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New York does have a great arts scene; but unless you're an artist, it'll always be peripheral to your day to day life.

Day to day life in New York is dreary. By American standards it's a filthy city. It smells and will always smell because trash is collected on the sidewalk. It manages to be both too hot and too cold. On summer days, a blanket of pollution hangs in the city air. The waterways are toxic after rainfall because NYC expels raw sewage into them. Most any place of business worth visiting will have a long wait. There are lots of delightful people in the right areas, but the many wrong areas are filled with throngs of really awful people. The amount of cat-calling, homophobia, and racism I experienced on the train or just walking around was an order of magnitude more than I've witnessed anywhere on the West Coast. The cost for living this privilege are some of the nation's highest taxes.

I don't regret my time in New York, but I do think it's one of the worst cities in the US in terms of livability.

From Joan Didion:

> All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not that young anymore. The last time I was in New York was in a cold January, and everyone was ill and tired. Many of the people I used to know there had moved to Dallas or had gone on Antabuse or had bought a farm in New Hampshire. We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York. There were years when I called Los Angeles “the Coast,” but they seem a long time ago.

> New York does have a great arts scene; but unless you're an artist, it'll always be peripheral to your day to day life.

This just isn't true. I know a number of people who work full-time in tech and are deeply integrated into various New York art scenes.

re: New York's awful quality of life compared to other cities, I completely agree. I can't blame anyone for wanting to live in a beautiful place with good weather and a more relaxed pace of life.

The subway makes the culture in NYC different than almost any other major city in the US.

If you lived in NYC maybe you understand. In other cities you can get around with public transportation, in NYC it's unquestionably the way to get around by everyone from day laborers to movie stars.

Also, your narrative of grittiness is very different than the other popular narrative, that NYC is now "disney" full of tourists, cops and wealthy transplants.

The simple fact remains that people want to be here in NYC despite whatever criticism.

Have you been to other cities with underground metro lines? The NYC subway is the dirtiest, noisiest, most claustrophobic metro system I've ever used; it even gives London a run for its money.

There are other great cities out there. Many of them do things differently, and do quite well at it. Try Hong Kong or Singapore's underground, or in Europe, Vienna's - even the ones in China are cleaner and easier to navigate.

I agree with nostromo. A day in New York is a day endlessly pushing against roadblocks, those roadblocks being people, traffic, delays, dirt, bad neighborhoods, long commutes, noise, expensive living, expensive eating... and all of that just to live in your tiny box and think that you're a part of it all.

I'll take small to medium-size towns any day, over that.

Notice how I qualified my statement by saying in the US.

I'm perfectly open to criticism of the subway compared to other countries more modern systems. As it stands though, for a person with only a US passport, the NYC subway is in a class of its own. On a global scale it is still one of the largest underground systems.

I was born in NYC and have also traveled extensively internationally. Foreigners and transplants often have this misconception that NYC = Manhattan. If I shared that sentiment then I would agree that NYC is not the greatest place to live. Try spending an afternoon in Astoria, Queens or Williamsburg, Brooklyn (two of the most trendy places in NYC at the moment but they work to prove the point). Tourists rarely see these places but residents live comfortable lives there with literally a 5 minute commute to the city.

Hell, the DC metro, for all its faults, is quite a bit nicer than NYC, but granted, it doesn't go as far.

Even for outer residents it is not great. My wife's family lives in Queens and it is inconvenient as all hell; there is a good reason people pay to live in Manhattan. NYC is bizarrely centered around Manhattan as its central hub, and all of the other boroughs are subservient to it; in a way they are deserts, devoid of all but the most basic businesses and services, as the arts/culture/jobs/education are in Manhattan.

To get to Manhattan takes 20 minutes by bus just to get to the L or M train, then another hour (or often more) to get to the outskirts. If you miss the bus, enjoy a 45 minute walk - the bus only comes every half hour, but is hardly regular, as it goes down the area's only main thoroughfare that is absolutely choked with cars, too many streetlights, and parking.

Maybe for some an 1:30-2:00hr commute daily is normal; at the best of times, in Spring/Fall, it's bearable but annoying. In the hot summer or cold winter, it's awful. I think, why go through all that - is the area really all that spectular? Can't you have 10x more (land,time,sanity) living in the Midwest or the South? Why even bother living in New York, if you're not going to live in Manhattan?

> In other cities you can get around with public transportation

In a lot of cities, the quality of public transportation lies somewhere between non-existent and abysmal.

This is mostly because of General Motors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

I went to NYC for the first time last year when I went to a conference. I wouldn't mind visiting the city itself, but I wouldn't live there for anything under seven figures per year (and not just because of the high cost of living).

This afternoon I just went to see a new opera that premiered yesterday at the Minnesota Opera Company (The Manchurian Candidate). I hardly feel deprived living in Minneapolis with the The Minnesota Orchestra, The Minnesota Opera, The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Schubert Club, and a dozen other ensembles I'm forgetting. And that's just classical music, which is what I'm interested in.

