Williamsport, Pa

[Nihilianth]

I grew up on Penn St. in East End, right next to the St. Boniface Cemetary. Growing up, I always thought of the HUGE cities as awesome, exciting places to live, and always thought of Williamsport as this small, tiny little crappy town with nothing to do at all.

Well, I have lived in Harrisburgh for a time, and currently live in York. Been to Philly many times since graduating high school. Spent three months in San Diego, been to Italy...twice. Been to all the huge cities along the east coast at least once, Philly and NYC I have vistited the most.

Whenever I go back home to Williamsport, I now realize how truly unique the city is, and how much it has changed just over the past 6 years since I have graduated.

There is a brand new movie thater downtown where they tore down an eyesore of a block that used to be called the "Beiter Block." Beiter's moved over to South Williamsport, opening a HUGE, brand new facility, selling home appliances, and other random things. The new Volunteer Stadium is very nice over at the LL Complex. ( I kind of miss the old LL grounds before the modern renovations actually, but I think that is mostly out of nostalgia.) There is a brand new Market St. Bridge, in which you now have full access to go straight from 15 onto Interstate 180, and vice versa without having to travel through the city along Via Bella to get form one high way to the other.

There is supposed to be a Kohl's department store opening up sometime soon. Have no idea when, but I do know where. It will stand where the current school district building is, cut across Church St. (taking that st. out altogether) and all the way across to where Wilson's used to be. In essence, it should be quite large.

The Lycoming Mall: The mall itself is rather drab, but has all the latest, trendy stores, such as Pac Sun, Macy's, Dick's Sporting Goods (I worked there the first year they opened), Border's, I even noticed a brand new Jewlery store that just opened. I also noticed Hollitster's opened as well in that store (not a great fan of Hollister's, but I know that is where a lot of rich, upperclass, preppy-style kids go to shop in the larger cities.)

Literally, right next to the mall, there is a new movie theater that opened a couple years ago, Gander Mt. Grizzly Inc. Toys R' Us, Circuit City, Sma's Cllub, Best Buy - which is brand new, Big Lots. Across the way from the mall, a new strip mall JUST opened in time for Black Friday this year, called Lycoming Crossings, with Target as it's anchor store. It also has a Ross' and Petco. Not sure what else in that complex. Right next to the new strip mall, the largest open, free-standing sports dome in North America opened about two years ago. The thing looks like an enourmous pillow from 180. Inside, it is very cavernous, I would say maybe larger than a regulation football field.

1 other thing that just opened right on the exact same grounds as the new strip mall, and sports dome, was the brand new East Lycoming YMCA, which from all accounts is state-of-the-art. This, all in Muncy alone.

In essence, what E=MCHammer has been saying, the city of Williamsport, and the surrounding areas are FAR, FAR from being "behind the times." If anything, the city is progressing a lot faster than the rest of the nation.

The downfalls: Crime HAS risen quite a bit over the past two decades. There seem to be a lot of fires. In fact, it seems like the neighborhood my father had to move to was quite literally burning down around his small little apartment. At the same time, the hospital project was tearing out whole neighborhoods. Walking through this area one night, I was looking around at all the burned out structures, and the torn down rubble, and I noticed bullet holes in the side of a parked car, and the car in front of it had smashed out brake light. I could literally swear it was Baghdad lol. But then again, you have the REALLY ritsy neighborhoods, such as Grampian Hills, and some of the upper-class neighborhoods all over in Loyalsock. You also have the middle class neighborhoods that I grew up in, such as East End. All those areas are extremely nice, with cute little tree-lined avenues. Grampian Hills are actualy up in the woods in the north end of town.

Taxes: If you look at the statistics on Williamsport, property taxes are much higher than national and state average. However, the incredibly low cost of living, IMO, offsets this anyway. Houses go for much cheaper than anywhere else.

All-in-all, if you think Williamsport is boring, you must not have much of an imagination anyway. Between the rich cultural downtown, and the new stores out in Muncy, combined with being in the Pennsylvania Wilds (fishing, hunting, mt. biking, hiking. Hell, the Appalchian Trail runs through Pine Creek Valley, which has absolutely breathtaking scenery there itself) You really should not have an excuse in finding yourself being "bored." If anything, it is by far cheaper to do things in that town than anywhere else I have ever been.

Education: The four years I went to Williamsport Highschool, from 1998 - 2002, it had the basketball team being the state champs a couple of those years. A strong baseball team, softball team, trak and field team were state champs, same with the swimming team. There is a golf and fencing programs as well. Has a brand new tech wing which opened my Junior Year. It also was one of the highest-scoring public school on the PSSAs. Has 4 gymnasiums, 3 cafeterias.

Penn College is one of the best tech schools in the nation. It rivals MIT these days. The new library they built is much like the rest of PCT's archetecture: Ultra-modern, and high-tech looking, with beautiful marble floors. Lycoming College recently became an Ivy-league school, with a very classical university-type campus with a quadrangle, and a couple of steeples on campus. They just recently built a couple of brand new dorms as well along Washington Blvd.

Anyway, long post is long. If you are thinking of moving to The Port, Little Philly, Billtown, whatever you want to call it, there is absolutely no reason not to.

[mamaplaysflute]

What department at Dick's did you work in? I was the AA there up till September when we relocated to NoVa.