Phillips: On outgrowing the downtown lifestyle

Well, downtown, it's been nice being here for four years, but it's time to say adieu.

When I first moved to my place on the west end of Vine Street abutting the university campus in June 2008, I was elated.

After moving to Chattanooga in 2007, I lived for a year in a cookie-cutter apartment near Hamilton Place. My new place was almost the complete opposite, and I loved everything about it.

Instead of a standard layout, my apartment looked like it was designed by M.C. Escher. The bedroom was between the kitchen and the living room, and I had no doors, which I made up for by hanging a beaded curtain and a tapestry.

After living next to an irritable elderly couple, it was invigorating to be living next to students and recent graduates.

I loved that I was just a few minutes from everything downtown, including my office. I could even walk to the North Shore, if I was determined enough, though that once meant taking my life in my hands to cross the Veterans Bridge during a particularly nasty ice storm.

The ceilings were high, there were silver radiators that looked like they dropped out of a time machine from the '40s and my bedroom was painted the sea green of an H.P. Lovecraft monster.

It had character and was just Bohemian enough without being too rough around the edges.

Unfortunately, time and inclinations change, and the things I once loved now grate on me.

The high ceilings make it hard to maintain the temperature, since the heat from the radiators is anemic and the air conditioner spontaneously decides to turn itself off during heat waves.

Being next to campus makes finding parking for visitors tricky, and the lack of a washer and dryer turns every laundry trip into an all-day affair rife with cursing and giving the cold shoulder to homeless panhandlers.

But the moment I realized it was time to move was when I began calling my 20-year-old neighbors "those annoying college kids whose music rattles my ceiling."

It's not that I have hard feelings about the place. Quite the contrary.

I remember how wonderful it was to wander in at 2 a.m. to shower off the grunge of a hot Riverbend night or the smoke of an evening at nearby JJ's Bohemia.

I remember having friends over to listen to albums fresh off the shelves of Chad's Records, which was just down the street.

I remember playing music with my friends and future bandmates in my living room and being able to walk to The Honest Pint every Sunday for the Irish session.

It was a wonderful place that has given me many fond memories, but those days are over. It's time for someone else to move in who can enjoy it as much as I used to.

In the meantime, I get to see what life is like commuting downtown by bike from St. Elmo, a place whose siren song has been in my ear for some time now.

The lifestyle will be different, for sure, but then again, so am I.