The same goes w/ NYC. I have been here for a while now and have met so many young girls following Sex in the City dream, which invariably turned out badly.
Given a choice among SF, NYC, and Seattle, and I'd choose Seattle: It has much of what makes the first two desirable, but at 60% of the cost.
BTW, to the extent that you want to make cities like SF and NYC more affordable, favor the removal of building height limitations and setbacks. The real problem in such cities is with supply, as Matt Yglesias writes in The Rent is Too Damn High and Ryan Avent writes in The Gated City. SF and NYC aren't expensive because of some natural law; they're expensive because of man-made laws, which can be changed. Don't yield to torpor!
It's not possible for any other city in the US to get a starred restaurant, no matter the quality of the food.
When I think of Chicago, I think of. . . corruption? Commodities markets?
I'm not saying this to be snarky or a coastal asshole or whatever. I'm saying it because I genuinely don't have much of an impression of Chicago from the popular culture, or from books, or from sites like HN.
Architecture would be another nice feature; the city has definitely benefited from being the home of many of the USA's most influential architects.
In summer the city's absolutely rotten with street festivals, which is also pretty fantastic.
So no, nothing that would be particularly notable to a non-resident. But you can't spend an afternoon outside reading a book under a social media startup or an up-and-coming fashion designer.
My caustic opinion is if you're not a farmer or self-sufficient type who is thrilled with the opportunity to live outside of a big city, then try for a city on the coast, like San Francisco. Big midwestern cities just aren't "all that" relative to their coastal counterparts. In the midwest you get:
- Higher crime rates and corruption
- Miserable, MISERABLE prolonged winters
- Salted roads --> depresses the value of any enthusiast (Porsche/BMW/Ferrari) type cars you might have on resale
- Rampant backwards conservatism
- Uncomfortably hot and humid summers
- Tornados and severe weather
- A severe lack of places to go and things to see
After living there for so long, I have a really tough time understanding why you would want to stay there if the opportunity to leave arrived, unless you're involved with a major university or are a farmer / homesteader type person living in the country. Bottom line, if you could magically swap San Francisco with Chicago, social network and assets included at no cost for a day I bet 100% of my money a bunch of Chicagoans would reconsider their whereabouts, and most SFers would be PISSED.
Also. And this is important: weed is legal or effectively legal for most of the west coast. This may not be a big deal to you but it's just amazingly energizing to live in an area with sane people who are not brainwashed as opposed to backwards conservatives so prevalent in the midwest. People are healthier and more active here, and I feel many are a bit more open minded. You can call it a negative that the startup scene is unavoidable, but really, isn't fluorishing innovation what you'd expect to see in any super happening big city? If you don't want to see innovation, maybe city life isn't for you, maybe dairy farming is for you.
just my 2c :0 plz dont hate me
Winters are absolutely brutal in the midwest, I would take rain over having to wear a heavy jacket.
Some of the best American architects built many buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers in Chicago. The Chicago skyline is a wondrous thing. It can't be compared.
World's biggest food fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_of_Chicago
If you don't like house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_hip_hop
For the amateur economist :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_%28economics%29
I spent two years in Minneapolis insisting I could take it, but the simple fact is that long, bitterly cold winters mean you end up inactive, indoors, cooped up at home more often than not. At least I did. It felt like wasted time, and Chicago is only marginally better.
It would take more than affordable rent and good restaurants to lure me back to a place with so many sub-20F days.
I don't think the financial prominence had much influence on the decision. They needed a location that was centrally located to minimize travel:
;)
I prefer the Seattle experience of relatively temperate weather, year-round, to the Tucson experience of insane heat for about five months of the year. Obviously nowhere else in the U.S. is going to rival the weather experience of the CA coast.
Did you not read the article? :-) Seriously, summers in the city (of San Francisco) can be miserable, at least insofar as your definition of summer includes wearing fewer clothes and dining outdoors. In general the coast of California north of say, Seal Beach, is not an enjoyable place to be after sunset, anywhere. Even in LA it's usually about 60 at the beach in July at night. I've never understood the massive gap between marketing and reality when it comes to the weather in coastal California, despite having spent half my life here.
Medellín, Colombia is the place I have been that comes closest to achieving what California peddles.
It's nice to have an ocean-sized "hot water bottle", running at about 15C in winter.
I've got to object to this. Yeah, June and July (and to a lesser extent August) are pretty intense, but I'd hardly characterize the rest of the summer heat as "insane".
> I still a) went running most days,
I suppose this could be an issue. Especially during the summer rainy season (usually July-early September) it's still pretty hot and the humidity means it doesn't much cool off at night, which makes strenuous outdoor activity harder even if you do it at the coolest part of the day.
Maybe four months of insane heat: mid-May to Mid-September are ridiculous. I can't even ride a bike without sweating like a mule after a mile.
In Brooklyn or Queens you can have plenty of room for much cheaper than Manhattan/SF/Seattle. There are one bedrooms in Astoria that start around $1200 and with a roommate you can easily be paying less than a grand each for a BIG place in a great part of the City. Almost all of the creative and intellectual activity in NYC comes from Brooklyn/Queens, whether its the rise of new and interesting publications (N+1, for example), art houses being opened, exhibitions being held, wild house shows or rooftoop parties and so on and so forth. It has a great vibe that I have yet to get from any other city.
I remember being on a rooftop in Greenpoint with some friends, having a nighttime barbecue, and they had a marvelous view of Manhattan. I mentioned that it would be nice to live there and my friend just laughed, saying "The city looks so beautiful now. Why would you want to ruin it by living there?"
What you say is true though, the "nice" parts of Brooklyn are as expensive as, if not more expensive than Manhattan. Manhattan's cost of living, relative to NYC in general, is plateauing, while Brooklyn is shooting upwards. Rent on the Upper East Side is downright affordable now, and even not-super-cool neighborhoods like Chelsea have stabilized.
Compare with Park Slope, where the price ceiling is nowhere to be found, or Williamsburg which is definitely more expensive than all but the most desirable areas of Manhattan. Dumbo too.
But, good news is, there are lots of gentrifying-but-not-quite-done-yet neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Bushwick and Prospect Heights come to mind, though I'm sure there are others I'm not remembering.
To think of that neighborhood as going upscale is almost unimaginable.
To the list I should add Jersey City. It's rapidly changing and has multiple train (PATH) stops that quickly get you in to the city (well, not now with Sandy repairs, but normally). It remains far more affordable than Manhattan. The fact that the NYTimes in the past month has wandered in to JC twice to review restaurants is a sign of the changes taking place. And along it's waterfront it has some pretty stunning views.
I've only been to California a couple of times to visit, but it seemed to me that everything is "newer" than your typical east coast city, and there's an immediate transition from urban environment to 1960+ suburbia.