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If you're feeling adventurous and want to step across the tracks, visit Soul Wired Cafe. They were featured on Anthony Bourdain's show some years back. The interviewee speaks well of what Jackson is like, a blank canvas waiting to be filled. Sometimes a good idea + right place/right time + blood/sweat & tears = success. Sometimes a good idea just needs a willing audience that doesn't exist here. It's a crap shoot. https://youtu.be/ToHZJVWh-ow
Still off the tracks is the Medgar Evers Home. No website, but it's worth the effort to make an appt for a tour: Guided tours are available to the public by appointment. All inquiries should be directed to 601-977-7706 or 601-977-7935. You can also leave an email at libraryservices@tougaloo.edu or fax your inquiry to 601-977-7714.
If you've never visited Mississippi or Jackson, I recommend you do. Stay a while to get to know it on a deeper level. Even if you never choose to live here, it's important to understand it's unique place in history and in the country.
I visited for a job interview in October 1981. There is little in your good writeup I don't agree with.
If you're feeling adventurous and want to step across the tracks, visit Soul Wired Cafe. They were featured on Anthony Bourdain's show some years back. The interviewee speaks well of what Jackson is like, a blank canvas waiting to be filled. Sometimes a good idea + right place/right time + blood/sweat & tears = success. Sometimes a good idea just needs a willing audience that doesn't exist here. It's a crap shoot. https://youtu.be/ToHZJVWh-ow
Still off the tracks is the Medgar Evers Home. No website, but it's worth the effort to make an appt for a tour: Guided tours are available to the public by appointment. All inquiries should be directed to 601-977-7706 or 601-977-7935. You can also leave an email at libraryservices@tougaloo.edu or fax your inquiry to 601-977-7714.
I'll defend Jackson to any outsider who criticizes it, but I'm sad to report that the place where I was born and raised can never be my chosen home. Yet it still holds my heart in ways I can't fully express.
I always enjoy posts from expats of cities who go elsewhere, pick up the snobby attitude and come back to bash the old home town.
Being an OKC resident we have this same thing going on here so I'm a bit worn out on this. To some degree because I was the same kind of 21 year old who left to find greener pastures, came back (due to family). However, I have a different perspective on things.
I'm grateful for the new restaurants we have realizing that to food snobs they will never be good enough or eclectic enough.
I'm grateful for the new things that are going downtown despite the fact that to the trendy little millennial snot they will never be satisfactory compared to wherever they've lived before.
I'm grateful for the trail system we are building despite the fact that it isn't very developed and is underfunded.
I'm grateful for the new entertainment districts that are being developed despite the fact that they don't measure up to those in other places.
I appreciate the effort and risk that people took on to develop these things for our city and don't put much stock in the continued whining of the malcontents.
I suggest citizens of Jackson do the same. Support the good things that are happening there so that other good things CAN happen.
I always enjoy posts from expats of cities who go elsewhere, pick up the snobby attitude and come back to bash the old home town.
Being an OKC resident we have this same thing going on here so I'm a bit worn out on this. To some degree because I was the same kind of 21 year old who left to find greener pastures, came back (due to family). However, I have a different perspective on things.
I'm grateful for the new restaurants we have realizing that to food snobs they will never be good enough or eclectic enough.
I'm grateful for the new things that are going downtown despite the fact that to the trendy little millennial snot they will never be satisfactory compared to wherever they've lived before.
I'm grateful for the trail system we are building despite the fact that it isn't very developed and is underfunded.
I'm grateful for the new entertainment districts that are being developed despite the fact that they don't measure up to those in other places.
I appreciate the effort and risk that people took on to develop these things for our city and don't put much stock in the continued whining of the malcontents.
I suggest citizens of Jackson do the same. Support the good things that are happening there so that other good things CAN happen.
Yep, this is where I am at.
Jgirl63 certainly did not add anything new or original to the conversation. But I can level with the idea that you can never truly shake Mississippi or Jackson from your being.
I have recently spent time in OKC and I know exactly what you speak of.
Many residents would never live anywhere else. Many from elsewhere love it here. Many are making positive changes, and I absolutely applaud it. No place is perfect. A place is what you make of it. Like this:
There are cities and regions that offer the right soil for growth for some and not for others. We each need what we need.
I hoped to offer an insider/outsider view, good and bad, from my singular perspective. That's all. Many Jacksonians are indeed grateful. Thanks for the reminder to be more so. I offer my critique and frustrations, snotty as they may be, even as I cheer for Jackson's success.
