Atlanta

Ansley Park is one of Atlanta’s oldest historic districts. Flanked by Piedmont Road and Peachtree Street, it is virtually a miniature suburb within the metro area. Adjacent to Piedmont Park and complete with its own golf course, it’s a clean, upper-middle class neighborhood built on well-maintained landscapes and smooth, wide roads. What it lacks in socioeconomic diversity, it makes up for in line-dancin’, drag showin’, pride paradin’ pastimes; to be frank, Ansley Park is arguably the most gay-family-friendly neighborhood in Atlanta. Its proximity to the rainbow flag-draped establishments in Midtown as well as Piedmont Park, the central location for almost every Pride Festival in recent years, is a clear signifier to young couples of any orientation that Ansley Park is a welcoming place to start a family. For the partiers in the crowd, Blake’s on the Park and Three-Legged Cowboy are great places to grab a cocktail (ha!), check out a drag show, or get a line dance lesson.

The best part about living in this bitty ‘burb is that a trip to the city is only a walk away. Ansley Park is surrounded by skyline on nearly all sides, and a night out on the town is only as much of a commute as finding a parking spot on Juniper Street. Ansley Mall, at the intersection of Piedmont and Monroe, provides the day-to-day essentials: Publix, CVS, a pet-needs store, and even some smaller boutique shops. Nothing pretentious or intimidating about this neighborhood, and if there is any drawback, it’s that it might be a bit too clean-cut and dry for singles not quite ready to settle down, or couples still looking to maintain a little edginess in their style of living.

Often enough, couples that choose to own homes in the heart of Atlanta have the option to send their children to private or Montessori schools. Ansley Park parents electing to educate their tots in the Atlanta Public School system will send their impressionable offspring to Morningside Elementary, their precocious pre-teens to Inman Middle, and their diversity-tolerant and well-rounded teenagers to Grady High. It’s probably important to note that, for all of its shiny qualities, Ansley Park is ultimately still a neighborhood in the middle of a metropolitan area, so break-ins and car-thefts are not uncommon. Fortunately, if you’ve been a good neighbor, you’ll likely have no shortage of community folks watching over your Colonial home and its manicured lawn. Cheers!

Thanks to an oligarchy of moneyed movers and shakers, the stretch at the Roswell/Peachtree split – once dominated by packed nightclubs and bars that brought a little too much “downtown” (read: ATL rap royalty and their entourages, noise, crime) to their uptown streets, today’s Buckhead Village is a strategically high-priced enclave in the glittering heart of an area where, according to the unofficial Buckhead motto, old money lives and young money parties. Though it's not so exclusive as to preclude an influx of more averagely yuppie partiers from flocking here every weekend to run up their credit cards and rub up on each other in its now gentrified club/lounge hot spots.

The Village itself represents a cultivation of luxury shopping (the Streets of Buckhead, boasting classic high-end staples like Gucci and Hermes, is perpetually “coming soon”) posh dining (the Buckhead Life Restaurant Group has a near monopoly on “it” eateries here: Nava, Chops, Pricci, Kyma, Atlanta Fish Market, Buckhead Diner…), velvet-rope entertainment (plenty of venues abound for the black-tie gala set) and the kind of discerning clientele who tend to congregate at such locations – usually with their designer bags/dogs/children in tow. Tourists, too, are frequent visitors to the area, often shuttled in by their hotel to shop and eat at, of all places, The Cheesecake Factory, which sits next to the even more incongruous ESPN Zone mega-bar (complete with disturbingly animated sports reliefs in a faux-stone facade).

Actually living in the Village most likely equates to buying/renting a high-rise condo, townhome or apartment – the few family homes that have held their ground here are not likely to be up for sale any time soon, unless it’s to a developer once the market recovers. Most residents are upwardly mobile singles or new bachelors/bachelorettes priming themselves for a post-divorce attempt at recapturing their roaring 20s.

Still, if you have a champagne taste for Buckhead’s version of the good life, and the income to back it up, you can’t do much better than the Village – which, I’m sure, was exactly what you were hoping to hear. Cheers!