Things I miss about Atlanta
September 15, 2007 - Reading time: 3 minutes
Note: 13 years later, I still miss all of these things about Atlanta, and many more. Cactus Car Wash (the one on Ponce) is still there but it's called something else now. I've grown to hate Houston, and Texas, much more in the last decade.
So I've lived in Houston for a couple of months now, and am finally starting to find my way around. While I still don't think of Houston as home, I definitely feel somewhat settled in (when Clio and my furniture get here, the illusion will be mostly complete).
But there are a few things that Atlanta really did better than Houston:
- Your Dekalb Farmers Market. I really miss that place. I don't know if it's technically a "farmers market," but it's clean, it's convenient, and it has a huge selection of food - in particular produce, meat, beer and wine, and the range of international foods. I haven't found anything that comes close, though someone mentioned Central Market so I'll probably try that out at some point.
- Cactus Car Wash. This car wash place isn't native to Atlanta, but it definitely hasn't been duplicated in Houston. I finally decided to get the car washed this morning and ended up at Classy Chassis on Bay Area Blvd - they did a pretty good job washing the car, but went a bit overboard on the shiny greasy dash cleaner stuff inside. Also, to get a decent wax job you have to wait around for several hours, which I didn't have time to do today.
- Road quality. The road quality around Houston SUCKS. No, don't deny it; you're lying. Concrete roads are wonderfully low maintenance for decades, but at some point it's time to stop pretending they're still OK. The roads around South Houston have reached that point and passed it.
- Wayfinding. Outside of the city, it's not too hard to find your way around. Inside the city is just madness. You can't get off an interstate and expect to get right back on in the city - the entrance ramp may be half a mile away from the exit. Furthermore, signage is really bad, and sometimes downright misleading. GPS would really help here.
- City and County offices. In Houston, at least in Harris County (where I live), county offices are open 8-5, Monday through Friday, and that's all. So any kind of business you might have (getting license plates, drivers license, etc) requires taking time off work. That's stupid - who has time for that? I sure don't. It's a real hardship.
- Clear windshields. In Atlanta, you get a single sticker for your car each year, and it goes on your (single) license plate, and that's it. No insurance card, no emissions sticker. Not so in Texas. Two gigantic stickers get plastered on your windshield, and the front plate is required (the standard license plate has a silly inaccuracy that I'll get to later). So much for the "no sticker" philosophy I've been holding to ...
Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of nice things about Houston (such as NASA). They've just fallen a bit short on details.