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The NY Sun has an alarming headline today: "40,000 New Yorkers Flee State for Atlanta," a fact that may be harshing the "southern hospitality" vibe Georgia had going for it. The newcomers are calling their new hometown a "second-tier city," and one woman declared: "If my kids have a Southern accent, I will kill myself." Unsurprisingly, the ex-NYers stick together down there, going so far as to start their own MySpace group -- while one keeps a blog called Voted Off the Island. As for the Atlanta locals, they seem welcoming, as the director of the Gone With the Wind Museum noted: "Since 9/11, everybody in the country has bonded with New York." The upsides to the move come off as few and far between in the article, perhaps the only one being that you can buy a 4-bdrm house there, with a yard, for $275K. The downsides: no good pizza, bagels, and no Central Park.
New Yorkers Flee City for Atlanta
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Have the natives listened to themselves talk lately? I would much rather hear a Southern accent than the nasally screeching endemic here.
Another big downside: as much as the MTA sucks, MARTA (Atlanta's public transit system) is worse. You can't function without a car in Atlanta, and the traffic is horrendous. Most transplants are actually not moving to Atlanta itself, but to the myriad suburbs built around the city. I lived in Georgia for several years before coming back to New York. It can be great if you can afford to keep a good car, but wages down there are lower than NY, so it's not really the panacea one would hope for. Also, finding good movies down there is tough, so if you habitually go to the Angelika for independent films, learn to love Netflix.
Atlanta sucks in every way possible, but I'd rather have my kids drawling all over the place than squawking like the demon spawn of Joan Rivers and Bugs Bunny.
please take some more native new yorker. the ones i grew up with were horrible racist not on my block type of shit.
ok, I get it, no good pizza but here are two reasons to move to Atlanta:
1. Chick-Fil_A
2. The Varsity
Atlanta IS a second-tier city. That's hardly news.
Chick-Fil A, where your money goes to support anti-abortion, creationist nuts.
The Sun only reported half the story and was misleading in doing so. The 40K people moving to Atlanta were from all of New York State. During the same 2000-2005 time period, nearly 10K people from Fulton and DeKalb counties moved to the NYC metropolitan area, making the net change much smaller. In addition, the data does not indicate how many of that 40K were Atlanta natives that moved to New York and have now moved back.
I for one am personally sick of the unqualified and ignorant vitriol these supposed "new yorkers" spew about the south.
Class is in session, kids:
- If you're from NY, you talk pretty funny too (myself included)
- You have no respect for other people, just as they may not be as attuned to those around them either
- If you're threatening to commit suicide if your children pronounce words differently, you probably should
- Atlanta is only a second-tier city if you're a self-righteous asshole who gets a sense of self-satisfaction from living in this (sometimes) cesspool of a city
- Not everyone in this country is enamored by you because of your zip code. The ignorance described here is just more proof that many New Yorkers are the actual assholes
- To be honest, the way we live is not the "normal" or "correct" way. The rest of the country is a place with a lot of space, a slower pace, and a little more consideration for others. If you don't like that--that's fine, but don't evaluate it based upon your skewed perception of regular living
I'm a born and bred New Yorker. Entertaining the idea of cultural, mental, and social seniority based upon the place in which your mother squirted you out is asinine and tactless.
Memo to Gothamist editors: Just for the record, the story was published by The New York Sun, but it's from Bloomberg News.
I have to go down to Atlanta about four times a year and I hate the city with a passion. Here's why:
1. It's one big urban sprawl. McMansions and horrible condo communities plopped down between megachurches and big box stores. There are also has some serious water supply and conservation issues.
2. The drivers are the worst in America. Anyone who says New Yorkers can't drive has never been to Atlanta. The specialty of Atlanta drivers is crossing four lanes of highway traffic at 25 MPH over the speed limit, sans turn signal and in an almost lateral motion.
3. The only city with a more obvious racial divide is Washington, D.C. The class divide (which breaks racial lines) is almost as obvious.
4. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution may be the worst big city newspaper in America.
5. Hartsfield International Airport makes JFK seem quaint. I will say that getting to, parking at and waiting for someone at Hartsfield is easier than at JFK, but flying in and out of Hartsfield is a painful experience.
6. MARTA just sucks and the bus system isn't much better.
7. The threat of snow or ice creates mass insanity. This is true of virtually every city below the Mason Dixon line though.
8. The Undergound, CNN and The World of Coke are Atlanta's biggest attractions. Pretty much says it all.
Atlanta may suck but I would bet money there are more NYers moving there than Atlantans moving to NY. In actual and per capita terms.
As much as I love NY, Atlanta is not the worst place to be. Cost of living is more bearable - here I don't feel like I'm living hand to mouth, though these days you do have to deal with high gas prices. You actually can get a decent bagel - you have to go to a Jewish deli - there's the Bagel Palace and a local chain called Goldberg's.
We have places like Ikea and Trader Joe's. We have a Landmark Cinema. Yes, traffic is awful and you often need a car. Yes, MARTA doesn't go everywhere. But if you live intown, there are resources like Zipcar now so you could live without a car if you live in the right neighborhoods. The airport is a major national/ international hub.
Good for you if you get to live in NYC, but a lot of the comments here indicate that you're just as provincial as some of the locals I deal with here.
