The Endless Quest For Awesome
I’ve been saying for years that LA is my favorite city ever. It’s true, of all the places I’ve lived it’s the first place that ever felt like home and I still feel that rush every time I step off a plane when I return to the city. Of course no city is perfect and even with every thing I love about LA it still has it’s faults, and top of that is that it’s been getting super hot in the summer and I just don’t work well with that. The trouble is there’s no place that’s perfect 100% of the year, so if you want perfect all year around you need to chase the awesome where ever it might be at that point in time. Also, there’s no universal “this is good” agreement on weather or cities so figuring out what is best takes a bit more than a google search. Here’s a few things I like, and a few things I don’t like, if you know a location that is heavy on the like and not so much on the dislike during a certain part of the year, let me know. This is by no means limited to the US.
LIKE:
- Bikable - lots of flat well paved roads
- Moderate weather - something between 60-80 is ideal
- Food - need lots of options especially vegan ones
- Theaters - good theaters are manditory
- Culture - the more people from different places the better.
- English speaking - I speak English and while I dabble in some others, if I’m thinking of spending a lot of time somewhere I need to be able to get around from day one. I do want to learn Spanish and Japanese, but don’t know them yet.
- Public transport - the more trains the better.
- Overcast is nice.
DON’T LIKE
- Rain.
- Extremely hot weather
- Snow and ice
- Humidity
- One industry cities - you know what I mean, places where the vast majority of people in a city are involved with one specific industry.
I’m sure there’s a lot more that I like and that I don’t, but that’s off the top of my head. Thoughts?
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Lizbt
Melbourne, Australia.
We have you sorted for everything except the rain (which isn’t torrential, and is usually over fairly quickly).
Jul 28th, 2008
Greg Hughes
Portland, Oregon. Really, it meets all your list items except for the rain part - But honestly, we lie about the rain to keep the Californians out (that’s a secret by the way). You seem like a decent Californian, though, so we’re letting you in on it. In fact, had I not known better I’d have pegged you for a Portlander.
Jul 28th, 2008
katie schwartz
I know SF isn’t flat, but there are beautiful bike paths along the ocean that are pretty flat. Certain areas of the city are very bikeable. In terms of weather and vegan eating, you can’t beat it. I’m a veggie, temporarily vegan. I get why you want a veg friendly city.
Jul 28th, 2008
Brad Fults
As someone who grew up in LA and has been all over the west coast, I think your best bets are San Diego or Santa Barbara.
SD has all of your likes (public transit is passable, but not incredible) and none of your dislikes. The rub is obviously the price, but you can hunt intelligently and find reasonable places around the city.
SB is even more expensive and smaller, but has many of the same niceties, including lots of neat outdoor culture.
One commenter above might be delusional, as the rain in Portland is abysmal. I spent a lot of time there when I was younger and absolutely hated it precisely because I detest the rain.
Seattle is a neat city and could work, but has a fair amount of rain and gets cold in the winter. Vancouver (British Columbia) is a fantastic city for most of the things you want, but only during the summer. It’s a frozen bastard during the winter.
Anyway, hope you find your city.
Jul 28th, 2008
Kath
After today, the word *faults* has a renewed meaning. Hope you fared ok.
Jul 29th, 2008
bill
I like that you didn’t put “phony people”. Usually, its the transplants that say that and they don’t bother to want to hang around with the other milliions of angeleno’s that aren’t even in the industry or want to be in the industry.
Jul 31st, 2008
tgfkae
Berlin? I’m pretty sure it matches all your listed faves, except for the no-rain-part, maybe… or well, maybe not…
Aug 3rd, 2008
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