I love the old buildings, and epecially all the Revolution-era cemetaries.
I love the energy of downtown, the street vendors (especially the honey-roasted peanuts ones… mmm, they smell so good!), the huge department stores, the sidewalk musicians, the sound of all those people.
I love how the bitter cold of winter fades into the spring and the nice warm summer.
I love the Red Sox!!!
The waterfront is gorgeous, and so is the riverfront, at the Charles. And the north end, and the haymarket by the freeway, and faniuel hall! And the theater district, and the Boston Common, and (of course) Fenway Park.
Such a nice city to take a long walk.
Oh, and Waterj2, I’ll second you, too… It’s great to have Cambridge as a neighbor.
[QUOTE=trublmakr]
I have to admit that I’m obsessive about “someday” living in Manhattan. Oh God, how I yearn to be in that city, that city that never sleeps. QUOTE]
I’ll second this, Manhattan being one of the places I mentioned where I’d like to try living. Many years ago, during a time I was enduring several years of Lonely Guy Trouble ™, a female co-worker told me she thought I’d do better in NY, where (she imagined) that women weren’t so looks-focused. Thanks a bunch, Becka! But you know, I think she was basically right. They do say it’s generally easier to meet people there than it is in L.A. I probably would have done better there during that time.
I live in Auckland. Many Kiwis don’t like Auckland but I think it is a groovy place to live.
Beautiful harbours, lots of nice beaches, plenty to do, lots of wilderness not far away, people from just about every country in the world (so yummy food). All in all a good place.
Of course it would be better if it didn’t rain quite so much.
I live in a post WWII era neighborhood in Sparks Nevada. I love Sparks. The weather is much milder than that of Toledo, OH, where I grew up. It’s not too hot like Las Vegas. We still have 4 seasons. We have a beautiful mountain view in any direction. I can walk down to Victorian Square in the summer where they have an awesome farmer’s market every Thursday…Farmer’s Market…it’s more like a street fair with music and lots of food, etc. There’s also the Sparks Marina…which has a great walking path.
I can drive for an hour and be in Lake Tahoe. I can be at Pyramid Lake in about 1/2 hour.
I can go to the movies…about 1 and 1/2 miles from my house. Or I can go to the Pioneer Center in downtown Reno and see a Broadway Show.
I can drive for two hours and be in Northern California.
I love Nevada…and I don’t even gamble…or eat at buffets.
Topeka, Kansas may not have all the things going for it that have already been mentioned here. The weather is changeable, cold and dry in winter, hot and muggy in summer. The selection of restaurants is not all that wide, even if there are some good places to eat. The city council is wussy, and I can’t wait for the next election to vote out my council person. We do have a zoo, there is Washburn University, and a really fine state museum. The library now, is top notch, truly. To balance that Fred Phelps calls Topeka home, and I have to see his church members picketing all the time.
But, but…it’s home, and I love it. I like my job and I have a great boss. The hospitals are good too, with every kind of specialist, so I didn’t worry(too much) when I had surgery recently. My family is here, and we are close. If I moved away I’d miss the Mexican fiesta held each July by Our Lady of Guadalupe church. I’d miss the tiny little museum of Orthodox Christianity, www.orthodoxmuseum.org I’d miss the phone drives at the PBS station, and the wonderful vet who takes care of my cats. I like my church and it’s activities.
In short, it’s not big things that I love, but the day to day things. I was born here and have lived here most of my 49 years. I spent three years in East Lansing Michigan, working( and I liked it there too) and I spent three years moving around in the Army. I saw the Seattle/Tacoma area when stationed at Ft. Lewis, Monterey when at the Presidio of Monterey. I also saw, briefly, San Angelo Texas and the area around Ft. Devens MA. I really liked SeaTac, and Monterey was gorgeous.
Gail, Sparks is indeed the finest city in America. I love it there (I had to move…grrr). Great weather, great people and a real small-town feel in a moderate-sized city. Is there still snow on the eastern hills?
Atlanta.
Beautiful women everywhere you look. Good climate, good restaurants, gorgeous women. Friendly people, symphonies, rodeos, just about anything you’d want to do… and the women are ever so pretty.
Affordable housing, good economy, and did I mention the women?
I was living in Raleigh four years ago when I got sent to Atlanta for a contract. When I got back to Raleigh I threw all my stuff into storage and I was back in Atlanta within 72 hours.
I’ve lived in the Tampa Bay, FL area for close to six years now. Do I love Tampa? Not exactly. It’s not a bad place, though, and it’s slowly getting better, turning into more of a “real” city and being built up to accomodate the influx of people.
Previously, I lived in Woodbridge, NJ. I really miss a lot of what NJ & NYC had to offer…Tampa just doesn’t compare. However, I will say I don’t miss shoveling snow or scraping ice off of my car. And it is kinda nice being able to enjoy good weather 9 or 10 months out of the year instead of 3 or 4.
In this thread I’ve extolled the virtues of Tucson, I’ve discussed my fixation with New York (even though I’ve never even visited), and I just felt I couldn’t let it go without a shout out to Asheville, NC. My dad’s from there, so we always visited and even lived there, back and forth between there and Michigan. Then as an adult I lived there for a couple of years, and it is a GREAT little city! I miss it, dab, dab, sniff, sniff. My dad’s hometown is a very small town about 10 minutes out of Asheville, named Weaverville. My grandfather and his sister built houses right across the street from each other on Ox Creek Road (how quaint) which led right up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Beautiful! Asheville rocks, all the way around.
