Quality of Life in Richmond
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3/15/2010
I moved to Richmond from Savannah in 1975 to take a professorship in the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University and helped to build the School's reputation over the course of the next 30 years. Before 1975 I had lived in New York City--now there is a city to be recommended--for five years off and on attending New York University.
I thought that Richmond would be a lot like Savannah, but it turned out to be a lot like Charleston--a really stuffy town too. What a shock it was!!
And I had left a tenured position at a liberal arts college in Savannah. There was to be no return.
In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Richmond rolled up the sidewalks come nightfall, so we went to Washington--another great town--on the weekends to have something to do. Very disappointing, but that is the way it was. Richmond could grow into being the largest city in the world and that would not affect its ultra-conservative, orthodox stogginess, which it wreaks of.
I am a queer man with a partner of 44 years and counting, so you can imagine what life was like during those 30 years. And by the way, the queers are just as conservative and stoggy as the straights. Pretentious, nothing interesting about them. The only friends we had were straights who in fact did think outside the box as the one commentator mentioned. You can find them even in a dire place like Richmond, but that yields no reason to move to the place if you can possibly do otherwise. I stayed because I had a good career going, and my partner had one going too. Today, I believe that I should have found another job when I was younger and was being offered positions at other universities, and we should have gotten the hell out of Dodge sooner rather than later. Of course we cannot execute decisions about the past.
After 25 years, my partner took an early retirement from the University of Richmond and moved to New Orleans--at least it is an interesting place no matter what you think of it--to develop side-by-side lots that we owned there into a Bed and Breakfast (www.brackethouse.com) that he later sold when he retired a second time. We lived apart during those last years before I too retired and I commuted by air back and forth once a month
thereabouts. Which would you chose to visit, Richmond or New Orleans?
Five years ago, I finally, finally retired--bored time does not pass
quickly--and left Richmond. May god bless you unfortunates who feel you must live there. To survive I turned to my work and built quite an inventory of scholarly research publications and wrote four books. Real life then took place at home and when we left town.
Today, we live near Mexico City in a safe, worry-free environment where there are no attitudes against outsiders of any color, shape or hue. You can compare Mexico City to New York or London. There is everything to do, and the creative spirit flourishes here. Mexico City, not Miami, is the destination of choice throughout Latin America. Perhaps we will move to Madrid in a year or so.
If you are not conservative and raising a family, either get out of town or do not come in the first place. Whatever you choose to do, take note that Richmond will remain the same. The blacks are full of venom even today. Think Nelson Mandela if you want contrast. The devotion there to the memory of the Civil War is absolutely bizarre. Looking backward is a good way to rearend someone.
Bp | Richmond, VA