I live in Canton, Ohio, a truck stop town in the bible belt.
My SO and I want to move out of this dump. Where to? I want to know about your city or a city you visited. We are currently considering Hartford, Connecticut. However, we’ve never been there, so any info on Hartford would be appreciative. Thanks!!!
lunapark
For all out partying, the best is Las Vegas.
For the best place to walk around downtown at night: Nashville.
For the best place to walk around downtown during the day: Atlantic City.
For the best place to eat out: New York.
The best place to live: Louisville, Kentucky.
I can see your first 4, but
“The best place to live: Louisville, Kentucky.”
What’s the reasoning behind that?
It’s just my opinion. About a year ago I got tired of Detroit and went asearchin’ for a city that wasn’t too crowded, didn’t have bad traffic, was fairly clean, was big enough that it had all the major retail & restaurant chains, had things to do and something unique about it. The best city of the 30 or so that I visited was Louisville. Alas, I could not find a job there and had to move elsewhere, but I plan to go back cuz I had a blast at Churchill Downs.
The best city, unquestionably, in the world is Boston, Massachusetts. It’s “The Hub of the Known Universe,” home to all things great and cool. It’s completely random in its design, a compact pedestrian city designed for the walker or for public transportation, and decidedly not the car. Entertainment is great, from the clubs of Landsdowne Street to the Harvard Square clubs across the Charles in Cambridge. Food? There’s no better seafood than in Boston, and I daresay that I’ve not found better Italian restaurants outside of The North End. It’s got loads of history, the Museum of Science is still one of the coolest museums around, and it’s a short drive to some of the best nature around. Trendy shopping? Try Newbury Street. Bars? Please, the worlds largest college town is LOADED with good bars. Some of the best are down around Union Street near Fanuel Hall. Clarke’s, The Black Rose, The Purple Shamrock, The Bell in Hand are all great places to grab a beer and a bite to eat. (stay away from the Beacon Hill bars like The Bull and Finch. Overpriced and too touristy). Boston’s people are like a friendly version of New Yorkers: They’re rude, loud, and uncouth, but not in a mean way. Generally, Bostonians are very friendly though very agressive, which can put some people off, but don’t be scared. Boston is just a great city to walk around in, and as long as you stay north of Chinatown, it’s a wonderfully safe city.
As for Hartford: It’s not that great of a city. The only industry to speak of there is the Insurance Industry (home of the HMO). If you want to go to Connecticut, stay away from the urbanized belt of Hartford and the coast. Hartford, Meriden, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stamford are all dumps. If you want some nice areas of Connecticut, the Eastern forests (Putnam area) is pretty nice, and Bristol/Farmington is ok if you like suburbia. The Connecticut Berkshires in the Northwest are VERY out of the way (and known as a bit of a celebrity hide-out). If you want secluded, that’s the place to go. But stay out of Hartford proper; it’s got all of that bad parts of a big city without any of its redeeming qualities. There are some nice small towns just outside of Hartford, however. I would say that Connecticut has some great areas to move to, but stay away from the I-91/I-95 corridor.
I grew up in New Hampshire, which has some great areas. Nashua and the surrounding towns are consistently ranked as some of the best areas to raise a family, due to reasonable cost of living, nice areas, good schools, and easy access to everything you could want (less than 1 hours drive to skiing, the lakes, the ocean, or Boston). Some of the suburbs around Nashua are getting VERY overpopulated, but if you head west a little bit, away from the highways, you hit some beautiful areas.
So that’s my plug for New England. If you have any other questions about places up there, let me know. I know the area like the back of my hand.
Hartford is a lovely town. I must respectfully disagree with jayron32. I’ve lived here in Connecticut for about three years now, and I don’t have a single real complaint. This state is wealthy. There is strong economic growth apparent and good money is easy to come by. This is balanced by a slightly higher than average cost of living, but jobs in a variety of industries are plentiful. Generally speaking, Connecticut is fairly well educated and developed. Though dedicated to economic growth and personal gain, the population is rather friendly and accepting. When people here keep to themselves, you can safely assume that they are doing so out of courtesy rather than a lack of concern.
The environment is pleasant here. Many communities in Connecticut make an effort to preserve the appearance of their domain and the quality of life in general. There is much peaceful woodland and trees are expected even in more metropolitan areas. This is a good land for the outdoorsman.
Hartford itself is still recovering from urban decay of the seventies and eighties, but is coming along nicely. Although there are many people working in Hartford, most of them commute from the surrounding communities. This means, of course, that you can expect some nasty rush-hour traffic if your mind is set on the city itself. There are delightful towns just outside of Hartford where you will probably spend a good portion of your time. As jayron32 has already mentioned, life is slightly better east of the river.
