Dallas or North Carolina

I would say, having lived in both states, it really depends where in NC you want to live. The coast (weather-wise) is more like north florida - hot humid, flat. The Piedmont (central nc) has real seasons - summers are brutal but falls and springs awesome with winters not so tough and terrain varied with rolling hills etc. The mountains, Boone / Blowing Rock etc. often have winters like New England with plenty of snow (and even more wind!). Hard to believe in NC but it is true (3500-4500 ft. alt is the reason). The summers are awesome there though (never above about 75-80) as are the falls and springs.

Jim Gray

NC overall has better climate and more variety. You can even have something resembling a yard as well.

Go for Asheville

I've never lived in Dallas, so take this for what it's worth.

The best years of my life are those which were lived in NC. I lived in the Piedmont (Winston-Salem to be exact). The seasons were great, the mountains are close, the beach is...3.5 hrs away. The cities are not too big but are metropolitain enough for me. cost of living is RIDICULOUSLY LOW! You have cities from 100,000 to ~1.5 mil in Charlotte. Charlotte's a touch big for my taste, but it is a nice city imo. Raleigh is growing and is near chapel hill, one of the great college towns of the southeast. As mentioned, there's a hell of a lot of variety there.

North Carolina

I have never been to Dallas, but an appropriate nickname for North Carolina is "The Big Tease." On paper, North Carolina seems like a wonderland, but most things will leave a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. The only pure positive is the abundance of trails in select places (like outside of Asheville).

how about somebody who has lived in dallas give an opinion? depends what part of dallas you plan on living in, if it is directly in the city of dallas or irving i would say NC would be better, but if you live in a suburb say lewisville/coppell/plano/southlake/keller one of those places then its definitely better than NC

I grew up in Dallas but will never go back. Stay away. My entire family still lives there, and I hate the week every two years when we have to visit.

The saying about Dallas is that it's LA without the ocean, beach, mountains, or Hollywood. It's true. What's not to like?

Weather: The summers are absolutely miserable. I'm talking 100+ with moderate humidity for weeks on end, and 90+ with humidity from mid April until late September. You get a month of rain in October and March, so the "nice weather" part of the year really is just November to February. And even that is usually punctuated by an ice storm or two and another couple of cold spells.

Geography: Flat flat flat. And ugly.

Running: Hope you like White Rock Lake, because that's the only place where you'll be running while you live there. Otherwise, it's hit the streets. And even then, except for a few posh neighborhoods, you're going to be sharing the roads with a bunch of cars that torment runners for fun. And the suburbs are even worse. My parents have a nice lakehouse in one of the exurbs, but I won't stay the night when I go there because you literally can't run -- once you leave the little subdivision, there are no sidewalks on the country road that people go 80 mph through, and you'll probably get attacked by the wild dogs.

People: I have never been anywhere since that has more pompous, self-absorbed, shallow people. And I include a number of my family members in that. My mother was shocked that we borrowed money to actually buy our car -- she said that we were literally the only people that she knew who didn't lease. I mean, what happens in two years when we need to drive a new car again? My sister traded in her Honda to get an even older used Lexus, solely because the car had a "Lexus" decal on it. I could go on. Oh, and did I mention that EVERYONE is militantly conservative? Even the people who are pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, and anti-war vote Republican, because only freaks and minorities vote Democrat.

There sre very few places in the US that I simply wouldn't live. Dallas is one of them.

Why Dallas? What about other areas in Texas?

as a resident of Dallas, I can attest to the fact that most of what this guy said is false

maybe some shades of truth, but exaggerated to a hilarious extreme

I can't comment on NC, so I don't have much to offer the OP. However, one factual pro to Dallas is that it has many big Banks, Law Firms, Corporate HQs and generally reputable companies, and a low cost of living.

One can work for a Top-Tier law firm with a big salary, and live in an apartment less than 1 mile away for around $600 a month..

I grew up/went to college in the Dallas area and I'm now living/attending grad school in Charlotte. I would agree with the majority of what's been posted so far. Largely it depends on where in North Carolina you choose to live, as others have mentioned. All I can speak to is Charlotte (although I've spent a small amount of time in the Boone/Blowing Rock/Banner Elk area as well).

As far as running goes, you're going to face similar challenges in both Dallas and Charlotte. White Rock is the main option in Dallas, as well as the Katy Trail, but both are paved and can be exceedingly crowded on weekends. In Charlotte, there are a few non-paved parks (McAlpine, where FL South is held, and Reedy Creek are the two that come to mind), but I would imagine 90+% of people who run at either of those locations would have to drive to them. I'm not sure how set you are on Dallas proper, but if I were you I would consider its neighbor to the west, Ft. Worth. It's a bit smaller but still very much a city, with much the same arts and culture of Dallas but less of the snobbery. There's also a ~20 mile long dirt/crushed gravel trail that runs along the Trinity River that is easily accessible from almost anywhere in town. As an example, I lived in three different apartments during my time in Ft. Worth and was never more than a 1.5 mile jog from the trail. Just a thought for you.

