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Nice armchair analysis. With all due respect to a fellow (once upon a time for me) Eastsider, I am going to disagree with you about your last point for a number of reasons. Lets take Milwaukee into consideration since we are both familiar with this city. I will refute every aspect of your assertion # by #.
10. Hyper-segregated MKE is not blatantly racist. Yes, I have come across some instances of bigotry, but not nearly to the degree in Phoenix.
9. The quality of public education in Wisconsin and MKE particularly rank in the top five every year.
8. Milwaukee is extremely diverse and worldly, even for such a small city. Calatrava would never build something in PHX...he would find this place appalling. I assure you.
7. The housing stock in Milwaukee was built by skilled European craftspeople. Look at the churches, the older homes (especially on Lake Drive.)
6. Milwaukee was one of the first cities in the United States with a public health department. This was started by a long line of Socialist mayors. Milwaukee was the first city in the US with an elected socialist mayor. (They actually cleaned the town up.)
5. Many of the parks in the city were designed by Frederick Olmstead who designed Central Park in New York. The street car system and city steam system attest to the quality planning that went into the city.
4. Milwaukee has an insane amount of QUALITY options for food. From German to Armenian, Korean, Middle Eastern etc. Many authentic, many nationally known or award winning. Maders.....nough said.
3. You don't need a car in Milwaukee. Mine sat in a garage for the almost 5 years I was there. Extremely easy to get around by foot.
2. A completely disproportionate concentration of globally recognized fortune 500 companies. Harley Davidson, Northwestern Mutual, Manpower, Miller....the list goes on.
1.The city has gotten better just within a few years. The UWM is building a school of freshwater science, a state of the art engineering campus, and continues to make strides in research. Even with the harsh winters and uncooperative weather patterns, MKE attracts investment from all over the world.
Now, before everyone chimes in, this post (for the 3rd time now) is for people thinking about moving to PHX. If you want to give me your freshmen year of college psychoanalysis, please send me a message instead of posting it here. Also, this was just to illustrate to our friend here that even a city like Milwaukee, which is constantly the butt of jokes for being small and unsophisticated, dwarfs a much larger city like Phoenix in regards to culture, education and general quality of life. I can also do this for every city I have lived in the past 15 years including LA, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Boston and Philly. So, if you need more clarification please send me a message and I can give you irrefutable evidence for why you are wrong.
The thing people that bash one city or another have to understand is that is there OPINION. Trying to convince someone your opinion is correct and others are wrong is idiotic. Different people enjoy different things and in my time in Phoenix everyone I have met loves it here. For someone who says people here are close minded, that is an extremely close minded thing to say. People who believe only their opinion is valid are ignorant and arrogant. If you were seriously looking for a job you shouldn't be wasting your time writing on a blog. Please stop playing the victim card if you really were as great as you say you there would be corporations seeking you out. This is your socialistic view that you're the victim, NO you're not willing to make the sacrifices needed to succeed. Anyone who puts effort in to being negative is going to be a negative person. Have fun blameing everyone else for your problems.
You need to read who the author of each post is...
I'm not actually looking for a job. I think you're confusing me with someone else. I am employed here in PHX and am transferring with the same company to MSP.
Also, if you want to learn a little bit more about how one can go making accusations about a city and be right, read a little about this well-known
urban and social theorist:
Also, if you want to learn a little bit more about how one can go making accusations about a city and be right, read a little about this well-known
urban and social theorist:
...
Quote:
People who believe only their opinion is valid are ignorant and arrogant.
#2 is funny--yup, seems so. Lots of things are run kinda half-as*ed out here--lax and informal to an extreme. Quality is not the focus, rather quantity and the "whatever" factor is more prevalent.
Nice armchair analysis. With all due respect to a fellow (once upon a time for me) Eastsider, I am going to disagree with you about your last point for a number of reasons. Lets take Milwaukee into consideration since we are both familiar with this city. I will refute every aspect of your assertion # by #.
10. Hyper-segregated MKE is not blatantly racist. Yes, I have come across some instances of bigotry, but not nearly to the degree in Phoenix.
