Spotted on collegeconfidential.com...
Ok, but is New Haven really that bad?? I know some of my friends really want me to say yes right now. I know part of myself really wants to say yes right now. But here's the lowdown from your confidential source: New Haven is great now. Not London-great or NYC-great, but it's great!
Essentially, New Haven used to be a warzone 20-30 years ago. Or something like that, per the lady who lives on the 5th floor of my building. She wouldn't even walk down the street that we currently live on, because of all the crime and drugs.
Now though the downtown area has really turned around. Crown Street on a Saturday night gets as busy as any in the East Village. There are bars, restaurants, cute cafes, craft ice cream joints, craft boba joints, craft fried chicken joints...
There's still visible poverty, but it's not as overwhelming as I hear it once was. Things can turn around very quickly in the span of about a block, though, kind of like the Tenderloin-Nob Hill border in SF, so you do want to stay on your toes.
New Haven's clearly part of New England, so there are lots of beautiful green spaces and churches.
Best of all though, of course, is the architecture of Yale itself. I remember when I was a freshman, I met an ProFro (prospective frosh, duh) who I was trying to convince to come to the clearly superior institution over Yale. This ProFro was just absolutely stuck on Yale, though, and kept saying: "oh but it's so much prettier there!" 15 years later...I get it.
Yale is gorgeous. Beautiful gothic arches, soaring towers, sun-dappled courtyards with ivy growing up the stone walls. Ugh! It's just so perfect. The whole place feels like a small piece of Oxford/Cambridge was transplanted over. Later I learned that all of the majestic stone buildings were built in the last century, and that some accused the main architect of "cheating" by using steel frames underneath the stone and throwing acid on the walls to make them look aged, but holy cow did that man know his stuff because they're beautiful.
So yes, we are definitely enjoying it in New Haven. One of our new favorite activities is to go for a walk on a weekend morning, cruising the city for coffee, spending time with each other, and taking in the sights. The city is big enough to feel like a real city with interesting things to see, but small enough to be manageable on foot. I'm a big fan of that. Next up: I gotta get some of that craft boba...
This Week's Random:
There's a really cool public art installation in one of the New Haven. Stand in exactly the right spot in one of the alleyways, and you're rewarded with this (the walls and parking structure are painted just so, so that you have to stand in the right spot to see it). Et viola
