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I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance
by reverend_gonzo 10y ago
I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs.
For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes on public transportation.
It's gotten to the point, where if there's a band I want to see, but they're in the suburbs, I'll just wait til they're back in the city.
I grew up and went to college two different small beach towns. There wasn't much of anything to do besides drink. If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour.
I have no desire to live outside of a big city, unless it is in the middle of nowhere, but in that case, I will still have a home in a city.
My guess is a lot of other people feel the same way.
- robterrin 10y agoI've heard this pitch for Chicago many times, and it seems reasonable if you are in the one of the industries, Tyler mentions, that are more diffuse. The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? No, that's NYC. Is it healthcare? Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland or Rochester. Energy? Houston. Technology? SF. Entertainment? LA or NYC. Politics? DC. What exactly is Chicago good at? They have Wilco, so that's cool.
- ntdef 10y agoI think you're a bit misinformed. Chicago has two large keystone industries that serve the global economy: (1) Industrial large scale manufacturing (Boeing, John Deere, Caterpillar), (2) Insurance (all of them); not to mention a ton of Food and Agriculture HQs are based there as well.
- acchow 10y agoIsn't Boeing in Washington? Also, not too many people aspire to be in insurance. I don't think you can put it on the same level as finance, arts, software, fashion, film, etc.
- ntdef 10y agoBoeing planes are assembled in Seattle; their HQ is in Chicago. Do people aspire to work in health, energy or finance, or even software aside from the money? If so, what difference does it make?
- scurvy 10y agoThey left Washington a while ago; I think over taxes?
- steffan 10y agoAlso iirc they hired a CEO who lived in Chicago
- cylinder 10y agoNo they did not leave Washington, that's ridiculous. Their executive HQ is in Chicago but that doesn't mean much. Many executive HQ are in Chicago but that's not many jobs.
- scurvy 10y agoSorry, I meant the HQ left Washington. Doesn't it impact taxes if you're registered as a foreign corporation vs local?
- anubisresources 10y agoInsurance is Hartford, CT. Food and ag I can see though
- and0 10y agoSlightly less so nowadays. I left that area and moved to a megacity so I could get into software dev without having to work at an insurance company (or ESPN). But there's a little bit more going on with CT nowadays, and I think the insurance companies are starting to spread out. They had a ton of leverage in the area and got away with a lot (not paying taxes, etc) but the well started to run dry and people started to push back. Before I left, the mere suggestion that we demand more from these huge companies always turned into highly publicized threats to take XX,000 jobs elsewhere. The whole situation is dumb, overall I'd avoid living in CT for a ton of reasons. CT had a lot of industry going for it (Stanley Tools in New Britain, for example, and Hartford was the center of the gun industry 100 years ago) but those of course moved overseas. The insurance industry provided a safety net so it didn't go the way of the rust belt but, late capitalism y'know, so that was just a band-aid that's being slowly ripped off. This is happening everywhere but the systematic denial isn't as ingrained as in CT, it's weird.
- unethical_ban 10y agoUSAA is in San Antonio!
- mcguire 10y agoCommodity trading?
- JimboOmega 10y agoI don't know the city well enough to be sure, but traditionally it's transportation - back in the day as a link between the Mississippi and Great Lakes systems, then as a huge rail hub (cattle from the west would get repackaged and shipped on to the East), and most recently O'Hare (busiest airport in the world).
- kingnothing 10y agoAtlanta is the busiest airport in the world and has been for almost 20 years.
- JimboOmega 10y agoCorrection - sixth busiest. I posted too early (as in, I looked it up but misread it, because I was't fully awake)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- elindbe2 10y agoNYC is more the equity side of finance, Wall St. and all that. Chicago is home to the largest futures exchange in the world, the CME and the largest options exchange, the CBOE.
- scurvy 10y agoWhat about debt?
- michaelcampbell 10y agoUntil recently, bond trading was dominated by NYC (and back in the day, almost one firm; Salomon). It may still be, but I've been out of the industry for a while so am not sure about modernities of it.
- mlrtime 10y agoCBOE and CFE moved to the east coast a few years ago.
- Arizhel 10y ago>What exactly is Chicago good at? Corruption.
- dpark 10y ago> The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? ... This is a weird expectation. Why does a city have to be "the best" at something? Seattle isn't the best place for software but I'd still choose it over SF any day. Chicago has plenty of industry.
