Ask HN: Where do you live? What's good or bad about it?
With each Who's Hiring, we see opportunities from many different cities. But having not lived in some of the cities, it's really difficult to know if we would be happy relocating.
What prompted me to post this "survey" is an interesting opportunity onsite in NYC. But from an outsider's perspective, especially browsing apartments online, it doesn't seem too attractive. I'm sure there's a lot to like, but it would be nice to hear the good and bad from people who live there.
So, please give your city and its pros and cons.
TIA!
323 comments
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Con: The unwalkable parts are extremely unwalkable
The sketchiness is mostly contained to tenderloin and soma south west of 5th st so fairly easy to avoid
Main thing I learned too late is to just build your ability to climb hills (on a bike, or even when walking I suppose) ... that opens up a lot of the city
Twin Peaks and the top of Potrero might out of range even so, but the rest of the city is open
Cons: expensive, city bureaucracy, rampant nimbyism
I love it. Now I got a family and may move to get some more space / be closer to family. But not an easy decision even after 10 yrs here.
Pros: most beautiful city I've ever seen, the water and mountains are unbeatable, ski resorts nearby, nice beaches, good asian food, friendly strangers
Cons: some really surprisingly unsafe and uncomfortable parts of the city, everything's expensive, lots of rain, biking feels really unsafe in most parts (some good bike lanes)
Exactly, I expect Canada to be more like Australia, NZ, West/Northern Europe, not the US or developing world. And for the most part it is
For cons — would consider it safer than any other “city” in North America once you exclude Hastings/surroundings. Safety issues are more concentrated in one zone compared to Toronto, NYC, SF, Seattle and etc.
I’ll add another con — it gets very routine after a few years. You don’t feel like you’re living a city life compared to… basically any other city. It’s nowhere close to Toronto, NYC, London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Tokyo, Hong Kong and etc.
Are there warmer places like Spain and Portugal in USA/CA?
Like, it'll get cold and there will occasionally be real snow, but is mild compared to other Western Canadian cites.
There is a lot of Dark and Bleak, though. Also like Seattle, once summer is over it turns gray and stays that way until April.
The people living there seem super friendly though. I think I would prefer Vancouver over Toronto.
Though I would like us to move the pendulum back towards being more… open about the faults of different ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures besides the Western one — without being hateful about it.
In the case of the American “white” culture the cons are obviously: boring, gentrifying, lack of culture, lack of risk taking or openness to (real) new experience, lame, orthodox, etc. It’s a real aspect of locales that’s important to take into consideration. Just the same as it is for any other culture: if you’re in a place dominated by it, and you’re not part of the group, you will have a hard time acclimating and fitting in. If you’re not American “white” then you might find Seattle boring or unwelcoming.
On a more personal note, I only believe racism to be "racist" when it's coming from a place of hate. Commenting on other ethnicities/cultures/etc. is standard everywhere outside of the primarily English speaking countries. For example, latinos are flaky, jewish people are fussy, eastern europeans are superstitious, african americans are loud, the french are self-important, the japanese are self-effacing, the british have no taste, and american white people are boring.
Whether this comment is met with intolerance is a non-issue for me. Say what you believe, so long as you're civil, and then accept other people will not agree with you.
The rain isn't what gets me; it's the monotonous gray skies even when it's not raining.
Pros: LCOL, great scenery, good food.
Cons: July.
Pros: Summers on the lake, on the river, in endless parks, street festivals, rooftops, and courtyards make you wonder why you would ever want to live somewhere else.
Cons: Winters inevitably remind you of the answer to the above question.
> "conservative media's portrayal of Chicago as a crime-ridden city"
Maybe check police crime reports [1] of your city before going after the conservative media. There's gun related violence every week in Chicago and often there are multiple homicides on a single weekend. I understand it's a big city, but it's still a big problem. Lincoln Park is indeed nice and safe and parts of the loop are safe cause they are very touristy with heavy police presence. But there are many neighborhoods that are not that lucky. Also, the public school system in the city has major problems. In one year when I lived there there were 21 kids from the public school system around the city who got murdered in gang related shootings.
[1] https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_C...
* I just picked the city wide report for the last week. 7 murders. last year same period 14 murders. 2023 numbers seem better than 2022 but still. For comparison, my city of about 110K people has 1-2 murders on average per year.
