(A.K.A. Inva­sion of the Townies)

Okay tech­ni­cally it’s not an “inva­sion” of Town­ies, because they do live here year-round. But when you live in a true col­lege town like Davis, you don’t see this much of the reg­u­lar towns­folk dur­ing a major­ity of the year.

I have never taken sum­mer classes, so this year is my first time spend­ing a large quan­tity of time stay­ing in the summer.

Pre­vi­ously I have gone home to work dur­ing the sum­mer, but this year’s job mar­ket has been espe­cially rough. With­out a job lined up, I returned up to Davis to spend more time with my friends who had stayed up.

I hadn’t really thought about if or how the town might be dif­fer­ent dur­ing the sum­mer, but I made a quick discovery. Cities like Davis take on a whole dif­fer­ent feel in the months between June and September.

The town is much emp­tier and qui­eter, and when you go out you don’t see hordes of col­lege stu­dents roam­ing around like usual. It also becomes more of a fam­ily town.

At last Sunday’s 4th of July cel­e­bra­tion in Davis, the fire­works show drew tens of thou­sands of peo­ple out to see it. But when I was there, I had to strain to find a large group of college-age atten­dees among the masses of fam­i­lies camped out.

Now, this isn’t meant to be a knock on town­ies, or a com­plaint of any kind. I just wanted to describe what I pre­sume to be a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in most col­lege towns nation­wide, and some­thing to think about when decid­ing to stay in your col­lege town for the summer.

I’m very curi­ous to know if oth­ers had sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences, so please com­ment below.

Image by Bev­erly & Pack, "Happy 4th of July! The Amer­i­can Flag in Fire­works," July 3, 2009 via Flickr, Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion.