Lifestyle

Why Would Anybody Want To Live In The Midwest?

Actually, there are some damned good reasons to consider Illinois

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My dad cannot understand why anybody would live in California, and he has a point: Wildfires, earthquakes, thousands of homeless people, an impossible cost of living, a threatened water supply. I’ve only briefly visited the state, but I disagree with my dad — I think there’s a lot to like there.

But he’s not wrong about California's downsides.

Most of my family lives in Illinois.

I’ve lived here all my life. And while we don’t have California’s great weather, we don’t have its problems, either.

We all got together at my dad’s cabin recently, and around the campfire we talked about a few other places that people find desirable, and found a fatal flaw in each. Hurricanes, an impossibly high cost of living, severe winters, vulnerabilities to continued climate change and more.

And so it was that my son, with zero advertising experience, wrote the perfect tagline for Illinois:

Illinois: It’s really uncomfortable a lot, but it probably won’t kill you.