-stop-talking-to-my-shoe wacko aura to it. Even the tall ship the community built (and has been featured in Star Trek and Pirates of the Carribean movies) no longer is ported there.
At one time it was one of the most infamous ports in the world, in my time it had a fantastic local music scene and the timber industry wasn't yet on life support, now it's just a place to gas up on the way to Westport or Ocean Shores.
It is my hometown, and I have soft spot in my heart for it, but I would never advise anyone to move there. Although you can get a big house for dirt cheap, and you will never run out of rain. Oh yeah, and it has a Walmart.