To the Editor:

I have lived in a big city, and I now live in a rural town, and while I think big cities are the best, both big cities and rural towns are way better than the suburbs. I’ll give two major reasons: (1) driving and (2) food.

Driving stinks. Commuting is exhausting and absolutely counts physically and emotionally towards the time you waste each day at work, even though you’re not financially compensated for the commute. Driving definitely stinks in a big city with its traffic and multilane roads where you know you need to make a right turn in three blocks but have to stay in the middle lane because driving in the right lane will force you turn right on the street before your turn. But you don’t have to drive in awesome cities like New York, you can walk and take public transport. Keep your car away and ride the Metro North or PATH or Subway in. You can have an after work drink or two and not worry about driving.

In rural towns, you have to drive everywhere, which stinks, but it’s easy one lane roads and no traffic. The worst you deal with is following a slow car going 40 in a 45 zone and I’ll take that all day over multilane bumper to bumper traffic. Suburbs have similar crappy traffic-y multilane roads to big cities and you have to drive because you can’t walk places or take public transport. Suburbia combines the bad driving of big cities with rural America’s lack of walkability. Suburbia is the worst of everything.

Big cities have awesome, diverse food options. Do you want Thai, Mexican, Spanish, seafood, Vietnamese, or great 24 hour diners? Big cities have it! Suburbia has Panera Bread in soulless strip malls - that you can only get to by driving! - plus terrible chain restaurants like Olive Garden and Texas Roadhouse that tasteless people think constitute a nice night out. Rural towns have mom and pop restaurants and dive bars that, sure, aren’t ethnically diverse and have the same Thursday wing night/Friday fish fry/Saturday prime rib special trifecta, and some stink, but a lot of them are really good at what they do! I’d rather roll the dice with a local place that might be bad or might be really good than get what I know will be a generic suburban chain restaurant meal.

Sean Pidgeon
Morristown