Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My girlfriend may be getting a job at UMASS which means I'll have to move from the "always sunny" Philadelphia to in-or-around Amherst. I'm used to living in a city and I'm a bit worried about living so far away from one.
Is there a nightlife in Amherst? Any good restaurants? Farmer's markets?
I'm also a bit worried because I'm a web designer and there usually aren't very many web jobs outside of big cities. Does anyone know of any design firms around Amherst?
It can get really lonely out here in Western Massachusetts. So lonely, in fact, that people just drive around 'til 3AM, honking and yelling out their windows "Anyone from Amherst here?"
(just kidding, not sure about any web design firms, but you might want to ask professors of the web design classes at the different schools in the area, and maybe even contact the Northampton Chamber of Commerce)
Just really stressed. I couldn't sleep last night because of the news that I'll be moving. GF is also gone until September. Amherst looks so small and has, like, no web jobs according to craigslist.
If you are looking on Craigslist to find ANY job, you are wasting your time. Sorry, but it's the truth. Craigslist is not a bad place to look if you want to spend money, sell a service or sell an item. As far as using it to develop relationships (or a quickie), experience personal growth or land a job, forget about it.
I'm from Amherst and also lived on Greene St in the Penn Knox neighborhood in Germantown/Philly. CL is good for a lot of things in some parts of the country but not in western Mass. The winters are much milder and shorter in Philly, get used to more snow. There's a few decent restaurants in Amherst, nothing at all like Philly and compared to Philly you have to work very hard to make friends and have a social life. The population is @ 32,000 in Amherst...many thousands of undergrads and a boring insular professor class, not much of a pool of potential friends. What are you into?
Northampton is about the same population as Amherst but has a much more urban feel. Many UMass students live in Northampton, with good bus service to UMass. I'm sure there are some web design firms around, but probably not too many job openings.
Springfield is about 20 minutes away. Hartford 45 minutes - if a bigger city is needed.
I can't help you with info on where there might be jobs in web design. I'm wondering whether your girlfriend might not be able to get some inside info from people at UMass once she settles in there. There are a lot of tight networks among the employees at Umass, so this may not happen overnight, but at some point she may be able to use contact with those networks to get some info on jobs in the area. I'll say also that I think you may have gotten a good suggestion from WMass, about checking job possibilities in Hartford and Springfield. Those are not exactly metropolises, and are certainly small cities compared to Philly, but they are cities rather than small towns, and should offer more job opportunities than the immediate small-town, college-crowd vicinity of Amherst.
There is both good news and bad news about nightlife in the vicinity of Amherst. The good news is that the area does have some nightlife. I would suggest checking out Northampton for nightlife catering to the college crowd but is not as completely dominated by the college scene as you'll find in Amherst. When it comes to finding people to socialize with, unfortunately Teachertype is right on target with the observation that the area has very well defined groups which can be hard to be part of if you don't have a natural connection. You've got undergrad students forming one group, grad students making up another, and then professors constituting another social circle. It's kind of obvious that these circles each have a common identity which would make them tend to hang together and not necessarily have a lot to do with those who don't share that commonality. It's true of the townies in the area as well. My impression when I lived in Amherst was that the local people on the whole were very clannish.
On the other hand, the wider area around Amherst has enough population that you should be able to get to know some people who would enjoy socializing with you, as long as you are good company and you don't try to push your way into local circles too quickly. As I said above, there is some nightlife in Northampton. There is some in Amherst too, though it's very heavily centered around the college crowd. With several colleges in the local area, there are also some cultural offerings, more than you might expect in a rural area. Still, the reality is that Amherst is located in a rural area. Though the area is not totally devoid of entertainment options, you will find it to be a major change from Philly.
One more suggestion is that when you are ready to start looking for a place to live, check back for details on neighborhoods in the area. Some sections of Amherst in particular are heavily populated by students, and can be noisy at times.
I'd like to be able to tell you that this won't be a change from life in the big city, but this would be unrealistic. Still, Amherst and other towns in the area do have some activity. It's a semi-rural area with a fairly small population, and nothing like the variety of entertainment and cultural offerings of a city the size of Philly, but we're not talking about a tiny cowtown village of just a few hundred people either. The area also has some gorgeous natural scenery. Who knows, maybe you'll expand your interests to include some outdoors activities not close at hand where you live now.
Last edited by ogre; 04-25-2010 at 10:12 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