Whew, thanks for a little vindication BXbrian. I'm a Southerner, but it always irks me greatly when I hear NYers spew on about the South and how culturally advanced this place is. I always thought it was a bit ironic for them to be saying this in a city that smells of stale piss and has the highest percentage of nutjobs I have seen in any major city in the world. For some weird reason NY parents also think that dragging their kids to the Met once a year and saying something entirely inaccurate about a piece of art makes their progeny cultured and intelligent as well.
No lie, I heard three kids talking about their therapists on the UWS this week. At that point, my fiance and I decided we are raising our kids in the South. We aren't conservative, but you must remember that a good half of Southerners aren't either.
As far as Atlanta goes: Southern culture has never been and never will be present in large city life. It's antithetical to it! Look for Southern culture in places like Asheville, Chapel Hill, Savannah, and other places where a slow pace of life, interaction with strangers beyond glares, and manners thrive.
Interesting...
Being from the South, and also a Chic-Fil-A-loving-Creationist "nut," I can honestly say, I despise no place more than Atlanta. There's NO "southern charm" or "southern hospitality" there. Maybe, just maybe, in the pompous Buckhead region.
As others have stated, public transport is nearly useless, which requires you own a car, as well as drive. ATL traffic is a mess! Not a fun place to be if you have a job and work normal (8-5) hours.
As for the accent, eh, it's not the worst out there, but it's not going to be THAT bad in ATL. For fun, travel an hour or so north toward Royston, Elberton, Hartwell and strike up some conversation (if you can call it that).
That said, I do miss Chic Fil-A. Mmm!
Like #9 said the scariest thing in the world is watching Southerners flip out over a 1/2 of snow on the ground.
The first thing they do is rush to the supermarket and buy all the wonder bread and whole milk available and then they crash their car into a ditch on the way home.
I don't think being self-righteous has anything to do with it...just look at the tourism numbers and tell me which one is on the upper echelon of world cities.
Here's a point - a southern accent, occasionally, can be really, really hot. I don't think I've EVER heard a NY accent do anything besides make my skin crawl, especially on women.
WHen the going gets tough, the yuppies run like hell. B'bye, don't come back now, y'hear.
I've been waiting for something like this, actually. Most of the recent arrivals have never known anything resembling hard economic times. Now it's coming. Some folks may stay, and then we'll know who our kindred spirits are.
Most we'll leave, and confirm the worst things we all thought about them.
^ This proves my theory: Atlantans hang out, New Yorkers hang on.
1) You can get pizza just as good upstate as you can here. If you can't, good pizza really isn't that hard to make yourself.
2) You don't need Central Park when you have, you know, a yard.
Bagels... you got me. For some reason that's something no one anywhere else can quite figure out.
"Skeptics say Atlanta, home of the 1996 Summer Olympics, risks becoming too cosmopolitan."
The worst fate of all for a city. Communist and subversive infiltrators.
""We are not going to get that sophisticated, damn it," native Mary Dobbs, 62, said.
Yeah goddamnmotherfuckah Yankees. Give'em hell Mary!
"We are not that involved in sports. We have other things to do.""
Zuh!?!...a preoccupation with Sports = Cosmopolitan. I need to sit down.
Ahem, now these are the people these fools chose to move in with. This confirms what 25 years of living in NYC has made me believe; everywhere else is a step down.
"Um lyke, I don't wanna have my kids, lyke, to talk with, lyke, a funny, lyke accent, and junk."
Enjoy hell Sunshine.
LOL.
I was born in NYC. Somehow I decided to go to Emory for 1 year before I realized how much Atlanta SUCKS. Awful awful awful. MARTA is a fucking joke, Atlanta is all full of disconnected neighborhoods and the food is awful except for the southern stuff.
I was one of the people featured in that Bloomberg article. We moved to Atlanta somewhat under protest, only because we had no choice but to leave NY due to the excessively expensive (fill in the blank) and a lack of professional opportunities for my school teacher wife. We've grown to like it here, though we do very much enjoy going back up North to visit.
Here are the well thought out reasons why a family from NY would conclude that Atlanta is a city worth living in:
1) We were able to buy the house of our dreams here. A house that would cost over a million in NY.
2) Our property taxes, auto insurance, homeowners insurance, etc. are orders of magnitude lower here than in NY.
3) My wife found work as a full time teacher in a great school easily. More than I can say for NY (Long Island, specifically), given the five years she spent looking for a job and working as a teaching assistant for a fraction of what she should have been making. (Before any idiots reply saying she must not be any good, you should familiarize yourself with the teaching landscape on Long Island. Each and every year over 1,000 newly minted teachers graduate from college and look for jobs in the hundred or so Long Island school districts. The problem is that the teachers never leave their jobs and few openings exist. Teachers routinely retire making well over $100,000/year. Schools are flooded with hundreds of resumes for every posted position. Just getting an interview is a miracle unto itself.)
4) Atlanta is rife with opportunity. We are both making more money than when we lived in NY.
5) There are plenty of family-centric activities around (if you look) and an easy weekend getaway to an interesting town, city or body of water can be had in any direction.
6) We can actually LIVE here, versus just getting by.
7) The weather is better.
8) The people are nicer.
The only real drawbacks I've found are the traffic and the lack of good pizza.