Rate your city: why you love it or lump it. - Page 9

I guess. Personally, I think the cost of living is quite high. (for being a second tier city ). Seattle had the third highest median list price for homes in the country at $450,000 last year. NYC, for example, has a median list price of $449,900 L.A. - $447,000 Boston - $389,000 Chicago - $276.000 Average per foot sales price for a home here (according to Zillow) is currently $190 a square foot. (down 11% from last year) For Comparison: L.A. - $281 NYC - $238 Chicago - $152 U.S. Average - $121 We are about even with Chicago as far as rent pricing goes. They are the third largest population city in the U.S. and we are the 25th. Gas prices are higher than pretty much every other major city outside CA, HI, and AK too.

Mexico City - 7
I moved out a few years ago, but let's rank it anyway.

Pros:
Food, all the regional Mexican cuisines are well represented, good Lebanese cuisine as well
Nightlife
Climate, high's in the upper-70's and low's in the mid-40's yearound
Good Theater


Cons:
CRIME
GRIME
TRAFFIC

Cancun - 9
Pros:
Perpetually rotating cohort of horny tourist women
The beach
The smaller islands
Good sailing
Super scuba diving
Mayan culture
Climate


Cons:
Perpetually rotating cohort of drunken tourist guys
Not many cultural events
Nightlife, it's great if your a tourist, but kinda static.
Too much mall food and mall clothing
Hurricanes

Add all the cons you mentioned to Boca Raton, and then add: no performance center (high art: opera, symphonies, performance plays, etc...), crappier restaurants than WPB, no real clubs (Clematis St. is better, which isn't saying much), utter lack of sophistication: people think leased cars + lots of debt to buy shiny objects = taste and culture, but they couldn't name 10 classical composers to save their lives, and the winner is lots of ex-cons / people that couldn't make it up north come down here to continue their immoral / unethical way of life.

In short I gave Boca a 2 and I was being very, very, very kind.

London, Uk - 9 Pros: Rich culture, history, diversity, huge amounts of shopping, semi-decent transport, any food you could ever want, easy to get to other Euripean cities (Paris, Amsterdam etc), nightlife, huge parks. Cons: Cost. Rents are expensive, tube is expensive, nightlife is expensive, then there's the congestion charge... Personally, I love living here. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

Ill Play

Old town: Spokane - 3

Pros: Great for outdoorsy types
Fairly Cheap housing
Downtown is beginning to develop again (hasnt since Expo '74)
Nice warm Summer (temps up to 102F but usually in the 80s)
Doesn't rain much
Seattle is a short 4 hour drive away
Decent low/mid-range restaurants and good variety (Greek, Japanese, tons of mexican, slavic, russian, Italian, etc)

Cons
Roads suck
Boring if you are not into outdoorsy shit
poverty/drugs/low level crime is everywhere
public transport development is constantly blocked by city government and old people, so shit bus system riddled with weirdos and homeless kids and no light rail (fight has been going over 20 years for this one)
again, shit city gov that is overly conservative
winter... HOLY FUCK! Usually well below freezing (sometimes as low as -30f or more) and lots and lots of snow (winter 09 was something like 2-3meters I heard)
Shopping is terrible
Bar scene is meh, only a couple clubs (who cares) but a couple cool bars amongst a lot of dives and douche magnet spots
Women dress like shit

Current City: Kawasaki/Yokohama/Tokyo - 8

Pros: Public transport is frequent and timely
Most neighborhoods have your daily living needs covered so you dont have to haul a lot of crap from one side of town to the other
Shopping is good
Food is very good but variety is a bit lacking (decent mexican is the Holy Grail)
Lots of beautiful women
Vibrant night life (as long as you are willing to be out till 6am)

Cons:
Rains a lot and is humid during the summer
Expensive (transport, housing, food, etc)
I am sick of Japanese beer, good beer is very hard to find here.
Last train can be kinda early (usually leave a party/club around 11:30 or 12 to get home)
Driving here is very expensive (gas, parking, insurance, Shakken, etc)
douchebag self entitled foreigners/tourists
For some reason shoes wear out really really fast here, like the toe and heel wear extremely fast