As soon as someone mentions moving to Atlanta, like clockwork, you will hear someone yelling,
“DON’T MOVE TO ATLANTA WE FULL!”
Why do they say this?
What do they mean?
Here is my opinion!
They say Don’t move to Atlanta, We Full
Stop Moving to Atlanta, We Full
When you are young, dumb, and not very well-traveled, you may associate bad accents and mispronunciations of words with someone being dumb.
When I first heard some people in Atlanta talking, I thought “This has got to be the dumbest batch of people I’ve ever encountered.”
They leave the last few letters off of most words.
They jumble so many words together that it’s almost impossible to understand if you’re not used to it.
I remember someone telling me. “Oh, let’s do it” was the most popular song on the radio.
I was like what? They played it “Olay-doo-way.”
I was like, how on earth did you understand that?
I moved down here on my own 16 years ago.
Before that, when I was in high school, My Mother sent me down here for a year to stay with my older brother because I was acting an ass in school up in NYC.
Listening to the folks down here talk was comical.
The chicks in my new school treated me and my NYC slang like I was a FEMA doctor in a poor country coming to administer medicine for their society to beat a local disease.
I was treated like a superstar!
That was the early 90s though.
Don’t expect the same infatuation with your NY accent these days.
Atlanta aint full for everyone
After a short time here, and getting to know people, my perspective started to change.
I slowly started to realize that even though these dudes and chicks were talking differently than me, they really knew what they were talking about.
I realized that I was talking to some of the smartest, most enterprising, and most calculated people I had ever met in my life.
The circle I surrounded myself with was different but made me ashamed to ever think that an accent could determine if someone was smart or not.
In all reality, I was the one with the accent being that I was the one who was new here.
I say all of that to say, that a whole lot of people who were born in Atlanta are extremely street-smart, well-educated, and dope people to be around.
Martin Luther King JR, and Maynard Jackson were from Atlanta.
Listen to TI and Killer Mike speak and you’ll see they’re brilliant.
The most insightful and fact-driven knowledge you’ll ever get from a political pundit will come from Glenwood Road’s Rashaad Richie.
but at the same time, there are still some really corny, snobby for no reason, proud-to-be bummy, dummies who were also born and raised in Atlanta.
The Number one thing that these mentally less fortunate people do is CONSTANTLY use old tired cliches!
You’ll catch them saying something useless like
- “I’m not new to this, I’m true to this”
- “You may have come here, but I’m from here”
- “You take the good with the bad and you glad” or
- “I was born and raised, cornfed and graised here
They are masters at using other tired, unoriginal, rhyming, thingamajig every chance they get.
I guess at some point, those cliches helped old farmers remember how to milk cows or something important.
So they were passed down from generation to generation.
A lot of people who recently moved down here slowly start to forget their style, originality, and essence.
I guess it’s an assimilation process.
A lot of Atlanta transplants start to become followers of the corny, dummy, groups of ATLiens.
These transplants are the creators of the phrase “Don’t move to Atlanta, we Full!” followed by a goofy laugh that sounds like “huew, hew, hew”
The process of getting on your feet in Atlanta is a lot quicker than you may think
“Don’t move to Atlanta we full” is a cliche used by Atlanta Transplants.
Cliches take no intellectual effort to repeat.
According to the dictionary, Cliches are phrases or opinions that are overused and betray a lack of original thought.
They’re a lot like memes, but more like reposting a meme from 2012.
Old and Corny
Maybe it was clever and funny the first time it was said or written on a T-shirt, but now, it’s just predictable and annoying.
Will you regret Moving to Atlanta?
How are the Highways:
On Friday, Rush Hour, (Both of Chris Tucker’s movies, BTW) the highways are horrendous.
They will be packed, Bumper to Bumper.
And for some reason, it’s usually raining.
More Interestingly, you can be on that same exact route, at the same exact time of the day, but on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday and those roads will be so empty that you’ll rarely see anyone in your rear-view mirror.
This is no exaggeration, on a Monday, you can drive from as far north of metro Atlanta to as far south as possible of metro Atlanta in about an hour.
