It's beautiful, and in the summer it is cooler than the rest of the city because there are more trees, less asphalt. It's more expensive than other areas, and also more politically conservative--although no part of New London is conservative relative to most of the country. There is a lot of beach traffic in the summer. When I worked in municipal government, that is the area where people would call from the most with their complaints, always prefacing their calls with, "I'm a taxpayer" and usually telling me exactly how much they pay in property taxes. Not that they had more to complain about than anyone else. They would complain in the middle of an ongoing blizzard that their road wasn't adequately plowed yet. I'll never forget the woman I spoke with when I was volunteering for a political candidate who complained about school funding, saying, "No one sends their children to New London schools." In her circle of friends, everyone's kids went to private schools.
Of course, there are jerks everywhere, and good people, too. You'd find a great community in New London wherever you choose to live; you just might have to work a little harder in that end of town. I never wanted to live there, at least not Neptune Park or Pequot Ave, because it is low-lying and is most at risk for storm surges and hurricane damage. Those threats will only increase in the coming decades. But consider Belleview Ave and Thames Street! They are midway between Ocean Beach and downtown--quieter and cooler than the area where I live, but only a twenty-minute walk to downtown and close to a bus line.
The restaurants are indeed really good here. There's also a great food co-op, lots of artists, lots of progressive activists, great organizations like FRESH which uses community gardens to help with food security and to teach entrepreneurial skills to youth gardeners. We have more diversity than I believe you'll find in Chester or Deep River--a big plus in my book--but Chester is charming, with a sweet, walkable downtown.
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