Relocating to Madison/Jackson from Miami/ft lauderdale (Hattiesburg, Magnolia: big house, landscaping)

[Ellygirl67]

Originally Posted by williboy

Nothing in Ms compares to the materialism and superficiality of southern CA. An interesting place to visit, but I wouldn't want to actually live there. And talk about overpriced, please!

Yes, but in Southern, CA you get great weather, beautiful scenery, landscaped roads, and free-spirited people. In Mississippi you get none of the above. In comparison to Southern, CA the prices are low, but compared to Dallas or Nashville the prices are about the same (in Madison anyway) without all the offerings of a big or semi big city and the luxuries they offer. My point was that this area offers very little and is overpriced for the very little you get.

[crorey]

I just moved to Madison from Coral Springs, FL (Fort Lauderdale). We have a Madison Mississippi Facebook group that you are free to join. Before I moved, this is where I tried to get a lot of the local information. Here is the link Madison Mississippi | Facebook

[joanie55]

The OP is from 2007.

[bornjacksonian]

Actually I just returned from a week down in Miami. This is our 7th year going and staying sometimes for 2 weeks. If you are someone who can adjust to change immediately then you should not have a problem. The only comparison both cities may have (Madison & Miami area) would be income. Other than that you will be coming to completely different lifestyles. No beautiful trees, colorful houses, nice wonderful weather, occasionally going to the beach, the restaurants, events, diversity, tourist .... NONE of THAT. I'm not knocking Madison at all because it's nice and very upscale in parts but it compares nothing to the Miami-Dade or Broward County.

[Northeasterner2548]

It is funny to see this site active again. I started this over a year ago before I moved and I have my own perspective now and just about everyone is correct.

Madison is a really nice town, I think the schools are great (better than S FL) but it is a small town and Jackson is a small town if you are used to Miami/Ft. Lauderdale. There is often little to do and my family does get bored. If you like hunting, fishing, church type activities or family activities with your family only then fine, but if you like more activities and larger groups and commercial theater, pro sports, kids places, museums, variety, etc it can be boring at times. On a Sat night after dinner there is not much going on, no Las Olas, South Beach, Coconut grove, Hard rock Casino, night clubs, beach, etc

whether you like it is personal,
I love my job so it is good for me, my kids like the schools and made new friends so they are okay (but sometimes bored on weekends), my wife doesn't like it as she has had a hard time meeting people and there is little upscale shopping, etc. or the things she is used to.

People are superficially very friendly but tend to keep to themselves so making real friends is harder.

[GrandviewGloria]

This is a very old tread, and I thought it could do with a bit of updating:

Madison Central's Debate Team, a couple of years back, ranked number one in North America (I think I'm relaying this accurately. Google it, if the particulars are important to you.). When someone told me about this, the team was headed to Europe, for the grand, WORLD competition. They were the rock stars of the debate world. That should give you an idea of who lives in Madison. It's Alphaville.

Madison is extremely open-minded, but grounded heavily in history. Many, if not most, of its inhabitants are descendants of important families....OR....hyperintelligent, ultra-aggressive, rich white trash. It's actually a good mix. You have FFV (First Families of Virginia), including members of a large Black aristocracy. Then, you have members of Princely Indian families and high-ranking Mafiosi (Sicilian & Russian), who settled here because of the very accepting environment. Then, there are the children and grandchildren of gun-runners and bootleggers, along with those currently preeminent in illicit activities of one sort or another. Madison is like a lifeboat, and everybody is rowing together, and getting along just fine. It works: probably because everybody is focused on acquisition and attainment. You see ninety-year-olds, still shopping for antiques. I get the impression that many of our imports never really had friends, until they came here. It's a very comfortable place to live, for cognitive/economic front-runners, who elsewhere would be social also-rans. Don't let the scary backgrounds of some of our wealthy frighten you. The deep Christian faith of our Mayor, sooner or later, insinuates itself into the souls of most people here, persuading us to abandon our dark ways and walk in the light.

Nice thing about Mississippi is that you are judged, here, on what you have, rather than who you are. If you can pay the dues, you're in. You see Debs, Sorority suzies, and women in elite organizations with names not far from 'Goonie Mae Hick'...totally bonded with women with names like Constance Worthington Abravanel. And, of course, the little cabals our menfolk cook up have resulted in some amazing business constructs, which have produced vast (and sometimes world-infamous) fortunes. There are plenty of people who manage real-estate empires from here; and a surprising number of people are headquartered in this very easy place for living everyday life, who consider themselves as living their 'real lives' in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, and Buenos Aires. But real lives are exhausting, expensive, and competitive: so most time is spent here in pleasant, easy, Madison.

