I Live In This Obscure City; You’ve Probably Never Heard Of It

Aug. 22, 2011

By Jessica Hurst info

Jessica Hurst is 21 and shares her one-bedroom apartment with a cute cat and a decent-looking man. She was born in ...

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lf you’re reading this right now, it may not surprise you that hipsters love New York City and hate absolutely every other place in the nation, if not the world. It is the only city that can enthrall and surprise them, challenge and enchant them, the mother’s womb that surrounds them with the amniotic fluid of culture but also bombards them with second-hand toxins on a daily basis. I believe that I have a better candidate: Huntington, West Virginia. Here are my reasons:

1. Geographically, it’s ambiguous, and ambiguity is hot

Is it in the South? Kind of, it does border Kentucky and our accents are not unlike an untuned banjo. Is it in the Midwest? Well, we border Ohio and are familiar enough with “casual dining” chains and large, homogenous malls, so maybe it is. Is it East Coast? We border Maryland and Virginia, so our ties to D.C. are stronger than most states. I prefer to pledge allegiance to the mountains and just say we’re Appalachian.

2. Politically, it’s fairly liberal

West Virginia is a land of working-class Democrats and has been for decades. When Robert C. Byrd died, my boyfriend cried for two days; his aunt was a personal friend of the man. Everyone is on welfare of one kind or another, or is at least related to someone who is, so universal health care and union support are popular. There’s an abortion clinic in Charleston that no one’s even tried to bomb, and protestors are usually bussed in from a few states away.

3. We have a pretty darn good college

You may remember said college from a film titled We Are Marshall starring Matthew McConaughey (or, he who dampens Southern mammaws’ panties). We were very excited about this, despite the fact that the premise of the film is “Marshall’s football team was great… until everyone on the team died in a fiery plane crash.” (It’s true.) But even though our football team never wins, we still have a rather prestigious English department (Google Breece D’J Pancake; he’s like a redneck Ernest Hemingway) and a now-quite-topical Parks & Recreation degree that is considered top-notch. Oh, and the college parties? Coal bought some huge houses in this town; get seven friends and you can rent one for about $200 a piece. #likeaboss

4. It’s all grassroots, all the time

The mayor has no idea what anyone is up to, and neither does anyone else in charge. Development has been limited to a few blocks downtown; the rest of the city is up for grabs. So, do you want to start a community garden? Play in a local kickball league? Participate in community theater? Organize a comedy night? Just do it, and find some other people to help. And the best part is, since you’re in a small pond, you are always the big fish (if that’s your thing).

5. Food

Let’s talk food. We get new ethnic cuisine all the time. Unfortunately, this is usually because the previous place didn’t get enough business. In one year, a Middle Eastern buffet was taken over by a Jamaican place, which lasted for about three months and then became another Middle Eastern place, which then closed because they were always closed on Friday and we just didn’t get that. It now stands empty. But with a large population of twenty-somethings willing to try weird meats, they might come back!

6. Economically, it sucks

Not gonna lie, there are almost no jobs here and the ones that we do have are mostly call centers or retail. It’s like the Manila of America. The silver lining is that there are tons of thrift stores and antique shops. I can drive to four different Goodwills within 20 minutes and they are all full of designer clothing.

You know, after listing all the great stuff about Huntington, I’m not sure that I do want you guys to move here. After all, it would suck if my city got all mainstream. TC mark

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image – We Are Marshall

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=612928768 Samie Rose

    Um.

  • loco

    hm

  • Guestropod

    Dude, you’re right.  I have never heard of it.  

    I learned some shit from this article.

  • cameron

    well, then.

  • Nigel D.

    OK.

  • http://twitter.com/tannnyaya Tanya Salyers

    I’m from Portsmouth, OH (now transplanted to Columbus, OH)…my local news was WSAZ based out of Huntington/Charleston.  That’s where our better mall was (compared to Ashland, KY).  I TOTALLY get this, and lived in the same sort of bubble.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1363230138 Michael Koh

    BUFFALO

  • http://twitter.com/ingenuegle Egle Makaraite

    Sounds like a great place. My friend is trying to bring detroit back!

  • http://www.facebook.com/t.jason.ham Jason Ham

    “you hipsters”?! *scoffs*

    “the Manila of America”?!? *scoffs MORE*

  • Anonymous

    No one can deny, it certainly was an article. 

  • Ethan

    Apparently Boise is the Republican cousin of Huntington.

  • KAte

    I really enjoyed this

  • avluna

    I live a few hours away from Huntington, in a muuuuch smaller town. I think it’s a great place, and I’m glad to see places like it getting some love!

  • avluna

    I live a few hours away from Huntington, in a muuuuch smaller town. I think it’s a great place, and I’m glad to see places like it getting some love!

  • http://twitter.com/ayecaleb Caleb Ray

    Hello from Ironton! (for those that don’t know, it’s like, 15 minutes away from Huntington and oh so horrible) It’s weird to see a thought about a city I live so near too. 

  • f xx f y

    My family relocated to Huntington sometime in the 2001 or 2002 when my mom decided to get remarried to a prosthetist whose family was from Wayne county though not quite Hamlin and had then (i.e. at the time of our moving (i.e. 2000 something)) relocated to the labyrinthine Westmoreland which is a surprisingly more depressing part of town than Huntington proper because everything is a strange burnt sienna color, the color of the forgetfulness of old age, and nobody living there seems to be under the age of 53 yet bursts of gunfire constantly contribute to the neighborhood’s nightly soundtrack. I attended Huntington High School for three years which was a strangely pleasant school to attend, inasmuch that it was the only high school in the area (a distinct difference from the rural Florida high school I went to which was one of maybe four in the county) and therefore had a studentship which included a significant portion of demographics possible in the United States by that I mean it was — to use a progressive cliche — ‘diverse,’ and it was surprisingly easy for me at the age of 15 to develop a reasonable handful of friends which thus dampened the existential despair I was prone to at the time which I expressed with significant behavioral indicators including head-lowering and hand-wringing and poetry-writing and which quickly became replaced by the normative behavioral standards of my new friend group which included music-playing and vide0-gaming and most importantly weed-smoking the latter of which being (perhaps informally) the most important social ritual of all and in a matter of weeks after the first joint I ever smoked I managed to sacrifice to the dreamy, sensual God of intoxication every other hobby or habit I had at the time, quickly followed by my incredibly meager paychecks I received from working at the Fazoli’s on Third Avenue directly across from my apartment complex.

    Huntington is a small city, with a population not exceeding the hundred-thousand mark, which dramatically decreases in the summertime when the students of the local University, Marshall, are not actively schooling. Opportunities for jobs are incredibly slim and it seems the only employers that are able to maintain any sort of presence in the city are fast food chains and telemarketing establishments, both of which being the only places where anybody I ever became friends with ever worked. That is, those who didn’t pay their rent dealing drugs. It was unusual for me to go through an entire day moving through the downtown area without seeing at least one person with a cotton swab taped to their inner arm, a telltale sign of one who has sold their plasma, usually for something around 40 dollars per 3- to 4-hour session.

    Driving into Huntington now, years after leaving, usually to visit my family who remain there because they have nowhere else to go, I get the impression that the city is shrieking, silently, in agony. To speak of the potential of Huntington to become an enjoyable place to live is to speak of alchemy — and far from becoming golden, Huntington seems to be performing its leaden role quite nicely, which is to say: sinking.

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