I will say that I've been to Cultivation Food Hall and it's absolutely beautiful. I was amazed. The Eastover district is contrived only if compared to an actual neighborhood. But it's basically brand new and also it's really nice.
I don't disagree with your post but I feel like it's not quite fair to expect a relatively small town to be as cosmopolitan as you've described. I also see many nice things which are not necessarily cosmopolitan but very nice nonetheless, especially seeing how new suburban areas work to make their areas nice (basically all of Highland Colony Parkway and Highway 463 in Madison out to Livingston and Lake Caroline, areas around the reservoir such as Lost Rabbit and on the Rankin County side, increasingly nice Flowood, and a newly revitalizing downtown Brandon.
In the city also I see the charming combination of Fondren, Highland Village, Belhaven including its new town center area starting up, Millsaps/ UMMC/ Belhaven, and the continued upgrading of Capitol Street. I do think it needs a good two or three decades to really come together, but I love the charm and the potential.
With a population of 167,000 in Jackson proper and over half a million metro area (Knoxville proper hits 187,000 and Chattanooga 180,000) I wouldn't call Jackson a small town, but I get what you're saying. There is still a small town feel in many areas of Jackson. Highland Colony, Livingston, Lake Caroline aren't technically Jackson but each offer a different take on shopping and suburban life completely different from J-town.
And yes, two or three decades is about right to reach its potential, but it is there . . .
Thanks again for the exchange everyone. We all have our opinions and I appreciate the opportunity to express and hear them all! I feel like there's more opportunity for meaningful conversation here than, say, Facebook.
I was born and raised in Jackson and moved away when I was twenty-one. I've lived all over the country, from New England to the Northwest and the Southwest, so I have a pretty good perspective on Jackson and Mississippi as a whole. I recently moved back Jackson to help my elderly parents. After 30 years away, I've found that many things have changed in here, and sadly many things are the same. There is slightly more cultural diversity here, a trend happening all over the country, but much needed in a state that tends to be wary of differences. The growing health care industry brings professionals from all over the world and for the most part Jackson residents seem to be nonplussed by the occasional turban-wearing Sikh gentleman or the Muslim woman in her head scarf at Kroger. How welcome they feel I can't say, but I've never witnessed outright aggression.
If you have children (which I do not) and if you go to church (which I do not), if you love college sports (nada), shopping and watching television (whatever), and if your interest is in living in a relatively safe suburb where you have to drive everywhere, where there are no commuter bike paths or even sidewalks (save for the few blocks in Fondren -- but few walk or ride bikes there), and if you want an arts scene that entertains but rarely challenges your perspective, then you may love Jackson. It's a family friendly city and most activities are geared specifically to the traditional nuclear family.
What Jackson sorely lacks -- besides a twenty-first century infrastructure in middle-class neighborhoods and twentieth century infrastructure in working class and poor neighborhoods -- is a visible youth culture that brings energy and ideas to a town infatuated with the status quo and Southern cliches. Much of Jackson is blighted, but you'll probably never see or experience the worst blight because most middle class white folks live in the more pleasant neighborhoods in central and northeast Jackson. Want to visit a third world country in the good ole US of A? Check out south and west Jackson! Lack of clean running water is not uncommon there. As for culture, Jackson prefers art that's pretty, music that's familiar (blues/rock/blues/blues), and attitudes that are safe. If that's what you're looking for, good on you. But many Millennials from elsewhere want to live in progressive, green, pedestrian-friendly cities that support healthy lifestyles and new ideas. That is NOT Jackson.
There are very few options for easily accessible outdoor activities. There is a small but relatively active biking community and a lovely bike path north of Jackson. Sometimes I hear of people canoeing or paddling along rivers but hiking is virtually non-existent. Hiking trails are well outside the city limits and, for the most part, over-grown and under-marked because so few people have any interest in hiking on a beautiful weekend day. Instead, they're in church or watching the game or tailgating in Oxford or Starkville.
The food scene on first glance seems plentiful but once you start exploring quickly becomes routine. (How much fried catfish, shrimp and grits,greens or barbecue can one have in a lifetime? Never enough, apparently.) If that sounds snotty, it probably is. I've lived in some of the best food cities in the country (Portland, Maine, NYC, Boston, New Orleans). Only in the last five years or so have "farm to table" restaurants really popped up -- and thank goodness for that. The downtown farmer's market is active in the high season and offers a great variety of fresh produce. Cultivation Food Hall just opened in the contrived new neighborhood called "The District" -- an area filled with condos and corporate offices and dotted with franchise restaurants -- but unlike St. Roche's in New Orleans, from which the food hall was modeled on, not all vendors represent local chefs. While it's a solid move in the right direction and will satisfy the newcomer for a time, Jackson has a long way to go to compete on the food frontier with other equally populous Southern cities like Birmingham, Chattanooga or Knoxville.