9. The quality of public education in Wisconsin and MKE particularly rank in the top five every year.
8. Milwaukee is extremely diverse and worldly, even for such a small city. Calatrava would never build something in PHX...he would find this place appalling. I assure you.
7. The housing stock in Milwaukee was built by skilled European craftspeople. Look at the churches, the older homes (especially on Lake Drive.)
6. Milwaukee was one of the first cities in the United States with a public health department. This was started by a long line of Socialist mayors. Milwaukee was the first city in the US with an elected socialist mayor. (They actually cleaned the town up.)
5. Many of the parks in the city were designed by Frederick Olmstead who designed Central Park in New York. The street car system and city steam system attest to the quality planning that went into the city.
4. Milwaukee has an insane amount of QUALITY options for food. From German to Armenian, Korean, Middle Eastern etc. Many authentic, many nationally known or award winning. Maders.....nough said.
3. You don't need a car in Milwaukee. Mine sat in a garage for the almost 5 years I was there. Extremely easy to get around by foot.
2. A completely disproportionate concentration of globally recognized fortune 500 companies. Harley Davidson, Northwestern Mutual, Manpower, Miller....the list goes on.
1.The city has gotten better just within a few years. The UWM is building a school of freshwater science, a state of the art engineering campus, and continues to make strides in research. Even with the harsh winters and uncooperative weather patterns, MKE attracts investment from all over the world.
Now, before everyone chimes in, this post (for the 3rd time now) is for people thinking about moving to PHX. If you want to give me your freshmen year of college psychoanalysis, please send me a message instead of posting it here. Also, this was just to illustrate to our friend here that even a city like Milwaukee, which is constantly the butt of jokes for being small and unsophisticated, dwarfs a much larger city like Phoenix in regards to culture, education and general quality of life. I can also do this for every city I have lived in the past 15 years including LA, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Boston and Philly. So, if you need more clarification please send me a message and I can give you irrefutable evidence for why you are wrong.
Classic. Defensive too, which is predictable given that I've uncovered your precarious condition. It's amusing that you are comparing Phoenix to LA, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, and the Bos-Wash corridor (which is where I moved from). Of course, when you moved to Phoenix, you thought that it would be just like those cities like everyone else does.
Let's look at your Phoenix vs. elsewhere "Top Ten" list. Basically you want a northeastern city, and your comparisons are completely irrelevant.
10. You are wrong about racism. Your anecdotal evidence is trumped by my more accurate anecdotal evidence. I have never heard or seen any obvious signs of racism in Phoenix. Phoenix is classist. Society is divided by economics. Milwaukee (and most northern cities) are products of racism and segregation created by heavy socialist entitlement programs of the mid century. Chicago suffers from the same problems.
9. Suburban education is good in Milwaukee, in some districts. MPS is a disaster area. Were it not for a couple of schools that buck the hopelessness of the MPS system, it would be the laughing stock of Wisconsin education. This is not convenient to your argument, so you neglected to mention it.
8. Small segments of Milwaukee have worldly qualities and an educated population. Educated people tend to... "get out more". Most of the city is still populated by people who are either afraid of, or refuse to acknowledge the presence of Chicago (90 miles city center to city center). Santiago Calatrava, by the way, was commissioned to design the Milwaukee Art Museum addition, he didn't roll into town and decide to build a monument. I'm amused that you are able to assure me that Santiago Calatrava--a world class architect--would think Phoenix is appalling. This is a psychological aberration.
7. I didn't know that people consider old world churches a factor when choosing a city. Eastern cities like Milwaukee (since we're using that example), are older and have more old construction. The well maintained older areas of eastern cities are comparable to well maintained old areas of Phoenix, and the construction techniques are similar, with differences for available construction materials and weather. Comparing homes from the same period to homes in the east, Phoenix has equally good housing stock. You have chosen to compare the 90s and 2000s tract housing stock to 1920's old world craftsman homes, which illustrates my point about you digging up false arguments to allay your anger at moving away from Phoenix.
