someone want to do boston? i'm too lazy. . . this is best i can do

history, education/college town, music, smallish at 3-ish million but has real city stuff, glorious summer and fall, big time sports town, pretty good public transport, easy to get out of town to western MA/VT/NH/ME, easy access to europe

expensive real estate, loooooong winter, college town


. . . that's all i got

Tucson:

Pros:

General scenery; mountains in the city, the desert is surprisingly pretty
A ton of great places to bike (bike lane on every road I can think of) and hike, most dog friendly
5 hours to Vegas, 4 hours to San Diego, 5.5 hours to LA, 4 hours to San Carlos Mexico
FOOD!!! (Green Chiles galore)
Relatively small, but large enough there's all conveniences of big city (kind of)
Best arts/music in the Southwest
Mild Winters
Liberal
Fairly well planned growth (the lack of a major highway makes for a good argument here, but the city street system/grid is phenomenal)
U of A
Skiing in the Winter up in the mountains
Monsoon Season

Cons:

Snowbirds
No major industry
Housing costs (renting isn't bad, but afforementioned snowbirds kill the prices for buying)
Summers are insanely hot (but hey, it's a dry heat)

chicago is awesome

yorktown has a great county school system. the buck creek festival has all manner of locally grown strawberries and paintings of clowns wearing t-shirts of american flags. you can get hammered at The Hideout while eating a tenderloin the size of a breaded hubcap. at the end of main street is a dollar general for all your off-brand food needs.

it's paradise.

santa cruz

pros: beach, mountains and redwoods, green industries, 90 miles to Big Sur, 90 miles to SF, university town, camper van beethoven, health food, drugs

cons: dirtbag hippies, high cost of living, too white, drugs





[img][650:519]http://www.bridgeofhopefoundation.org/images/SantaCruz700.jpg[/img]

[img][650:434]http://www.eastcliffbeachoasis.com/images/ecbo_beach_tree.jpg[/img]

Richmond kind of blows but it's cheap.

Yeah, Boston's pro/con list would look about 75% like d's Portland list, but with more history and less rain. Also there are tons of good shows, not that I go to any of them. I would gladly trade something for Portland's beer scene though. Like the Patriots.

perhaps I should expand on Atlanta a bit:

Pros: Finally has a decent music scene, southern hospitality, great bars, great food, some areas are still cheap to live in, jobs, big booty hos

Cons: The Traffic is fucking horrendous. The anger everytime a band skips the city but still plays SC, AL, FL, TN, and NC, public transportation is awful, you have to drive everywhere, lots of suburban sprawl in formerly urban areas.

I was all set to sell you on Norfolk/Hampton Roads but typing out the pros and cons made me want to move.

Just kidding.

It's nice being 15 minutes from the ocean front and 15 minutes from a "city" (Norfolk). There's a decent amount to do. Nothing too exciting and the availability of record stores and shows is pretty limited. But, I don't know much about what you actually like to do in your free time, so that makes it somewhat difficult to sell. There's tons of history anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours away. Virginia got dat history.

Two major downfalls, IMO: This area is pretty damn conservative politically--most likely to do with the high military population. The other issue is that most areas in Norfolk and Virginia Beach are exorbitantly expensive for no apparent reason.

St Louis...

cheap beer...cheap rent...#1 in crime...and Chuck Berry still plays a local bar once a month

Also, I've posted a glut of photos... boston, area beaches, VT and NH mountains, etc. Kinda depends on how you like to kill time I guess.

Move here and buy a motorcycle. I hear you're good people.

Philly is an under-rated town. Great restaurants (especially the byo places), lots of good bars, surprisingly good art & music scene, cheaper than NYC/Boston/DC, liberal, public transportation is decent (depending on your neighborhood tho), lots of history, easy to bike around, seems like good things are happening around here.

cons - despite being cheaper than the other east coast cities, housing can still be pricey; its pretty dirty overall; summer can be sweltering; city taxes are higher than they should be

Sorry, but St. Louis is a pit. The best club in town closed down, every restaurant is a chain, and everyone drinks Anheiser-Bush beers.

All that it has going for it (for me at least) is that I still have some friends there from my days at Mizzou.

I've got a good friend who lives down there. I need to get my butt down to visit soon. Looks beautiful.

I honestly can't imagine a shittier city. The only positive I can think of is the bbq. And if you ever find yourself in West Memphis, you'll be encouraged to believe that nuclear winter isn't so bad. And on top of it all it's closer to Northern Mississippi than any thing Tennesse


Keep driving and go to Nashville.

You forgot to list these under cons:

Flyers
Eagles
Phillies
It's in Pennsylvania

Home of the Splash-n-Grab

Indianapolis

Pros:
Low cost of living
Small - easy to get around
"Clean" - a comment we often get from people who visit
Easily accessible to other cities - Cinci is 2 hours away, Chicago 3.5 hours, Louisville - 2 hours, St. Louis - 5 hours, Detroit - 4 hours, etc.
Seasons - we've got 'em all
I live here

Cons (some pluses are also minuses):
Seasons
Size
Poor public transportation
Republican (assuming you're not)
Bands often skip it on tours

The Phils I don't mind, but the rest of these are valid.

Although up here in tundraland it's considered totallynot cool for a born and bred Montrealer to admit: I really do love Toronto.

(of course I realize you're not looking for Canadian cities but I just had to put a plug in)

pluses:

+ great music scene
+ surprizingly green, both in a lots of parks way and in an environmental way
+ (most) people are very polite (e.g. you bump into someone on the subway and they apologize).
+ amazing food from all over the world
+ jobs (& good economy)
+ lots of very nice and interesting neighbourhoods to choose from
+ very very multicultural
+ a bunch on islands just 20 mins (by ferry) from downtown... with beaches where you can swim.
etc. etc.

minuses:

+ smog
+ increasing gun violence (but still small potatoes compared to most cities of this size)
+ rents are pretty high
+ housing costs pretty darned high
+ for some bizarre reason the city expects citizens to shove the sidewalks themselves, to the point of fining us if we don't. So picture coming home late from work, um, in a snowstorm, it's pitch dark out, and then having to shovel snow---as it's possibly still snowing---all this so you won't get a fine when they drive by to check in the night.

anyway... a good town

Don't you have something bad to say about being #1 in crime?

I would agree with all of this...

but I would add a con by way of the AWFUL 19th century liquor laws...you can't buy beer in a gas station or supermarket (I got laughed at my first weekend there). If you want a 6 pack of something cheap, you gotta go to a bar and they charge out the ass...so you're pretty much stuck to buying cases.

liquor/wine is only sold in these state liquor stores.

Confirmed. Memphis is a shit hole.

Because it's all about me...

Portland, yes.

Texas, no.

New England, yes.

Chicago, yes.

LA, probably not.

I won't speak for Vermont, because the job market is abysmal (plus you probably wouldn't choose it unless you were pretty serious about becoming a mountain man), but I adore New England. I happen to like the extreme change in seasons, so if you don't mind snow it is plentiful in history, compact and many different things are within reasonable driving distances and it's pretty.

Hmpf! We don't want you either...we already have plenty of out-of-staters. We're kickin' Billy G out soon. You're next, duckyboy!