The people you see getting off the private planes at Madison's tiny airport will amaze (and sometimes frighten) you. People here pay and threaten their way off America's 'richest' lists. No one would dare compile a comprehensive list of those who inhabit all those mansions and villas tucked into Madison's woodlands and pastures. But such a list would amaze.

You know how the social scene is for those prominent upper-midwesterners, who boat back and forth between isolated island summer 'camps' on the Great Lakes? That's kind of how it is, every day, in Madison. Only, the canoe of choice is a white Lexus SUV, and everybody is doing business, every day. Men wear shorts to business meetings. Flip flops are accepted footwear. Women I know sandwich trips to the personal trainer (unless the trainer is coming to work them out in their home or office gym) between board meetings.

The treasures are hidden within those sprawling 'Acadian' villas everyone is building...or locked away in the vaults of those ornate new banks. One man collects Rolls Royces. Many secretly own hyperluxury autos, and have them trucked to The Kentucky Derby, Pebble Beach, or Palm Beach, for driving. The jewels come out for charity events...along with the Haute Couture/Bespoke clothes. One man I know has a $16,000.00 silk tuxedo from Bijan. A jeweler I've seen at Pilates for years tells me that Madison County people buy jewels just one class down from famous/Hope Diamond type jewels. And not just occasionally. You'd never know it, because you seldom even see watches worn, these days. the day-to-day look is cool and functional.

So, please don't wear your little diamond-chip jewelry in Madison. It will mark you as an outsider. Just wear big, fun 'art' pieces (papier mache is fine), or no jewelry AT ALL, and you'll be fine. Shorts and a T/Polo-shirt are normal attire for both genders. But expensively-maintained teeth are a must (people will get eighteen inches from your face, to check out your teeth, to decide whether you have enough money to hang with them), and new, mid-priced (under 120k) Lexus/BMW/Mercedes vehicles are must-haves. While cool, washable knit shirts and cargo shorts are the uniform, here, don't think you can throw them over an unshapely body. Fitness is seen as an index of your self-discipline and income. DAILY meetings with personal trainers are not unusual. And unless you are incapacitated, it is assumed that you work out at least once per day. If you really want to keep up, you will get in all your TV time, while doing your hour of cardio, mornings....then, you'll do your hour of lifting in the evenings.

Our preacher used to lament that he could not "...keep that revival spirit going all-year long..." . Well, that revival spirit is sustained, in Madison, every waking minute. Everyone is intent upon having, doing and being it all.

Nobody goes to bars. People do not cuss. Smoking or drugs will get you blacklisted. You have to edit what you say, so as to always appear 'nice' and not 'high-falutin'. And Heaven forbid you should admit to having ever done the three-letter-'s'-word thing. Babies in Madison apparently came, special delivery, from Saks Fifth Avenue or Neiman Marcus. Think wholesome, wholesome, WHOLESOME! People here hug at board meetings, and are very genuinely caring of each other. Great emphasis is placed on charities and volunteerism. If you cannot get into that groove, then Madison is not for you.

And be prepared for everyone to find out where you live, and how you decorate. Houses, here, are mostly for showing to people. So, be prepared to be a live-in docent, giving tours of your home to all prospective friends...and neighbors...without advance warning. Hey! It beats rotting in some 'Gold Coast' condo, somewhere, where nobody cares if you live or die. The Jackson area is a major consumer of all luxury home products, and Madison is leading the way. If you can furnish your Acadian-style compound with Swedish antiques, you will instantly be regarded as comme il faut. And yes, you'd better get a good decorator, an no, you dare not try doing it, yourself.

If Madison's rampant wholesomeness is a bit much for you, then move to Jackson. It's where you'll find the smokers, drinkers, druggies, self-styled 'intellectuals', economic liberals, and party people. If you want even more wholesomeness (but less achievement mania) than what you'll find in Madison, move to Rankin County, which is almost exclusively Fundamentalist Christian. It's still a mostly 'dry' county, and the lack of booze discourages degenerates from moving there from Jackson.

