I just received a job in Madison, Wisconsin. I was wondering if anyone lives in the area or has lived there in the past and can tell me the best places to live. I would initially be getting an apartment but would like to get a house soon after moving there. Thank you for any information you have.
no idea about the place, but congrats on the job and good luck with the move.
All I know is during the fall Madison is supposed to kick ass for college football!
I’ve been there on business so I don’t know much about the living areas but it’s a fun town. Consistantly rated highly in places to live. They may not do these polls in the winter though…
Anyway, good luck, hope it goes well.
I’ve been to Madison twice, and I love it. Great college town, but also a great city for young professionals. The winters can be rough, but the summers are incredible, especially with its location on two lakes.
A lot of new condos in the city, some really nice stuff.
I lived there for a while in grad school at the university. Madison is a wonderful place to live (as long as you adjust to the brutal winters).
As a student, I was always renting and looking for something close to campus, so I can’t tell you as much about buying a house. Is your job in-town or somewhere further out from the city center? Most of the undergrad student areas are right near campus, within about 2-3 miles east, west, and south. On the fringes of this is where I’ve lived, including just south of the Kohl center close to the capital, and east of the capital just off of Washington Ave. Most of the folks that want to live close to downtown/campus are starting to look for homes in these fringe areas, but of course it’s more expensive for what you get than further outside town. The roughest areas of town are in the middle of the student housing right around campus, south near where S. Park and Fish Hatchery hit the beltline (highway 14/18), further along the beltline in the Verona Rd-allied drive area, and further east along Washington as you get past East high school. For most of the rest of the town, the crime is minimal. If you’re looking for the hipper areas of town for apartments (houses can be pretty expensive there), you could try near the capitol building, north of Washington Ave going towards Lake Mendota, and east between Williamson St and Lake Monona. If you’d like more traditional neighborhoods and apartments, out along University boulevard (and Old University), the east side of Lake Monona (out Atwood dr.). More expensive neighborhoods include the Lakefront areas, south and west of town but inside the beltline, and the Maple Woods/Maple Bluff areas northeast of Packers Ave (I don’t know as much about those). As you go out from the isthmus east and west, the neighborhoods get more and more like stereotypical suburban sprawl homes (cheaper for how much land/house you get, but further from all the action and usually less interesting).
Madison is surprisingly segregated (though I guess it is WI), but if you’re into cultural diversity, living closer to downtown is a good bet.
Parking downtown and on the fringes of the student areas sucks, so if you can find a place with a spot to park when you live close to downtown, that is a huge bonus. It’s alternate side parking during the winter, they sell more permits for street parking than they should (most of these downtown apartments don’t have enough spaces), so when it snows and they need to plow, you can spend a while trying to find a spot.
In case you didn’t already know this, Madison has an awe-inspiring number of great restaurants and bars, somewhat concentrated towards the center (so it’s sometimes better to live in the area). They claim its second only to San Fran for per-capita numbers of restaurants. You can google where some of these are I think. I used to love Dotty’s burgers, Smokey Joe’s BBQ, the Old Fashioned (though watch your cholesterol counts), Himal Chuli, Roman Candle pizza, El Pastor (Mexican), Bluephies, Monty’s Blue Plate diner. Be sure to check out the farmer’s market and the breakfast they serve at the Madison senior center ($7.50 but really good). Also, the Friday fish-fries are kind of like church BBQ’s in Charlotte (e.g. good ones at the Dane, Avenue Bar, the local catholic churches are probably best). There’s also a number of great brew pubs and bars, which often have surprisingly good food, including the Great Dane just south of the capital, Greenbush Bar (great pizza), Weary Traveler, Blue Moon Bar, Harmony Bar and the Avenue Bar. Of course the best place to be in town (in my opinion) is having ice cream or a beer out on the Memorial student union’s lakeside Terrace on a sunny day.
As you can tell, I’m pretty enthusiastic about the place. Congrats on getting a job there!
Lots of coeds I’d imagine. Oh yea, bring a coat.
Madison Rayne is hot, & she’s the Tna Knockout Champ.
9erken, you’re putting in a recommendation for the Sr. Center? :)) I’m pretty sure no one wants to check out girls with wrinkles.
[quote=“stonecoldken, post:8, topic:23122”]Madison Rayne is hot, & she’s the Tna Knockout Champ.
9erken, you’re putting in a recommendation for the Sr. Center? :)) I’m pretty sure no one wants to check out girls with wrinkles.[/quote] Might not be your scene. But they just hold it there, people of all ages attend, and it’s run by folks associated with the farmer’s market, so the food is fresh. They had the best bacon I’ve ever had at this breakfast. Do you like bacon?
[quote=“9erken, post:9, topic:23122”][quote=“stonecoldken, post:8, topic:23122”]Madison Rayne is hot, & she’s the Tna Knockout Champ.