6. Yet another fine point. Milwaukee and it's socialist past. So great was the era of entitlement programs in northern cities, that those very cities became government endorsed and funded dormitories for the unproductive class. From there, the snowball effect took over. Segregation. Teenage pregnancy. Drug abuse. Rampant violent crime. For the sake of your argument, you wish to acknowledge social programs from sixty years ago, but overlook the horrible results that they produced. That's not how it works.
5. A street car system in Milwaukee shows urban planning? It was so good that it was ripped out, replaced by a crappy bus system. Since Phoenix is in the desert, a "city steam system" used to heat buildings is useless. Phoenix has an excellent park system, but the geography isn't comparable to New York.
4. Sorry, not "nough said". Phoenix has plenty of non-chain options as well. I'm literally surrounded by them downtown. Phoenix wasn't settled by the same people as eastern cities. Again, you want Phoenix to be a clone of an eastern city, which it isn't. Having Armenian food isn't the sign of a good city. Sorry.
3. Fail. You do not need a car in Phoenix any more or less than you need one in Milwaukee. You need a car to live in your neighborhood, perhaps, or to commute from your neighborhood to your job. You mentioned Bell Road. Bell Road is the equivalent of living in Naperville or Gurnee IL. Or any suburban area in the world. Suburbs are all the same in every city. You're blaming Phoenix for something that you did to yourself. I am in Phoenix now, and haven't driven anywhere since Sunday. I drive the same miles in Phoenix as in Milwaukee, except in Phoenix, I can take a train to the airport in 20 minutes, but in Milwaukee, I have to drive or take an airport shuttle for the short trip.
2. Disproportionate only because Milwaukee is much older, and was once a manufacturing powerhouse. Again, strictly apples to oranges.
1. Milwaukee is infamous for losing its brightest young minds (look for threads in this very site about Milwaukee's "brain drain", or google it). UWM is an OK school. It's using an ASU-like strategy to legitimize itself in education. That is, they will let anyone in the doors, but they now offer more competitive specialty programs that attract students who may have previously not even considered the school, favoring more specialized, competitive education elsewhere. I hope it works.
Now, to quote you, "before you chime in", this post was to give an example to "our friend" (you), who is a garden variety example of people who move from other cities and expect Phoenix to be another city. I do wish you the best moving to a city that I like very much, MSP. You'll need a car unless you live very close to the city center. It's much like Phoenix in that respect.
My suggestion to people who move to Phoenix, is to examine your needs and wants first, find the area that closely represents what you want, then move. If you value old world craftsmanship, don't move to a neighborhood full of 2003 homes. If you want unique dining experiences and the ability to get around on foot, don't move to Surprise or Deer Valley or Gilbert or Queen Creek. If you are moving from Lincoln Park in the city of Chicago, don't beef about having to own a car when you move to North Scottsdale. Don't blame Phoenix for your inability to have a social life, or for ruining your financial well being, or for any other thing that is directly a result of decisions you make.
And if you do move to Phoenix and don't like it, just admit you screwed up, or that you learned that it's not for you. Not every place is for every person.
Finally, to anyone who is considering relocating to Phoenix, ignore the OP's rants. They are nothing but magnified annoyances of a person wishing to sever all ties with the city before moving on to Minneapolis. Minneapolis is a nice city. I'm sure they will like it a lot.
Last edited by 43north87west; 11-05-2010 at 11:14 AM..
I think you are projecting just a little bit. Phoenix didn't ruin my financial situation, on the contrary, I am making more than I ever have and have actually climbed 2 tax brackets in the time I have been here. WRONG and presumptuous. I am not blaming Phoenix for anything but being a gargantuan waste of time. I am not going to spend much time as I did last time refuting your points but I will give it a go in the 10 minutes I have until my next appt comes in.
10- Never heard a racial slur directed toward someone EVER until I moved here. Specific example, was crossing the street on a flashing don't walk, man in large truck tells them to "move your Ni**er A$ses." Never seen that ANYWHERE.
9-Shorewood, Whitefishbay, Bayside, Marquette, Tosa. All urban schools. Wrong again. You are employing some socioeconomic stereotyping too. (You should probably seek some help. Probably a traumatic childhood experience.)
