Some Americans trading in cities for towns

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ
AP BUSINESS WRITER

NEW YORK -- Living in Queens and riding a crammed subway into Manhattan each day for work, Luis Rivera and Beth Gissinger-Rivera personified New Yorkers' resigned acceptance to the hassles and travails of life in one of the world's biggest cities.

But the more Rivera, 34 and a native New Yorker, visited his then-fiancee's family in small-town Massachusetts, the more he started questioning why he was putting up with the expense, the crowds and the overall irritation of daily life in the Big Apple.

"I gotta tell you, I just fell in love with how easy everything is out here," Rivera said, speaking from the outdoor deck of his home in Fairhaven, Mass. "Growing up, I thought New York was how the rest of the world lived. But everything just seemed to be so much easier out here."


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