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If a single person who is, say 31 years old and male, moved up to the Albany area and wanted to know the best area to live so they could get out and meet people, any ideas on where that may be?
I just got back from visiting Saratoga Springs (live in Philadelphia) and checked out Caroline street last night. The street had a very college, meat market feel to it (no offense to purveyors of meat markets).
Lark street is for renters seeking a social life. Liberal and diverse with tulip fest, lark fest, thursday night live music, and first friday art shows and not corporate although I see a fuddruckers coming in soon.
The problem with the city of Albany is that it's bustling during the work week with state workers, but after 5 on Friday it becomes a ghost town. Any single people your age would probably hang out at bars and restaurants around the park and Lark St, as ltnflvr mentioned. You wouldn't want to be on the streets of Troy or Schenectady after dark. That's a tough one.....most of the suburbs are sleepy family-type towns.
I used to live in the area. I would recommend moving to the town of Rotterdam or Scotia. Stay out of the city of Schenectady itself. Never buy any property there. The property taxes are OUTRAGEOUS.
I should of made the location of where I may work more clear, Ballston Spa area.
As mentioned above I was in the area this weekend and stayed in Saratoga Springs. I drove around the region the next day (Halfmoon, Clifton Park and many others) and felt that I would not be very happy moving up here.
We recently moved to Clifton Park from Colorado temporarily. It's not bad but not that great either. No downtown, bad traffic. It has everything a person needs, just no downtown....
I have no idea how dangerous Troy or Schenecady really are. The crime rates for Albany and Schenectady seem about the same but still much higher than Troy.
Both cities seem to have their bad streets and their good streets. For instance, Schenectady's Union College area has some fantastic homes and neighborhoods. Go a few blocks outside of that and it starts to look run down. Troy is the same way. I have no idea how dangerous bad areas can get, it just seems like classes are really segregated around here. Same goes with Albany (Clinton vs Lark Streets for example).
Ballston Spa, Waterford, Scotia seem like nice compromises. If anyone has some additional opinions I'd be interested since I'm still trying to figure out if I like this area or not. I have mixed feelings about the whole place. Most of the middle class seem to live in the burbs, leaving the downtowns pretty much empty except for the poor and the college kids. I heard these cities are on an upswing though.
During my exploration of the area around Saratoga Springs I drove down some road (can't remember the route number but I got onto it off of Broadway street) and ended up on Route 5. I got onto it going southeast towards Albany and passed through Schenecady. It looked REALLY economically depressed. But as I got closer to I-87 the areas around Route 5 looked nicer.
This is a tough decision for me as I need to let my potential future employer no if I want to accept the job in the next week. I live in Philadelphia, so I am not expecting to get the same lifestyle near Saratoga Springs that I have now.
I really have three options:
Stay at my current job, which it getting phased out by the fall,
Take this job and spend the the next year seeing how do, or
Pass up this job and see what comes along before the fall.
I'm looking for something up there to compensate for the harsher winters and the fact that I will be 4 hours farther away from my family that lives in the midwest.
Route 5 is about the most depressing road I've come across. Downtown Schenectady looks pretty sad but just a tad north of that street the neighborhoods get really nice. Lark Street in Albany seems pretty vibrant.
Of course, this is coming from a recent transplant from Fort Collins, CO which has a similar vibrant feel and downtown as Saratoga (but a tad less snooty).
Joer has a good point about being close to family.
The job itself would be a good opportunity for me and after a year, if I am not happy with living up there, I can move onto something else.
I've spent the past 6 years living 800+ miles from my family in different locations so perhaps I could handle one more year.
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