I'm working on a travel article on road-tripping to college music towns. Right now, this involves sitting in the pedestrian mall in downtown Charlottesville, Va., and sipping a hefeweizen under the willow oaks. Wireless internet is an amazing thing.
My question of the moment is this: What makes college towns so cool? I mean, I love the places. When on long drives, I sometimes spend the night in a college town just to look around (hello, Tuscaloosa, Alabama).
There is, of course, no single answer, but I think a major part of my love of college towns stems from what they combine: academic rigor and wild debauchery, intellectural curiosity and love of leisure. College towns, to me, are symbols of rich, well-balanced lives. So I've enjoyed watching the joggers, the students throwing frisbees, and even the frat boys staggering between the bars.
My battery is dying, so I'll leave it at that.
boy. how do you GET a job like that? The last piece I wrote for work was a memo explaining the difference between a hard drive and a server ... but it is FASCINATING, I assure you.
Posted by: Janet Edens | Monday, September 19, 2005 at 09:30
Basically, you become a freelancer who can afford such work only by crashing with friends, camping, and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all the time. Also, having terrible health insurance and living in a seniors apartment complex helps.
But I still can't complain too much. It's my dream job.
Posted by: benbrazil | Monday, September 19, 2005 at 09:46
Seniors apartment complex? does this mean you have to put on wrinkle cream before you can walk out the door, to escape detection?
re the college towns, it seems that the common denominator is ferment
intellectual and otherwise
Posted by: Anna Haynes | Monday, September 19, 2005 at 20:12
Very nice line. I'm tempted to steal it.
No, I'm legit at Williamsburg Senior Apartments, where a small proportion of non seniors are also welcome.
Among the benefits: Checking out the ladies at the pool. And DAMN, Edna is looking
GOOD.
Posted by: benbrazil | Tuesday, September 20, 2005 at 09:13
I live in Nashville, TN but am frequently in Athens, GA for long stretches of time visiting my girlfriend (I also lived there for a couple of years back in the mid 80s). Consequently, I often reflect on what it is I like/dislike about college towns. In my mind, it's simply the fact that you have thousands of people of the same age group gathered together and that, for the most part (or compared to later in life), these people don't have a lot of the anxieties that they'll have later. As a result, they have time for a type of "balance" as you suggested between leisure and work that might not be afforded later. (The very idea of balance, then, is always relative to one's age--i.e., balance between just what?)
On the other hand, as I get older, I've discovered one aspect of college towns that I doesn't work for me as well as it did in the past. That is, in a college town, no matter where you go, there's a dozen people who know you. Give me the anonymity of a city anyday.
Posted by: jmsloop | Tuesday, September 20, 2005 at 11:13
The intellectual side has large appeal for me, too.
And I'm probably more anonymous in Chapel Hill (from where I graduated) than in Atlanta. Don't know anyone anymore, minus maybe a professor or two.
I can't decide if I like the anonymity or not, though.
Posted by: benbrazil | Tuesday, September 20, 2005 at 11:27
re: anonymity. The allure of anonymity is directly proportional to the number of people in a given locality who secretly would like to watch you die a painful, horrible death in the gutter.
Consequently, anonymity looks better to me every year.
Posted by: Daniel | Tuesday, September 20, 2005 at 14:40