

Your City Sucks: Altanta - lanceweatherby
http://davideckoff.com/2010/11/your-city-sucks-and-so-does-mine-atlanta-version.html

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tcskeptic
The narrow minded comment made me chuckle. I no longer surprised by how myopic
certain people can be. In my personal experience moving between Chicago,
Appalachia, LA and now deep in the rural heart of Texas is that "broad
mindeded" people (especially those in larger cities) often overestimate their
own tolerance, and see no reason to be tolerant of, interested in
understanding the rural or southern culture within their own country, and have
a profoundly limited, almost cartoonish understanding of the motivations,
predjudices and attitudes of the same. I remember with particular humor a
roadtrip with people that I had worked with in some rough areas of Chicago to
Lvingston, TN. During the trip a couple of the group got into a discussion
without every having stepped from the van about how backward and prejudiced
the people in the area were.

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nspiegelberg
This. I moved to Silicon Valley from Huntsville, AL (< 1hr drive from KKK
birthplace, snake handlers, and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'). I've heard more
racist and sexist comments from educated people in SV than I did living in AL.
Sure, you have your fair share of stereotypical rednecks in AL, but the vast
majority of the population is mostly past that. SV just has a bay segregating
them instead of city blocks.

My coworkers expressed disgust that they might have trouble in AL going around
the office proudly proclaiming they were atheists. I told them that CA had a
similar paradigm too: Fox News.

...That being said: Atlanta is a cautionary tale of how laze-faire central
planning doesn't work.

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tel
Living in Atlanta for 4 years while in college at Georgia Tech, I can
basically corroborate on the opinions here (except the funding ones which I
have less information about).

My overall opinion about the city is that it in a lot of ways is looking to
other cities for inspiration, believing that Atlanta _needs to_ become a major
city of influence and prestige on the country and the world. With that goal,
however, there's currently far too much "us-too" leading to posturing and
materialism and burnout.

Underneath that exterior, of course, there are a whole ton of people in art,
music (huge underground music scene on the east side), and technology (lots of
engineers and young doctors) doing wonderful things. I think it'll come as a
surprise to many in the city that should that side of its culture ever take
hold that they might have a chance of actually developing a unique city
identity.

I'll also reiterate the point that Atlanta feels like a collection of
unconnected neighborhoods instead of a real city. The place was burned down
twice in history and rebuilt ostentatiously under the influence of zero
central planning. Roads meander oddly and there's a demand for a car given the
inadequate public transport MARTA provides. Traffic on the major in-city
highway, which is a perpetually under construction connector between two major
out of city highways, is almost always a parking lot and that spills into the
city making rush hours tricky at best. I managed to bike everywhere which is
adequate but not immediately safe. It can also be a bear to have to go 15
miles up and down hills to get to your favorite bar or a concert.

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jamesaguilar
I am already over the "Your X sucks" articles and we've only just gotten
started. The title is so irrelevantly offensive (since it has little to do
with the content).

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dabent
I live in Atlanta. The number one thing for me is this: "Traffic can be
horrendous, especially for those who live outside the city but work downtown."
Other than that, it's not a bad place to live, if you're just working a job.

For startups, there isn't anywhere near the investor community you'd find in
other cities, especially when compared to SV. For instance, Atlanta's Shotput
Ventures funded _one_ company in 2010, but Y Combinator funded dozens.

However, if you want to work for a Fortune 500 company, and have the sense to
live near where you work, Atlanta can be wonderful. You can find all kinds of
places that have tech shops or even their corp headquarters in town and
probably a cheap house, too.

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DanielStraight
I would love to see more of these. It's surprisingly hard to find good
summaries of what life in a city is really like, especially geared toward tech
people.

I'd volunteer to provide info on New Orleans, but I don't know enough to put
it together myself.

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davideckoff
I'd love to see these for a variety of cities. One way to put one together for
New Orleans: reach out to other tech people you know there, and collaborate.
That's what I did for Atlanta, and I got a much richer set of pros & cons than
I would if I had done it independently. The little bit of time spent
eliminating dupes and organizing it thematically, was well worth it. If you
write one for NOLA, do let me know, and I'll link to it.

I'd also love to see one for Austin, TX. And one for NYC.

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lusis
David, thanks for putting it together. That was kind of my goal for
sweatteamanifesto.com was this kind of information.

Atlanta is an awesome city. I'm surprised I didn't see anything about
Amendment 1 in there especially since you got Lance to comment ;)

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davideckoff
Yeah, I was surprised about that, too! But a fun mini-project, and shows what
banding together can do. Perhaps the best result is writing that post got me
to surface from a ton of work I've been doing, and get onto HN! I can pretty
quickly tell that there are some awesome people here.

