Patterson sees parallels between Greenville and her hometown of Pittsburgh, which have “both been through some great revitalizations in the past, I would say, 10 to 15 years. It’s amazing to see pictures of Greenville before. … And a lot of people, when you say, ‘Pittsburgh,’ have that picture in their head of the old steel town, and smog. And it’s not like that anymore.”
Jamie Patterson is a trailing spouse. Her husband is from Upstate South Carolina. Now is a good time to move back home. Greenville is booming.
Luckily for her husband, Patterson gets Greenville. In every Rust Belt city I've visited, I feel at home. Portland, Austin, and even Denver don't excite me. You can have your Emerald City. I prefer Rust Belt Chic.
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While living in Dallas for the last five or six years, I worked for a company that was based out of Austin. No stranger to the T-shirt, "Keep Austin Weird!" I used to retort, "It's not working!"
When downtown Austin started to try passing noise abatement ordinances (keep in mind this is the live music capital), we knew the cultural creative war was lost. I lived in Southern California long enough to recognize a cultural trade deficit between net consumers and net producers. Austin probably passed that divide sometime in the middle of the last decade.
Rust Belt Chic may have an edge to it, but there is no doubt when waking up to a Pittsburgh morning that I am alive and aware of the world around me!
J. Scott
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