How exciting to get a special request that I blog about something! Especially since the person who asked, Kate, asked for my opinion. I love giving my opinion. :)

Here are my thoughts on the question of moving from DC to Atlanta, and more generally, comparing the two metro areas:

COST OF LIVING: Atlanta wins this, hands down. We sold our 4th floor, walk-up, way-out-in-Reston, condo and purchased a nice single family house in the Metro-Atlanta equivalent of Takoma Park, the City of Decatur. If our house were in Takoma Park, it would be roughly twice as expensive.

Update for readers not in metro DC or metro Atlanta: Both municipalities are known for being progressive, diverse, having excellent public schools and very high taxes, and for being the epicenter of lesbian family life in their region. Atlantans joke about the pronouciation of “Decatur” in that regard — I’ll leave it to your imagination. I think most metro areas have somewhere similar — Park Slope, Shorewood, Somerville/Jamaica Plain, Hawthorne….

CAR TRAFFIC & COSTS: This is a draw. My car insurance went up here, which totally surprised me. But the drivers are actually worse. The traffic is a negligible percentage better. Car traffic and long commutes are hideous in both places.

PUBLIC TRANSIT: This one goes to DC, unless you already live outside the Metro or commuter rail range. The MARTA here isn’t very convenient for most people. I’ve ridden it twice, Jill maybe half a dozen times.

CULTURE: Atlanta has a worse reputation than it deserves, and the High Museum is really nice, but DC has such a great theater and artistic community that it wins hands down. Plus you just can’t compete with the monuments and the Smithsonian. I hear that the music scene is better in Atlanta, but I’m unqualified to have an opinion on that.

OVERALL POLITICAL “TONE”: This has to be broken down by community somewhat. In Atlanta, the split is “ITP” vs “OTP,” or “inside the perimeter” vs “outside the perimeter.” Technically that’s like inside vs outside the beltway, but the cultural meaning is more like DC & Maryland vs Virginia. I’d personally rank the general comfort level as follows:

  1. Montgomery County
  2. The City of Decatur
  3. The District
  4. Fulton County ITP
  5. PG County/Dekalb County ITP
  6. Northern Virginia (Note that I am not distinguishing Arlington separately. I never lived there & don’t have an opinion about it separately, although I understand that many people do.)
  7. Other Counties in Metro Atlanta

Living in ITP Atlanta doesn’t feel like I imagined living in “the South” would feel like. When we first visited, the two real estate agents we contacted both said they thought we would be fine anywhere ITP, and they recommended half a dozen neighborhoods. Atlanta is urban and cosmopolitan, I’m out everywhere, and it is 98% a non-issue. Maybe more.

I felt more hesitant about coming out to my neighbors when I lived in Shaw, and when I lived in Reston, although not when I lived on the Hill (in spite of the fact that my landlord was Senator Specter’s consipiracy theory staffer) or in Takoma Park. And I’m more comfortable coming out in work contexts here than when I was a lobbyist.

THE REAL LEGAL SITUATION FOR SAME-SEX FAMILIES: This goes to DC and Maryland, hands-down. But Georgia is (surprisingly) MUCH better than Virginia!Geogria law is actually silent on the question of whether or not same sex couples can adopt and both be the legal parents of a child. Some judges, in some counties, will grant the adoptions, others will not. This is being litigated and could possibly get worse. There is also always a worry that the legislature will make it worse, but the good news is that they only meet from January-March, so the paranoia and fear is finite.
Although our efforts to have Jill legally adopt Noah as a second parent were an awful roller-coaster, a gigantic pain in the ass, and much more expensive than we originally anticipated (what with having to MOVE), we were ultimately successful, as were those of all the other couples we’ve met in Atlanta.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about? Noah has two legal mommies, and if we’d stayed where we lived in metro DC, we would have had all the awful moving issues there too. (But at least we could have planned for them.)

WORK: It depends on your taste, but I give this one to Atlanta.

In DC, tons of people you meet have really interesting sounding jobs. On the down side of that, tons of people you meet spend the first 10 seconds of the conversation trying to figure out if you are important enough to keep talking with, or should they move on to someone more important?

In Atlanta, I’ve never had a conversation that felt like that. People here seem more interested in talking about something they’re interested in than what their job is.

People have a wider variety of jobs. A lot more people work for big companies. Far fewer people work for the government, although there are enough to notice, especially the CDC and the VA, in our area.

THE NEWS: You really can’t compete with the Washington Post and WAMU. WABE is pretty good, but the AJC? It has THREE sports sections on Saturday. The news part? Not so strong.

GAY BARS: I only went out once while I was here, before Noah was born. But women’s night at Hoedowns drew +150, which beats any crowd I ever saw on a Thursday night at Remingtons. (Even the night KJ became Ms. Rems!) Otherwise, I’m unqualified to opine.

I miss reading Lisa de Morales** with my morning coffee, and don’t even get Jill started on the theater critic at the AJC. Jill just pointed out that you can still read her — and the rest of the Washington Post online, but I like the newspaper. (And so does she.)

RESTAURANTS: DC edges out Atlanta in this category, but not by a whole lot. DC wins on convenience more than anything else. Atlanta is more scattershot. On the plus side, Atlanta is less expensive, or maybe less expensive on the “inexpensive-to-moderate” end of the spectrum.

Commenter Kate, be careful what you wish for! If you still want more on Atlanta vs DC, drop me a note at lesbianfamily (at) gmail dot com with your number.

**When you google Lisa de Morales, you don’t get a link to her column on the first results page. But you do get a link to regular commenter here, Jen (in MD)! I never was able to find a bio to link to….

PLLP 9/25(2): Pizza for dinner. It is really hard when Noah crashes at 6:15 pm.

PLLP 9/26: Fruit - I think I had a banana, but I don’t actually remember. Veg - mix of corn & greens with lunch, and corn with dinner. Treats - snack of last pkg pop-tarts & also some chocolate at work.