“It is literally the place where everyone knows your name, you belong.”
“We're very much a front porch community. … at the end of the day, we go sit down on our front porches. We wave to each other. If we're on a walk, what should only be a thirty minute walk turns into two hours because people are on their porches. You stop and you chat. So it's just a very welcoming feeling.”
“There's always something going on.”
“I can remember listening to a Rolling Stones song back in, I think, my senior year, and I was sitting next to [a friend] and we're having a coffee . . . at the Romeo cafe. [I] remember sitting at the counter and listening to Honky Tonk [Women] on the radio . . . and just chatting there . . . we were just beginning our senior years. We just kind of, you know, we felt . . . this was a good time in our lives . . . top of the world, yes, we're seniors, top of the world. We had our blue jeans, and . . . that was the first year . . . we weren't allowed to wear anything, but, you know, slacks, no blue jean denim . . . but we were allowed to wear blue jeans our senior year.”
“It's like stepping out of your hustle and bustle, your day-to-day, and just coming home and you're in a storybook. It's like, I can't imagine living somewhere else.”
“The first thing that always pops into my head when I think about Romeo as a kid, is my grandparents. They rented an apartment which was above the old Romeo bakery. And you could open up their window and you could see the bakery sign hanging out from front of the building, and you look at the cars going and we'd be there on, like, a Saturday morning, you could smell the fresh donuts. Yeah, and that, that is a, like, a core memory of being a child in Romeo and remembering that, the smell of the bakery. And then walk[ing] through town, you could smell the bakery.”
“You know, some of the things that I just have to pinch myself [about] is the church bells, you know [they] still ring on the hour. When I was a kid in the summertime, we'd all have to listen, but if it rings five times, we got to get home. I just I love being able to sit on my front porch and read a book or a magazine, and people are coming by, and they always, everyone, everyone waves and says hello. And I thought, you know that defines Romeo, right there.”
“I've never, like, had a scenario in my life where all of my friends, everyone I knew, lived within 5 or 10 minutes of where I live. Everyone goes to the football games on Friday. I felt like I was in, like a Netflix show. Like it was just like, so surreal coming from someone who was so removed from a wholesome little community, and we were just welcomed with open arms, like we just fell in love. So now, I feel like I love being a part of it, because it was so good to me.”
“I could spend every weekend here and be happy.”