I think this is probably the most important point. Much of the crime is concentrated in the city's far west and far south sides, where I generally don't go. These stats are old, but the map is roughly correct and shows the disparity I'm talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago#/media/File:2...
The effect is that most of the city is safe, but people on the far south side are impacted by crime. Not to defend the situation—I of course wish that all of Chicago was safe and want to see our city make progress on that. Just trying to provide nuance.
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... in the summer. After about the end of September, until about the middle of April, you can keep it. I just can't do those winters. I spent a big chunk of winter in, aaah, 2014, 2015 (one or the other) in Naperville just west of Chicago and it was brutal.[1] :-(
[1]: But still not as bad as the Twin Cities, Minnesota area. Edina, MN is not a place you want to be at in the winter, IMO.
I disagree though. MN is colder but less windy so you get those crisp calm, blue sky winter days in Jan-Feb that make the winter more survivable. But you gotta be ok with the cold.
That all said, I’m now in central Indiana and prefer the milder climate (than both those places!).
public transit isn't bad but also isn't great and can be rough at times. also necessitates walking in said bad weather.
> Can't you hunker down and get everything delivered to reduce outdoor time?
COVIDs over bro. what's the point of living in a city if you're hunkered? move to a far flung burb and become a hermit.
Hard to get a variety of delivery options there or great internet! :)
If it were colder there would be more sun and snow instead of grey and slush.
Cons: it's the great flatness - you have to drive for hours to see hills. Tech industry is ok but very b2b and fintech focused and not a lot of consumer or entertainment stuff. Also as a very liberal city it's a favorite target of culture warrior types.
Tie: winter. Yeah, it gets cold and snowy. But also, it's "just weather". It's the same every year and people deal with it pretty easily.
I've only visited Chicago once. It was nice, but I'd never thought architecture would be a selling point. Do you have examples of where I should look, the next time I'm there?
Pros: Cheap relative to other US cities (especially California). Close to lots of beautiful nature (red rock, charleston, valley of fire, mojave, zion, death valley, joshua tree, eastern sierra). Airport has cheap direct flights to lots of places for the size of the city. Friends/family come to visit a lot. Good food if you can find it hidden away in the strip malls.
Cons: Arguably not a city, just the absolute worst suburban sprawl you can imagine. Cookie cutter homes, huge stroads everywhere. Need a car to go anywhere, walking or biking sucks. The summer, obviously. The population is very transient (at least in my experience, but most of my friends are climbers/other outdoors people which might bias things)
Pros: Cheap compared to other cities. No state income tax. Good airport and air connections. Lots of deals for locals if you bother to figure out the rules (so can be cheap to eat out). Plenty of good food.
Cons: Blazing hot or freezing cold desert climate. Terrible public transportation, too hot or cold (for me) to bicycle, too spread out (and hot/cold) to walk anywhere. Lots of weirdos, drunks, pathological gamblers, scammers. Maybe some of the worst and most dangerous driving I've ever witnessed outside of SE Asia.
I found this out recently and couldn’t believe it was true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon,_Michigan
Arguably Vegas is the true capital
Pros: easy to get around town, great airport, lots to do, and very very affordable.
Cons: Not pedestrian friendly. Sprawl.
I’ll just add mine here:
Pros: decent chef-driven dining scene, active downtown due to sports and conferences, affordable, small enough to not feel like a major metro but big enough to have stuff to see/do, not a far drive to country areas to get out of town. As someone who grew up in a small town but then have lived in major metros since, I’m most comfortable in Indy.
Cons: distance to mountains (7 hr to Smokies) or oceans (13 hr to outer banks), relatively tame and limited local hiking options, potholes in spring, limited tech options (Eli Lilly, Salesforce, Rolls Royce, Cummins, Roche, Beckman, Corteva, Hospitals, … maybe a few others I'm forgetting).
Aside Salesforce, these are just big companies. The startup scene here is pretty good (I run one), and there are many other tech companies (Genesys, 1st Internet Bank, Jobvite - techpoint.org is the tech industry trade group here) that have a significant presence here. It's not SV, but if you are a developer, you can do alright here.
Pros: Limitless number of things to do, people to meet, communities to be a part of. And Broadway (for me). I also enjoy not needing a car.
