First off, love the OP's user name. Please don't let him change it when he goes MPRA or Helos.
To answer his question, I'll toss out a nomination for downtown PCola or East Hill. It's a maybe 15-20 min drive to NAS PCola, but that's not bad. Not sure how often they are mustering there, but if it's still the weekly muster and otherwise phone muster for those with stash jobs, that's easy as cake. And, you can walk home from the bars. Never underestimate the value of this.
Perdido is basically beaches and like, what, 3 bars? Not a lot to do out there. My friends there always had to carpool and drive the 30-40 minutes to downtown on the weekends. Same, same for going to the mall or getting dinner.
Regardless, I'd reccomend getting roommates and saving some coin while you can.