in retrospect
-
8/9/2012
I left Bridgeport in 1996, after bankruptcy changed it. I left looking for a better place to live. Funny thing is I haven't found it. I grew up in Bridgeport. What I loved? It was near the ocean. Not all towns have that quality. It had three parks. Seaside with lots of playing fields, Beardsley with a petting zoo and a nearby dairy queen, and Pleasure Island with endless horseshoe crabs. The houses have character, at least the older well maintained homes. I attended Central Magnet High School and I had the best teachers. They were people that cared about my future. They guided me to attend college, and they taught me how to work hard. Yes, there was crime. I personally never suffered anything horrible thank God, but I was no stranger to people being murdered, raped, or robbed. You know what, so far Bridgeport is one of the best places I'e ever lived. I moved to Florida. Everything costs an extensive amount of money. Florida was fun, but living there was hectic. I found that the teachers in Bridgeport cared more than the ones in Florida. The homes in Florida all look like cookie cutter houses and they are all controlled by home owners associations. My home in Florida never felt like my home. Then I tried Fresno California. It had no beaches. It was safer than Bridgeport, but it was like living in the middle of nowhere so that I could be safe. Then I moved to Wilmington NC. The city is beautiful and it has beaches. At first I thought, yeah I did it, but I was wrong. The people are hateful and racist. In Bridgeport I learned to respect and appreciate other cultures. In Wilmington they teach you to blatantly hate them all. In Bridgeport people worked together and worked hard. In Wilmington, the people like to destroy each other and do not appreciate people that work hard. Having a cousin or making a donation gets you a job faster than working hard. Wilmington makes me miss Bridgeport. My point. Bridgeport is a solid Big City. It is one of the USA's oldest cities and it is a big city so yes it has crime, but it also has a lot good things to offer its people. It has experience that new towns lack to properly handle crime waves and economic waves. Shoot, Bridgeport was the first town in the US to go bankrupt and since then it got back on its feet. If you are looking for the laid back, good old boy but kissing of a suburbs don't go there, but if you are looking for a big city with character, a beach, a multicultural attitude that welcomes all, values hard work, and always bounces back on its feet try Bridgeport.
anonymous | Wilmington, NC