The down side, from my point of view, is that there is not much of a reliable social scene aside from the predictable pubs and clubs. You’ll want to take the ninety-minute drive to Boston for social functions. Although there is a strong representation of community and student thertre, you will probably want to hop on the train to NYC for that sort of thing. There are some good restaurants, but you will get to know them all in pretty short order. Gas and insurance prices are rater high, and traffic tickets are highway robbery. Spring, summer and autumn are beautiful, but winter is long and lonely.
Why are you thinking of Hartford? Perhaps if you tell me your intentions, I can better predict your success and happiness here.
My favorite city is New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve never had so many options for wonderful food and entertainment. The weather is absolutely beautiful except for the hot summer months. There is always new stuff to discover and appreciate. What the population as a whole lacks in education is more than made up for in kindness. Although tourism is a bit overwhelming when you’re a resident, the economic and social effects of the tourist industry are delightful.
Although I was neither born nor raised there, I still consider New Orleans my home. It was there that I first struck out on my own and began to carve a niche for myself. One day, I will return to buy a lovely home in the garden district and sit contentedly on my porch sipping gin and chatting with anyone who happens by.
New Orleans, hands down. Good food, good music, good coffee houses (yes, I like Café du Monde, but there are other ones too: Neutral Ground, Kaldi’s…), great architecture in the Quarter, lagniappe, cheap beer. The summer heat and humidity sucks, but you get used to it. The first time I was there we were shooting a film. 90°, 100% humidity, thousands of watts of lights, un-air-conditioned room. But you get used to it.
Yeah, The Big Sleazy is my favourite town. But I’d rather live in the Pacific Northwest.
I have to say that New Orleans is my LEAST favorite town… and Nashville is a close second on the most despised… followed by Jackson Mississippi.
Love Atlanta though… and Boston rules… and I would move to Providence in a heartbeat. 
Why San Francisco of course. And xizor, you are wrong about numbers 3 and 4. SF wins in those catagories. 1 and 2 it definetly doesn’t
My absolute favorite city.
Uglich Russia. Beautiful sites, a Vodka museum with taste testing for 50 rubles. Nice friendly peope.
1st runner up: Buus, Switerland 400 souls in a village 30 minutes north of Basil. LOcated in the hills surrounded by a nice little vinyard.
2nd runner up:Huntsville Alabama. Big enough to find things to do, small enough people still stop and say hello.
Honorable mentions:
Memphis Tennesse
Springfield Illinois
York PA.
Augusta GA
Osip
As should surprise no one, I’m in league with oldscratch.
San Francisco is the only way to go. I’d live there now, if my school weren’t here.
[hijack]
lunapark, your name is the name of a nightclub down here in L.A. - you just reminded me that I need to find out when my friend’s band is playing next.
[/hijack]
New York rules.
Yer pal,
Satan
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, two days, 21 hours, 34 minutes and 21 seconds.
3755 cigarettes not smoked, saving $469.49.
Life saved: 1 week, 6 days, 55 minutes.
California! Pretty much anywhere in SoCal. How about along the coast between LA and San Diego? You could live in Oceanside, San Juan Capistrano, Encinitas…
That’s my plan as soon as I become financially independent. There’s just something amazing and wonderful and indescribable about California. It glows. Seattle is great, but California shimmers. Warm, friendly, vibrant…the ocean, the mountains and forests, the lakes, the farms, the desert…
One of my favourite things to do when I lived in Riverside was to go out to Anza Borrego with my family. The sunsets are fiery cascades of conscious-mind-stealing magic. And when the sun is gone, the night sky and stars swallow the landscape whole.
My God, my God, I can’t wait to go back.
Eight more days till I set foot in LA for the first time in six years.
Some would say I’m very trying! 
Most people I know around here like Los Hideous. Of course, my friends don’t. That’s why they left!
I would have to advise you to go a bit farther north of Connecticut to Burlington, VT. Moderate sized town(35,000±) with UVM, regarded as one of the country’s best public Universities, adding about 10,000 more residents. Picture perfect downtown area, great shopping, cool bars even the more so if you have hippy/crunchy tendencies, active community culture, the university always has cultural events open to the public. Set on Lake Champlain, with great views into New York, to the east are the Green Mountains and all of the skiing(killington, stowe, smugglers) and hiking(camels hump, mt. mansfield) that they offer. Little over an hour to montreal, 3-4 from Boston. Just a great town.
but
If you need a bit more of the city life Boston is a great place to be for all the reasons Jayron gave. Nashua is always ranked as a great place to live in the magazines, but working there I don’t personally see it as all that attractive but it has got to be better than ohio.
