panopticon

The sad part is that I once heard a guy say that lots of people try to leave Fort Smith, but they always end up coming back. I nearly scoffed. But he's right. The town doesn't have enough to keep people, but it barely has enough to draw them back for whatever reason. I think it's where dreams and aspirations ultimately go to die, though. Which is why I'm doing what I can to leave for greener pastures. People come down hard on Fort Smith because it really is wasting its potential every step of the way. I noticed that nearly all the TV broadcasters moved up to NWA after being headquartered here for so long. I know a guy who lives here but does the bulk of his work up in NWA for one of the broadcasters . It's not uncommon for him to come home after 7 or even 9 pm during the week. I also heard that Toyota was once interested in building a plant here, but the city wanted nothing to do with it, like building utilities out to land in Fort Chaffee. Was that true? If it is, then Fort Smith really deserves whatever slow death comes to it.

Welcome all, I'm new here and had to register when I saw this thread. I grew up in Fort Smith, attended UAFS, then graduated with a pre-law degree at Central Arkansas. In between, I traveled, and saw cities like San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. After suffering a lot of personal troubles down in Conway, I felt that returning to Fort Smith would settle things down. Big mistake. I learned fairly quickly why I left. There is nothing here! No growth, no jobs, no culture, no singles scene worth looking into.... and that's only the tip of the iceberg. The only new things that occurred after I left were Hooters, Target (which was planned but never implemented for many years) and the Marshals museum; I've been to Hooters in other cities, Conway has had Target for at least 3 years and I find nothing exciting about a stack of old guns. There is something fundamentally wrong with this town, which I think it's its chronic lack of culture, education and forward thinking, and it's choking it into an overgrown suburb of NWA. What Fort Smith could be, I've seen in other parts of the state. Fayetteville has a vibrant downtown, Little Rock has an enormously well-developed riverfront (you can actually get decent seats at the pub crawls down there, rather than uncomfortably standing shoulder-to-shoulder here), and you can see variations of both in their surrounding areas. Fort Smith, on the other hand, just continues to stagnate. I have a pretty good job now, though after realizing that I'm pissing away my mid-twenties here, I decided to finally apply to law school next fall. I'm looking at Little Rock and Fayetteville, and if I do well enough on LSAT, I'll look elsewhere. In any case, I hope to leave and never look back. I hate this town with a passion, not because of what it is, but because of what it could be but will not.