Why I Moved From Maine (Uber-Hate Edition)

By Christine Rousselle


I love Maine. I was born there. I spent 18 years of my life there. My entire family lives there. Trading in my Maine driver’s license for the Virginia version was emotionally painful. I miss (nearly) everything about Maine—the food, the people, even the smell of the marsh in my hometown.

That being said, I just don’t see myself moving back there any time soon.

I moved to Alexandria, VA on June 1, 2013—11 days after I graduated from college. The culture shock was immediate. For the first time in my life I was living in a major metro area. There was just so much stuff to do. Museums? Sure, there’s a bunch of free ones. Concerts? That band I like is actually performing down here. Spur-of-the-moment sporting event? Let’s fire up StubHub, see what’s available for one of the four major teams in this town, print tickets and go. Hungry? Seamless will deliver basically anything with the push of a button. None of these exist in Maine, and certainly not on the scale they do here.

It’s not exactly a secret that Maine can be hostile to new things and that the business climate is not as friendly as it could be.

Let’s talk about Uber, for instance. Uber is a ride-sharing service that works through a cell phone app. A person opens the app, places a pin on a map indicating where they are, and hits request. Eventually, a car connected to the Uber system arrives and takes you to whatever address the person has plugged in to the app. Payment is through the app. It is, in the opinion of this writer, the best thing since sliced bread.

So naturally Maine had to fight it before it even entered the market.

Read the rest here.