Cons: Yes it's expensive. Apartments are a choice between: good location, good size, good price (choose two). More shit seems to be going down in the subway (sometimes the literal kind).
Also, there's a kind of art to apartment hunting in NYC. Once you master it, finding an apartment isn't that bad. I've always gotten a pretty good deal and always had a choice between a few apartments. Staying away from trendier neighborhoods is my first rule (way overpriced.. and this is what most ppl see first before digging deeper). I guess the second rule is know thyself - knowing what annoyances you can tolerate will help you find the types of housing that'll conceivably work for you.
In general, "the market" is extremely efficient: all "bona fide good" (i.e. you, your mother, your 5 closest friends, your manager, your college roommate would unanimously agree that it's "good") living situations are really expensive.
To find situations that are affordable, you have to trade off on a couple of those bona fides (dishwasher, W/D access, square footage, daytime/nighttime noise, distance from trendy neighborhoods... ambient incidence rate of violent crime).
All that being said, if I were new to the city and under 30, I wouldn't discount bunking up with randos in LES/East Village/Nolita (trendier neighborhoods) for the first year. You're not going to know which neighborhood is your neighborhood until you've seen what's around, and you might as well enjoy the first year. Will you be financially responsible? Eventually. For now, have a good time.
Reminds me of the chapter on Optimal Stopping in the book Algorithms To Live By.
Last time I looked I had a check ready to sign and fill with the proper info.
Optimal Stopping alone makes Algorithms to Live By worth the read
Please elaborate beyond avoiding trendier neighborhoods.
> Staying away from trendier neighborhoods is my first rule (way overpriced.. and this is what most ppl see first before digging deeper)
Where have you looked?
Thing is as much as I love good urban design, there's more to life than that. Eg, Amsterdam has terrible weather and tbh I find Dutch culture and lifestyle monotonic and boring. Lisbon is diverse and great but salaries too low. Paris is diverse and amazing but too cold and salaries too low. Cabo Verde you need a good remote job to live. Miami has mostly terrible urban planning but is diverse, fun, gives access to good USD high paying jobs and has nuggets of gold which if you chose your neighborhoods, activities and lifestyle wisely can be much, much more livable than it looks. So I ended up in Miami.
I live car-free in Little Havana, walking distance to both Brickell and Ocho. Plenty of restaurants, supermarkets, pharmacies and every imaginable service within walking distance. I ride my electric bike to South Beach, Little Haiti etc in ~20 minutes. (Wynwood and Overtown in like five ten lol) (that's faster than driving, esp in case of traffic or even just if you include parking) I can take the TriRail and Brightline to Ft Lauderdale and beyond. I can even ride the Amtrak all the way up the East Coast. Not living in Kendall or Hialeah, and not having to drive everywhere, I'm simply not as affected by the bad aspects of Miami's terrible urban planning as most people fuming in traffic on I-95 on the daily are.
Don't get me wrong, Miami gets a solid F in so many ways when it comes to urbanism, so I don't want to plug it too hard. But yeah def not just doable but outright enjoyable if you make the right choices.
I agree with most of your sentiment, Miami (really all of Florida) has awful urban design up there with Texas and other "Modern" metropolis in the US and i95 is a bane on this earth. However if you are Latin there really isn't another place with as much variety and cultural presence like South Florida. I have met Colombians, Argentinians, Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguan all with prominent communities doted across the city and that isn't even including all the Caribbean ones like Jamaica, Puerto Rico, DR, Haiti, and the Bahamas.
I love the beaches and had a more pleasant time in the Hollywood and Hallandale areas that in LA / SF throughout the year. The food scene is amazing and there are plenty of places for entertainment like concerts, sports, theater, and even drag brunches. And look I get that it's overrated but Disney is really impressive but for adults without kids i highly recommend Universal Studios which IMO blew Disney out of the water with both Harry Potter and a more enjoyable selection of rides in general.
My biggest complaints are that a lot of people I meet are "Short-term" transplants and very few people consider the area an option for residency which is a shame when trying to make friends especially now since I am pretty much committed. I also very much dislike how flat and uninteresting the landscapes are especially when driving up to Orlando where the most interesting landmark is a bridge or cows on the side; I miss seeing mountains or rolling hills at the very least. Also despite having a very lively culture scene in general the museums leave a lot to be desired; there are a few hidden gems like the Dali Museum in Tampa (Largest collection of his works outside of Europe) and the Vizcaya (Great Gatsby-like massive mansion built by one of the richest men in the US during the 20s). Also local / state politics could put a lot of people off, especially considering the strong presence of the MAGA crowd.
