Life in the Big City
A lot of folks I talk to are under the (mistaken) impression that Columbus is some little hick town in Georgia. Far from it. Columbus is the second-largest city in Georgia. For those of you in Michigan, its kind of like Pontiac or Flint, only without the close proximity to a major city. Atlanta is about 1 1/2 hours away, so Columbus is very self-contained. But it has many of the same problems as both of those cities.
Columbus' geography is interesting. See, there are no suburbs to Columbus, because the City shares a consolidated government with Muscogee County, so if you're in the county, you're in Columbus. But there are very distinct sections to the city. I live in the north part of Columbus, also known as the "nice" part of town. South Columbus is the older part of town, and more notably, the side of town close to Fort Benning, so there's a lot of strip clubs, tattoo parlors and pawn shops. It's also the "black" side of town and the "poor" side of town.
Now, that's not to say that the north side doesn't have it's problems. On Thursday, just about two miles from our apartment, two people were gunned down as they were pumping gas at noon on one of the busiest roads in the city (Veteran's Parkway is kind of like our Woodward or Telegraph, if you're from Metro Detroit). People I saw at the baseball game last night were telling me they drove past on their lunch hour and saw the bodies just lying there next to the gas pumps. Last year, there were two murders within a quarter-mile of our old apartment. One was a shooting at the Waffle House on the corner (and if you've ever been in the South, you know there's a Waffle House on every corner), the other occurred when two bouncers at a bar in a strip mall beat a patron to death. Nice, huh?
A lot of folks I talk to are under the (mistaken) impression that Columbus is some little hick town in Georgia. Far from it. Columbus is the second-largest city in Georgia. For those of you in Michigan, its kind of like Pontiac or Flint, only without the close proximity to a major city. Atlanta is about 1 1/2 hours away, so Columbus is very self-contained. But it has many of the same problems as both of those cities.
Columbus' geography is interesting. See, there are no suburbs to Columbus, because the City shares a consolidated government with Muscogee County, so if you're in the county, you're in Columbus. But there are very distinct sections to the city. I live in the north part of Columbus, also known as the "nice" part of town. South Columbus is the older part of town, and more notably, the side of town close to Fort Benning, so there's a lot of strip clubs, tattoo parlors and pawn shops. It's also the "black" side of town and the "poor" side of town.
Now, that's not to say that the north side doesn't have it's problems. On Thursday, just about two miles from our apartment, two people were gunned down as they were pumping gas at noon on one of the busiest roads in the city (Veteran's Parkway is kind of like our Woodward or Telegraph, if you're from Metro Detroit). People I saw at the baseball game last night were telling me they drove past on their lunch hour and saw the bodies just lying there next to the gas pumps. Last year, there were two murders within a quarter-mile of our old apartment. One was a shooting at the Waffle House on the corner (and if you've ever been in the South, you know there's a Waffle House on every corner), the other occurred when two bouncers at a bar in a strip mall beat a patron to death. Nice, huh?
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