Gary, IN: Lock the doors. Do not stop.
Macon, GA: You know, Atlanta is just up the road, right?
Elko, NV: The only winners are the house and the mine owners.
Milwaukee, WI: Fourth place is just fine, given enough beer.
Clearly, I need to hang out in better cities.
Wolfeboro, NH (smalltown New England summer resort): You should pretend it's 1962 like all the retirees do.
Waltham, MA (Brandeis University): Go back to NYC when you graduate.
Cambridge, MA: You should be more educated.
I chose "educated" over "intelligent" largely because I lived closer to Harvard. When I go to the MIT side of Cambridge I would switch the two. In and around Harvard you see a strong vein of people who aim for the prestige of higher education over the knowledge it brings.
The middle-aged people dream of sitting in a musky study debating high-falutin mish-mash over a nice port. The college-aged kids dream of sitting in a coffee shop debating their PHIL101 papers. They seek _established_ education.
I know this doesn't speak for every aspect of Cambridge, which I did love living in for a few years, but the too-strong emphasis on the appearance of education as opposed to the knowledge you gain helped me move to take a job in San Mateo (shameless plug: RockYou.com).
Disclaimer: I am not your average anything. My move to San Mateo from Cambridge is via Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I speak Mandarin but I'm English/German. Take what I said with a healthy grain of wacky salt.
There are two strains of culture in Cambridge, "you should be smarter" which is why I love living here. And "you should have two PHDs" -- which is very different and unfortunate message. It's almost the opposite of the Valley, which speaks so reverently of the Harvard drop-out.
The best thing that those of us who live in Cambridge could do is keep the culture focused on ideas and less on diplomas.
Columbia SC: Uh, the culture is pretty much centered around it's mid-tier University of South Carolina, which is a party-hardy Frat/Sorority vibe. So, I guess it says "YEEE-HAAAAW! More beer, Bo!"
Hartford, CT: Unless you can calculate the death of a 55 year old smoker with no major medical history within a margin of error, the city says "There's NY below and Boston above, take your pick, pay your toll, and have a nice day."
Raleigh-Durham, NC: Duke University, UNC, Wake Forrest, North Carolina State, Shaw, and various other colleges all within around 20 interstate exits of each other. I guess it would say "study hard, and find job at IBM, Sony-Ericsson, or Cisco." Not too much entreprenurial spirit here, I guess because the tech giants gobble them up with nice offers right out of college.
Columbia, SC doesn't really send any strong messages. Only the young people in the area have anything to do with USC, normally, so not even the frattiness comes across that strong.
College football tailgating, however, is a state-wide sport.
The message in Charleston definitely has something about aristocracy and the value of old money, while the message in the rest of the coastal towns generally involves fishing. Except Myrtle Beach, where the message is, "Y'all come on down for a visit, and leave your money when you head back up north."
Visited Bob Jones as a kid -- "You know you're going to hell, right?"
Speaking of Bob Jones, no one ever believes me when I explain that it has a "date room", wherein couples sit together in a chaperoned room, with a Bible-width space in between. Which explains why Bob Jones girls are such a terror when they do manage to escape the watchful eyes of the school.
I live in Honolulu. It's a miracle that I make it out of bed in the afternoon.
I have, and here's what they've said to me:
Pittsburgh: You should be nice.
New Jersey: You should be in New York.
Los Angeles: You should go outside.
Phoenix: You should go inside.
Detroit: You should be glad you have a good job.
Tampa: You should buy a new pair of flip flops for dinner Saturday night.
Sydney: You should spend more money on real estate.
Melbourne: You should spend more money on clothes.
London: You should have been here 150 years ago.
Davis, CA: You should leave Davis, CA.
Mountain View, CA: We're not the Barrio (any more).
Toledo, OH: We're close to Detroit.
Bowling Green, OH: Attend a real university with your real high school friends!
