If you are very short on funds and don’t need a lot of good restaurants this is your place. There are so many small motels and little houses where people can live really cheaply and the taxes are a joke! Many locals walk up and down the main drag, people watching and talking with friends. You get the feeling they don’t have a vehicle-but we have the cutest little busses to take you around.
On the other hand, if you do have plenty of cash we have many gorgeous homes here, many right on lovely lakes. You still will have very few places to go out for a wonderful meal but if eating isn’t your thing then, yes, we do have big beautiful homes and townhouses at reasonable prices.
On “Bathhouse Row” which is simply a row of lovely bathhouses on the main street (a narrow, crowded street), we do have pools of smoking hot water coming up out of the ground. Seems like they’d have them roped off for safety but—here? Safety? It’s not much of an issue here. When you live here you pass them on a regular basis driving downtown so you dont notice them anymore but vistors are quite impressed. They are round holes in the sidewalk filled with steaming hot, underground springs.
I wouldn’t go downtown after dark here; it’s just too risky.
But that’s true of a lot of towns. Some people think nothing of asking you for a dime, money for Christmas gifts after the hard times they’ve had lately and one person even said, “I’m not going to rob you or anything.” So stay home after dark.
To me, the skin of some of the people who walk around downtown looks greenish. What does that mean? Picture a typical Hot Springs man, in a plaid flannel shirt, missing teeth, long unkempt beard with greenish gray skin. You want to toss him a multiple vitamin & a bar of soap.
I’ve lived here for seven years. I’ve noticed that the chain restaurants like Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday, On the Border and the like generally don’t have the same quality of food or service that their partners in other cities have. I”ve never lived in a place that has more odd things happen in restaurants such as being told , “we’re out of potatoes” “we’re out of ice” “could you order a substitute? we just put our ribs on” and it gives you the feeling that there is a lot of incompetence here. You find yourself settling for a few places to eat and you just ignore the rest.
We have a large, new Chinese Buffett we like quite a bit; then there are the older ones like The Panda and King’s Chinese Buffett that are also good. The Colorado Grill is an old, wooden floored Mexican food place with the worst water ever.
There is a very good, small Mexican place they just opened up near Hot Springs Village. Across from that next to the post office is a very good Chinese place with white tablecloths. They have excellent water and their lemon chicken is very good but it takes awhile. Near the main gate of Hot Springs Village is the typical Sonic, Taco Bell, Domino’s and a so-so Colonel Sander’s. There is a place to eat right on Lake Balboa inside HS Village; lovely mountain view. The food is mostly terrible, everyone knows it, but they go there in droves allegedly because it’s so close to the residents of The Village. Lake Balboa, on which it was built, is beautiful with a sandy beach and gas station. We ordered the catfish “special” and it was the first time in my life I’ve seen french fries that were solid white and limp. I’m talking NO color at all, NO crispness, just like they were boiled. It was All You Can East catfish night but we had to wait at least half an hour for our dinners. The service is often extremely slow here. The water can be terrible in certain restaurants, good in others. Like the Outback runs their water thru several filters and it’s great as is their food. I do miss Texas but my husband is in love with his 8 (eight)golf courses here in HS Village. All you can see is mountains and forest; all you hear is birds and deer running off. It was six years old at the time we found it and we have really loved this house and its location.
I like the climate here. I don’t like long, frigid winters and the winters here are perfect for me. It snows maybe twice each winter, a few inches, and in less than a week the snow is gone. The summmers are really hot (July and August then part of September)then October onward is great. We have had one white Christmas in seven years. The chigger problem is horrendous.
Whenever we have found people to come out to the house and do something we’ve been shocked at what has gone on. One man remarked that I had been , “yakking on the phone” as he walked out the door. We had someone doing remodeling on a house we used to own who drank a lot of beer on the job. A lot of this goes on here. We’ve had men who have promised they were coming out again but we’ve never seen them since. Some speak of drug use when they’re working for us.
To be honest, I have never experienced more heavy drinking, drug use and stealing by workmen than in Arkansas. This has left me with a bad taste for Hot Springs, as pretty of a town as it is.
We were quite surprised when our mailman forgot to take our income tax return from our mailbox. He’s been taking our mail here for six years; but there it sat in the box after he left.
I went to Colonel Sanders last week for a 2 pc white chicken dinner. “We’re out of mashed potatoes” she said. I go, “really? well what else do you have?” and she said, “cole slaw.” and I said,”that’s included” and she said, “well, you wanted me to tell you what else we had. We have corn.” So I go, “OK, THEN, CORN” and it turned out to be a few wrinkled up kernels of canned corn. Inedible. The chicken was fine, though….
A few years ago, a lot of people drowned in a lake here; it was on the evening news with Peter Jennings. Turns out the life jackets were hard to reach and there were not enough of them on the “duck boats” as they’re called. Some people were saved by watchful, caring people who live on the lake and noticed the boat was sinking fast. They got in their speedboats and raced out to save people. A week later, these duck boats were back in business with the “hole” repaired and more lifejackets added.
You just have to know how and where to live here. You have to be careful and realize what you’re doing and who you’re dealing with. If you can afford it, I suggest you live in one of our lovely gated communities (HS Village or Lake Hamilton)where you have to have a membership card to get in. You can spend a million dollars on one of those homes in Lake Hamilton. Just hope no one with green skin tailgates a member thru the gate.