9erken, you’re putting in a recommendation for the Sr. Center? :)) I’m pretty sure no one wants to check out girls with wrinkles.[/quote] Might not be your scene. But they just hold it there, people of all ages attend, and it’s run by folks associated with the farmer’s market, so the food is fresh. They had the best bacon I’ve ever had at this breakfast. Do you like bacon?[/quote]
That is quite possibly the silliest question I’ve ever heard. Do you like Bacon? Who doesn’t like Bacon. Heck I give Vegans bacon and they like it. All real humans like Bacon. I bet pigs would eat bacon. If they knew how good they tasted, they’d roast one of their legs and eat it.
Thanks for all the info 9erken. The job is actually in a town just southwest of Madison called Verona. So I would prefer to be somewhere on the west side of the capitol building.
[left] [/left]
[left]When I was there for the interview I stayed in the Madison Concourse, next to the capitol, and walked down State St. so I have seen a little bit of the restaurants and bars that the city has to offer. From what I have seen, it is an amazing city and I am looking forward to moving.[/left]
[quote=“9erken, post:6, topic:23122”]I lived there for a while in grad school at the university. Madison is a wonderful place to live (as long as you adjust to the brutal winters).
As a student, I was always renting and looking for something close to campus, so I can’t tell you as much about buying a house. Is your job in-town or somewhere further out from the city center? Most of the undergrad student areas are right near campus, within about 2-3 miles east, west, and south. On the fringes of this is where I’ve lived, including just south of the Kohl center close to the capital, and east of the capital just off of Washington Ave. Most of the folks that want to live close to downtown/campus are starting to look for homes in these fringe areas, but of course it’s more expensive for what you get than further outside town. The roughest areas of town are in the middle of the student housing right around campus, south near where S. Park and Fish Hatchery hit the beltline (highway 14/18), further along the beltline in the Verona Rd-allied drive area, and further east along Washington as you get past East high school. For most of the rest of the town, the crime is minimal. If you’re looking for the hipper areas of town for apartments (houses can be pretty expensive there), you could try near the capitol building, north of Washington Ave going towards Lake Mendota, and east between Williamson St and Lake Monona. If you’d like more traditional neighborhoods and apartments, out along University boulevard (and Old University), the east side of Lake Monona (out Atwood dr.). More expensive neighborhoods include the Lakefront areas, south and west of town but inside the beltline, and the Maple Woods/Maple Bluff areas northeast of Packers Ave (I don’t know as much about those). As you go out from the isthmus east and west, the neighborhoods get more and more like stereotypical suburban sprawl homes (cheaper for how much land/house you get, but further from all the action and usually less interesting).
Madison is surprisingly segregated (though I guess it is WI), but if you’re into cultural diversity, living closer to downtown is a good bet.
Parking downtown and on the fringes of the student areas sucks, so if you can find a place with a spot to park when you live close to downtown, that is a huge bonus. It’s alternate side parking during the winter, they sell more permits for street parking than they should (most of these downtown apartments don’t have enough spaces), so when it snows and they need to plow, you can spend a while trying to find a spot.
In case you didn’t already know this, Madison has an awe-inspiring number of great restaurants and bars, somewhat concentrated towards the center (so it’s sometimes better to live in the area). They claim its second only to San Fran for per-capita numbers of restaurants. You can google where some of these are I think. I used to love Dotty’s burgers, Smokey Joe’s BBQ, the Old Fashioned (though watch your cholesterol counts), Himal Chuli, Roman Candle pizza, El Pastor (Mexican), Bluephies, Monty’s Blue Plate diner. Be sure to check out the farmer’s market and the breakfast they serve at the Madison senior center ($7.50 but really good). Also, the Friday fish-fries are kind of like church BBQ’s in Charlotte (e.g. good ones at the Dane, Avenue Bar, the local catholic churches are probably best). There’s also a number of great brew pubs and bars, which often have surprisingly good food, including the Great Dane just south of the capital, Greenbush Bar (great pizza), Weary Traveler, Blue Moon Bar, Harmony Bar and the Avenue Bar. Of course the best place to be in town (in my opinion) is having ice cream or a beer out on the Memorial student union’s lakeside Terrace on a sunny day.
As you can tell, I’m pretty enthusiastic about the place. Congrats on getting a job there![/quote]
Do you know the name of the bar that has an all you can eat bacon night?
Don’t know the all-night bacon bar. I think one of the undergrad bars (Wando’s or the Church Key) had a bacon night during the week where they had free bacon.
Verona is a nice little town, but I don’t know much about it other than there’s lots of farms around and several nice little parks. If you want to live in Madison, you might try looking for apartments down Monroe St., though you’ll want to be away from the football stadium, another heavy undergrad area. I had a few friends living in that direction (just southwest of where they put in the Trader Joe’s), and they liked the area and loved being near the Arboretum, which is a nice place to take a walk and a lot of easy bus routes straight into town. Tons of suburban development further out though, so you could probably find newer places closer to your work. The Allied Dr. area that I mentioned being rougher is in that direction, though I’ve heard it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be (evening news hype perhaps). I drove out that way quite a bit, and there’s a good italian deli called Gino’s near where Verona Rd. hits the beltline.
Good luck.
Yeah that is what I meant. Those names sound familiar. http://www.wandosbar.com/ Tuesday night is Bacon Night.