I wouldn’t live anywhere but Baltimore. It’s a major city with a small town feeling to it. The people are friendly, the seafood is fabulous and the history of the city is pervasive. We’ve got better football than Pittsburgh and better cheesesteaks than Philly. Unlike DC, we have baseball, and we’re not overrun by liberals who never learned that while the ideals of college are nice, out in the real world they need to be leavened with common sense. Half an hour’s drive will take you from downtown to rolling farmland, and the bay is right there for boating and fishing activities. We’re also centrally located, less than an hour to visit the monuments and museums in DC, about 90 minutes to Philly, 3 hours to Manhattan. I’ve done NYC as a day trip before. I dunno why anyone would live elsewhere.
Paris is cool, for obvious reasons: the food, the parks, the beautiful buildings, the amazing boutiques, the polite people, the ease of transportation.
I’ve loved every city I’ve lived in, though.
Washington, DC: the museums, the bike trails, the international populace, the universities, the history.
New York: the pace, the energy, the things to do, the music, the shopping, the neighborhoods.
San Francisco: the natural beauty, the laid-back atmosphere, the weather, the health, the ocean.
I seem to have settled down in Somerville, close to both Cambridge and Boston. The greater Boston area is definitely my home now. This is a pretty big deal to me since I don’t have a tendency to grow roots, anywhere. But as soon as we got off the red line at Park Street for the first time, and I saw the fountain in the Boston Common, and it was identical to a fountain that I had loved in a small park in my home town all the way back in Tasmania, I knew I could love this city.
Boston is like a magnified version of my home town, lots of parks, gracious old houses, churches everywhere. In addition it’s got a real American feeling- something composed of all the intangible bits of Americana I can’t put my finger on, baseball and the style of traffic lights, architecture and attitude, and I can’t help but get a grin when I’m standing down town in the middle of summer with the smell of hot-dogs and fried dough wafting around me and the sounds of the people, and I think, well, after all, here I am in Boston! Really truly home at last. It’s sort of hard to believe, it’s so far from where I grew up, and so similar yet so alien, sometimes I just want to pinch myself to tell me I’m not dreaming.
Somerville is neat, it’s pretty laid back and seems to have a relatively mixed demographic - of course it’s overrun by college students, but that’s OK by me. It has lots of great restaurants, and of course if we don’t fancy anything here, two T stops away is Harvard Square with another great selection of restaurants. We also have a really magnificent used book store.
I’ve lived outside of Chicago most of my life and I love it (except for the weather). We have world-class museums, restaurants, the lakefront, sports, shopping, music, change of season (although I can live without winter), interesting politics, and jobs. I’ll eventually move to New Mexico or Arizona to escape the cold, but my heart will always be here.
Howdy, neighbor! I live in an older neighborhood Reno, and I love it for all the same reasons - Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake are just the beginning. Drive a little longer and you can get to the Black Rock Desert, Yosemite National Park, Mono Lake, and any number of beautiful spots in the Sierras. Year round recreation includes skiing and snowshoeing in the mountains too - add to that 300+ sunny days a year, and you’ve got an outdoor paradise right here in Northern Nevada.
And there’s more to do in the city, too. The Truckee River Whitewater Park recently opened right in the middle of downtown. There are petroglyph sites just a few minutes away, fishing spots right in town, trails along the river, the art museum, casinos if you’re into them, two good brew-pubs, downtown festivals seemingly every summer weekend… I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
I really loved Minneapolis for about 4 years.
Many shiny modern buildings and skyway sidewalks.
Very clean and safe for a big city. All the bars are zoned to one area so cops can keep a close eye on them.
The freeways have excess capacity.
It wasn’t until I’d been gone a while and came to visit that I realized I could never return to a cold climate.
Im a native of Las Vegas. Love love love my town. The tourists are fun to meet when I go out for some nightlife here. In almost every stage of their stay, whether its the wonder of driving over the hill from Sunrise Mt at dusk with the jewels of the city lights sparkling or the awe as you depart from the runway at McCarran Airport to view the massive black pyramid ahead, I love the first and last moment you spy Las Vegas. It is oppresively hot in the summer and the heat remains in the 100’s at midnight. This is a not so subtle reminder that for some people this is a real hell, especially those that lost all their spending money last night gambling with nothing to show for it but shiny purple bead from the Rio, or the guy who hooked up with some girl at The Beach last night and this morning he cant find his pants or rental car keys.
But Las Vegas is not about subtlety. Nor was its first intention to be that of bastion of culture and renaissance. No, it can be more of a place of excess and the utter ruin that swallows neophytes whole that cannot extricate themselves from it. I have said before somewhere on the boards that like the song Viva Las Vegas says, "*A fortune won and lost on ev’ry deal All you need’s a strong heart and a nerve of steel
Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas
*
I had no idea there were so many Nevadans on this board!
Having lived in Las Vegas for just over 5 years, I love it here - but I like it really hot so this place is perfect. Plus, as others have already pointed out, the night life, the surrounding areas and the proximity to other places (California beaches, Grand Canyon) all a half day’s drive away.
But I also loved Chicago - (except for the weather).
Will always claim NYC is the center of the universe - (but more than a tad expensive).
Berlin is the pulse of Europe and a fantastic place to live, despite the rainy weather.
Los Angeles gets a bad reputation, but in reality is a very liveable place (especially West Hollywood) with perfect weather.
So - other than having been born and raised in a dinky little boring small town in Illinois, where the mosquitos are the size of ponies and the excitement was hanging out at Dairy Queen - well, I moved on and have loved every place I have ever lived. I would move back to any of those cities with no regrets whatsoever.
Bicycles, Rembrandt, Architecture, Laid-back people, van Gogh, Proud people, Grolsch, Cannabis, Fun people, Modern art, Canals, Vondelpark, Weird people, Union for prostitutes, Beautiful people, Old awesome buildings, Anne Frank, Tolerant people, Science, Public transport, Irritating people.