8-Calatrava adopted Milwaukee and often reffered to it as a second home....in fact, HE MAINTAINS A RESIDENCE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE (AND AN OFFICE) WRONG AGAIN.
7.Wrong again.....not even worth defending. You gave me 0 to work with here.
6. Norquist was a socialist in every conceivable way. You must have not lived there long. He was going strong well into the 90's.
5. You must have not understood what I meant by this. THERE WAS NO EFFORT MADE TO PLAN PHOENIX. None. Sprawl and band aid projects like the failed light rail. You get this one back for missing the point entirely.
4. The food (overall) here is awful....I chalk this one up to pure delusion.
3. You must have lived in Brookfield. I drove a handful of times while living there. Got around by Bus, Bike and foot in a reasonable amount of time to every destination. Tried it in Phoenix.....buses schedule was infrequent and unreliable. Light rail is inaccessible to residents everywhere but downtown and Tempe. Just plain wrong.
2. Phoenix is part of the illustrious Sun Belt....WHERE IS THE INVESTMENT? The age of the city is irrelevant. It has EVERYTHING to do with quality of the workforce.
1. MKE has brains to drain! That is my point! It cultivates a creative and talented workforce.
In my 3 minutes of cursory review I see that you provided nothing but common stereotypes in the defense of a dying city. I don't even really think you spent much time in MKE. You also provided no specific examples about Phoenix in the fashion I did for MKE.
Location: Sunny Phoenix Arizona...wishing for a beach.
4,300 posts, read 14,953,183 times
Reputation: 813
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pillage Your Village
I think you are projecting just a little bit. Phoenix didn't ruin my financial situation, on the contrary, I am making more than I ever have and have actually climbed 2 tax brackets in the time I have been here. WRONG and presumptuous. I am not blaming Phoenix for anything but being a gargantuan waste of time. I am not going to spend much time as I did last time refuting your points but I will give it a go in the 10 minutes I have until my next appt comes in.
10- Never heard a racial slur directed toward someone EVER until I moved here. Specific example, was crossing the street on a flashing don't walk, man in large truck tells them to "move your Ni**er A$ses." Never seen that ANYWHERE.
9-Shorewood, Whitefishbay, Bayside, Marquette, Tosa. All urban schools. Wrong again. You are employing some socioeconomic stereotyping too. (You should probably seek some help. Probably a traumatic childhood experience.)
8-Calatrava adopted Milwaukee and often reffered to it as a second home....in fact, HE MAINTAINS A RESIDENCE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE (AND AN OFFICE) WRONG AGAIN.
7.Wrong again.....not even worth defending. You gave me 0 to work with here.
6. Norquist was a socialist in every conceivable way. You must have not lived there long. He was going strong well into the 90's.
5. You must have not understood what I meant by this. THERE WAS NO EFFORT MADE TO PLAN PHOENIX. None. Sprawl and band aid projects like the failed light rail. You get this one back for missing the point entirely.
4. The food (overall) here is awful....I chalk this one up to pure delusion.
3. You must have lived in Brookfield. I drove a handful of times while living there. Got around by Bus, Bike and foot in a reasonable amount of time to every destination. Tried it in Phoenix.....buses schedule was infrequent and unreliable. Light rail is inaccessible to residents everywhere but downtown and Tempe. Just plain wrong.
2. Phoenix is part of the illustrious Sun Belt....WHERE IS THE INVESTMENT? The age of the city is irrelevant. It has EVERYTHING to do with quality of the workforce.
1. MKE has brains to drain! That is my point! It cultivates a creative and talented workforce.
In my 3 minutes of cursory review I see that you provided nothing but common stereotypes in the defense of a dying city. I don't even really think you spent much time in MKE. You also provided no specific examples about Phoenix in the fashion I did for MKE.
You never heard a racial slur until you moved here? What part of New York did you live in? I was brought up with racial slurs.
Location: Sunny Phoenix Arizona...wishing for a beach.
