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Comment by rw | Hacker News Reader

The cultural variety and quality is awesome in New York. The Valley has a critical mass of technology, but NYC has a critical mass of life.

</more-than-usual bias>

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And it's incredibly expensive. Let me put a word in for Chicago. 80% of the benefits of NYC, only 5% of the problems. For instance: no bedbugs.

(We're headquartered in NYC and Chicago).

You know who says NYC is awesome? People who already live there. Good luck finding a place to live in the city. Your options: room with four other people in a two bedroom or have insanely rich parents who can co-sign a lease with you.

Of course, I disagree wholeheartedly with Thomas on Chicago unless you're bootstrapping. If you don't want to do SV, Boston and LA (especially now with Jason's Open Angel Forum events) are pretty good options.

The thing about NYC is that the high end (and much of Manhattan) is indeed incredibly expensive. And if you don't know NYC, you think that's all that's out there.

But New York is huge and you can find a little bit of everything. Brooklyn alone is larger than most large cities, with 2.5 million people (over half the size of metro SF, and about the same as metro Pittsburgh). Everything gets much, much cheaper when you leave the ultra-density of Manhattan. It's like any other city center, just scaled way up.

This is only partially true. a 1br in SoMA is the same rent as a 1br in most of Manhattan, but you possibly get lesser space in Manhattan, so then you move out to brooklyn if you want more space.

Also, DUMBO in Brooklyn is fairly easily accessible and is becoming quite a startup hub. NYC seems expensive, but if you look hard enough you can find good deals anywhere.

Very true.

Don't be afraid to look outside of the manhattan/williamsburg/dumbo/long island city areas, either.

Most people who think that NYC is incredibly expensive (I've even gotten this from folks who live in La Crescenta, CA) haven't bothered to explore beyond Manhattan.

There is a VC community in Chicago, but not nearly so extensive as SV.

Funky, the city of Chicago has a pretty large help page on what a bed bug is and how to deal with them. http://bit.ly/6ZwDrU (evgov.cityofchicago.org)

Brooklyn really isn't that expensive - you can get a decent enough railroad style apartment for around $1100. That's more than enough space for one person. You can dial it down to $6-700/mo if you're willing to move in with flatmates.

I find that most of the expenses of NYC come with the nightlife. I actually live cheaper up here (rent + $400 or so for food + transport, monthly) than my brother does down in Durham, NC.

Disclaimers: I don't go out much, and when I do it's typically on the cheap. I live in a pre-gentrification area of Brooklyn (Bushwick), but I've only felt unsafe once - and that was due to some stupid mistakes on my part. The hipsters are starting to trickle over from Williamsburg, but it's not annoying-roof-drink-n-drugs-college-party-ville yet. My landlord sucks (but don't they all?). And I've never (Disclaimer^2: I've only been here for 3.5 yrs) had issues with bedbugs.

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