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Foldyourarmsandsaynah wrote:There are much nicer, cleaner beaches most places south of us on the eastern seaboard.

I concur. The beaches pretty much suck. Do they still have the trash-infused clay bottom beaches from overdredging sand that they had in the late 1980's and early 1990's?

mr.arrison wrote:

FuzzBob wrote:I agree about the shitty builder-home construction going on there. I experienced that shit in San Antonio, too. Military towns will tolerate the ugliest, barracks-looking shitboxes.

I disagree about the seafood. We get Va Beach seafood here in Richmond, only two hours away by refrigerator truck, and I'll put Crab Louie's in my neighborhood up against (the good) Phillip's anytime.

Phillips imports most of their seafood from Southeast Asia now. There aren't many things living in the Chesapeake as the oxygen supply in the entire bay can barely support even barnacles. I would suspect that the same is true for most Restaurants that are claming "Fresh Seafood from the Chesapeake" etc..

As far as the shitty home construction, many areas in both Va. Beach and Chesapeake were built in areas equal to or below sea level. Retrofitted swamps turned into subdivisions... Virginia Beach builders generally stopped using perimeter poured concrete foundations for housing around 1978 or so. Hurricane bolts are also not used. So basically you have thousands of houses sitting in swamps on cinder block piers with nothing bolting them to the foundation. If the sea levels were to rise, or if a Katrina caliber hurricane came, all of Virginia Beach would basically get washed out to sea.

It's also filled with white, young right-wing Bush-loving Christians who are usually in the Navy. Just look at 2004 election maps. Virginia probably would have gone for Kerry if it wasn't for the entire Norfolk/Virginia Beach region.

I can't believe that when I lived there good shows came through the area, but they did.

Virginia Beach has been slowly turning blue since 2004. It's probably a mid grade purple at this point. They elected 2 dems to the house of delegates in the last election and the state senate just got a democratic majority for the first time in a long time. And Norfolk is democrat as all hell, I don't know what map you were looking at because they were announcing city votes during the election and Norfolk wanted the democrats. And remember, most navy guys/girls who live here don't vote based out of here, it's wherever they're from. The retired ones do, but not active duty.

Marsupialized wrote:

Foldyourarmsandsaynah wrote:I lived in virginia beach for almost 20 years until I moved to Norfolk last October

what's the steak place in Norfolk where you grill your own steak?

You're thinking of the Grate Steak. That place rules. It's fun to cook a steak for that cheap and make some buttery garlic chili bread. When they roll the cart of meat out is pretty hilarious too.

Norfolk has Dog'n Burger though. Love that damn place. I don't know why but when I get chili on a hot dog I want it to taste like elementary school chili. I have been assimilated.

mr.arrison wrote:

Foldyourarmsandsaynah wrote:There are much nicer, cleaner beaches most places south of us on the eastern seaboard.

I concur. The beaches pretty much suck. Do they still have the trash-infused clay bottom beaches from overdredging sand that they had in the late 1980's and early 1990's?

Nah, now the waters just dirty. The only beach worse than ours is the one in the Outer Banks. I swear the sand there is made of jagged glass shards and rusty nails.

mr.arrison wrote:

FuzzBob wrote:I agree about the shitty builder-home construction going on there. I experienced that shit in San Antonio, too. Military towns will tolerate the ugliest, barracks-looking shitboxes.

I disagree about the seafood. We get Va Beach seafood here in Richmond, only two hours away by refrigerator truck, and I'll put Crab Louie's in my neighborhood up against (the good) Phillip's anytime.

Phillips imports most of their seafood from Southeast Asia now. There aren't many things living in the Chesapeake as the oxygen supply in the entire bay can barely support even barnacles. I would suspect that the same is true for most Restaurants that are claming "Fresh Seafood from the Chesapeake" etc..

As far as the shitty home construction, many areas in both Va. Beach and Chesapeake were built in areas equal to or below sea level. Retrofitted swamps turned into subdivisions... Virginia Beach builders generally stopped using perimeter poured concrete foundations for housing around 1978 or so. Hurricane bolts are also not used. So basically you have thousands of houses sitting in swamps on cinder block piers with nothing bolting them to the foundation. If the sea levels were to rise, or if a Katrina caliber hurricane came, all of Virginia Beach would basically get washed out to sea.

It's also filled with white, young right-wing Bush-loving Christians who are usually in the Navy. Just look at 2004 election maps. Virginia probably would have gone for Kerry if it wasn't for the entire Norfolk/Virginia Beach region.

I can't believe that when I lived there good shows came through the area, but they did.

I found the election results:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... inia,_2004

Norfolk was 61.7% for Kerry/Edwards, 37.4% Bush.

