Depends on which FReepers. ;-)

If Freepers hate it, it can't be *all* bad.

Funny you should mention about Ithaca. So often when I hear Ithaca, the phrase, "The City of Evil" comes to mind. It is mostly due to its extreme leftist bent and far-out-of-the-mainstream nuttiness. Discussion groups have popped up over it, websites,
http://freepers.zill.net/users/fixit_fr/Ithaca/WhyEvil.html
and even "Ithaca Is The City of Evil" memorabilia http://cafeshops.com/CityOfEvil,PRI

Ithaca became so inhospitable to those not of that particular radical ideological bent, that it spurred on an outmigration in the '90s of those that were "fed up" with the intolerance (similar to when the GOP lost the East Bay Area in CA in the late '50s for good). "Mainstream liberals" are now considered the right-wing reactionaries in Ithaca, and the local GOP types (what few are left) have little choice but to endorse the liberal Democrat candidates for local offices over the establishment Greenie/"Progressive"/Socialists.