Ten Reasons NOT To Move To Grand Rapids [Video]

To be fair, this guy named Briggs (after the Park?) has some points about our bad roads and snowfall totals, but other points are little off.

The YouTube site 'The World According To Briggs' posted this video Wednesday highlighting the ten reasons NOT to move to Grand Rapids.

Here's the interesting thing about this video: the guy who did it honestly likes Grand Rapids, but in the first minute he relates a sad fact about the internet, he says NO ONE will click on a positive video, so he has to take a negative twist to get hits. What does THAT say about what we've become? (Side note: I did my own version of this list three years ago. You can check out my take here.)

Overall, it's not a bad take on our city, and the video actually taught me some things I never knew before (not that I'm a GR scholar). But if you want to save the 12 minutes it takes to watch the whole video, here are the reasons:

10. BAD ROADS. Nothing new here. 54% of roads in GR are considered bad. Have you checked your front suspension lately?

9. IT'S A COLLEGE TOWN. I consider this a plus because young people bring an energy to a city. But Briggs says it is annoying and a headache.

8. THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH. I think we all know this.

7. GROWING PAINS. Lately, we've all noticed there are more people here. No surprise.

6. BAD DRIVERS. Young people equals bad drivers. There were some stats thrown out here that we're surprising to me.

5. THE SNOW. We know.

4. URBAN SPRAWL. Unless you have a car, it's not a good place to be, because public transportation isn't real good.

3. CRIME. What!? Compared to Flint and Detroit, we're doing well, but the violent crime rate here is 72% higher than average. (!!!!!)

2. NO RAPIDS. Hey! We're trying to restore them.

1. HOMELESS PROBLEM. If you've ever been downtown, you know this is a minor annoyance at most, but the pandemic may drive the homeless population up. Did you know we're sixth in the nation in the amount of homeless school students we have? I just learned something new!