ABQ after two years
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1/15/2008
We bought a house outside of ABQ just about two years ago. We moved out of Phoenix, because Phoenix IS everything that some people here accuse ABQ of being: hot, dirty, crime-ridden, overpriced for the underpaid, etc. I lived in Phoenix for 35 years; so I know what I say when I report that ABQ is pretty much what Phoenix was like 30 years ago, before it turned into LA West. Compared to places like Phoenix and LA, ABQ is inexpensive, clean and comparatively safe.
Last summer was so mild and dry that we only turned on the evap cooler in late June (don't have AC in our newly built custom home - and don't need it here.) I seem to recall that it was in the 90s, which I consider to be spring weather. The locals have a really skewed sense of temperature and act like 70 is hot. Winters are relatively mild for a place where the locals think 70-something is hot, but cold and snowy for my taste. It's warmer and less snowy than the winter of 06-07, but it's barely gotten out of the 40s for weeks. It can be brutally windy for days on end. However, compared to Phoenix, where the sky only comes in shades of brown for half the year, they skies are remarkably blue and clear.
We have found the job situation better here than in Phoenix, where there is such a huge population base that job descriptions are incredibly picky and you are often competing with hordes of people for anything. A 4-year degree and typical big city midcareer experience has gotten both of us jobs that we couldn't even have applied for back in Phoenix.
I can't speak for schools, since we have no children.
Drivers here are polite and tentative. As a Phoenix driver, I have to consciously make a point of leaving the hostile, high-speed driving which I have known my whole life behind. There's also a lack of a certain cultural ethos which thinks it's cool to drive half the speed limit.
Abhd | Moriarty, NM