Well, guess what, pal---Tulsa, Oklahoma wants you! Billed as “the world’s largest small town,” Tulsa wants bigger. Since 2018, Tulsa Remote has helped more than 2500 people move to Oklahoma’s second largest city by paying successful applicants to its nifty relocation program a whopping $10,000 to move there for at least a year. Hell, you could put up with Newark for that long with ten grand in your pocket and a Glock in your sock. The city will also give you free desk space at 36 Degrees North, a popular downtown co-working facility where you can job-hunt or whittle.
Maybe you’d like Topeka better. If you’re a talented professional seeking new opportunities, the Choose Topeka program offers an Employer Match Incentive which could pay $10,000 to cover rent and $15,000 towards buying a house in town or anywhere in ever-starched Shawnee County. The cost of living in Topeka is already 15% lower than the national average. You could be the first Democrat on your block.
How about Noblesville, Indiana or Frankfort, Kentucky? Both of them will pay you $5000 to relocate under certain circumstances, but is that enough to live in the exotic edens that are Noblesville, Indiana or Frankfort, Kentucky? No, it’s not. There is grave danger that once you move you’ll morph into a pea-brained Republican and grow a foot-long nose.
If you’re a qualified physics or language teacher, you can pick up $13,000 just for emigrating to jolly old England. The British government’s international relocation program will pay you around that amount to help with moving costs if you’ve got a job offer there in one of the approved subjects. If it turns out you can’t abide fish & chips or fog and have to return home, you’ll have picked up a bit of an uppity English accent and can quickly get hired by U.S. employers with delusions of grandeur.
Have they got a deal for you in Italy, Danny Levine! All across the country, villages and towns experiencing depopulation are facing an unsightly consequence---watching conditions deteriorate in their abandoned houses and seeing local businesses close. In a radical attempt at salvation, some authorities have signed up for a scheme in which outsiders commit to renovating and restoring empty properties in exchange for unbelievable bargains on the asking price (sometimes as low as one euro). From the Valle d’Aosta in the north to Puglia in the south, a wide selection of Italian real estate is on offer. Turns out it’s not too late for la dolce vita after all. Don’t forget to bring three coins for the fountain.
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Are you lonely? Hungry for neighbors? Like the sound of other voices and the smells of food cooking in the hallways? Then Whittier, Alaska might be the place for you. In Whittier, almost all of the 200 residents live in the same dwelling. Instead of a remote log cabin, you get a 14-story high-rise known as the Begich building that everybody calls home. You won’t have friends from the lower 48 dropping in on you much either since the only way in or out (except by boat) is a 13,000-foot-long combination rail and highway tunnel. Also on the positive side, you’re sitting on stunning Prince William Sound, which is full of rambunctious whales, Steller seals and calving glaciers. A terrific alternative if you can’t stand life in the government’s Witness Protection Program.
Everything is BIG in Casey, Illinois. Twelve of the world’s largest things live there, including a 55-foot tall wind chime (delightful in typhoons) and a 56.5-foot high giant rocking chair, which is too big even for Shaquille O’Neal. And that’s not the half of it. Casey also has more than 20 other gargantuas, like the world’s largest cob of corn, a very large crochet hook and a monster taco. Most of these items are centered around the town’s only stop sign (average size) but the gigantic Golf Tee is up the road at a nearby links. All this overreaching is the brainchild of one Jim Bolin, who wanted to do something huge for his hometown. Bolin constructed most of the world’s largest things with recycled materials like old telephone poles with the help of his crazed employees. If you want to live somewhere different between Indianapolis and St. Louis, this might be the place. You could be the word’s biggest loafer or the world’s biggest jerk, you'd fit right in.
You didn’t know this, but the United States contains a micronation within. The Republic of Molossia in Nevada was founded by James Spielman (King James I) and Kevin Baugh, the Prime Minister, in 1977 and was known at the time as the Grand Republic of Vuldstein. If you’re eventually accepted for residence you’ll be 1/37th of the total population. Better take a look first during the official touring season (April 15--October 15), but leave your walrus at home, they’re highly illegal in Molossia. Also, no onions or fresh spinach, please. All tourists are escorted, of course, and limited to three-hour visits, so you’ll have to drink your Molossolini on the run.
The demise of circuses has thrown a ton of lion tamers, bearded women and short people into retirement and many of them head for Gibsonton, Florida. Gibtown, as it’s affectionately known, even has a famous cemetery called Showmen’s Rest dedicated to fire-breathers and sword swallowers who have emigrated to that Big Top in the sky, Many others were buried there after the tragic Hammond Circus Train Wreck of 1918. Florida has long been a haven for circus people, as Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus wintered in Sarasota beginning in 1927, then at the Tampa Fairgrounds and finally the booming metropolis of Ellenton. The next generation of circus artists is being trained today at the Sailor Circus Academy in Sarasota. You don’t want to live anywhere near there, though. You never can tell where the human cannonballs are going to land.