Foldyourarmsandsaynah wrote:

mr.arrison wrote:

FuzzBob wrote:I agree about the shitty builder-home construction going on there. I experienced that shit in San Antonio, too. Military towns will tolerate the ugliest, barracks-looking shitboxes.

I disagree about the seafood. We get Va Beach seafood here in Richmond, only two hours away by refrigerator truck, and I'll put Crab Louie's in my neighborhood up against (the good) Phillip's anytime.

Phillips imports most of their seafood from Southeast Asia now. There aren't many things living in the Chesapeake as the oxygen supply in the entire bay can barely support even barnacles. I would suspect that the same is true for most Restaurants that are claming "Fresh Seafood from the Chesapeake" etc..

As far as the shitty home construction, many areas in both Va. Beach and Chesapeake were built in areas equal to or below sea level. Retrofitted swamps turned into subdivisions... Virginia Beach builders generally stopped using perimeter poured concrete foundations for housing around 1978 or so. Hurricane bolts are also not used. So basically you have thousands of houses sitting in swamps on cinder block piers with nothing bolting them to the foundation. If the sea levels were to rise, or if a Katrina caliber hurricane came, all of Virginia Beach would basically get washed out to sea.

It's also filled with white, young right-wing Bush-loving Christians who are usually in the Navy. Just look at 2004 election maps. Virginia probably would have gone for Kerry if it wasn't for the entire Norfolk/Virginia Beach region.

I can't believe that when I lived there good shows came through the area, but they did.

Virginia Beach has been slowly turning blue since 2004. It's probably a mid grade purple at this point. They elected 2 dems to the house of delegates in the last election and the state senate just got a democratic majority for the first time in a long time. And Norfolk is democrat as all hell, I don't know what map you were looking at because they were announcing city votes during the election and Norfolk wanted the democrats. And remember, most navy guys/girls who live here don't vote based out of here, it's wherever they're from. The retired ones do, but not active duty.

That makes sense. Norfolk's main industry outside of Ft. Eustis is what, shipbuilding and MARAD? That has to involve plenty of skilled and quite possibly unionized labor. The military vote does count if officers move their families and take up residence there. However, the military vote is closer to purple than many people think. I can think of 5 friends and acquaintances offhand who are liberal Democrat vets, and they've all told me that political views are quite diverse. Not only is there a gay contingent but significant minority and green ones as well. The McCain-types only represent the subgroup of Republicans who are active or vets.

Virginia itself is purple. NOVA is not as blue as DC but still blue. Charlottesville is blue. Urban Richmond is blue, but suburban/exurb metro Richmond is red as shit. Lynchburg is Falwell's empire's nerve center, also ass-red. Other red spots are redneck shitholes like Christiansburg, Wytheville, and various tank towns in the extreme southwest region. Not too sure about Blacksburg which is VT's home.

The tidal estuaries in the Chesapeake Bay do support sizeable oyster colonies; I know this because some folks freaked out that an oil spill up the James would threaten them. All those ships chugging in and out look like major water pollution threats but actually aren't, particulate matter from airborne diesel exhaust notwithstanding. I'd guess that's moot anyway since most other forms of shellfish grow in saltwater, not the kind of brackish water found at a river mouth, so any "Chesapeake Bay shellfish" would be caught pretty far away from town, right?

Sucks about Phillips, BTW.

The cops suck. Did you see what they did to Gator at Mt. Trashmore?

FuzzBob wrote:

Foldyourarmsandsaynah wrote:

mr.arrison wrote:

FuzzBob wrote:I agree about the shitty builder-home construction going on there. I experienced that shit in San Antonio, too. Military towns will tolerate the ugliest, barracks-looking shitboxes.

I disagree about the seafood. We get Va Beach seafood here in Richmond, only two hours away by refrigerator truck, and I'll put Crab Louie's in my neighborhood up against (the good) Phillip's anytime.

Phillips imports most of their seafood from Southeast Asia now. There aren't many things living in the Chesapeake as the oxygen supply in the entire bay can barely support even barnacles. I would suspect that the same is true for most Restaurants that are claming "Fresh Seafood from the Chesapeake" etc..

As far as the shitty home construction, many areas in both Va. Beach and Chesapeake were built in areas equal to or below sea level. Retrofitted swamps turned into subdivisions... Virginia Beach builders generally stopped using perimeter poured concrete foundations for housing around 1978 or so. Hurricane bolts are also not used. So basically you have thousands of houses sitting in swamps on cinder block piers with nothing bolting them to the foundation. If the sea levels were to rise, or if a Katrina caliber hurricane came, all of Virginia Beach would basically get washed out to sea.

It's also filled with white, young right-wing Bush-loving Christians who are usually in the Navy. Just look at 2004 election maps. Virginia probably would have gone for Kerry if it wasn't for the entire Norfolk/Virginia Beach region.