Saturday Afternoons will probably get you stuck behind construction on the I-285 highway but not many people are traveling that time of day anyway.
Just keep it in mind if you are going to the airport or a day party.
But on Fridays, the traffic is incredibly awful.
Why and how is that possible?
After all of my years of living here, I still can’t figure it out.
I guess it has something to do with visitors coming to town for the weekend.
But to this day, after 16 years it still puzzles me.
UPDATE: Someone told me 18-wheeler trucks usually end their long hauls on Fridays and they are the reason for the Friday highway backup.
But instead of sitting around pondering about why this is happening and singing “WE SHALL OVERCOME this Traffic” what you could do is just plan ahead.
Since you know what awaits you on the roads on Fridays solve the problem by having alternative routes planned.
Is Atlanta Expensive?
Is it Expensive to live in Atlanta?
It is NOT expensive to move to Atlanta
The prices of everyday items are about the same as they will be in most big cities around the country.
You will save on everything else when it comes to the everyday cost of living expenses and convenience when compared.
The good thing about Atlanta not being so full is the fact that when you spend money, you will actually get to enjoy your purchase.
Go to the movies, and within minutes you’ll be eating popcorn, and watching very popular movies in a not-so-crowded theatre.
Popular restaurants will sometimes make you hold for a table, but most waiters will say it’s about a 30-minute wait.
I recall restaurants in New York, making us wait 3-4 hours.
I’ve mentioned this in my previous videos about Atlanta but visiting Public Services Places like DMV, The Courts and Registration and the IRS building is still like living in a Parallel universe
When compared to the wait times that I was used to in NEW YORK, it’s literally like night and day.
So no, “don’t come to Atlanta we full” does not hold up in that department either.
Atlanta Cost of living
Well-paying Jobs are still easy to get if you have the right skills.
After the Pandemic and the new explosion of work-from-home jobs, lower-paying jobs are extremely easy to find too.
If you keep your skills updated, you’ll not have to worry about someone taking your job or getting paid more than you.
Excellent courses like CourseCareers can have you making over 80,000 a year in just a few months.
If you don’t have skills, almost every retail store, supermarket, and gas station have now hiring signs on their front door.
If this place was “SO FULL” there wouldn’t be so many available jobs.
If your job aint paying you enough, either upgrade your skills or make sure you get a degree in something that’s actually marketable.
Concert in Piedmont Park Atlanta
Moving to Atlanta with no Job
If you are looking for an apartment and you have the money for 1st and last month’s rent, you can move in that day.
No waiting lists.
Full cities can’t say that.
Just make sure you start looking for a steady income immediately.
I wrote a whole article on how to make moving to Atlanta with no job as easy and profitable as possible.
The same goes for homes.
New houses are being built everywhere and the only thing that will keep you out of them is your budget, not a lack of space.
It depends on what you’re used to and willing to deal with when it comes to how much money you need to live comfortably in Atlanta.
Clubs can get crowded.
But there is always room to move around, unlike some clubs I’ve been to in NYC, Miami, and VEGAS.
Is Atlanta full or getting full?
Atlanta aint full as of now.
A lot of people who say that are selfish, haters, and FULL of “Bleep”
They have a good thing going on down here in Atlanta.
They don’t want to share so they use “Don’t move to Atlanta we full” as a deterrent to others.
In the playlist I’m attaching to the end screen, I want you to take notice of how my experience has been living in Atlanta.
Honestly, a lot moved away from their native cities to put space between themselves and certain people.
To then see those people getting off the greyhound in front of your house can be pretty disappointing.
I guess that’s the real reason the phrase “Don’t move to Atlanta we Full” was coined.
Are you thinking about moving to Atlanta but don’t want to go from 1 crowded city to the next?
Are you currently living in a small city and want to see what big-city living is like?
Type “Atlanta aint full and I’m coming on down!” in the comments section below and tell me about it.
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Is Atlanta Paradise?
NO.
Is Atlanta a Good Place to Live? Yes.
Is it full? Not by a long shot.
Can you live like a king? Yes, A Passport King!
