Moving to Birmingham, Al from Jackson, MS

[Faster Fuller]

Originally Posted by turneed

If you want to get the best bang for your buck for housing, I would avoid these areas: homewood, hoover, hwy 280, inverness. They are all good areas and low in crime for the area, with excellent shopping, but they all have horrible traffic and most of all are overpriced. Here are some alternatives: fultondale and gardendale(both are less than 15 miles north of downtown on Interstate 65 and are relatively safe with very affordable housing for the area, they are also growing and better shopping is coming); trussville/pinson(about 20 miles north of downtown on Interstate 59, both great areas with more affordable housing than hoover, 280, etc., trussville is growing and even has its own mall); Forest park, certain areas of southside, south avondale(all crunched together near the southside of town close to uab, shopping, affordable, older housing, lots of young professionals and students live there and it is relatively safe and close to all major interstates)

I'm moving home from Los Angeles in a couple months and I agree with what turneed posted..with a couple caveats:

-Parts of Fultondale are shady, but it's really easy to tell the good parts from the bad.
-If you look in Avondale, stay as close to the Highlands area as possible. It's great. BUT the further north you get, the worse crime gets...and get gets really bad.
-To give you an idea how bad the traffic in the 280/Inverness are is: I'm moving back to b'ham from Los Angeles this summer and I won't be looking in that area solely because of the traffic.
-Gardendale is a nice area, but the municipal gov't is a bit under control of a particular church. The town is starting to lighten up, but some of the regs have been historically regressive. That doesn't stop the kids from being some of the most maladjusted people I've met in b'ham though. If you can tolerate people who get coked up friday nights, then go to church sunday to profess their devotion to Jesus, that's your town.
-Southside is like a lot of city residential areas. It's a block-by-block hit or miss type affair...not the lowest crime area by far, but I've never felt unsafe there.

The market will be bottoming out soon. For the price of rent in Hoover, Homewood, Inverness, or Vestavia Hills, you can buy a decent condo in Southside or Highlands. If you're both making around 27k, you should very easily qualify if you have decent credit.

As far as EATING goes, Dreamland is an institution, you can't go wrong with the pulled pork at Johnny Ray's. If you like Mediterranean, there are a couple places like Al's close to UAB.

If you like live music, Zydeco's is great, as is WorkPlay. If your girl likes flowers, the Botanical Gardens are much better than most would expect for a city like b'ham.