Oprah says America’s “most unusual town” is Maharishi Vedic City in Iowa. You wonder why you never knew this, never passed through, never even heard of the place. As we said, it’s in Iowa. If, however, you think you might want to live in the Hawkeye State and have found the charms of such as Ames, Fort Dodge and Hard Scratch highly resistible, Maharishitown might be for you. The city was built by the famous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to The Beatles, and is a very peaceful hamlet dedicated to the ancient Sanskrit text known as The Veda and its principles. Every building in the town was constructed adhering to the Vedic fundamentals of architecture, which are meant to bring joy and balance, and we can use all the balance we can get, right? Residents adhere to unique practices initiated by the guru like Yogic Flying and Transcendental Meditation, both said to promote health benefits like reducing stress and helping achieve an enlightened state. As the first organic town in the USA, Vedic City allows no non-organic food sales within the city limits, so Colonel Sanders and Ronnie the evil clown are out the door. Pesticides and gasoline-fueled vehicles are banned but there’s a ton of action on the black market for chocolate.
Or you can go to Hell. It’s in Michigan, an almost microscopic enclave dedicated to all things fire and brimstone. Oddly, few evangelist ministers or Satanists live there. Hell’s slogan is “More People Tell You To Go To Our Town Than Anywhere!” and it’s hard to argue. Not only can you be married in Hell, you can even buy a small piece of the landscape or become mayor for a day. Serious candidates for the office, alas, must retain a lot of patience. The official website says mayoral elections will be held only when Hell freezes over and like The Twelfth of Never, that’s a long, long time. Theatergoers will be delighted to know the arts are important here and that Hellzapoppin’! is performed 365 nights a year on the community stage. To prove you’ve been there, you can send a letter from the Hell post office, where each envelope is singed for added effect. In case you were wondering, there are no towns in the United States named Heaven but there’s a gullyful of Paradises. You already know their slogans.
If you’re an unreconstructed old hippie from the sixties or seventies, you’ll want a future home where the livin’ is easy and the pot plentiful. Don’t be misled, however. The Bong Recreation Area is in Wisconsin, where recreational marijuana is still verboten. Blunt, South Dakota is not cannabis-friendly having rejected last year’s marijuana initiative by nearly six points. High Point, North Carolina recently experienced a nadir in cannabis-community relations with the police bust of several local vape shops for selling products like Trips Ahoy and Stoneo cookies. There’s better news from Roach, Missouri, where voters approved a ballot amendment for recreational cannabis and sales began almost a year ago.
Although cannabis is technically an illegal substance in the Netherlands, for more than 20 years Dutch citizens over age 18 have been permitted to buy and use marijuana and hashish in hundreds of government-regulated coffee shops. Amsterdam is the home of the annual High Times Cannabis Cup and boasts incredible museums and parks as well as trippy architecture perfect for a giddy stroll around town.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, police are largely tolerant of pot, thus seed retailers and coffee-shop marijuana can be found with little effort. Smoking in Vancouver is often done in public places like parks or on the city’s famous Vansterdam Pot Block on Hastings Street.
If you’re carrying and don’t mind the mean streets of Oakland, it’s easy to find pot-peddling coffee shops, stores with growing equipment and even a cannabis college called Oaksterdam University. Non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries provide pot along with free acupuncture, massage, yoga and counseling for patients with gunshot wounds. Move to neighboring Berkeley, instead.
Although marijuana use is laughably illegal in Negril, Jamaica, nobody seems to care. Users of WeBeHigh.com describe the enforcement situation in the city as relatively non-existent. Dope connoisseur Danny Danko cites Negril for its “pot tourism, sunshine, plentiful weed, reggae music culture, beaches, drinks and spliffs.” What more could a devoted pothead ask for? No....you have to bring your own cookies.
Portland, Oregon is home to America’s first Cannabis Cafe and one of the biggest chapters of NORML, whose annual convention will be held there this year. The city has a bohemian mien and a robust marijuana culture and citizens carrying small portions of weed are rarely bothered by police. WeBeHigh.com lists several areas where pot can be easily purchased, including the waterfront area and park block.
Nimbin, Australia, home of the yearly Nimbin Mardi Gras festival, is basically a hippie paradise. “It’s a must-see pot destination,” says Danko, who professes a great love for his favorite strain of Australian marijuana, Mullumbimby Madness. Nimbin, which is located in northern New South Wales, has been described as a haven for the country’s counterculture with hippie communes and various types of multiple occupancy residences. The town has a resident population of 352 but a proliferation of marijuana-related institutions like The Nimbin Hemp Embassy, The Nimbin HEMP Bar and even The Nimbin Museum. What do they do on a rainy night in Nimbin? You guessed it.
We started this off with Tulsa, it’s only fair to bookend it with Oklahoma City, which may become home to a new 1907-foot skyscraper called Legends Tower that would become the tallest building in the country. Or, as Frank Lloyd Wright would call it, “The toothpick in the pie,” a drastically out-of place spindle on a flat, treeless plain.
This foolishness was dreamed up by developer Scot Matteson, who says “Oklahoma City is committed to growing as a major metropolitan area. The city has invested in infrastructure surrounding the project. The groundwork has been laid and the time is right for this project.” A California development company called Matteson Capital still has to secure the approval of local officials, secure funding and find 8000 Okieland optimists to rent space to, but they’re on their way. We can hardly wait to elevator up to the nifty observation deck and look out to see miles and miles of ….well….nothing.
We’ve been there and you don’t want to move to Oklahoma City, you really don’t. They burn dopers at the stake there, and books, too. Wild hogs attack your car tires on dirt periphery roads and tornadoes blow your houses down when the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. Even Tulsa is better, and they pay you to move there. Slow down, pardner. Turn that truck around before it’s too late.
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| A pilgrim could do worse than a relo to Puglia |
That’s all folks….
