So, I moved away from Atlanta (suburbs) in the early 1970s, and it was a lot different then of course. I ended up in Cincy for 38 years starting in 1980. I wasn't too enamored with Cincy initially, everything seemed old to me, and sort of run down in many places, and the cars all had rust. But I came to like it and learned how to enjoy what it had to offer, which is a good thing wherever you live. We can't all live exactly where we think we might like to live.
So, we've been here now 3 months. We have a new car, down to one, driver's licenses, sold our house up there, so we're here now. Some things really are different.
1. This place has a lot of trees. Just about everywhere has old large trees and it's nice.
2. This place has a lot of traffic. Duh. We really have to plan when we try and go certain places.
3. The driving style is a bit more aggressive, but not overly so. This results from the traffic I think and having to make that left turn signal etc.
4. A lot of the secondary roads have a lot of patches in them around where we live. It looks like they put in underground whatever or patched water pipes and did a poor job resurfacing.
5. Having the park right across the street is nice.
6. The humidity in general is not nearly as bad. It can be 91°F here and still be OK. Being in the sun versus shade really matters, but we have trees here.
7. A lot of stuff is new. There is a building boom going on downtown and in Buckhead, not to mention the suburbs. A lot of what used to be slums now looks nice.
8. The nightly local news features a lot of crimes relative to Cincinnati. Of course we have nearly 3 times as many people also.
9. There are a lot of independent restaurants around, Cincinnati seemed to be mostly chains that were often boring. Of course, we're 3 miles north of downtown, so the comparison to living in the 'burbs in Cincy is not really accurate.
10. The freeways here can clog up at any time and there is no major construction happening inside the loop right now. See item 2.
11. Cars in general look new, but they did in Cincy as well once the rust problem was largely fixed. A lot of SUVs here of course.
12. This place has more smaller choppy hills around that can be fairly steep. Cincy had large hills, much larger than here in general, and the valley and river.
13. Some of the neighborhoods near us with single homes are quite nice and have interesting tiny "downtowns". They remind me of Wyoming in Cincinnati. Or Glendale or Hyde Park.
14. There is a lot of gentrification going on here, ranging from rehabs to tearing down the old and building the new. That is in addition to all the high rises going up in the business districts. Cincinnati didn't have any high rise construction when we left, not a single building.
The wife likes it here, she says. It feels a lot different to me than 1970, but I'm different also and we're in a very different environment here.
We went to the Fox Theater on Thursday to see the movie "Funny Girl". The wife had never been there and I had not been in 40 odd years. It's an interesting venue. I had never seen that movie before. It was long. We took the subway down and decided to walk back as the rain had "stopped" and of course midway back the rain started. It's about 13 blocks or so.
The Tech campus and stadium are across the freeway from the Fox etc. and I might take in a game this fall. I hear tickets are easy to get. I probably won't wear red and black though. I was there in 1971 for a UGA game won in the last seconds by UGA. The game this year is in Athens where they have been prone to upsetting us, and me.
With all the new high rises being built around us, I'm not sure how traffic is going to get anything but worse. The secondary streets are usually OK outside rush hour, but there are so many new residential buildings going up 30-55 floors than this is going to change I fear.
