By Andrew Howard ’17
THE ROUNDUP
Phoenix is the sixth biggest city in the country, and there are a plethora of opportunities in this town to take advantage of.
Yet with all the hustle and bustle, Phoenix still offers a small town feeling.
The Phoenix metro area is home to almost 5 million people, and hosts four professional sports teams. These are all characteristics of big cities, yet within a two hour drive you can go to the city of Prescott, which only has about 40,000 people.
There are many perks to this, if you want to enjoy a city with a large urban environment, you can, but at the same time you can escape for a weekend if you want to.
Despite being a major city, Phoenix’s museums are not as world renowned as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, but I personally do not find this to be a bad thing. The Phoenix Art Museum offers unique pieces, and often has world renowned artists, but is much less crowded than these more famous museums.
Plenty of people say Phoenix isn’t perfect though.
One argument I have heard a lot about is the heat, and that it is too hot to live here.
Yes, at times, the heat can be somewhat unbearable, but you are still always only about an hour away from better weather.
This argument would make sense if all year long was summertime. But the winters here are beautiful, people travel from all over the country to warm up and play some golf.
The second argument I hear a lot about is the competitiveness, or lack thereof, of the sports teams for being in such a major market.
I am an Arizona sports fan, so yes it is extremely difficult to not see our teams do well on a yearly basis. But I would counter with the fact that since we are such a major market, we have opportunities for sporting events here that many places never get.
In the last 10 years we have hosted the NBA and MLB all star games, two super bowls, 10 Fiesta bowls, a college football national championship, college football national semi-final game and most recently the Final Four.
Even more than just that, we host spring training every year as well.
To say that Phoenix is boring, or there is nothing to do here is just wrong. This is a growing city with lots of opportunity.
