Louisville "Home Town"
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1/4/2010
Both me and my wife grew up in Louisville and left shortly after graduating college. We have lived in Philadelphia, Lexington, Lafayette (IN), Colorado Springs, Dallas, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Omaha and Chicago for the last 8 years. All family on both sides are there and have never moved anywhere else. As I run across people who have cycled through Louisville a common observation is that "They seem very self satisfied..." In other words generally know nothing else and therefore the group think is that it is a great place to be and even gets better. As well, there is a none to subtle conspiricy of thought and practice to not speak ill of the city and its people...in fact you are likely to be cut off or shuned if you offer "constructive Criticism". The deep roots of the majority of the population support these attitudes and beliefs, self fullfilling in any case. The caste system is hierarchically driven by, interestingly enough, by what high school you went to and secondarily what college. Private catholic schools generally riegn supreme. Employment tends to be pretty stable but wages/salaries are low...internally competitive. With external candidates the case is made that the cost of living is sooo much lower, but, it is never as low as the comparable salary offered. Take for instance the comparison of Chicago to Louisville. Louisvile has approximately a 25% lower cost of living but a salary for the same level of position will and has been between 40-50%. The result is an incestuous low pay system for all but the top 2% earners. What inherently adds to the cost of living behind the scenes is that any educated family of reasonable means moving to the city will likely feel compeled to send their kids to private school at 10K a year per kid. The down town has gone through several attempts at metamorphosis all with fanfare delivering underwhelming sustainable results. On a recent trip there we were in downtown on a weekend day and it was like a ghost town...apparently only special events draw folks to center city. All in all the criticisms of my home town are based on the underlying concept that if you only compare yourself against yourself the results are predictable. All that being said it really is not a bad place to live, if you are reasonably finanacially comfortable and are wired in!...breaking in and up is nearly impossible without a pre-ordained pedigree...a vestige of the old South. Would I live there again? Yes...it would be a good place to ease into retirement.
Richard | Lake Zurich, IL