So, I’ve returned to Tallahassee after being away for a few years living another life and “WOW, thanks I hate it”

Smoke shops everywhere. Why are there so many smoke shops?! Just before I left you could see the Tallahassee Boomers’ grandchildren coming back from their fancy schools and going all ‘storage unit’ crazy (a’la Sweatystartup) all over the city.

W. Tennessee St is out of a late-stage capitalist nightmare. Ugly and Gigantic student housing complexes tearing all the way through to the French town side. I hear they are building more too. Cascade park is ridiculous and just look at what happened to the All Saints neighborhood of Tallahassee.

Years ago I made a post here about Adam Boyton Kaye being hellbent on destroying Railroad Square and I can’t tell if he’s been successful or not because something tells me that other developers might have stolen his thunder. The ‘Greenwise’ on Gaines St is starting selling high fructose corn syrup candies = and became a regular smegular Publix. Not sure what happened with that but I do love Publix- best grocery chain in America followed by Sprouts.

And WaWa? WaWa’s everywhere. Which isn’t that bad to be honest because the gas station experience is the worst retail experience in America for the most part. But then I heard that a Buc-ee’s is being built here too. Amazing. Disgusting. Hilarious!

Project Mango was a success, I see. Congratulations on Amazon. And the housing developments I’ve seen all over Tallahassee just don’t make any sense to my brain. Who is supposed to be living here and where are they supposed to be working?

The industries in Tallahassee are what? Medical? University and Government. But the job market isn’t that fucking big at all, not nearly big enough to support the amount of apartment developments going up everywhere is it? Am I the thicky thicky dumb dumb here? I look at Tallahassee and I’m confused at what I’m looking at. Has FSU increased it’s student enrollment by thousands? Is the local government expanding or expecting to expand? What am I missing about Tallahassee?

I’m not against progress, change or development. I’ve lived in big cities for awhile now. I travel a lot. Change is good. Capitalism is good. Tallahassee is developing like it’s Charolette, Austin or late 90’s Portland…but it’s not. And I’m just wondering where is the money coming from? Where is the money going?

Originally posted by u/CatSkillsPro on Reddit.

Top comment by u/toprailfull

For upper middle-class income, Tallahassee has a ton of tech industry 1099 independent contractors who work 95% at home and the other 5% flying to major cities for meetings and product demos. It’s a quiet demographic that pulls in substantial non-local income, and you can live like a king in Tallahassee on what it pays. AI-related layoffs have hit company careerists, the contractors implementing new workflows utilizing it are making bank.

The typical Tally middle-class is one person in the household has a State or local government job for the insurance and benefits, and the other works a blue-collar job in the trades or in retail.

Tons of students with mommy and daddy’s money for the College Experience™ drive the W Tennessee buildout. But W Tennessee’s always been a trashy sprawling mess people want to avoid after graduating for as long as I’ve been alive.

Hard disagree on Cascades, it’s one of the best outcomes to a Superfund site I’ve seen.