Slog Comments
Bloomberg/Businessweek Rates Seattle the Second-Best City in the States
1
You're high on drugs. Manhattan is the center of the last century, not this one. Very little of interest happens in Manhattan now. The future of New York isn't even in Manhattan, let alone the world. If you want "urban soul" you have to go to Queens. Flushing, for instance. Manhattan's a great place for $400-a-plate dinners, though.
5
Sell your home in Wichita, cash in your 401k and sink it all into an apodment sized condo in Lower Queen Anne that evokes the "spirit of the Fair".
It's good for business.
Ours.
It's good for business.
Ours.
6
@3, I lived around Manhattan and three of the other boroughs. There is more of a buzz in Manhattan, but Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are integral to NYC. Manhattan isn't NYC any more than Capitol Hill is Seattle.
7
I would be more comfortable in saying Manhattan is the most important city than the best. I have friends living in Manhattan and it doesn't seem to me that they enjoy it. They all are professionals but they barely make enough to enjoy the city they live in. I visit for a holiday flushed with Seattle disposable income and they always groan when I want to go hit the city.
10
The problem with NYC is you cannot fucking get out of it. If I want to go to the mountains I can drive out to Wallace Falls or whatever in under 45 minutes. Good luck even getting halfway out of Konkrete Jungle in that same amount of time, and then maybe you're only in New Jersey.
11
As to san francisco, the drawback is that you have the live in sanfrancisco with everybody fucking else who lives in san francisco.
13
Manhattan is sooo over! Totally overrated! Everyone knows if you go to NYC, avoid being in Manhattan. San Francisco and Seattle are the best! Where you actually get to enjoy life and breathe!
14
I'll happily take any of the cities mentioned here (or most any other major US city, frankly) over the desolate rural nowhere that is my childhood home. A trip to see the family reminded me of what I grew up with, and further strengthened my love of the city.
16
1. In NYC you can get to 300 foot high cliff walk in the palisades by putting your bike on the A line and then cycling over the GWB bridge locking the bike and doing a ten mile hike.
2. You can ride the A line to Rockaways and be on a desolate mile or two of beach on the abandoned army base. Out of sight of anyone.
3. You can get on a train -- they're really great things, too bad seattle doesn't have many -- and get to about 25 world class stunning beaches and beach towns in 1.5 to 3 hours. Ever hear of the hamptons? beautiful desolate beaches. Montauk? very natural. You can then bike for say 40 miles from Westhampton to Montauk. Seattle has nothing like this. IT's called swimming in warm water, it yields folks in things called bathign suits at a beach including bikinies and other sexy things. People on the beach in Washington state are no where near as sexy.
4. You have access to rural landscapes like the bershires and bear mountain park and the catskills. yes, not as great as our mountains here, but it's not nothing either.
5. People here go to Whistler in a 4 hour drive. In NYC you are four hours from DC and have day access there on a long day trip, also day access to philly and new haven and there are tons of natural places all over the east coast, PNWers are just generally not in the know about them.
2. You can ride the A line to Rockaways and be on a desolate mile or two of beach on the abandoned army base. Out of sight of anyone.
3. You can get on a train -- they're really great things, too bad seattle doesn't have many -- and get to about 25 world class stunning beaches and beach towns in 1.5 to 3 hours. Ever hear of the hamptons? beautiful desolate beaches. Montauk? very natural. You can then bike for say 40 miles from Westhampton to Montauk. Seattle has nothing like this. IT's called swimming in warm water, it yields folks in things called bathign suits at a beach including bikinies and other sexy things. People on the beach in Washington state are no where near as sexy.
4. You have access to rural landscapes like the bershires and bear mountain park and the catskills. yes, not as great as our mountains here, but it's not nothing either.
5. People here go to Whistler in a 4 hour drive. In NYC you are four hours from DC and have day access there on a long day trip, also day access to philly and new haven and there are tons of natural places all over the east coast, PNWers are just generally not in the know about them.
18
Most truly civilized people recognize that Portland, Maine is as big as a city needs to be. Portland, Maine for the win.
21
Dear Comments Thread,
The borough of Manhattan is, more than any other American city, the sinister heart of capitalism. Nice place to be a money vampire or one who feeds off the implacable beast (prestige artists, supermodels, stage actors, media moguls), but when's the last time anything of cultural significance came out of NYC? I would argue the early '80s, when the city was on the ropes--a socioeconomically diverse place where artists could afford to live and hip-hop was born. It's still a giddy place, but more gloss and shine than substance.
Love,
A former Manhattanite
The borough of Manhattan is, more than any other American city, the sinister heart of capitalism. Nice place to be a money vampire or one who feeds off the implacable beast (prestige artists, supermodels, stage actors, media moguls), but when's the last time anything of cultural significance came out of NYC? I would argue the early '80s, when the city was on the ropes--a socioeconomically diverse place where artists could afford to live and hip-hop was born. It's still a giddy place, but more gloss and shine than substance.
Love,
A former Manhattanite
23
I do not understand the yuppie collective hard-on for San Francisco. Mediocre cultural institutions, overrated, overpriced restaurants, and possibly the most underserved, aggressive homeless population of any city in the US outside of the deep south (probably something to do with the fact that California on the whole is an underfunded, mis-prioritized public health nightmare).
25
Read @21's comment. Manhattan is a playground for the rich. Nothing of cultural consequence happens there anymore - and no, Broadway is not of cultural consequence.
Much better restaurants in NYC than SF, though. So there's that.
Much better restaurants in NYC than SF, though. So there's that.
26
@23,
Have you been to San Francisco sometime in the past 20 years? Because what you described sounds more like the situation in the '80s and early '90s, certainly not what it's like now. SF spends many millions of dollars dealing with the homeless every year and has passed a number of laws to clean up the streets. Not only are there very few aggressive panhandlers left, if you avoid the Tenderloin, you hardly have to so much as lay your eyes on an obviously homeless person.
Have you been to San Francisco sometime in the past 20 years? Because what you described sounds more like the situation in the '80s and early '90s, certainly not what it's like now. SF spends many millions of dollars dealing with the homeless every year and has passed a number of laws to clean up the streets. Not only are there very few aggressive panhandlers left, if you avoid the Tenderloin, you hardly have to so much as lay your eyes on an obviously homeless person.
27
Manhattan is a swell city and all, but the human world I live in is more oriented towards San Francisco.
29
@23: No one said San Francisco was perfect.
Personally, I'm less interested in "cultural institutions" than I am in actual culture - music, styles, ideas, social life, etc.. New York definitely makes its contributions in that regard, but San Francisco is way further out on the edge - it's much less bridled by history and convention, and it's more possibility-friendly.
Personally, I'm less interested in "cultural institutions" than I am in actual culture - music, styles, ideas, social life, etc.. New York definitely makes its contributions in that regard, but San Francisco is way further out on the edge - it's much less bridled by history and convention, and it's more possibility-friendly.
30
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-sol… San Francisco- a husk of what once was, colonized by overpaid tech execs who have no time to cook (hence the 1000s of restaurants) cafes have been taken over as workstations for google freelancers, bookstores are non-existant , rent and condo conversion has forced out the artists and street radicals, it's what Seattle will look like in 10 years.
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