- hugs 10y agoThe nice thing about not having one dominant industry is that the entire local economy is more stable and better able to take shocks to the system. (I've lived in NYC and Silicon Valley and both felt like boom/bust kind of places to live. I now live in Chicago.)
- Declanomous 10y agoChicago has finance, it just doesn't have Wall Street. If you want to trade options or commodities Chicago is arguably a better place to be. New York is undoubtedly the better place to be for stock trading. As far as entertainment goes, it's no accident that a huge number of comedians get their start in Chicago. Chicago has tons of anchor industries, the real problem is that they don't translate well to the unicorn strategy of most start-ups.
- ntdef 10y agoTo your point, pretty much everyone who's ever been on SNL made their way there through The Second City.
- kesselvon 10y agoThat's also the main benefit of Chicago. The city isn't incredibly screwed when one industry goes belly up (i.e. Detroit and automotive).
- reverend_gonzo 10y agoChicago is the center for futures and options trading, especially commodities. Proprietary trading is generally based in Chicago, while banks and hedge funds are usually in NYC. There are a massive number of other companies headquartered here, like Boening, CNA, Kraft Foods, Walgreens, State Farm. While NYC might be known for its comedy, it recruits directly from Second City in Chicago, and the numerous small comedy clubs and schools here feed into Second City. It has its own caliber of theatre it puts out as well, regardless of whether it matches NYC on notoriety. Lastly, while having the benefits of a large city, Chicago also does not have the stupidly high rents of NYC or SF. It is a very livable city, even for those on modest incomes. Public transportation is excellent (though not as good as NYC). And if you are doing well enough to have a six-figure salary, you can live very well here as opposed to how you would live even on an cost-of-living adjusted salary in SF and NYC. The primary downside to this city is the weather. In my opinion, the secondary downside is how far it is from outdoor activities, but, then again, you can easily fly elsewhere via O'Hare/Midway.
- cozzyd 10y agoA few more winters like this one and it'll be hard to complain too much about the weather (although, in mid December, when I got back from Antarctica, it was much colder in Chicago than Antarctica).
- mlrtime 10y agoAll those exchanges are moving to the east coast. CBOE and CFE did a number of years ago. CMK is not the data center it used to be although it is still very large.
- shostack 10y agoCounterpoint... I grew up and lived in Chicago for most of my adult life. I moved to the Bay Area in 2013. My main reasons were weather, crime, and jobs. For some people, living with gray skies half the year with not-infrequent temperatures below zero or above 100 takes its toll. Also, the violent crime rate has gone through the roof in recent years, even in generally good neighborhoods. On the jobs front, I'm in marketing and a more technical marketer at that. The job options in Chicago were largely unappealing, but more importantly was the major difference in culture. There are obviously exceptions, but Chicago seems to have a much more "conservative" corporate culture on the average. This means less competitive pay, 2 weeks of PTO, 2 weeks paternity (if that), stricter 8 or 9am start times, less free on-premise food, fewer perks overall, less competitive benefits, etc. Again, you can find exceptions, and large tech companies tend to have offices there as it is a hub (particularly for media companies like Google). But on the balance, due to the extreme concentration out here, it seems many Bay Area companies are forced to up their game and be much more in favor of the employee with regards to comp, perks, culture and benefits if they want to be competitive with the local giants. I get very sad when I think about the cost of housing out here, but TBH, I'm not sure I could go back. Whenever I get off the return flight from a trip home and step out the doors at SFO, all of the color, sunshine etc. makes things look like technicolor compared to the ugly red brick, gray skies and black slush of Chicago. Don't get me wrong--it will always have a place in my heart and I dearly love many things there. But depending on your priorities, in some cases there is no competition if you can afford enough to make it manageable.
- logfromblammo 10y agoChicago is the "second city" in a lot of things. These are the top public companies in the city: Aerospace/Defense: Boeing Agribusiness/Foodservice: ADM, Mondelez, McDonald's, US Foods, Ingredion Communications: Anixter, Motorola, TDS Energy: Exelon Finance: Discover, JLL Healthcare: Walgreens, AbbVie, Abbott, Baxter, Baxalta Industrial/Manufacturing/B2B: ITW, CDW, Navistar, Grainger, Univar, Tenneco, LKQ, Dover, Packaging Corp., Essendant Insurance: State Farm, Allstate, Old Republic, AJG Publishing: RR Donnelley Retail: Sears Transport: United Apparently, Chicago excels in insurance, food, and manufacturing support. If you intend to create technology for supporting businesses in those sectors, having a Chicago office would not be a bad idea. SV unicorns tend not to even want to solve problems like how to more efficiently route a single gigantic monolithic I-beam from the foundry to a building site without destroying buildings, bridges, and roads along the way. It isn't sexy, and doesn't attract money or eager and idealistic employees.