As for the two cities themselves, to be honest I probably haven't spent enough time in Charlotte (

Lastly, as someone else said, the weather in Texas is miserable. Straight up, summers, suck. Charlotte is just as humid as Dallas but doesn't seem to get quite as hot. Also the leaves actually change colors here in autumn and the flowers and foliage are absolutely gorgeous in the spring.Hope some of this helps.

Mr. Arms wrote:

I can't comment on NC, so I don't have much to offer the OP. However, one factual pro to Dallas is that it has many big Banks, Law Firms, Corporate HQs and generally reputable companies, and a low cost of living.

One can work for a Top-Tier law firm with a big salary, and live in an apartment less than 1 mile away for around $600 a month..

I will say that this is true. The cost of living in Dallas is laughably low, and the salaries are reasonably high. The pay is usually only a slight cut below what it is at the big non-NYC cities (i.e., Chicago, Los Angeles, DC), but stuff costs a LOT less. To give you a point of comparison, houses where I live now (Colorado) probably cost 50% more than their equivalent in Dallas, and jobs probably pay 33% less.

But here's the thing: There's a reason that employers need to pay so much despite the low cost of living. It's REALLY hard to keep people around if they have other options.

(Good call on Fort Worth, by the way. The commute would be a hassle, but I'd almost consider living there and working in Dallas if it was a possibility -- and if the job is in Arlington or Las Colinas, it's a no-brainer. Also, if you have flexibility, there are a number of cities in Texas that are actually kind of nice. Everyone knows about Austin, but San Antonio and Amarillo are decent as well. Houston too, though the weather is even worse there than in Dallas.)

Well I moved from Minnesota to NC some 25 years and outside of the fact that the civil war still rages, it's a pretty nice place to live.

I go to Dallas a lot for work and have a sister that lives there and it's pretty much a paved over hell hole full of big haired ex-cheerleader wannabees, bigots, and truck driving bubbas. It's somewhat tolerable out by Grapevine for 2-3 months a year. Outside of Austin you're dealing with a group that's got an IQ about 1/3 of what you're used to in Wisconsin.

If you decide on Dallas hopefully you're from farm country in Wisconsin so you can practice up by going to the barn and spooking the cattle and then trying to have a conversation with them. You'll hear a lot of noise and it won't matter much what you say because they'll just keep mooing.

If you're from Madison and you move to Dallas you'll likely shoot yourself inside of 6 months.

I've been to both and lived in Dallas for a long while. Don't take everything some of these posters are saying to heart. Northern Texas weather is not bad at all. It does not stay above a hundred outside of June and July very much and the humidity is not that killer, especially compared to Houston or Austin. I would recommend checking out Fort Worth. I tend to like that area more than anything around Dallas. Plus it is much more family friendly.

good, leave then. we dont want girly trash like yourselves here anyways.

Keith,

Do you really feel that way? That the civil war still rages? Maybe it is just my social circle, but I tend to go through life in Winston-Salem feeling pretty good about race relations, etc.

I tend to enjoy your posts, but sometimes you catch me off guard. I believe you still live in Winston, so can you give me examples of what you mean?

Hope you are doing well.

Dr.Heelon wrote:

I've been to both and lived in Dallas for a long while. Don't take everything some of these posters are saying to heart. Northern Texas weather is not bad at all. It does not stay above a hundred outside of June and July very much and the humidity is not that killer, especially compared to Houston or Austin.

In point of fact, August is just as hot as July (both are a little hotter than June), and September is similarly hot through the middle of the month.

As for humidity, it's certainly true that Houston is much more humid. It's also a little cooler, but not enough to make a difference -- that's why I said that you'd have to be able to stand the weather to live there. I always found Austin to be more or less as humid as Dallas. The weather's really similar, if I recall.

Apples and oranges. Dallas is a city North Carolina is a state. When requesting a recommendation from the viewing audience we should be presented with 2 options from the same choosing class.

It is impossible to develop a choice matrix for this two completely unrelated options.

Another One from the Dash wrote:Keith,

Do you really feel that way? That the civil war still rages? Maybe it is just my social circle, but I tend to go through life in Winston-Salem feeling pretty good about race relations, etc.

I tend to enjoy your posts, but sometimes you catch me off guard. I believe you still live in Winston, so can you give me examples of what you mean?

I'm still in Winston, and in my social circle I can also go through life without much concern about race relations or references to the War of Northern Aggression.

However, outside of those circles it's pretty hard to go through a week without some reference in the paper to something some Yankee did or some veiled reference to how the "real South" has been ruined by them "durn fureners".

Now all in all I like it here. If I didn't I would have left by now. Winston is certainly a damn sight different than Yadkin County, but you can't ignore the fact that until a few years ago we were represented by Jesse Helms and everyone here knows how he got into office.

Now it's a state composed of people that either believe the civil war is going on and those that didn't believe they lost with four seasons, big trees, mountains and beaches vs a state that considers itself an independent country with scrub-brush, big-hair, and concrete as far as the eye can see. From a runner's standpoint North Carolina wins hands down.