It has to be, I gather, because the space industry is going gangbusters and needs people to want to move to Alabama. Local unemployment recently hit 1.9%. Major corporations like JP Morgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin are heavily engaged with state and local leaders to fund cheap housing for new employees, try to get high school students trained on coding so they can become 2-year college students then trained on machine welding and other technologies greatly in need in the rocket industry. Four-year colleges focus on engineering; the town claims the highest percentage of engineer citizens in the nation. They've also built parks, an arboretum, music venues, sporting facilities, trails, and anything else they can think of to make the place seem like a fun place to be -- which, indeed, it is.
Here's one fun idea: they turned over one of those antiquated mid-century school campuses to local bars and game shops, which have had fun turning it into a punk/rockabilly sort of version of traditional high school.
Classic institutional architecture, now a reform reformed school.
Pool and Bud Light in the Principal's Office.
Dungeons and Dragons gaming shop among lockers festooned with once-forbidden stickers.
Prom, no. Rockabilly Prom? Maybe!
An arcade filled with nothing but pinball machines. I played the Star Wars one.
Well, and one more pool table at the back.
Rockabilly Prom? How about Zombie Prom?
The whole area is what we here in NC call a "Social District," meaning that you can walk around freely with open containers of alcohol. There are some rules that are mostly deference to state law, but generally it is set aside to be a more-fun space than usual.
Right across the street from all that is the IBEW Union Hall, so it's a place where you'll meet welders and working men. Also servicemen: the city features Redstone Arsenal, where the military component of all this lives, about 45,000 service members and civilians devoted to the space program in one way or another. Soon to be 55,000, because US Space Command is relocating there soon from Colorado Springs.
A much fancier version of the same concept exists just two blocks away:
A similar space called Stovehouse built around an old factory. It’s got everything from ballroom dancing to taqueria to a Pilates studio.
Also defense contractors. Lots of them have offices in the same facility: Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, etc.
Less wild and crazy than the reformed-school space, but it was fun to watch the happy children play in the water feature.
Because of the prosperity and low unemployment, Huntsville is a very clean and safe town. I think it is well understood that I generally dislike cities under the best of circumstances, but this one is actually a nice place to visit. Even better -- it's only about 12 miles from city-center to the farmlands outside, so it doesn't take long to escape when you get ready to climb on your bike and get out of town.
A bit to the south, outside Birmingham, is the Barber Motorsport park.
ReplyDeleteHome to one of the best motorcycle museums in the US, also home to a track designed with bike riders in mind. They have a vintage week in the fall, races, swap meet etc.