If you're into live theater there's a dozen or more shows going at any one time. I'm sure there's a visual arts scene of which I'm happily unaware, jazz performances, dozens of small clubs, and more.

There's more than enough culture to fill my available time and interest. Living in NYC, I'm not sure I'd go see all that much more of it. Yes, I'd be spoiled for choices (and I miss the American Composers Orchestra) but I'm not really suffering in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis also has an incredible local music scene (greatly bolstered by The Current[0] and Radio K[1]). If it weren't for the weather, Minneapolis would be a lot higher on city "tier" lists.

[0] http://www.thecurrent.org/ [1] http://www.radiok.org/

I'm from the Minnesota. I lived in Minneapolis from age 18 to very recently. I played in bands, my friends played it bands, etc. But let me tell you, after 10 years in that town you realize it really is very small.

@msutherl is completely right. If you have any creative bent outside of pop culture even a town the size of Minneapolis does not really provide the kind of creative stimulation you need. The kind of diversity and culture mixing that comes from a metropolis like NYC is on a whole other level entirely.

(By the way, the current is a crap radio station and they haven't played anything other than indie top 40 for years. Radio-K is cool, but every town with a university has a college radio station </hipster>)

Right, if your tastes line up with mainstream cultural production, you're probably all set wherever you live. I happen to find it odd that people are interested in recapitulating the same music from the 18th and 19th century over and over again irrespective of what happened in music in the past 100 years (from serial music to minimalism, spectralism, post-minimalism, Wandelweiser, whatever, not to mention electronic music), but it is what it is. Not that no contemporary music happens in smaller cities – I know of a lot of great stuff in St. Louis and Minneapolis especially – but it usually scales with the size and prestige of the local universities and doesn't extend much past there. If your interests are more specific, you might get stuck with a few events per year.

That's actually the most important thing from my perspective. Somebody called me a hipster, but what I love about having access to a huge array of contemporary art, music, etc. is that it gives me the opportunity to see a lot and really understand what it is that moves me and that I can express myself through. As I learn more, my tastes become more specific and "obscure." On the flip side, knowing more also helps me appreciate more different things on a new level.

> if your tastes line up with mainstream cultural production, you're probably all set wherever you live.

Up to a point, and then you're selling Cleveland short. The points on Broadway and the Orchestra both bear repeating - literally world-class in both regards, at half (or less!) the ticket price. On the hipster/contemporary side of things, I was spoiled for choice as a student in Cleveland - fantastic craft beer (I prefer it over most on the West Coast), concert venues like the Grog Shop[0] that rival most places in Seattle, and Ohio City (Cleveland suburb) is nigh indistinguishable from any other yuppie district over here (well, until you look at the prices).

In fact, the only thing that sticks out as missing is the lack of good clubs and an LGBT district, although Cleveland did just host the Gay Games last year. I'll echo other comments here - if someone offered me a 5% pay cut to move to Cleveland, I'd actually give it some thought.

0. http://www.grogshop.gs/

Actually, I only like 20th century music or newer for the most part. I think our local orchestras and chamber ensembles do a pretty good job of including new music. There are also new music ensembles here. More would be good for my tastes, but it's enough to satisfy my interests. I just don't think I'd go to a new music concert every week even if I did live in NYC.

Did you miss the part of my comment where I mentioned seeing a new opera commissioned by the Minnesota Opera that premiered this past Sunday?

Sorry for making assumptions here – point taken.

I've thought a lot about this myself, as a musician and lover of art and music. I live in a mid-sized Midwestern town, where even Chicago would be a step up culturally. But I've thought about what it would be like for me to live in "Chicago" with a spouse and family. It would probably mean living in a suburb, spending a great deal of time in a car, and having neither the time nor the energy to go into the city for a concert or museum very often.

And the suburbs are yet another 2 orders of magnitude below my little town.

I've probably attended the Chicago Symphony more times than the average person who refers to their home as "Chicago." As for my town, if I want to play music or attend the Symphony with my kids, we're 10 minutes away.

And while it's true that great artists and musicians move to the metropolitan centers, they also move back out, in droves, because only a tiny fraction can survive the scene, much less prosper. I play in a band with some of them.

This is all without denying the obvious cultural role of the great cities. Thank you for bebop. ;-)

I've lived in Chicago (not burbs) for 9 years with my daughter (her mother lives in another part of the city).

Come on, I live in Manhattan, this place is so incredibly stagnant and uninteresting these days. And don't talk about Brooklyn, it's full of vanilla transplants from the suburbs of middle America like myself.

Culture is people living their lives, pursuing interests and hobbies, being happy (not always), working, raising families. This is culture to me ... New York is just: either work all the time, talk about work, or be in poverty, talk about New York, be angry about New York, talk about leaving New York, talk about your rent.

