Two Years Living in Christiansburg, 2032 (Long Post)

Posted on R/VirginiaTech, May 11th, 2032 by user: Pizza-Inn-N-Out

Sorry if this post gets a little long. I wanted to write up my take on my first two years living in Christiansburg, Virginia. I’m a transplant from a small town in California. I came here with my husband, Isaac, and my dog, Lewis (“Lew-Boo”). We both moved here for the same reason everyone does—work at Virginia Tech and, despite some challenges, we really love this place.

I’m a professor in Urban Planning, so when we first started looking at Virginia Tech, I was skeptical. I always want to live somewhere that feels like it’s growing and we were both very unsure about Blacksburg. The only train station was a town over, the student housing sprawl is immense, and even with the sale of our house in California, our dollar wouldn’t go as far as we’d like.

Still, I started to love this place. The mountain views. The humid air that didn’t dry out my skin every day. Every time I flew in and took the train to Christiansburg to do my interviews at VT, I fell in love a little more.

We moved into our house in October and the leaves were absolutely beautiful. Isaac flew this drone every day for weeks.

Fast-forward to our real move cross country, a wildly expensive rental for a while, and the purchase of our home in Christiansburg! A cute brick ranch on a hilly half-acre’s worth of yard with some mid-century details. Way more than we had back in California.

This town took some getting used to. “Small town” here means something different than back home. Only one high school, no pro sports, and every doctor—if you can find one—is booked out a year.

Still, we started to meet people and eventually found our way downtown. The farmers market is so cute! It’s built on a former street and right near the coffee shops and restaurants. I’m told the whole downtown used to be sleepy: boarded up buildings, law offices, and barber shops.

Downtown is absolutely bustling now. They closed off most of the side streets to car traffic, which created a massive pedestrian area and huge influx of business interest in town. I know every town wants to “pedestrian-ize” these days but Christiansburg really went all-in on it. The 2029 Federal Revitalization Initiative really helped make all this happen.

Anyway, it’s a really cool small town. There’s music on Fridays at the amphitheater. It’s pretty informal: a food truck or two but people mostly just bring dinner and have a picnic.

There’s not much nightlife—this is really a commuter town for workers after all. If you want sticky floors and 1am drinks, Blacksburg is always happy to oblige.

The community is incredible and absolutely overwhelming. When we moved in, the neighbors all came by and said hello. We moved in late October and everyone took Halloween as their opportunity to knock on our door and meet us. Coming from a place where neighbors might wave and shut their doors in the same breath, this took some getting used to.

Once we figured out that people really just wanted to invite us over for a cookout and weren’t trying to talk us into any cults, we relaxed a bit. The neighbor kids have free reign across everyone’s yards, which Lew-Boo still isn’t accustomed to.

We really just settled into an easy life here. I’m working on tenure and Isaac found a remote job doing AI-remediation. We both joined a run club in town and I keep finding more and more book clubs to join.

It’s still not the perfect place but its problems are all things we can work with. The town council is constantly dealing with developers wanting to bring more and more “Student Professional” projects in—which is code for “Student Housing but make it expensive.”

They did say that sometime around 2035, the town’s population should be able to actually support the number of barber shops. There’s 28 of them in town, narrowly edging out the car washes. Most people just treat those as strange quirks of Christiansburg. Isaac thinks they’re all fronts.

I do hope we get a little more here before the kids get older. The arcade across from Pizza Inn (my favorite restaurant, hence my username!) desperately needs a face-lift. The main building still has a gaudy red-white-and-blue motif that has fallen apart. That helps it earns its nickname, “‘Merica-cade.” I can’t imagine what the owners were thinking.

Anyway, we love it here. The people are warm and welcoming. The town just feels like it’s taking a slower approach—less traffic, narrower streets, and a little less love for sprawl.

Do I recommend Christiansburg? I do. I’m surprised to say that because the last two years haven’t always been easy. Everyone told me I was moving to a southern bible belt town, stuck in its ways as ever. That’s not what I found here; instead I got warm people and opportunities to get out and connect myself to a town that loves each other—my family included.

I do have one gripe still, though: can we finally connect the path that goes between the rec center and place I go to swim laps? Despite all the fixes, they’ve never done that!