Our current big news is that Tulane University will be opening a small campus here, catty-cornered from that fabulous Italian palace of a CVS Pharmacy that is going up. Everyone is beyond excited, and committed to doing whatever it takes to get the school to eventualy put in a full-sized campus. Beagle Bagel is open, packed, and delectable, in the fancy French manor house type building next to St. Joseph School. Big houses are still being built, and prices have not plummeted. The St. Peter Orthodox congregation has moved into the old church on Church Street, and is SPLENDID: great landscaping, and a dazzling gold dome. Needless to say, the teardown/renovation craze in that neighborhood is ON. Young couples and retirees are snapping up sixties ranch houses for around 150. You cannot overinvest in Madison, and investing they are. And now, they're only a few blocks from Tulane! TULANE!

And yes, I have hand-picked little bits from here and there, to paint a picture much more intense than what is immediately apparent. Some people just see a forest. Some people see Cypresses, Magnolias, and Possums.

[jacksonian]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

This is a very old tread, and I thought it could do with a bit of updating:

Madison Central's Debate Team, a couple of years back, ranked number one in North America (I think I'm relaying this accurately. Google it, if the particulars are important to you.). When someone told me about this, the team was headed to Europe, for the grand, WORLD competition. They were the rock stars of the debate world. That should give you an idea of who lives in Madison. It's Alphaville.

Madison is extremely open-minded, but grounded heavily in history. Many, if not most, of its inhabitants are descendants of important families....OR....hyperintelligent, ultra-aggressive, rich white trash. It's actually a good mix. You have FFV (First Families of Virginia), including members of a large Black aristocracy. Then, you have members of Princely Indian families and high-ranking Mafiosi (Sicilian & Russian), who settled here because of the very accepting environment. Then, there are the children and grandchildren of gun-runners and bootleggers, along with those currently preeminent in illicit activities of one sort or another. Madison is like a lifeboat, and everybody is rowing together, and getting along just fine. It works: probably because everybody is focused on acquisition and attainment. You see ninety-year-olds, still shopping for antiques. I get the impression that many of our imports never really had friends, until they came here. It's a very comfortable place to live, for cognitive/economic front-runners, who elsewhere would be social also-rans. Don't let the scary backgrounds of some of our wealthy frighten you. The deep Christian faith of our Mayor, sooner or later, insinuates itself into the souls of most people here, persuading us to abandon our dark ways and walk in the light.

Nice thing about Mississippi is that you are judged, here, on what you have, rather than who you are. If you can pay the dues, you're in. You see Debs, Sorority suzies, and women in elite organizations with names not far from 'Goonie Mae Hick'...totally bonded with women with names like Constance Worthington Abravanel. And, of course, the little cabals our menfolk cook up have resulted in some amazing business constructs, which have produced vast (and sometimes world-infamous) fortunes. There are plenty of people who manage real-estate empires from here; and a surprising number of people are headquartered in this very easy place for living everyday life, who consider themselves as living their 'real lives' in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, and Buenos Aires. But real lives are exhausting, expensive, and competitive: so most time is spent here in pleasant, easy, Madison.

The people you see getting off the private planes at Madison's tiny airport will amaze (and sometimes frighten) you. People here pay and threaten their way off America's 'richest' lists. No one would dare compile a comprehensive list of those who inhabit all those mansions and villas tucked into Madison's woodlands and pastures. But such a list would amaze.

You know how the social scene is for those prominent upper-midwesterners, who boat back and forth between isolated island summer 'camps' on the Great Lakes? That's kind of how it is, every day, in Madison. Only, the canoe of choice is a white Lexus SUV, and everybody is doing business, every day. Men wear shorts to business meetings. Flip flops are accepted footwear. Women I know sandwich trips to the personal trainer (unless the trainer is coming to work them out in their home or office gym) between board meetings.

The treasures are hidden within those sprawling 'Acadian' villas everyone is building...or locked away in the vaults of those ornate new banks. One man collects Rolls Royces. Many secretly own hyperluxury autos, and have them trucked to The Kentucky Derby, Pebble Beach, or Palm Beach, for driving. The jewels come out for charity events...along with the Haute Couture/Bespoke clothes. One man I know has a $16,000.00 silk tuxedo from Bijan. A jeweler I've seen at Pilates for years tells me that Madison County people buy jewels just one class down from famous/Hope Diamond type jewels. And not just occasionally. You'd never know it, because you seldom even see watches worn, these days. the day-to-day look is cool and functional.

