I can see that about Pittsburgh. My wife did college there, and we've visited a few times. It's got the right mix of tech and working class, I think.

That's what I miss about Philadelphia. Actually, probably the only thing I miss, because there are a lot of problems in Philly, too. But the indie hacker scene in Philly was amazing. We had a lot of intermingled circles of entrepreneurs, hackers, and artists . If you wanted to get something done and make it a cool, weird thing along the way, you just had to show up at the hackerspace with some parts and beer.

I'm in the DC area now, since I got married 10 years ago. Nothing like that here. Lots of extremely intelligent people, but no desire to Just Make Things. Everyone's got their career plan, retirement plan, home ownership plan. And none of it involves just hanging out and fucking around with a soldering iron.