4,300 posts, read 14,953,183 times
Reputation: 813
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pillage Your Village
Nice armchair analysis. With all due respect to a fellow (once upon a time for me) Eastsider, I am going to disagree with you about your last point for a number of reasons. Lets take Milwaukee into consideration since we are both familiar with this city. I will refute every aspect of your assertion # by #.
10. Hyper-segregated MKE is not blatantly racist. Yes, I have come across some instances of bigotry, but not nearly to the degree in Phoenix.
9. The quality of public education in Wisconsin and MKE particularly rank in the top five every year.
8. Milwaukee is extremely diverse and worldly, even for such a small city. Calatrava would never build something in PHX...he would find this place appalling. I assure you.
7. The housing stock in Milwaukee was built by skilled European craftspeople. Look at the churches, the older homes (especially on Lake Drive.)
6. Milwaukee was one of the first cities in the United States with a public health department. This was started by a long line of Socialist mayors. Milwaukee was the first city in the US with an elected socialist mayor. (They actually cleaned the town up.)
5. Many of the parks in the city were designed by Frederick Olmstead who designed Central Park in New York. The street car system and city steam system attest to the quality planning that went into the city.
4. Milwaukee has an insane amount of QUALITY options for food. From German to Armenian, Korean, Middle Eastern etc. Many authentic, many nationally known or award winning. Maders.....nough said.
3. You don't need a car in Milwaukee. Mine sat in a garage for the almost 5 years I was there. Extremely easy to get around by foot.
2. A completely disproportionate concentration of globally recognized fortune 500 companies. Harley Davidson, Northwestern Mutual, Manpower, Miller....the list goes on.
1.The city has gotten better just within a few years. The UWM is building a school of freshwater science, a state of the art engineering campus, and continues to make strides in research. Even with the harsh winters and uncooperative weather patterns, MKE attracts investment from all over the world.
Now, before everyone chimes in, this post (for the 3rd time now) is for people thinking about moving to PHX. If you want to give me your freshmen year of college psychoanalysis, please send me a message instead of posting it here. Also, this was just to illustrate to our friend here that even a city like Milwaukee, which is constantly the butt of jokes for being small and unsophisticated, dwarfs a much larger city like Phoenix in regards to culture, education and general quality of life. I can also do this for every city I have lived in the past 15 years including LA, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Boston and Philly. So, if you need more clarification please send me a message and I can give you irrefutable evidence for why you are wrong.
You haven't heard a racial slur in Philly either? I can give you my sister in-law's email address she will give you an earful on Philly. Last time I went to a mall in Philly we almost got a bullet in our head over a parking spot.
The OP mentioned he has lived in at least 8 cities, including Phoenix, in the past 15 years. That's an average of 2 years per city. Apparently those other cities didn't measure up either. I feel bad that he had such a negative experience here, but I have to say I disagree almost totally with his list. Well, maybe not #2. And I can't remember the number, but I happen to live in a brick, not a stucco, house.
Classic. Defensive too, which is predictable given that I've uncovered your precarious condition. It's amusing that you are comparing Phoenix to LA, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, and the Bos-Wash corridor (which is where I moved from). Of course, when you moved to Phoenix, you thought that it would be just like those cities like everyone else does.
Let's look at your Phoenix vs. elsewhere "Top Ten" list. Basically you want a northeastern city, and your comparisons are completely irrelevant.
10. You are wrong about racism. Your anecdotal evidence is trumped by my more accurate anecdotal evidence. I have never heard or seen any obvious signs of racism in Phoenix. Phoenix is classist. Society is divided by economics. Milwaukee (and most northern cities) are products of racism and segregation created by heavy socialist entitlement programs of the mid century. Chicago suffers from the same problems.
9. Suburban education is good in Milwaukee, in some districts. MPS is a disaster area. Were it not for a couple of schools that buck the hopelessness of the MPS system, it would be the laughing stock of Wisconsin education. This is not convenient to your argument, so you neglected to mention it.
8. Small segments of Milwaukee have worldly qualities and an educated population. Educated people tend to... "get out more". Most of the city is still populated by people who are either afraid of, or refuse to acknowledge the presence of Chicago (90 miles city center to city center). Santiago Calatrava, by the way, was commissioned to design the Milwaukee Art Museum addition, he didn't roll into town and decide to build a monument. I'm amused that you are able to assure me that Santiago Calatrava--a world class architect--would think Phoenix is appalling. This is a psychological aberration.