So, please don't wear your little diamond-chip jewelry in Madison. It will mark you as an outsider. Just wear big, fun 'art' pieces (papier mache is fine), or no jewelry AT ALL, and you'll be fine. Shorts and a T/Polo-shirt are normal attire for both genders. But expensively-maintained teeth are a must (people will get eighteen inches from your face, to check out your teeth, to decide whether you have enough money to hang with them), and new, mid-priced (under 120k) Lexus/BMW/Mercedes vehicles are must-haves. While cool, washable knit shirts and cargo shorts are the uniform, here, don't think you can throw them over an unshapely body. Fitness is seen as an index of your self-discipline and income. DAILY meetings with personal trainers are not unusual. And unless you are incapacitated, it is assumed that you work out at least once per day. If you really want to keep up, you will get in all your TV time, while doing your hour of cardio, mornings....then, you'll do your hour of lifting in the evenings.

Our preacher used to lament that he could not "...keep that revival spirit going all-year long..." . Well, that revival spirit is sustained, in Madison, every waking minute. Everyone is intent upon having, doing and being it all.

Nobody goes to bars. People do not cuss. Smoking or drugs will get you blacklisted. You have to edit what you say, so as to always appear 'nice' and not 'high-falutin'. And Heaven forbid you should admit to having ever done the three-letter-'s'-word thing. Babies in Madison apparently came, special delivery, from Saks Fifth Avenue or Neiman Marcus. Think wholesome, wholesome, WHOLESOME! People here hug at board meetings, and are very genuinely caring of each other. Great emphasis is placed on charities and volunteerism. If you cannot get into that groove, then Madison is not for you.

And be prepared for everyone to find out where you live, and how you decorate. Houses, here, are mostly for showing to people. So, be prepared to be a live-in docent, giving tours of your home to all prospective friends...and neighbors...without advance warning. Hey! It beats rotting in some 'Gold Coast' condo, somewhere, where nobody cares if you live or die. The Jackson area is a major consumer of all luxury home products, and Madison is leading the way. If you can furnish your Acadian-style compound with Swedish antiques, you will instantly be regarded as comme il faut. And yes, you'd better get a good decorator, an no, you dare not try doing it, yourself.

If Madison's rampant wholesomeness is a bit much for you, then move to Jackson. It's where you'll find the smokers, drinkers, druggies, self-styled 'intellectuals', economic liberals, and party people. If you want even more wholesomeness (but less achievement mania) than what you'll find in Madison, move to Rankin County, which is almost exclusively Fundamentalist Christian. It's still a mostly 'dry' county, and the lack of booze discourages degenerates from moving there from Jackson.

Our current big news is that Tulane University will be opening a small campus here, catty-cornered from that fabulous Italian palace of a CVS Pharmacy that is going up. Everyone is beyond excited, and committed to doing whatever it takes to get the school to eventualy put in a full-sized campus. Beagle Bagel is open, packed, and delectable, in the fancy French manor house type building next to St. Joseph School. Big houses are still being built, and prices have not plummeted. The St. Peter Orthodox congregation has moved into the old church on Church Street, and is SPLENDID: great landscaping, and a dazzling gold dome. Needless to say, the teardown/renovation craze in that neighborhood is ON. Young couples and retirees are snapping up sixties ranch houses for around 150. You cannot overinvest in Madison, and investing they are. And now, they're only a few blocks from Tulane! TULANE!

And yes, I have hand-picked little bits from here and there, to paint a picture much more intense than what is immediately apparent. Some people just see a forest. Some people see Cypresses, Magnolias, and Possums.

Welcome to the forum Mayor... I mean...

Please forgive me your majesty - what I meant to say was "Welcome to the forum Queen Mary Hawkins Butler!"

[GrandviewGloria]

Originally Posted by jacksonian

Welcome to the forum Mayor... I mean...

Please forgive me your majesty - what I meant to say was "Welcome to the forum Queen Mary Hawkins Butler!"

Well, I HAVE become a bit of a mini-Mary, and am proud of it. So a hearty thank-you from a Mayor Mary Mini-Me!

So what did Mayor Mary or one of her many, many, Mini-Me's and mere minions prevent you from doing?

[jacksonian]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

Well, I HAVE become a bit of a mini-Mary, and am proud of it. So a hearty thank-you from a Mayor Mary Mini-Me!

So what did Mayor Mary or one of her many, many, Mini-Me's and mere minions prevent you from doing?

At first, I really did think you were making fun of Madison in your "lengthy" post - but now that I know you were serious makes it all the more HILARIOUS.

I'll be sure to take my hat off in respect of your most gracious highness the next time I drive up I-55 and pass under Madison's wonderful brick overpass on my way to real destinations.

[brickpatio]

Where else in America can you find a faux Greek Revival Exxon and Baroque Italian CVS Pharmacy? Who else has a Federalist red brick overpass and Rococo Wal-Mart. Say what you will...It's charming. Alas, admittedly, I love it.