Comment by tropdrop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tropdrop | Hacker News Reader

If you would like to remain in United States and do not mind having proper seasons, I would strongly consider Chicago, the last affordable big city in the United States.

University of Chicago pulls a robust intellectual community (81 Nobel Laureates), but there is also a deep intellectual history around the arts and music that transcends the work of the university - something that I'm not sure I can say for a place like Cambridge.

The Art Institute has many of the paintings you might have seen in middle school history books, which is telling in of itself - and while everyone remembers Chicago's jazz, few know that it also invented house music (and a variety of other genres). It's home to many a political movement. It has unparalleled and extremely diverse architecture. The tech scene is doing great - and if any place will upset racial diversity in tech, it will certainly be this city.

People feel like they have a general sense of good will towards their neighbors, without losing the quick pace only a big city will offer you.

Most importantly and to your point - there is a respect for intellectual exchange no matter the discipline - Tech? Economics? Art? Policy? Medicine? Michelin-starred cuisine? I can't think of a field that you can't pursue with confidence in Chicago.

A completely trivial aside - one of the biggest complaints I hear from expats of the Bay Area is a lack of great Mexican food in Boston/Europe/etc. Thanks to a neighborhood called "Little Mexico" (which really does feel like being transported to the Mission), Chicago may be the furthest east you can go while still being able to find authentic Mexican food.

"Chicago, the last affordable big city in the United States"

I love Chicago, and would consider living there were it not for the harsh winters. But, Dallas and Houston would like a word about being the last affordable big city in the US. I'd wager they're more affordable than Chicago, actually. Then again, if your definition of "big city" includes mass transit worth speaking of and corridors where you can live affordably near that mass transit, I guess you'd be right. Texas is stupidly backward on transit. Big roads, big trucks, big houses in big suburbs are the rule in Texas (this is changing in the major cities, though slowly).

But, they've both got all the big city stuff most people think of: Museums, food, music, culture, etc. Houston, in particular, will surprise you, as it has excellent art museums (including the Menil collection, which is probably my personal favorite museum of any I've visited, and I've traveled a lot), and one of the best opera companies in the world, among other things. Also amazingly good food due to large immigrant populations and a lot of produce that doesn't have to be shipped very far since it's grown in nearby areas. And, a very low cost of living, relatively speaking.

Despite what 'tptacek and others might say about winters, I don't find them bad at all. There have, in fact, been one or two that are outright frauds, with 72 degrees on Christmas Day. And the lowest temperature is only -29F.

(Full disclosure--I grew up in Montana on the prairie, with more wind than Chicago, so my perspective might be unusual.)

I grew up in the south. -29F sounds like hell on earth. I get seasonal depression, there's no way I'd put myself through a winter like that to save a little money on rent. Though, again, there are major southern cities with lower cost of living than Chicago, so it's like not even saving money, despite the possibility of living without a car. Since I work from home, my car/commute costs are negligible, and I drive a 10+ year old vehicle that's fully paid for.

I'm not saying Chicago isn't a great city for some folks. It is, but it's not the city for me, though I love to visit and when a conference is happening there I'm more likely to want to go.

I can't argue. But as a northerner, it was slightly funny how freaked out everyone was about that -29. Diesel fuel was coagulating, tires felt funny. The good part of it was that there wasn't very much wind.

But there is was an extreme that was not so funny. That was the heat wave in 1995. Nearly a thousand people died during that time. High temperature of 106, high temperature overnight (which I feel is a crime against nature), insane humidity. The city learned, in that there are now cooling centers for crisis like temperatures.

Humorously, the second-highest actual temperature I experienced was 112 during one year of harvest back in Montana. Fortunately, the humidity was low (sometimes as low as 4%) and, as it should be, it cools off at night, as the universe intended. The higher temperature was in Phoenix, when it hit 117 at sunset. Riduculous.

Yes, it can be depressing with the shorter days, and the harsher winters encouraging biological hibernation.

My take is, as a country boy, if you are need to live in a city, Chicago is excellent.

We are polar (heh, polar) opposites. Those high temps are hot but not awful, to me. Texas sees those kinds of temperatures every summer, and I've summered in the desert, as well (Tempe/Phoenix in spring is awesome). This summer in Austin was particularly brutal, and currently the rain is among the worst I've seen (because mosquitoes, when combined with record breaking high temperatures), as it's been going on for weeks nearly daily. We handle the heat fine, here, but the rain less so. I would guess it's the opposite in Chicago.

I am sure Dallas and Houston are great places to be, but my own prerequisite for "big city life" is the ability to live comfortably without a car (and because the poster is from the Bay Area, I assumed they had something similar in mind). This doesn't just mean public transit, either, but high density architecture to eliminate the amount of time I need to spend traveling for groceries/food/coffee/social activities (so I can continue working asap).

Good public transit gives me freedom to concentrate my income on things that are important to me - no car maintenance, no debt, and an even further increase to the amount of time I can be productive in a day (by doing work on a train/bus).

So keeping this criteria for "big city" in mind, I think few in the US can compare to San Francisco, New York and Chicago, and out of those three Chicago has a drastically cheaper price point.