7. I didn't know that people consider old world churches a factor when choosing a city. Eastern cities like Milwaukee (since we're using that example), are older and have more old construction. The well maintained older areas of eastern cities are comparable to well maintained old areas of Phoenix, and the construction techniques are similar, with differences for available construction materials and weather. Comparing homes from the same period to homes in the east, Phoenix has equally good housing stock. You have chosen to compare the 90s and 2000s tract housing stock to 1920's old world craftsman homes, which illustrates my point about you digging up false arguments to allay your anger at moving away from Phoenix.
6. Yet another fine point. Milwaukee and it's socialist past. So great was the era of entitlement programs in northern cities, that those very cities became government endorsed and funded dormitories for the unproductive class. From there, the snowball effect took over. Segregation. Teenage pregnancy. Drug abuse. Rampant violent crime. For the sake of your argument, you wish to acknowledge social programs from sixty years ago, but overlook the horrible results that they produced. That's not how it works.
5. A street car system in Milwaukee shows urban planning? It was so good that it was ripped out, replaced by a crappy bus system. Since Phoenix is in the desert, a "city steam system" used to heat buildings is useless. Phoenix has an excellent park system, but the geography isn't comparable to New York.
4. Sorry, not "nough said". Phoenix has plenty of non-chain options as well. I'm literally surrounded by them downtown. Phoenix wasn't settled by the same people as eastern cities. Again, you want Phoenix to be a clone of an eastern city, which it isn't. Having Armenian food isn't the sign of a good city. Sorry.
3. Fail. You do not need a car in Phoenix any more or less than you need one in Milwaukee. You need a car to live in your neighborhood, perhaps, or to commute from your neighborhood to your job. You mentioned Bell Road. Bell Road is the equivalent of living in Naperville or Gurnee IL. Or any suburban area in the world. Suburbs are all the same in every city. You're blaming Phoenix for something that you did to yourself. I am in Phoenix now, and haven't driven anywhere since Sunday. I drive the same miles in Phoenix as in Milwaukee, except in Phoenix, I can take a train to the airport in 20 minutes, but in Milwaukee, I have to drive or take an airport shuttle for the short trip.
2. Disproportionate only because Milwaukee is much older, and was once a manufacturing powerhouse. Again, strictly apples to oranges.
1. Milwaukee is infamous for losing its brightest young minds (look for threads in this very site about Milwaukee's "brain drain", or google it). UWM is an OK school. It's using an ASU-like strategy to legitimize itself in education. That is, they will let anyone in the doors, but they now offer more competitive specialty programs that attract students who may have previously not even considered the school, favoring more specialized, competitive education elsewhere. I hope it works.
Now, to quote you, "before you chime in", this post was to give an example to "our friend" (you), who is a garden variety example of people who move from other cities and expect Phoenix to be another city. I do wish you the best moving to a city that I like very much, MSP. You'll need a car unless you live very close to the city center. It's much like Phoenix in that respect.
My suggestion to people who move to Phoenix, is to examine your needs and wants first, find the area that closely represents what you want, then move. If you value old world craftsmanship, don't move to a neighborhood full of 2003 homes. If you want unique dining experiences and the ability to get around on foot, don't move to Surprise or Deer Valley or Gilbert or Queen Creek. If you are moving from Lincoln Park in the city of Chicago, don't beef about having to own a car when you move to North Scottsdale. Don't blame Phoenix for your inability to have a social life, or for ruining your financial well being, or for any other thing that is directly a result of decisions you make.
And if you do move to Phoenix and don't like it, just admit you screwed up, or that you learned that it's not for you. Not every place is for every person.
Finally, to anyone who is considering relocating to Phoenix, ignore the OP's rants. They are nothing but magnified annoyances of a person wishing to sever all ties with the city before moving on to Minneapolis. Minneapolis is a nice city. I'm sure they will like it a lot.
Well said!
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