And I can't even see any of the "mass produced" culture because the prices are absurd and the things sell out in minutes anyways.

Nobody gives a fuck about you, nor your hipster definition of culture.

He is from New York, and therefore immune to that type of response. Regardless of any argument you can come up with, the typical NY fanatic will brush it off as uninformed word diarrhea coming from the scum not smart enough to live there.

NY produces a lot of art / culture, but as with most things more than 90% of it is crap. If you don't feel like shifting through it then living in NY is pointless.

Or maybe you just don't care for modern city culture. I find a long walk in the woods more enriching than a world class art museum, though the latter has better bragging rights.

Seriously, humans lived in societies for thousands of years without the billion forms of stimulation that we have today. I refuse to believe their lives were in any way deprived because of this. The demand for an urban lifestyle is completely artificial and only serves to create a steady supply of desperate workers filled with envy of movie star lives. Humans in primitive societies today still manage to live happy lives. What would aid us all is to realize our desires are not our own but implanted by marketing to benefit the power elite.

Whatever floats your boat. You're into art and culture; NYC is a good scene for you. But if you're into something else...

How far is it from New York (City) to a good trout stream? Air that you can't see? A mountain peak above 10,000 feet? Powder skiing? (Yes, I know, those things aren't Midwest either, exactly.)

what is your idea of culture?

Artists, musicians, artisans, chefs, writers, cultural institutions, etc. producing new, non-derivative cultural products that address current issues, articulate forward-thinking ideas, or otherwise awaken, expand, deepen, and question our understanding of and relationship with the world and all its myriad facets.

what about all the stuff that has been created since the dawn of time up to this point? crap?

And what important forward thinking ideas have exclusively come from NY recently? Skinny jeans?

This is the problem. GP mentioned London: I live in London. I see a lot of art in London. (I lived in Hackney Wick for a while, which at the time was basically a pile of art studios plonked into rotting industrial estates. There were some, er, very interesting people around.) None of it is particularly path-breaking.

But that's not an issue. Because any fule kno that all cultural production is highly derivative, and innovative only at the margins. GP gripes elsewhere about people ignoring the last 100 years of western art music, but seems to miss the fact that there is no Schoenberg without Brahms, Wagner and Mahler, no Reich without the Early Music revival; and, equally, the fact that not all productions of a given opera are alike. Innovation is possible, and happens, within the standard repertoire; that's one of the happy side effects of playing the same things over and over again.

I have no idea how forward-thinking the opera house(s) of Ohio are, admittedly.

I should have said "perspectives." The production of ideas operates differently post-internet and isn't so geographically specific. If you want to talk about trends in art, music, fashion, etc., then I could list quite a few.

Ha, scathing. But yeah, if a guy has not lived round the world before deciding Ohio is the best place to live, then it's not a very convincing argument.

> If a guy has not lived round the world before deciding Ohio is the best place to live, then it's not a very convincing argument.

I would venture to guess that you haven't been to Ohio.

I'm not claiming that it's an epicenter of amazingness, but I can count at least one person that's decided that's the case (Dave Chappelle).

I'd say that's heavily biased by the fact that Chappelle spent lots of time growing up in Ohio (and specifically Yellow Springs).

Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns - not quite the same as randomly stumbling upon OKC and deciding it's what you've wanted all along, you know?

And Chappelle's probably not the greatest example, since he very famously got fed up with his celebrity status and wanted to retreat from the world a little. Surprised you didn't go to Lebron instead.

Or Garnett (Minnesota). Not his hometown, but longest place of residence.

Also, Buffet, Prince, Eminem, etc. You can find an argument about a lot of places. The fact that people write of (any) place without spending any amounts of time there, speaks more about them than the place they're referencing.

>Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns

Nobody with a modicum of intelligence thinks that is irrational. Of course people are going to have strong attachments to a place where they spent a major portion of their childhood making memories and relationships.

The only seemingly irrational thing would be indifference. You don't spend 18 years in a place and not have any emotional reaction to it (good or bad).

I thought it was pretty clear that the implied irrational part of it is the opportunity cost of choosing your hometown, not the actual attachment itself.

If I'm a brilliant mathematician or a world-class athlete and I choose Kansas over Cambridge/Boston, then yeah, plenty of people are going to think that my attachment to Kansas is making me act irrationally. I don't think they lack a "modicum of intelligence" because of that thought.

There are obviously exceptions where your choice of location doesn't matter, but if you're a high performer then it frequently does (with the obvious notable exceptions e.g. Prince).

[EDIT: I originally just had a quip about not being a sports fan, but I thought you deserved a real reply.]

As a mathematician by training, I would venture to say that there are probably few mathematicians who are able to choose a location first and then a suitable job in academia or industry (in academia, that number is almost surely zero).

In particular, if you're an academic mathematician and you ended up in Kansas, then that probably means that you're working at the University of Kansas or Kansas State University.