The Joys Of A Bigger City

Driving through Tucson, we got onto Speedway, the street we used to live on way back when and started driving toward our old apartment. We were on it for a while passing shop after shop and resaturant after restaurant and in the process saw a renaissance store. An entire store, dedicated to swords and bows and arrows, costumes, armor, etc etc and I thought Man, it must be great to live in a city.

Because only in a city would a store like that survive.

I know that strikes as a bit odd considering there's no proactical use for something like that in the city whereas in the country there's lots of room to get dressed up and go outside and play with your friends. It's not like you're going to be wearing this stuff you your office or anything.

But in a city you have a vast increase in the number of potential customers, simply because there's more people there. It's kind of like the old saying "location, location, location." Put a Renaissance store here, it'll fail in a week. For one thing, maybe ten people will visit but they're probably young and not carrying enough money to buy anything, they're just kids who want to play with swords for a while and push your ideas of insurance for the shop. Perhaps you should bump it up just in case little Leonardo there (Ninja Turtle not famous artist) cuts his friend's hand off.

But in a city, not only is there a greater potential for more people to be genuinely interested in this kind of thing (whereas in the country people are only interested in going to Wal Mart and the Mellow Mushroom) but there's even a strong possibility of conventions going on, highland games, and reanactments and just plain people getting dressed up for fun with their friends and playing Braveheart in their back yard.

I said to my wife, jeez I want to live in a bigger town. Or even a smaller town.

I have a strong belief that small towns are not bad towns. Usually the people are very friendly and there's a good sense of community. There are less shops but the internet is a wonderful invention and if you can still get what you want via the internet and still have that small town charm, well, that's not bad at all.

Warner Robins, however, is NOT a small town with charming people and a good sense of community. Warner Robins thinks it's a full blown city (and with the tallest building being the hospital, I fail to see how they think that, but then again, I fail to see much of what they thing). Not only do they consider themselves a city, but they consider Warner Robins, GA with a population of a little over 60,000, but they believe they are Georgia's International City.

Maybe this is because the Air Force is here and the Air Force brings in people from all over, including a ton of military brats like myself who were raised overseas. Maybe they didn't know Atlanta has an international airport and therefore brings in more international people in a day than Warner Robins does in a year. Maybe they didn't know Helen, GA ranks in the top five for Oktoberfest celebrations this side of the Atlantic. Maybe they just didn't realize that this is not a city at all, let alone an international city.

But they think they're a city.

And because this is a "city" there are people with city attitudes and a strict "I don't care" personality. There are some really nice people here, but they are few and far between. This town (town) does have some good things about it, but come on, a city it is not. Even Tucson, which is a fairly small city is tipping toward the 500,000 people mark. Warner Robins has a lot of growing to do to get anywhere near that.