- amyjess 10y agoIIRC, Chicago is the main national hub for agribusiness.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoUhhhhhh.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chicago >Chicago and its suburbs, which together comprise the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is home to 29 Fortune 500 companies and is a transportation and distribution center. Manufacturing, printing, publishing, insurance and food processing also play major roles in the city's economy. The total economic output of Chicago in GMP totaled US$547B in 2012[1] making Chicago the 21st largest economy in the world[2] just surpassing the total economic output of Switzerland. >The city houses one of the Federal Reserve Banks, established in 1914. There is also the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. The largest banks in the Chicago region (by % of deposits) are: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (through its acquisition of LaSalle Bank), BMO Harris Bank (a BMO subsidiary), and Northern Trust. The largest banks headquartered in Chicago are: Northern Trust, Chase, BMO Harris Bank, Wintrust Financial, and First Midwest Bank. Many financial institutions are in the Loop. >Chicago has five major financial exchanges, including the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), and NYSE Arca. While the city of Chicago houses most of the major brokerage firms, many insurance companies are in the city or suburbs, such as Allstate Corporation. I have family in Rochester and it isn't known, at least to me, for healthcare in particular. The biggest Rochester companies are Xerox and Kodak neither of which are healthcare companies.
- clock_tower 10y ago> What exactly is Chicago good at? Geography. Chicago's the primary water connection between the Great Lakes (which communicate with the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers) and the Mississippi River; that's the historic origin of its central role in commodities trading.
- zanny 10y agoI have to imagine I'm somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum. I could care less about attractions, since even when I lived in the city I was spending a lot of evenings just playing video games anyway. I think the broad adoption of mobile gaming and the Millennial adoption rate on video games and the successor generation (whatever we are calling them now) basically being raised on them will break down the reliance on physically proximate entertainment for enough of a subset of these generations that businesses will have to adapt to remote more than they already are. Plenty of people are going to be satisfied with what is available through technology, rather than just what they can commute to. This is on top of being able to do work remotely, its the value in being entertained remotely that truly separates them from the city centralization problem.
- tsunamifury 10y agoI pretty much think the expansion of drugs and crime due to boredom in rural America proves you wrong. On top of the fact that many people are different than you (in fact the 100s of millions who live in cities) are not satisfied just playing video games all day long.
- humanrebar 10y agoOr maybe logistics are so much better now that even illegal drugs are more accessible and cheaper than before.
- clock_tower 10y agoThat's probably true; but rural areas had alcohol problems before they had drug ones.
- humanrebar 10y agoAnd they've always had poverty problems. The underlying point is that I'm sure we cannot boil down substance abuse problems to simple boredom.
- humanrebar 10y ago> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour. Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting or Korean TV or opera. Producing great culture is harder without a local community, but it's not like there's no access to culture in small towns. They're binge watching Iron Fist just like all the other geeks.
- cheriot 10y agoWith fewer people in a place there will be fewer people that match OP's cultural interests. Even moving from a medium city to a larger city has a noticeable increase in organizations of people doing cool things I'm interested in.
- humanrebar 10y agoRight. To do things, it helps to be colocated. But in many cases, you don't strictly need to be in the same room with people even then.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThere's complexity and sophistication. Which you don't simply find anywhere. Having lived in small towns, big cities, and desert planets.
- derefr 10y agoPeople tend to use "culture" to refer, more often than not, to the local availability of global culture-production top-dogs. For example, New York has "fashion culture", because it's a place where you can expect to run into people who aren't just into fashion, but who lead and dictate the world's fashion. In other words, people want access to socially-dominant individuals. It's probably some sort of backwards instinct that doesn't serve us very well these days, given that for each of the top 100 people in anything, there are a million people who want that "access", and obviously only an infinitestimal fraction of them are going to get it—and living closer to those top 100 people (or even going to events they hold) won't really increase their chances of doing so, any more than living in the capitol city of a monarchy means you'll get to meet the monarch.