Bloomington

Family live here so I love it!

Bloomington-Normal has lots of things to offer a family or to couples who are thinking of raising a family. Home to 3 different colleges and universities, Bloomington also has a booming job market. Major employers in town are State Farm Insurance, Country Companies, and Mitsubishi Motors. It has big-small town feel, lots and lots of restaurants, and plenty of activities and parks for kids. Night life in town is lagging a bit, but other than that is a really nice town.

Sucks you only have the two extremes here. It’s not anywhere special, just a lot of people end up coming here because of State Farm or ISU. There’s not really a whole lot to do here besides drink or the concerts or speakers that come to ISU/Wesleyan a few times a year, if they happen to be what you’re into (Tenacious D, Marilyn Manson, James Earl Jones, Kevin Smith, Noam Chomsky were my personal highlights). ISU’s not a terrible place to go to school, but it’s not particularly great either.

It’s a fairly isolated community, and many people easily live their whole lives here (go to college here cuz it’s cheap, and then go to State Farm because it’s a decent, if corporate job, and then have kids here because it’s a fairly safe community). It almost becomes a trap, and I only barely managed to escape it after 24 years of living there, and it’s only been a year and already it’s seductively calling me back, because that’s where my friends are, most of them having also left for various reasons but coming back themselves after tasting the rest of the world.