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Comment by mcone | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Albuquerque for nine years (2003-2012). The Catholicism is certainly part of it, but it's more complicated than that.

One gets the feeling that it's a more egalitarian city than other US metro areas. I didn't feel like it was that racist of a city, certainly nothing compared to Pittsburgh, where I now live.

And there are very few establishments that are designed exclusively for the wealthy. The Frontier restaurant near UNM is a great example of what I'm talking about. You would regularly see news anchors, professors, doctors, etc. dining there in the same room as people who were homeless.

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> And there are very few establishments that are designed exclusively for the wealthy.

This is an excellent description. Some people still flaunt their wealth, which is true everywhere, but I feel a sense of the city belonging to everyone that lives in it.

Of course, that's my view as a fairly well-off white male who's never experienced anything close to homelessness. People from different circumstances may have different opinions.

You can still find those places in Alb and the rest of NM. They have a hard time establishing a real presence though, as there really aren't so many people there. It still needs more industry/business. Something to pull the average income up and employ everybody.

For the most part, there's also very little geographic separation between the poorer parts and the richer parts, unless you end up east of Tramway or north of Paseo. This does tend to mean a bit more property crime, but for the most part people are relatively accepting of that.

There are still parts that are a bit scary (south valley, south of central especially around Zuni/San Pedro) but it's not that scary if you are from Abq. As for the racism, a lot of that goes back to the makeup of Abq historically and today, with an extremely diverse (and distributed!) population that most places can't match.

How come you left?

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