Fairy dust and hypnotism
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6/28/2007
Lived in Scottsdale and NE Phx for over 20 years, now relocated. I'm a professional with an income many times the national average income and a lot of contact with the public. In my opinion, the quality of a place to live is related to the people who live there and the prevailing attitudes and influences. Scottsdale is a physically beautiful place-"Disney desert"-planned that way by the City of Scottsdale and developers to sell parched desert at absurd prices nicely repackaged into the aesthetically acceptable "Disney desert" to maintain the tax base and the only "industry" sustainable-selling real estate. Once you get past the physical appearance and the impressive show of dough ($) and live there a while, you know it's MUCH different than appears. Overall a crassness of attitude, centered around appearances, materialism and one-upsmanship. A lot of desperation, both emotional and financial caused by the above attitudes and everyone being over-extended financially to keep up appearances. One poster mentioned the noted pretentiousness of Scottsdale women. This is a prominent and prevalent characteristic of the place. Overall, character, values, sincerity, integrity are way down the list of importance as money (or a show of such, anyway), appearance, pomposity/pretentiousness-"flash"-are really what's important to the people there. It is absolutely the boob job capital of the world. Add to it the heat, the traffic, the cost of living, which is absolutely absurd, the surrounding out-of-control Metro and you have a mix which once you get past the fairy dust and mesmerism is a very poor place to LIVE-not visit-live. I've characterized Scottsdale (and Phoenix) as 10% Beverly Hills dough, 10% Hollywood glitz, and 80% Las Vegas trash and I think it remains a good characterization of the social influences there. Connecting with other people is low on the list of priorities of most there (it's all about the money, stupid!) and in general truly an emotionally and civically impoverished place. No sense of community with anyone for all the above reasons and the unmanaged growth and influx of people from everywhere. Especially the "nuvo-riche" who tired of So Cal, sold their over-appreciated real estate in CA and think having a few coins in their pocket makes them SOMETHING. They ruined CA, now they're ruining the rest of the inter-Mountain West and this is probably the root of the problem in Metro Phx and Scottsdale.
It is a good place to VISIT with
David | Kansas City, MO