Columbus, OH: Love Ohio State football (and basketball, if the season's wrong).
brooklyn: you should be hipper
cambridge: you should be smarter
berkeley: you should only eat organically grown vegetables
tokyo: you should be japanese
san francisco: you should become as crazy as most everyone else, but not quite as crazy as the homeless people
No it's more like...
Melbourne: You live in the sports capital of a sports crazed country. You should go to the footy, the cricket, tennis and don't forget some new duds on cup day.
London: "You should have been here 150 years ago" is essentially "you should be more aristocratic". I think that signal is strong in London. I have been at dinner with friends who started arguing about how far they had to commute on the tube (as a proxy for social class.) The English pretend to the world that it doesn't matter but it seems to matter deeply to them. This seems to be an English hidden rule; that is how the discussion started.
If you are merely rich, your money can be easily taken from you by more powerful person in Moscow.
And if you didn't know, Russian is a second class citizen in Russia.
All in all, one message per city is insufficient. It all depends on the people around you.
Being a native Western Pennsylvania, and living more of my adult life in Pittsburgh than anywhere else, I'll take that as a compliment :).
I moved to NYC with my wife right after we were married, and loved every minute of it. But decided to return here to raise our kids after they were born.
An interesting thing about Pittsburgh is the number of large non-profits of every kind, especially considering the reduced population. The major industrial titans that made their fortunes here in decades past (Carnegie, Mellon, Heinz, etc.) have left behind many cultural institutions like libraries, museums, universities, parks, hospitals, etc. that are still well funded and high quality.
You'll find some of that in NYC (even from some of the same benefactors) but Pittsburgh I think has a higher cultural dollars/resident ratio. This is a wonderful thing in terms of raising children. My kids think hanging out at the zoo, library, conservatory, kids' museum, etc. is a perfectly common thing to do. I think in NYC (and other cities?) you could find many of the same things, but it would not be possible to enjoy them in a leisurely manner, or afford family yearly membership passes.
(The day after a Steeler's loss, of course, all bets are off.)
Perhaps it's even more noticeable because I live in SF now, especially in the Marina filled with mostly pretentious folks.
The "under attended" part isn't all bad. Our boys can run around a little bit in Phipps Conservatory, for example, without many negative glances.
We do live in a city neighborhood, so that might account for some of the difference.
Portland, Oregon: Be alternative just like everyone else.
San Francisco: We're so hip and important.
Padova, Italy: That was a long, hard work week, let's have a drink in the piazza and get a pizza afterwards.
Innsbruck, Austria: ... something in the Tirolean dialect that I completely failed to grasp, involving skiing ...
Barcelona: Party naked but watch your backpack.
Toronto: Buy land north of here.
Amsterdam: There's no work done here at all.
London: Next time, bring more money.
Also, I believe it's the only country in Europe except for the UK where everyone speaks good English. In most big cities in Europe you will eventually find someone who speaks English, but in Amsterdam the odds that it will be the first person you approach are no worse than in London or California.
Stockholm is similar -- most people speak good English.
Amsterdam is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Europe, no wonder about the quality of their English (although this applies to the whole of Netherlands, not just Amsterdam).
I hear the Danes speak excellent English too, but I haven't been to Denmark myself.
Minneapolis: You should be nice
Providence, RI: You will eat well.
LA: You should look better or be more famous, preferably both.
Chicago: You went to the wrong fraternity
Logan, UT: You should be one of us.
Denver, CO: You should be healthier.
Chicago: There's nothing wrong with second place.
Stockholm, Sweden: You're not clean enough!
Orlando, FL: Subprime.
Space Coast, FL: God's Waiting Room
Rio Grande Valley, TX: Play your cards right and some day you could be middle class!
Terre Haute, IN: South side of Chicago, without the rest of it.
San Antonio, TX: To the newly minted soldiers/airmen/sailors/marines- welcome back to the real world!
Las Vegas, NV: Be at least 21 and on vacation.