The Land of the Free. Or At Least, The Land of the Cheap.

Rochester must be the cheapest city to live in ever, ever. Seriously, I don't know how all you Rochestarians aren't millionaires by now- it seems like if you have a decent paying job and barring any serious gambling addictions, you could pretty much pay all your bills with one week's worth of work, and have the other three weeks to spend at will or tuck away for some tidy interest. I will illustrate this with a short list:

1. Pat's Coffee Mug
For $1.95 we just had two eggs, two pieces of toast, homefries, and coffee that was so abundant we couldn't even finish it all. So it's a little gentrified over there- for $1.95 I can put up with a booming bass blasting some Snoop from a beat up old Celica. I can turn a blind eye to the shoeless, dirty children splashing in the sewer puddles. The South Wedge is just keeping it real.

2. Cinemark
Can you scrape together a couple quarters and dimes? Maybe hiding under your car seat or pillow cushions? Because if you can rummage up one measly dollar, you can march yourself straight over to the Cinemark for hours of entertainment at a $1 movie.

No, I'm not kidding.

No, seriously.

I didn't even realize dollar theaters still existed; their myth was as distant to me as Loch Ness and the Abominable Snowman, some fable out of the 1950's. We definitely do not have dollar theaters anywhere in New England, and if we did they would be showing movies like this.

3. Public Market
Yes, we have farm stands and farmer's markets on every street corner in New England. But apparently out here in Rochester, farmer's can just give their shizznit away. People were buying full palettes of strawberries for two bucks. How are these hardworking farm people making a living? How many times do they need to procreate in order to have a large enough slave labor force for 10 hour days of strawberry picking? It's like a sad math equation. All I know is there are still 4 jars of strawberry jam in the freezer, a month later.

4. Living Arrangements
When you hear people complaining about one bedroom apartments that are $450 a month, don't you just want to strangle them a little bit? Yes, you do. Because for $450 a month in Boston, you couldn't find a one bedroom in Chinatown, even if you split the rent 5 ways with a Chinese family. People on welfare, living in Section 8 housing projects, don't even have rent that cheap.

And let's not even get started on buying houses out here. The last time I saw a house listed for under $100,000 in New England I was in middle school and the house was actually a trailer that had no indoor plumbing was still attached to a 1972 Ford pickup with no engine.

Of course, there are some tradeoffs. Like, there are no jobs here. And not much of a young crowd. And people get paid way less. And the closest "cities" are Buffalo and Syracuse. But what you do have, Rochester, is goddamn cheap. Now I must return to the land of $10 movies and half-million dollar houses that I will never buy. So long, land of 1,000 Dollar General Stores. I salute you.