New West Living

A Moving Downtown Albuquerque Story

By Alan Kleinfeld, 5-24-06

I've mentioned in this space before that I'm a recent re-transplant to Albuquerque, moving here not yet a year ago from our nation's capitol. The transition returning home has been a hard one, if not impossible. So challenging in fact, that we sold the home we just moved into and planned to hightail it back to the Right Coast, where they have subway systems, Nordstrom's, and people moving at speeds other than slo-mo.

And then things changed. Maybe it was the fact that we'd been here almost a year and were getting over our knee-jerk reaction. Maybe it was the sunshine and the nearly perfect weather. Perhaps it was the fact that there are so many golf courses within a short drive (and at half the cost of those in the DC area). Or possibly it was because our job offers back east fell apart like so many Hollywood marriages.

By the time we decided to stay, we had already sold our house. We had to be out by closing and since we weren’t taking the apartment we found in DC, we were left homeless in Albuquerque. Luckily, we found a rental home available in downtown Albuquerque and we only had to put our belongings in storage and live in a hotel for a short while.

We intentionally picked Downtown. No, there is no Apple Store or Container Store. Yet. And that’s okay. We don’t need ‘em. Yet. But we love being Downtown. Now we get some of that urban feeling we missed from DC. We can walk, walk, walk to just about everything we need or want. And that alone was one of the things we missed most about living in DC. I hadn’t owned a car in years while there and used the metro as my main mode of transportation.

In the short time we've been Downtown, we've walked to the movie theater, to Thai food, to the bank and even to the little Lowe’s grocery on Lomas and 12th. So far the only thing we needed that we couldn’t walk to is a hardware store. If there’s one Downtown, we don’t know about it. We found a dry cleaner, a flower/gift shop and more barber shops and salons than we have hair on our heads to style. If we had a Walgreens to walk to, we would have visited it by now, too. We've even made the trek to Old Town. Hey, 20 minutes is nothing when you’ve walked from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the Capital Building.

Before moving back to Albuquerque, we looked at the lofts, popping up like springtime weeds. We found them (and still find them) to be ridiculously overpriced (almost as bad as prices in DC. No foolin’!) and with so many of them available (and more opening soon), if we do decide to buy a loft in the future to remain Downtown, we’ll wait for all the suckers to go bankrupt and then check out what’s left standing.

But we’re sold on Downtown, despite that every two inches we encounter a law office. There’s a great mix of homes and people and nothing seems too far away. There’s no Wal-Mart (thank gawd!). And if I didn’t say it before, it’s great to be able to walk to stuff. Now, if I can manage to keep myself in Albuquerque long enough, maybe Downtown will become the cosmopolitan joint that makes other Downtowns first class. You know, a trolley system, maybe a stadium and an Ikea. As long as I can walk to it, I’ll be fine.

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