I can't believe that when I lived there good shows came through the area, but they did.

Virginia Beach has been slowly turning blue since 2004. It's probably a mid grade purple at this point. They elected 2 dems to the house of delegates in the last election and the state senate just got a democratic majority for the first time in a long time. And Norfolk is democrat as all hell, I don't know what map you were looking at because they were announcing city votes during the election and Norfolk wanted the democrats. And remember, most navy guys/girls who live here don't vote based out of here, it's wherever they're from. The retired ones do, but not active duty.

That makes sense. Norfolk's main industry outside of Ft. Eustis is what, shipbuilding and MARAD? That has to involve plenty of skilled and quite possibly unionized labor. The military vote does count if officers move their families and take up residence there. However, the military vote is closer to purple than many people think. I can think of 5 friends and acquaintances offhand who are liberal Democrat vets, and they've all told me that political views are quite diverse. Not only is there a gay contingent but significant minority and green ones as well. The McCain-types only represent the subgroup of Republicans who are active or vets.

Virginia itself is purple. NOVA is not as blue as DC but still blue. Charlottesville is blue. Urban Richmond is blue, but suburban/exurb metro Richmond is red as shit. Lynchburg is Falwell's empire's nerve center, also ass-red. Other red spots are redneck shitholes like Christiansburg, Wytheville, and various tank towns in the extreme southwest region. Not too sure about Blacksburg which is VT's home.

The tidal estuaries in the Chesapeake Bay do support sizeable oyster colonies; I know this because some folks freaked out that an oil spill up the James would threaten them. All those ships chugging in and out look like major water pollution threats but actually aren't, particulate matter from airborne diesel exhaust notwithstanding. I'd guess that's moot anyway since most other forms of shellfish grow in saltwater, not the kind of brackish water found at a river mouth, so any "Chesapeake Bay shellfish" would be caught pretty far away from town, right?

Sucks about Phillips, BTW.

Well, the Shipyard thing is probably more split. The Norfolk Shipyard is Naval as is Portsmouth, I have a few friends who work for one or the other and I've talked to them about politics and most of them vote republican because in their cases although they are skilled labor, they hope for the ginormous military spending of the republicans to keep work coming in. These guys love overtime. When you're making $18 an hour with government benefits and you can work an extra 15-20 hours a week at $27 they cream their pants.

The Ford plant in Norfolk was heavily unionized until it shut down. All the workers got pretty nice buyouts because of their union deals (some upwards of $100,000). The governor tried to intervene on that one because he gets a lot of backing from the Labor Unions. He even tried to appoint a former higher up of the AFL-CIO to direct the Department of Labor. Norfolk is weird though, it's residents are for the most part middle class with small concentrations of old money in Oceanview and Larchmont. Downtown is turning into a corporate plaza to an extreme, with a lot of the higher salaried people living in Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, and to some extent Suffolk because they bought their property dirt cheap in the middle of a safe nowhere.

I volunteered with a friend of my dads who won one of the delegate seats I was talking about and talking with his campaign staff and some of the guys who work for the state dem party I'm really curious/excited to see what happens in the presidential race. Bush had something like an 8% victory over Kerry, with the way Virginia has been slowly shifting I don't have a doubt that it's going to be hotly contested this November.

Foldyourarmsandsaynah wrote:Norfolk was 61.7% for Kerry/Edwards, 37.4% Bush.

True, but Norfolk is an urban enclave and it's relatively diverse (even if it still seems to vote less progressive/liberal than 90% of the other east coast urban areas). Virginia Beach went 59.1% for Bush, 40.2% for Kerry, even moreso Bush-leaning than the very conservative Richmond suburbs like Henrico County. I'm just saying in my experience, I met the worst examples of Military right-wing nutjobs in "Hampton Roads"

Plus there's the "Regent University" empire in Virginia Beach. Oookie.



That said, I'm sticking to my opinion that Virginia Beach has the best mini golf known to humankind:

That said, I'm sticking to my opinion that Virginia Beach has the best mini golf known to humankind

to your point, in my time here I have worked at two different miniature golf courses. i was not trying to work at miniature golf courses. i got both jobs through friends or acquaintances. there are just that many mini golf places.

i've never gotten too caught up in towns. i can enjoy myself or be bored just about anywhere. virginia beach has some nice spots, some horrid shit, some great people, some assholes. i haven't noticed a trend that's more prominent than any other place i've visited.

if the point of this thread was to visit? don't visit. way cooler places to visit that aren't much further away. while working at one of the aforementioned mini golf places i would deal with loads of tourists and so very many of them were from Quebec that i finally just asked one guy "you know there are better beaches on your way here and past here right?" "Oui" "why come here?" "eh, vaycayshun uh?"