Rate your city: why you love it or lump it.

[superego]

Originally Posted by Stavros

Seattle, WA - Rating: 5 The good: fairly multi-cultural, strong local (NW) cuisine + decent ethnic cuisine, excellent seafood, abundant waterfront resulting in affordable waterfront housing, decent ski resorts within 2-hr drive, hiking/backpacking paradise, excellent hospitals, strong university (UW), dense public transit system, 2.5-hr drive to Vancouver BC. The bad: rain (lots of it), people are not very outgoing (because of the rain mostly), not much opportunity for outdoor activities except in summer (again because of the rain), sartorially dissapointing (and hopeless), too politically correct/green, bad drivers, ugly bars/clubs with even uglier crowds, small proportion of women being actually feminine. Overall: Affordable, livable but you won't be happy here unless you fit one of the several typical "NW profiles":

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

It's a myth. It doesn't really rain that much here. Unless what you mean by rain is "there are clouds in the sky". Seattle *IS* eternally 'partially cloudy'. But that doesn't stop anyone from doing anything outdoors. I'd say that it was less affordable than you'd make it out to be, and while I'm sure we all know someone who fits into one of the stereotypes in that ad campaign (The four way stop guy is me. Sorry!) There are a lot of things to do in this city, both indoors and out, and you don't have to be a socks with birkenstocks guy to like living here.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

That's not what I said. I said "partially cloudy" as in what the weather report calls this:

Yep... totally depressing.
I'd actually 2nd virtually all of Starvos' points. The winters are incredibly drab and drizzly (worse than any of the other four cities I've lived in and I grew up in Buffalo), the people are, to generalize, anti-social and unattractive and it's fundamentally a second tier city. The summers ARE amazing (like, seriously amazing--your pic highlights this) and the cost of living is quite good for the city's size, but anyone that complains about how expensive things are (and there are a lot of them) simply hasn't lived in any other major city (NY/LA/SF)--housing is basically free here in comparison to SF. I'd personally put Seattle around a 5 out of 10 as well and think of it as a budget version of San Francisco.

 

[Tokyo Slim]

Originally Posted by superego

The winters are incredibly drab and drizzly
Wuss. Dec

Jan

Feb

MAR

 

[superego]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

Wuss.

Dec

Dude, I live here, and those pics aren't an accurate representation. You can't deny that for ~5 months out of the year, it's overcast and drizzly as ****.

 

[Tokyo Slim]

Originally Posted by superego

Dude, I live here, and those pics aren't an accurate representation. You can't deny that for ~5 months out of the year, it's overcast and drizzly as ****.

Yes, I believe I just did. Some years are worse than others, but no, it's usually NOT five months out of the year.

 

[jpeirpont]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

Yes, I believe I just did. Some years are worse than others, but no, it's usually NOT five months out of the year.

I know you keep mentioning cities in which have rain. I'm assuming you are going by accumulation an not by how many rainy day per year the city may have. Seattle might come across are rainy because it rains more day through out the year, while other places get down pours.

 

[Tokyo Slim]

Originally Posted by jpeirpont

I know you keep mentioning cities in which have rain. I'm assuming you are going by accumulation an not by how many rainy day per year the city may have.
30 year average - rainfall of .25 inches or greater days per year: 1: Olympia, WA (63.5 days per year) 2: Mobile, AL (59.3) 3: Chatanooga, TN (58.3) 4: West Palm Beach, FL (58.1) 5: Eugene, OR (57.7) 6: Huntsville, AL (57.4) 7: Miami, FL (57.0) 8: Knoxville, TN (56.6) 9: Pensacola, FL (56.4) 10: Birmingham, AL (56.4) according to this study, Seattle is the 41st overall rainiest city. with only 47.7 rainy days per year, and only 36.9 average inches of rainfall per year - it is out-rained by places like New Orleans, which averages 55.5 rainy days per year and 63.9 inches of average annual rainfall. What people are talking about is "clouds". We have a lot of clouds. 226 average days of cloud cover per year, which is the highest amount in a city in the U.S. with a population over one million people. That being said, this is cloudy:

and so is this:

and this:

^ this is the one that gets the pussies all depressed. But this is not likely to produce rain, and at some point in the day this will clear off. Around November, there will likely be three or four straight weeks of it with maybe two clear days. At any other time, it's pretty rare to see it like this for more than three or four days in a row. Yeah, this is totally worse than Buffalo. They only have 206 "cloudy" days a year. They also get crapped on with a ton of snow, have over 40 inches of rain, and over 50 rainy days a year.

