My hometown is Kansas City (though I now live in Barcelona, you can take everything I say with a grain of salt).
My take on KC is that it’s a nice place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit there.
Pluses: The economy is booming, unemployment is very low, there are a lot of high-tech companies to get into while the manufacturing sector is solid, it’s safe (except for certain delimited areas where you’re not going to go anyway.) The art museum, science museum, symphony, and theater scene are good anywhere outside Chicago. The zoo is nice. We got pro sports. Good live music. good bar scene. Good schools in the suburbs of Johnson County, Kansas. The weather’s not too awful and spring and fall are wonderful.
Cons: The same as Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St.Louis, Indianapolis, etc. If you wanna move to the Midwest any of those cities would be worth checking out. If you’re a Right or Left Coaster, you might be happier where you are.
Pro: You can still buy a decent house in a decent school district in KC for less than $100,000.
Providence is nice. Cheap rents, lots of artsy stuff. Good architecture. The winters are rough, and the nightlife isn’t great, but it is within commuting distance of Boston.
Amherst or Northampton, Mass, same thing (except the proximity to Boston).
I was hoping someone would bring up Providence. The city itself is beautiful, and its getting better by the day. Urban renewal has truly taken hold there.
Just outside of Providence is great, too. Just be careful of which suburb you go to (some are much worse than the rest). I reccommend crossing into Massachusetts to the east. I’ve lived here all my life, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. (No bias in that view…)
The western half of our wonderful Commonwealth is great, too. To some extents better than the eastern half of the state. The cities (ie, Holyoke) can be tough, but the rural areas are damn near perfect.
Oh, I like Maine, too.
Jeremy…
Nobody ever calls me after they’ve done something smart.
Okay… I’ve heard Portland and Seattle come up a few times. For the love of god, if you’re going to move here, don’t just visit during Summer. It’s absolutely beautiful here in the summer. The weather is perfect, the skies are blue, the people are nice, there are festivals in the park…
Then comes September.
The skies go grey and don’t change for nine months. Rain comes by the week, not day. In the winter, it never snows, but there is just enough ice to much up the roads.
The northwest is a great place, but don’t move here until you’ve seen what it’s really like.
Well I can help you here. I’m originally from Austin and was going to suggest it.
The city has about a million people but it still has that small town feel to it.
Surprisingly there is a lot of water (lakes, rivers, etc) around Austin. There’s even a nude beach. There are lots of trees and rolling hills around Austin. If you’re into music, there’s a wonderful music scene going on there. They have a huge music conference every year that last a couple of weeks. I think the politics of the city are very liberal. They even had a councilman who was a corner flower vendor.
Plus, it’s an hours drive from San Antonio. Two and a half hours from Houston. Three hours from Dallas. And less than 6 hours from Mexico.
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
That’s OK . . . I’m sure they’d have put Austin farther away from both if they could’ve. There’s no such thing as far enough away from Dallas, and Houston is an armpit with no zoning laws.
If only you could drain off the Texans and import some trees (real ones, not the scrub they call trees down there), along with enough water to keep them alive, it mightn’t be so bad.
“Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.” –Satchel Paige
Gee, Rackenstack, do you have anything worthwhile to contribute to the OP? If Texas is so disagreeable to you, at least come up with an alternate suggestion instead of just insulting my state and its people.
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
SF Bay Area ain’t so bad. A little expensive, and getting crowded. But I resent Johnny LA saying that it’s still in CA, as if that’s a bad thing. Listen, bub, there’s a world of difference between here and southern CA.
It’s not how you pick your nose, it’s where you put the boogers
Uptown Chicago? UPTOWN?!? Do you mean generically “uptown” in the sense of north of downtown (Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, Lakeview, Rogers Park, etc.), or do you specifically mean the Uptown neighborhood?
For those not familiar with Chicago, Uptown is a VERY crappy neighborhood. South of, say, Argyle, north of Irving Park Road, west of Sheridan Road, and east of Ashland. It’s been skid row for ages, and there’s lots of drunken homeless people wandering around the vicinity of the Wilson L station. It doesn’t help that the city, state, and private organizations have concentrated just about every social service agency and office imaginable into the few blocks around Wilson station: rehab centers, free clinics, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Mind you, it’s a small area and completely surrounded by decent and even expensive neighborhoods. South and east of Uptown are very desireable (and fairly expensive) yuppie areas – south of Irving Park Road is Wrigleyville. North of Uptown is Little Chinatown, and west of it are working-class neighborhoods. It’s such a small and discrete area that if you get off the L at Sheridan/Irving Park (4000 North) or at Argyle (5000N), you’re in a relatively safe area, while if you get off at Wilson (4600N) or Lawrence (4800N), you’re right in the middle of it. People who live just outside Uptown, within walking distance of Wilson or Lawrence stations, will typically take one of the express buses along the lakefront rather than walk to the L, even though the L is usually faster.
Don’t move to Denver!! It’s a horrible place. Traffic jams where people die of old age. The snowstroms that hit in the middle of summer and kill hundreds at once. And the man-eating squirrels that come out at night to rip your skin off! Please do not move to Denver, if you value your life!!
Ummm. have you ever been to Texas, or are you just taking a giant dump on my homeland without any frame of reference?
I grew up in Southeast Texas. We have pine forests that stretch for hundreds of miles. I live between three rivers. Drive south for 30 minutes, and I’m in coastal wetlands and estuaries. The Austin area is most emphatically not a desert. In fact, the central Texas Hill Country is, for my money, the most beautiful place on Earth. Whatever your opinions on Houston and Dallas, please don’t project them onto the lovely people of Texas.
“Now you pissed me off. You and I? We’re NEVER gonna be friends.”