I think the Bay Area outside of SF is only barely qualified for a carless lifestyle, and most of it is not "big city". I lived for three years in Mountain View with only a bike, but still had to rent a car now and then. There's the Caltrain corridor (which I lived on), but if you get out into the suburbs of San Jose, Sunnyvale, etc. you pretty much need a car.

Chicago is better in that regard, but Houston and Dallas both have a train (and some buses), like much of the Bay Area, which also has a train (and some buses)...you can live on that line and live without a car most of the time, if everything works out (like your commute also happens to be on that line). But, most people in those cities have a car, as is true of much of the Bay area. And, it's probably not useful to treat "Bay Area" as a singular city. There's really only one big city in the Bay Area that works for this argument, so someone accustomed to the Bay Area life could very well have a car.

Cars suck, of course, and every great city should stop relying on them. But, the necessity of a car is not the only factor in what makes a big city great, even though it's important.

Fair point, I don't know that the poster lives in San Francisco. But it's not the only big city in the Bay Area that works for this argument - Oakland and Berkeley with their multiple train lines would like a word about that!

Chicago pro's:

* Cheap housing with lots of options, even if you stay in the city limits (Chicago is huge).

* Cheap office space.

* Vibrant, 1st tier business community; Chicago's not the best place to try to get a tech job, but it is one of the better places to start a tech company, especially if you're bootstrapping.

* Really fantastic food and drink scene.

* Top tier venues for touring music scene; we get better shows than SFBA does.

* Functioning, wide-reaching public transit system.

Chicago con's:

* State finances are truly fucked.

* The crime situation is not a joke, though it's more a moral catastrophe than a middle+ class safety issue.

* I like cold weather but you probably don't and Chicago cold is not fucking around cold.

* The startup scene is has a serious cargo cult vibe and can be cliquish.

* Apart from the lake, outdoors stuff is adequate and unspectacular at best.

* It won't be nearly as easy to raise money here as in any tech hub.

I think if you buy into the premise (big city, cold weather 1/4 of the year), Chicago is easily the best value in the US. But lots of people reasonably don't buy into that, and if you don't, you probably won't love the city the way its boosters do.

Chicago is a really wonderful city and I can vouch for everything tropdrop says here. I will also add, it's good for cycling (though do take care when not on dedicated lanes) and though the winter will leave you breathless and the summers will leave you panting, the vibrancy of city and everything it has to offer, and the affordability it still has, make up for it. It's one of my favourite cities in the world.

I've lived there for a while and there were a lot of deal breakers for me:

* security: you feel unsafe in most of the city, past a certain hour and you can't walk nor take the public transit (actually even during the day, the public transit is filled with crazy people). I could never take walks around my place when I was living there. A lot of poverty.

* no real life: there is the loop, but it's mostly offices and it dies down at night. Then there are a few single streets (wicker park, logan square, etc.) but they are rather small places where you can't really walk for a long time.

* the winter: it's freaking cold

It's a big city. There is big city crime.

Your nightlife thing is pretty weird. The Loop is Chicago's business district. It is dead after business hours. Don't be there. Wicker Park and Logan Square are neighborhoods, not single streets. There's also Lakeview, Avondale, Pilsen, Andersonville, and a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Maybe the argument is that together these neighborhoods constitute a pretty decent night-life, but it's hard to walk from Wicker Park to Andersonville if you want to start an evening eating tacos at the Big Star walkup and end it with beers at Hopleaf? That's fair, but that's what NYC is like too.

It does get cold here!

> It's a big city. There is big city crime.

Compare that to London or Beijing where you feel safe at all time. Being a big city is not an excuse for feeling unsafe.

> Wicker Park and Logan Square are neighborhoods, not single streets

After one or two streets there is not much to see. Again I'm comparing this to european cities/asian cities where you can walk for hours in lively old centers/districts.

I'm not going to compare it to London or Beijing, but while I wouldn't move to Chicago from San Francisco to get away from crime, for most people, a move from SF to Chicago wouldn't be a move into significantly more crime either.

Oh yeah definitely. Note that I'm doing the inverse move (to SF) and I have no idea why I'm doing it.

Yeah, I'm not sure why you're comparing to European/Asian cities here - I did qualify my recommend for Chicago only applies if you'd like to stay in the US. In my experience, the nightlife in Chicago is more diverse (with many more places and neighborhoods to go) than in San Francisco.

I'm making the reverse move at the moment, so I hope you're wrong :D but when it comes to nightlife aren't NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Miami, etc. better?

NYC and LA, yes, of course (both are larger and more expensive). Maybe Miami? Miami seems like a metro area that specializes in nightlife. But Boston? Why would you think Boston was better in that regard? Move there and report back, please.

I haven't checked myself, but I visited and I saw a lot of students so I extrapolated.

I would take CT/IL/NJ off of any list just due to the situation of the state finances. Taxes are going to rise a lot in the next 10 years, and government services are going to be reduced to make their debt payments.

What would be authentic Mexican food?

Not OP but for me...something that's not TexMex.

Obligatory fajitas is not Mexican. It's American-Mexican (TexMex).

One TLDR/cusory menu check for authentic Mexican: are there mole sauce based dishes on the menu?

Chicago has an enormous Latinx population and very good Mexican food. Tripe tacos. Ridiculous mole. Goat stew. Tortas and cemitas.

as tptacek noted in a sibling, there is seriously good Mexican food here, and Latin American food as well. All over.

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