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Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JJG
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite, thanks to Breaking Bad and The Simpsons...
Lots of tourists fly into ABQ, pick up their rental car, and hit the freeway out of town making a beeline straight up I-25 to Santa Fe. And for good reason too, it's a lot more attractive and interesting for visitors. AA also has nonstop routes into Santa Fe's little airport from DFW and LAX. The wealthy women from the Metroplex like to go shopping for art and jewelry in Santa Fe.
Breaking Bad has definitely raised Burque's profile.
What is weird is that before BB, Roswell, a city of less than 50,000 that is bloody hot, flat and nothing to look at, and smells like cow dung was more well known than Albuquerque. All because of a UFO crash that never actually happened.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Desert_SW_77
Lots of tourists fly into ABQ, pick up their rental car, hit the freeway out of town making a beeline straight up I-25 to Santa Fe. For good reason too, it's a lot more attractive and interesting for visitors. AA also has nonstop routes into Santa Fe's little airport from DFW and LAX. The wealthy women from the Metroplex like to go shopping for art and jewelry in Santa Fe.
While Santa Fe is definitely more tourist oriented (virtually entirely tourism oriented), to say there is nothing to see in Albuquerque is an overstatement. There is at least a long weekend's worth of interesting stuff to do from the Sandias to museums to.... um... Breaking Bad tours. The difference is Albuquerque's attractions are surrounded by a city full of regular people working regular jobs living in a regular city.
People understandably want to visit the city that is built like a territorial pueblo where the residents wear $500 artfully distressed cowboy hats and folksy applique denim vests and batik mumus while discussing their past lives and chakras.
I mean, Santa Fe is beautiful, but there is a reason it is locally referred to as Fanta Se and Santa Fake. That said, I do like Santa Fe, but as SantaFe400 said, it is overlooked Breaking Bad or no.
Last edited by ABQConvict; 08-07-2014 at 10:36 PM..
It may not be much, but that's a famous gag from one of the most iconic fictional characters ever created. It's not New York or Chicago, but it's definitely known.
It may not be much, but that's a famous gag from one of the most iconic fictional characters ever created. It's not New York or Chicago, but it's definitely known.
And then there's this iconic fictional character putting Albuquerque on the map:
Lansing/East Lansing gets slept on big time too. You have Downtown E.L. and Lansing's Old Town just north of Downtown Lansing would be nice areas for young professionals. It is a pretty well integrated metro in terms of the city and suburbs, which is different from what people think of cities in MI. Kalamazoo also comes to mind.
Yeah, Lansing/East Lansing and Kalamazoo definitely get overlooked. Although I'm not quite sure that either is big enough to be on the national scene. Looking at metro area statistics, Lansing seems to be on par with:
Kalamazoo seems to be on par with:
Rockford (IL)
Naples (FL)
Ocala (FL)
Spartanburg (SC)
South Bend (IN)
Columbus (GA)
Fort Collins (CO)
Evansville (IN)
Lincoln (NE)
Green Bay (WI)
Most of those cities are overlooked as well.
In contrast, the Grand Rapids metro area is bigger than Tucson, Honolulu, and Tulsa, and within 100,000 of Rochester, NY. So I might say that Grand Rapids is more overlooked, possibly?
Id say mesa, az... always getting overshadowed by its big brothers phoenix and tucson.
Eh... I dunno. Mesa, though it is a city of 400k population, really is basically just a suburb of Phoenix. Same as Scottsdale, Glendale, Peoria, and Chandler. It does have it's own quaint little downtown, but about 90% of Mesa is suburban sprawl that didn't even exist 40 years ago. It's more a large incorporated suburban satellite of Phoenix than it's own individual hub city. Same as Plano is to Dallas, or Bellevue is to Seattle.
I would say the most overlooked city in AZ would be Yuma. Not that there's much to look at in Yuma.
Breaking Bad has definitely raised Burque's profile.
What is weird is that before BB, Roswell, a city of less than 50,000 that is bloody hot, flat and nothing to look at, and smells like cow dung was more well known than Albuquerque. All because of a UFO crash that never actually happened.
I've never watched one second of Breaking Bad and before probably before 1990 hardly anyone knew of Roswell. And Sante Fe was a pretty quiet artist town/state capitol. Albuquerque was THE town in New Mexico.
I still see it that way but I agree with you that Albuquerque has some normalcy to it as a regular working town. Santa Fe has become chic and Roswell has cashed in on the UFO craze. In the 1980s and before there was scuttlebutt about the UFO crash that you heard but none of the touristy stuff was there.
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