Pros: it's the business and tech city in South America, lots and lots of immigrants and their delicious restaurants, basically all shows and band tours in South America pass through here. Good internet and infrastructure. Good doctors and healthcare. Cheapest place to travel abroad from Brazil.
Cons: it is not very safe[1]; not much nature like Rio.
[1] safe is a relative standard, I never suffered any kind of theft or robbery living here for 10+ years.
pros: INCREDIBLE food and beer scene, lots of events, surprisingly great museums, really great zoo, symphony is top notch, friendly people, surprisingly cheap, very high cultural and political diversity, good parks system, did I mention the food?
Cons: swampy, brutal summers, public transit (it exists but won't get you anywhere you want to go), suburban sprawl for miles and miles, parks aren't picturesque, Houston is to oil and gas what the bay is to tech
Add in the current politics in Texas and yeah, I'm glad I'm not in Houston these days.
Pros: mountain biking.
Cons: Drains all your money, then squanders it through corruption, laziness, incompetence.
Pros:
• Best city for running in the US
• Relatively cheap still - I pay $1200/month for a 1-bedroom
• Easy to get around without a car if you bike
Cons:
• Tons of restaurants and local businesses shutting down
• Increase in property crime as a result of drugs
• Average summer is going from a few days of 90+ to a week of days pushing 100 degrees with hardly any overnight cooling
A pity about the summers though.
Pros: Weather, activities. People are chill and the Mexican food is dank.
Cons: Spensie and the wages aren't great; prefer to work remote for that Bay Area $
Pros: cheap cost of living for a tech city, warm most of the year, BBQ and live music
Cons: it's hellishly hot for 2-3 months, it's expensive compared to other (non-tech) cities, politically liberal folks will find state politics oppressive
I wrote a much more in-depth analysis of the best city for techies in 2024. TLDR, I think Seattle is probably the best place overall. The Bay is still king if you want to maximize for career growth, though: https://overthinkingmoney.com/2023/11/21/best-city-for-techi...
Pros: Mostly quiet, good food, cheap, I have a backyard, I know my neighbors. Manhattan is ~25-30 minutes by subway, my friends are ~10 minutes by bike, the good bar/nightclub area is ~15-25 minutes by foot.
Cons: I'm dependent on one okay subway line and one pretty bad one, and I'm a 10-12 minute walk from either in opposite directions. My landlord doesn't like to fix things. People like to ignore driving laws in my neighborhood and paper plates are common (by far the most common crimes, by several orders of magnitude).
I've lived in NYC my whole life, and I'm happy to share any experiences you might find helpful. My email's in my profile!
Edit: My subway lines are okay/bad in terms of reliability, not crime or cleanliness. They're average on the latter.
Brooklyn can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Avoiding internationally/media famous neighborhoods helps.
Pros: mild winters, reasonably pleasant weather year round (although the summers here are a bit hot for some folks' tastes). Lots of good college sports action, reasonably good night-life. Educated people, cool coffee shops and cafes, decent food scene locally. Lots of tech jobs in the greater Triangle area. Plenty of outdoor green spaces, mountain bike trails, running trails, places to fish.
Cons: "good night life" is relative to where I grew up which is completely in the sticks. Chapel Hill has a lot compared to that scene, but can't compare to the really major cities like Chicago, San Fran etc. The same could be said in terms of food, and many other factors. OTOH, the cost of living tends to be less here, so it's a tradeoff to weigh. There are plenty of tech jobs, but locally there is nowhere near the same access to venture capital funding, which can be problematic if you're wanting to go the startup route. In regards to public transit, at least in Chapel Hill proper the buses are free, which is kinda nice. But unfortunately when you look at the Triangle region as a whole, the public transit scene here pretty much sucks. The live music scene here is OK, but we don't have a truly metal oriented club (that I know of) since the old Volume 11 / The Maywood folded. Walnut Creek is a nice outdoor amphitheater venue and gets some nice shows, but still, a lot of major tours bypass our area in favor of Charlotte or whatever.
On balance though, I'm pretty happy in Chapel Hill. I think this a really nice balance of many factors, and I don't feel any particular urge to leave. Although I'm not saying I never would under the right circumstances.