 

[Tokyo Slim]

Cloudy days in Seattle since Sept. of 2008 -177. And that INCLUDES psycho winter last year, where it snowed for ten days.

 

[rdawson808]

30 year average - rainfall of .25 inches or greater days per year:

1: Olympia, WA (63.5 days per year)
QUOTE]

Props to Oly, my hometown!

I wonder if a big difference in perception doesn't hang on whether or not you grew up with this weather. I grew up with it and it just didn't bother me. But many people I know who moved to Seattle or the PNW in college or later (even from eastern Washington) just did not like the long stretches of drab days.

b

 

[Tokyo Slim]

Originally Posted by rdawson808

I wonder if a big difference in perception doesn't hang on whether or not you grew up with this weather. I grew up with it and it just didn't bother me. But many people I know who moved to Seattle or the PNW in college or later (even from eastern Washington) just did not like the long stretches of drab days.

b


I grew up in Eastern WA and the desert SW.

 

[gamelan]

5, LA. i'm so tired of this city. having to drive everywhere. no central downtown. and in the summertime, it's just ugly unless you live near the coast i suppose. i'll get over it.

-Jeff

 

[Rolf]

Since I don't live in a city i'll just rate the two nearest cities.

Sandnes - Small, fugly, nothing to do whatsoever 1/10
Stavanger - Small, not so ugly, atleast have some menstores 3/10.

For both and Norway in general - EXPENSIVE. Example: 170USD for a PRL oxford shirt.
Someone please come to Norway and take me back with you to the US.

 

[jpeirpont]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

30 year average - rainfall of .25 inches or greater days per year:

1: Olympia, WA (63.5 days per year)
2: Mobile, AL (59.3)
3: Chatanooga, TN (58.3)
4: West Palm Beach, FL (58.1)
5: Eugene, OR (57.7)
6: Huntsville, AL (57.4)
7: Miami, FL (57.0)
8: Knoxville, TN (56.6)
9: Pensacola, FL (56.4)
10: Birmingham, AL (56.4)

according to this study, Seattle is the 41st overall rainiest city. with only 47.7 rainy days per year, and only 36.9 average inches of rainfall per year - it is out-rained by places like New Orleans, which averages 55.5 rainy days per year and 63.9 inches of average annual rainfall.

What people are talking about is "clouds". We have a lot of clouds. 226 average days of cloud cover per year, which is the highest amount in a city in the U.S. with a population over one million people.

That being said, this is cloudy:

and so is this:

and this:

^ this is the one that gets the pussies all depressed. But this is not likely to produce rain, and at some point in the day this will clear off. Around November, there will likely be three or four straight weeks of it with maybe two clear days. At any other time, it's pretty rare to see it like this for more than three or four days in a row.

Yeah, this is totally worse than Buffalo. They only have 206 "cloudy" days a year. They also get crapped on with a ton of snow, have over 40 inches of rain, and over 50 rainy days a year.

Then I don't know what they are complaining about. Seattle is popular with people so it can't be all that bad anyway, people need something to complain about.

 

[makushin]

Buffalo, NY. 3.

I tried to like this place, I really did. I suspect I would rate most east coast cities a 5 or below though. Too crowded and flat for my tastes. Looking forward to moving back out west someday.

Pros
most affordable housing in the country.
$5 overnight parking downtown
some nice architecture



Cons
flat
absurd property taxes
local politics that have left this city in squalor
midwest accent (really cannot stand this accent on women)
ugly and poor. never seen so many dollar stores in my life
lack of convenient outdoor activities. this is a big one for me.

Most people say weather, but I'm from a place with worse weather and it doesn't suck near as bad. Ultimately I just don't feel Buffalo has much to offer.

 

[Astan]

Los Angeles - 8

Pros
Very diverse feel, Westside is beachy, chill, but also has major business facets. Eastside has the hippster feel, fun, surprising finds for clothes food ect.
Warm all year, almost no rain nor snow. Downtown is straight big city business, sorta ghetto though.
Good food, good shopping, good teams (no football though....)
Great Universities
Good network of people
Positive overall feel
Excellent Mexican food
Developing downtown area


Cons
TRAFFIC (holy ****) takes ******* forever to get anywhere almost regardless of time. I was once in gridlock traffic at 2am (not for an accident, just regular traffic!)
Some spotted ghetto areas
WAY too big, everything is spread out
No feasible mass transit no matter how many buses you put on the road
To do anything it costs gobs of money, nothing is free here, nothing.
It can get oppressively hot.
Major drought period on right now.

 

[oneblood]

Atlanta. 2. I can't muster the anger or effort to explain why except to say that it is the worst designed city I have ever seen.