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eavc
"The city is quite segregated (mexicans, white, black, asian, etc are in
certain areas and don’t often mix)."

Eh, kind of. It's more segregated by socio-economics just like everywhere
else. As a counterexample, many areas in Gwinnett contain Hispanics, whites,
Asians, and blacks. Many of the neighborhoods on the East and South of Atlanta
contain whites and blacks in mixed neighborhoods. I don't know that the
wealthy parts of town are any less diverse than the sample of wealthy people
overall. Mostly white, some black, some Indian, some Chinese, etc.

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matwood
I read the linked article and was immediately turned off the by narrowed
minded comment under cons. Just because someone disagrees with the authors
personal political ideology does not necessarily make them narrow minded. If
he was simply talking about racists, bigots, and the like then you can find
those in any city as large as Atlanta.

This author based his idea on the post here:

<http://stu.mp/2010/11/your-city-sucks-and-so-does-mine.html>

I disagree with a lot of what the author said were cons of Boulder. In a pro
he says good ski slopes are 3 hours away, but a con is Denver is too far. Huh?
Denver is plenty close enough to Boulder to drive to for a concert or to see a
professional sporting event if that's your thing.

The cold really isn't that bad here either. Does it get cold in the winter?
Yes, but it's not unbearable like Chicago or any other mid-western city. When
the sun comes out it really does feel much warmer here. I was in Oregon not
long ago and I had forgotten how miserable the wet cold feels even when the
thermometer says it's not that cold.

Now I gotta jet because I only live 1:30 away from good snow and it's opening
day at Keystone :D

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davidw
> I was in Oregon not long ago and I had forgotten how miserable the wet cold
> feels even when the thermometer says it's not that cold.

Precisely. It's the same here in Padova, where it gets humid and foggy in the
winter. It usually doesn't dip too far below freezing, but the humidity chills
you to the bone. Where we lived in Innsbruck, Austria was much colder, but it
was less humid so it didn't sink in the way the wet cold does.

And as a native of Oregon... yeah, rain and 5 C is about the worst thing out
there. You simply can't do stuff outdoors in that kind of weather and stay
warm for very long, no matter how much fancy technical gear you pile on: the
rain eventually soaks in and you start getting cold. Bleagh....

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arethuza
I've always wondered about that - to me -10C at ~1000m on a ski slope in
Scotland often feels _much_ colder than -35C at ~4000m in the Alps.

I've always assumed it was something to do with the humidity.

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cyanbane
have lived and hacked in metro/downtown Atlanta my entire adult life (however
decently well traveled inside and outside the US), I think the emphasis on
traffic being horrible cannot be understated. I would love to see a large
scale study of Atlanta residents' overall perception of Atlanta grouped by how
many miles they drive per week avg. It is an amazing city provided you are
within walking distance of your destination between the hours of 7am and 7pm
weekdays.

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simonjoe
I live in atlanta…pretty accurate. Except for the comment about the weather.
Yeah we have all 4 seasons…but we also have all 4 seasons once a week during
the so-called "fall" and "spring." And there's no snow. One morning or so a
year, there's a half-inch of snow on the ground. Occasionally, it's followed
by ice that the DOT covers with sand instead of salt for reasons that have
never been adequately explained.

Oh, and there's no such thing as clean local politics. Want something
passed…pay for it. Period.

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unwind
Maybe someone can edit the headline to correct the spelling? Thanks.

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wyclif
Altanta?

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icey
Not sure why you're getting piled on; the name is misspelled in the headline.

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itisfritz
I program in Buckhead on the the northside of Atlanta. If you are from here it
is a great place. Basically almost nobody is from here so one thing in common
everyone has is how long ago their family moved here.

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bobf
Buckhead is a really great area. If I had to compare it to somewhere in the
SF/SV area, it would probably be most comparable to Palo Alto. I've been in
Atlanta twice over the past year, and spent most of each trip in Buckhead.
There are _tons_ of great restaurants, but my two picks so far would be
Woodfire Grill for dinner and Buckhead Diner for brunch. I really can't say
enough good things about Woodfire Grill -- it was probably the best meal I've
ever had.

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lanceweatherby
The Chef there won "Top Chef" one year.

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bobf
Yep! That's why I went there the first time. It was amazing, so I went back
again on my next trip to Atlanta. Interestingly, he was in the "kitchen" (at
the woodfire grill, actually) cooking both times -- most well-known chefs are
more restaurateurs than chefs.

