The metro ATL is far easier to deal with than most places
I just came across an online article about someone who came up
with today’s costs to live in the home depicted on the late 1980s/early 1990s
situation comedy Full House. Now that
many of the characters have been resurrected on the Netflix’s program, Fuller House, PopSugar figured out how
much it would cost the Tanner family to live in that same house in 2016. The
price tag is a whopping $3 million. The early 1990s cost to be in that same
house was around $440,000.
Now everyone knows that the city by the bay has always been
expensive, but over the past quarter century, its costs have skyrocketed.
Speaking of San Fran, I caught the last half hour of San Andreas, the wannabe Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson disaster thriller
set in that city. San Andreas depicts
the ‘perfect storm’ with San Francisco getting hit with super-earthquakes and a
tsunami never before seen. The channel guide gave the film two stars so right
there that’s being generous. Perhaps if the film was marketed as a comedy, it
would have received more stars. Indeed the digital effects are spectacular, but
seeing AT&T Park collapsing and the city drowning with water levels
reaching beyond the 10th floor on some skyscrapers, I just had to
laugh.
Or maybe I shouldn’t laugh. Maybe the folks who put San Andreas together know things that we
do not know. Maybe the 2015 film is a
premonition for worse things to come for San Francisco. I’m wondering if this
film was ever shown in San Francisco. One thing is for certain, San Andreas is not a great film for
their tourist industry.
Which brings me back to the Atlanta metro area. Yes, the ATL can
get pretty bad weather in the form of strong storms/tornadoes, ice storms and
bad heat. Yes, the ATL has awful traffic. Here’s the thing: the ATL is
affordable compared to cities like San Francisco. Certainly San Fran is
wonderful to visit, but live there, it seems like you have to be in the ‘tech
club.’ The ‘tech club’ is where one has a high-tech job that pays astronomical
sums of dollars which get quickly spent on the high cost of living in that
city. In the ATL, living and working here is doable. Plus, there’s much to
boast about in Atlanta. According to the city’s stats, Atlanta is one of the
top 10 U.S. cities for foreign investment, resulting in 130,000 jobs. Atlanta
ended 2015 with $142 million in reserves, property taxes have not been raised
in four years. Atlanta has the highest concentration of Fortune 500 businesses.
Felony crimes are the lowest since 1969 in the city. The best part is that Atlanta hired more police, firefighters and
reopened youth recreation centers – all the while protecting pensions, indeed
loads of controversy, but had to make tough choices.
Yes, the ATL is far from perfect. Indeed, there’s political
corruption just like anywhere else. Recently we have seen the spate of stories
of high-speed police chases ending in tragedy. Furthermore, like other big
American cities, we’re seeing a heroin problems not in the cities proper, but
in the more affluent suburbs. Still people from all walks of life have a
greater chance to make it here due to far fewer barriers than one would expect
in larger more expensive places.
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