I like a lot of cities and always enjoy visiting (I’m talking major cities now). Favorites so far are New York, Boston, Montreal, and San Francisco.
I love Minneapolis.
It’s so clean and beautiful, and they have such dramatic buildings.
The many over-street pedestrian bridges remind me of Buck Rogers’ cities of the future.
Seattle – in 1967.
I’m not particularly well-traveled, but I fell in love with Cody, Wyoming after a short stay there in 1990.
Does Cody count as a city?
Minneapolis would come in second. I’ve gone there to catch flights to Seattle, for baseball and football games, and a concert. It’s amazingly easy to navigate. Clean, but not too clean, and there’s a great fantasy-SF bookstore, Dreamhaven Books, on Lake Street.
I will respectfully defer to ** Tymp ** on this one, as I haven’t had much experience with Downtown Hartford beyond what my Bristol relatives have to say of it. I know that I have seen some formerly miserable cities revitalized in my time (Baltimore, MD and Cleveland, OH are much nicer now than their old reputations hold for them). Still, Hartford and Springfield and that area I’ve always felt suffered from the sort of “suburban sprawl without a real city” that made them unattractice places for me. Hartford has a lot of business, but as you note, little social scene.
And ** billyt123 ** makes some great notes about Brulington, which I would only lodge the caveat that Vermonters are fiercly and stubbornly provincial. If you move their, it won’t be until perhaps your grandchildren’s generation that your family aren’t considered “foreigners” and “flatlanders.” Vermont is great for all those earthy-crunchy reasons (Well, Montpelier and Burlington are) but there ARE some areas where outsiders aren’t exactly meant to feel “at home.” Still, Burlington is a great town, and if you want vistas, you won’t find a better place.
Good vacation spot: Washington, DC. Nice location, you can drive to the whole Eastern Seaboard easily, great museums and sites of interest (Library of Congress my favorite, esp. the reading rooms. Beautiful!), plenty of authentic restaurants (plenty of recent immigrants as well, English is understood to varying degrees everywhere, though), and a nice climate (Humidity? Go to the Gulf. That’s humidity!).
Best place for a steakhouse tour: Kansas City, MO and KS. If you can get past the smell of stockyards a few miles to the west, you’ll enjoy the best red meat you’ve ever had. Steak in that town is good and realtively cheap. Nothing beats good old cornfed American!
Best place on the Mississippi: St. Louis, MO. (East St. Louis, IL, is essentially a slum. Don’t drive through after dark, and don’t tarry there at all.) Great place for blues, steak, and history. If you’ve ever wanted to study the Big Muddy, do yourself a favor and view it from the top of the Gateway Arch.
Best place in the Rockies to base a vacation from: Missoula, MT. Only a stone’s throw away from Flathead Lake (Extremely scenic, extremely boatable, extremely cold lake in the Rockies. It’s glacier-fed, making it crystal-clear and frigidly cold.) and some of the most beautiful roadway this country has to offer. I’d suggest Going-To-The-Sun Road for breathtaking driving with pull-offs for picture taking. Don’t attempt it in the winter, though, because it will be icy even if the city is dry. Heck, that’s true of every mountain pass in Montana! Missoula is also a nice shopping town, with a Costco (Dirt-cheap bulk wholesale. They sell everything, and they sell everything in bulk. You can find toilet paper cheaper than some places sell candy bars, but only in 50-roll packs. Don’t buy perishables unless you’ll actually eat 50 pounds of rib roast.) in town. And, as a refreshing aside, you can buy things at a Missoula grocery store (Buttrey’s is good), drive your car around to the loading lane in front, and bagboys will load your stuff for you.
Great shopping town: St. Paul, MN. The Mall of America, the biggest damn retail center in America, is in St. Paul. Like Costco, you can find anything in The MoA. Unlike Costco, it’s retail. Plan to spend plenty, but on a bewildering variety of shops. There’s even an amusement park, complete with flume ride and roller-coaster, inside the building itself. It’s at least a few days to see it all, and plan on getting very sore feet. Hey, it’s a workout.
This doesn’t get even close to all the cities I could recommend (Cape Girardeau, MO, for Broussard’s, a great cajun restaurant; Ely, MN, for a great rural northern Minnesota vacation spot in the famous North Woods; etc.) but this post is running on and on. I’ve lived in various places, and I’ve traveled to many, many others, including Europe. I’m just glad I could and did.