Lemuria bookstore, Jackson's oldest and only independent bookstore, is an anchor for the literary arts and a haven for me on a quiet rainy afternoon. What's appalling is that in a state that boasts such a strong literary heritage has such a down-trodden public library, a converted old Sears building in desperate need of updating. Kudos to the library for what it does do, but the city should pump all the money it can to create a jewel of a library that inspires the general public and serves as tourist attraction as much as any museum, especially in the home state of some of the country's literary giants. Speaking of museums, Jackson has recently opened a new Civil Rights Museum that has become a real a source of pride and will likely become a cornerstone for black history in the city.
Among other things, such as institutional racism, Jackson suffers from poor city planning dating back to the late fifties and early sixties, when downtown expanded north and eastward. Without a mix of commercial and residential zoning, without the infrastructure that supports a variety of modes of transportation, Jackson was doomed to become a series of suburbs bounded by shopping center sprawl. It never was and never will be anything but. The heart of Fondren, which fills about four city blocks, is the only thing that comes close to the kind of neighborhoods you find in the dozens in other metropolitan cities of equal size. Missing are other "Fondrens" in other areas of town.
What Jackson does have are some lush green neighborhoods that are relatively affordable and, if you stay long enough, a small-town feel. People are by and large friendly. For outsiders, Jackson's culture may seem quaint and novel at first: rarely do folks complain of food allergies, talk of politics is politely avoided, and true artisan anything is a rare find. In many ways, this can be refreshing. Behind the strip malls and box stores, beneath the Brazilian blowouts and spray tans that so many women in Northeast Jackson sport, you can find a deep caring here. Jackson has a particular nuanced social construct that is hard to explain and best experienced. The humor here is unlike any other anywhere. No one can give you a put down while making you laugh in quite the same way than someone from Mississippi.
On the plus side, if you're from "away" or you're from the area and have lived elsewhere and are entrepreneurial, there are plenty of empty storefronts begging to be brought to life and a close-knit community who will largely support your endeavors. How successful you are depends on how much you appeal to a general audience rather than a more esoteric one.
Others may have a wildly different take on Jackson. Fair enough. Mine is that of a middle-aged, adventurous, open-minded rule-breaker who left Jackson like a lion out of a cage when I was twenty-one. Once my family responsibilities are over, I plan to hit the road with my husband in search of that city or town that offers more than to be lulled by the status quo. I'll defend Jackson to any outsider who criticizes it, but I'm sad to report that the place where I was born and raised can never be my chosen home. Yet it still holds my heart in ways I can't fully express.
If you've never visited Mississippi or Jackson, I recommend you do. Stay a while to get to know it on a deeper level. Even if you never choose to live here, it's important to understand it's unique place in history and in the country.
This is a great synopsis of Jackson, one of the most honest, detailed and insightful I have read. I don't consider what you wrote negative, Jackson, like all areas, has good and bad.
As far as hiking trails, people hike for the views, unfortunately, MS is relatively flat with few rocks, or beautiful lakes or rivers. Just like Lousiana, MS will never be much for hiking (plus it is hot as hades in the summer and too many hunters in the winter, better to stick to hiking in East TN). There is a decent amount of kayaking in Pelahatchie Bay, but the water is slow and muddy and the gators are plentiful (they leave you alone though). Also, there is a decent amount of bike/jogging/walking trails in the Flowood/Rez area.
Last edited by viverlibre; 08-19-2019 at 08:00 PM..
There will always be a struggling Journalist looking to write a piece. They write great things about every city that no one has mentioned in a while. In a way, it can be a bad thing to get noticed sometimes because these magazines and sites are scraping the bottom of the barrel for content to write about.
But wait! That doesn't automatically make what they say untrue! There certainly are some gems in Jackson, but sure it has a ways to go before it competes with other Southern peers like Birmingham, Chattanooga, Knoxville etc.
But what I love about Jackson is I don't get the perception they think they compete with Birmingham.. They're happy being Jackson. They don't care to grow like Nashville and become a metropolis. Other small/midsize southern cities are obsessed with being on the national scene or being Nashville or Atlanta.
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