Pros: Amazing food, music, "culture" in general. In general, if you enjoy some cultural niche, it is probably most at bloom in the U.S. inside the doors of some random address within the NYC boroughs. Compared to many cities, it's relatively easy to make new friends. In most neighborhoods, you can be born, go to school, play, eat every meal, go grocery shopping, get married, get divorced, spin out, find yourself, etc. in a walkable or at worst bikable distance.
Cons: wickedly expensive. You can trade-off some things to make it more affordable, but you have to get creative. It helps to know a local. If you want consistent access to real nature, you realistically need a car. Owning a car in NYC (usually) sucks.
I sum it up as a three-legged stool. It's a great place to have few-to-no responsibilities, be youthful (at heart, at least), and very gainfully employed. If you're short one of those three things, it becomes a shaky proposition. I've wanted to leave at one point or another for at least half the time I've been here, I'll probably still be here in 10 years.
Similarly, LIRR/MNRR run to quite a few nice hiking or otherwise outdoorsy areas. They're obviously not as flexible as a car, but I've had consistently good experiences taking MNRR to e.g. the Bear Mountain area for day hikes.
What do you mean?
Basically, trade-offs.
On knowing a local, locals will know which neighborhoods align with your lifestyle. They'll also be able to share helpful details about which brokers to work with / avoid, and how to time the markets.
Basically, any apartment you see on zillow/streeteasy (they're the same company) that's been listed for more than 1 week in a desirable neighborhood is either not "bona fide good" or incredibly overpriced, which could (incorrectly) lead you to believe that no good rental options exist in NYC.
The reality is that all the bona fide goods are snapped up within 48 hours. The best ones are practically snapped up before they're even listed. Unless you've lived in NYC for a while and tried to play the housing game, this reality isn't super discoverable.
How is that possible?
If a prospective tenant is seriously interested, you can have all the paperwork submitted before the apartment appears on Zillow. We got our last apartment this way. I think the apartment was vacant for less than 7 days.
It tilts the market in favor of people who are willing + able to pay a broker fee. Personally, I'd rather there be no brokers (it'd make the market more fair) but the game is what it is.
Pro: way cheaper taxes than Illinois and Chicago
It's a red state, we have constitutional carry, so crime is far lower than Chicago
Con: it's a Red State, with all the hazards for women that entails.
Chicago Winters
Pros: No need to have a car (pretty great transit system), I can't leave the house without running into someone I know as at least a friend, great coffee, super easy access to international travel and nature. People who are at the peak of competitive athletics, particularly outdoor athletics, also tend to gravitate here, and that's a unique circle to be adjacent to.
Cons: Outrageously, comically expensive, for pretty much everything, especially a place to live, and there's fuck all for jobs atm. I'd also argue that the city lacks any kind of particular cultural expression except bland richness and being filled with fit attractive people. We have concentrations of some ethnic groups that bring some interesting visual architectural flavor in specific areas, but the city stands in for arbitrary big American cities in plenty of movies. Maybe that's it, film people is our thing.
I have no plans to leave; though I'm sure I could find some footing elsewhere, it would take a rather unique opportunity to throw away my sense of community where I live. I still enjoy traveling internationally to see what other places are like.
Everyone has their own conception of miserable though, and for me the rain barely registers since I'm from any other part of Canada; no, sunny and extremely cold winters are not superior
Pros: Best Mexican food in the country, proximity to Mexico, beaches, biotech (if that’s your industry), weather, laid back, great zoo, people are generally active.
Cons: Very expensive CoL relative to income (“sunshine tax”: despite the same if not higher housing costs than other west coast cities, salaries are comparatively lower), not the best tech scene (e.g. tech meet up events hard to come by), tourist season can have bad traffic, people who purchase second/third homes here.
Pro/con depending on who you ask: everything is 15 minutes away from everywhere (unless you’re at the peripherals).
Pros:
Often ranked a top places to live in the US. Very safe for families. Day trip access to Ocean/Snow/Lakes/Mountains. Lots of good food to discover. Relatively cheap CoL. No snow.
Cons:
A car is absolutely mandatory. The purge June-Aug. Everyone is moving here. CoL is rising quickly. The sprawl can make hobby/tech meetups inconvenient to attend.