5 ms·

Chicago (specifically Printers Row/South Loop): 1. Homes - Many apartment buildings are 75-100 years old which comes with a whole slew of issues - Buying a con

Chicago (specifically Printers Row/South Loop): 1. Homes - Many apartment buildings are 75-100 years old which comes with a whole slew of issues - Buying a condo or apartment in the city is difficult due to Illinois taxes and the states shit financial situation 2. Outdoors - Chicago has a fantastic lake front and some public parks that are nice but there is little to no, "outdoory" things to do in the city or even near by outside the city. The state is flat so there's no elevation hiking to do. There's no real forests. It's prairie land. Frustrating if you like the out doors - It's easy to get into a routine that is comfortable in Chicago and they have that be drastically altered when the weather changes. This happens in a lot of cities but Chicago it can change your whole life due to the cold and things being less walk able when it's freezing outside. 3. The Cubs - Chicagoians love sports. Cubs fans tend to be the worst of the fans in the city. If you happen to forget the cubs are playing and have to go through Wriggly on a game day you're in for a bad time. Need to use the red line on game day? Good luck. Other than that Chicago is incredible. More people should move here. If it wasnt for the lack of mountains I'd probably never leave. Can someone tell me what sucks about Denver before I pack up and move?

timtyrrell 8y ago
Lol, I am from Chicago living next to Boulder now. Everyone on my street is from the midwest, the weather here in the winter and summer is 1000x better.
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  You're not helping! Haha. Why Boulder over Denver?
fowkswe 8y ago
I'll add that while it's got a great transportation system, it's still a very car centric city. Train transportation is directed at getting you into the loop, and not so great if you want to traverse to other parts of the city. Want to go from Pilsen to Lincoln Park? You'll probably drive. Pilsen to Wicker Park? I doubt you are going to take the bus, so you'll drive there too. The advantage of it being flat is that you can cycle to those places, but that option doesn't work 4-5 months out of the year.
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  I'd say it's car centric depending on where you live. I designed my life around being able to walk everywhere I need to or hop on the CTA to get places I cant walk. But I'm in a rare part of the city where I can walk to the red line or blue line in 5ish minutes. If you live elsewhere, or cant afford to uber from time to time, a car would be a big plus.
fowkswe 8y ago
And yes, please give me the Denver version of this as I'm seriously considering a move there. (Portland too please)
fowkswe 8y ago
Oh, and I'll reiterate the real estate tax issue - you can definitely get a bigger, more livable place here, but the taxes are sort of obscene. For example, you can get a nice, newish 2br / 2ba condo in your choice of neighborhoods, probably with parking for 450k. Your tax bill will be 8-9k.
nulladdr 8y ago
I've lived in the Denver metro (suburbs) for 7 years now and still love it. I moved here from a small city in the south. - Large and growing tech community. Every year, I see job postings from new companies in the area. Google, FB, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft all have sattelite offices. Plenty of options to choose from if you're in development, IT, finance, etc. Lots of non-profit organizations as well. Good universities in Boulder, Denver, Golden, Fort Collins. - Cost of living was certainly higher than my hometown, but much more reasonable than many coastal cities. Not sure how it compares to Chicago specifically. Housing and rents have been rising rapidly over the past few years. I've seen two bedroom appartments listed for around $1600 - $2200, but that's still a fraction of what we would have been paying in the bay area. - Purple state, if the local politics matter to you. Blue in Denver/Boulder, red in Colorado Springs, more or less purple in the suburbs. There's a pretty broad spectrum of people to connect with. There have been quite a few measures on our state ballot that passed that I've been happy with. - Traffic on I-25 and I-70 sucks during rush hour. It's a high growth area, so it seems to get worse every year. It's no worse than any other major metro area that I've visited though. Population density is quite low, so you often end up driving longer distances but with less congestion than you would have in many cities. - Lots of outdoor activities in the mountains (but weekend traffic on I-70 is attrocious because everyone does this)--skiing, hiking, camping, etc. Lots of music, art, cultural events, museums downtown. Lots of good concerts at Red Rocks. - There are large (and growing) populations of homeless people in Denver and Boulder. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as SF or NYC, but it has definitely been getting worse, especially as housing prices have risen. If you rent, it's easy to get kicked out for a missed payment. Heroin and opiate addiction is a problem throughout parts of the area. - There are major sporting events here (Broncos, Rockies), but I've never been interested in attending them. I hear tickets are hard to get. Shrug. - Weather is pretty nice, but it's quite dry. Forest fires can be a problem during the summers (mostly in the mountains), but that's the only kind of natural disaster that I've been worried about since I moved here. We can get a lot of snow during the winter, but the roads are well taken care of, and we get a lot of sunshine when it's not snowing. Makes for some excellent powdery ski conditions. - Major airport (DIA) with direct flights to most other major airports in the US, which is nice. It was built out of the way, northeast of Denver, but it's a large airport and traffic isn't bad on the express way (toll road). - Misc: Food and services usually seem pretty reasonable to me. Uber and Lyft are all over the place. No place is perfect, and it's all about tradeoffs... but life is good and I have no plans to leave Colorado any time soon.

timtyrrell 8y ago

Lol, I am from Chicago living next to Boulder now. Everyone on my street is from the midwest, the weather here in the winter and summer is 1000x better.

Taylor_OD 8y ago
You're not helping! Haha. Why Boulder over Denver?

fowkswe 8y ago

I'll add that while it's got a great transportation system, it's still a very car centric city. Train transportation is directed at getting you into the loop, and not so great if you want to traverse to other parts of the city. Want to go from Pilsen to Lincoln Park? You'll probably drive. Pilsen to Wicker Park? I doubt you are going to take the bus, so you'll drive there too. The advantage of it being flat is that you can cycle to those places, but that option doesn't work 4-5 months out of the year.

Taylor_OD 8y ago
I'd say it's car centric depending on where you live. I designed my life around being able to walk everywhere I need to or hop on the CTA to get places I cant walk. But I'm in a rare part of the city where I can walk to the red line or blue line in 5ish minutes. If you live elsewhere, or cant afford to uber from time to time, a car would be a big plus.

fowkswe 8y ago

And yes, please give me the Denver version of this as I'm seriously considering a move there. (Portland too please)

fowkswe 8y ago

Oh, and I'll reiterate the real estate tax issue - you can definitely get a bigger, more livable place here, but the taxes are sort of obscene. For example, you can get a nice, newish 2br / 2ba condo in your choice of neighborhoods, probably with parking for 450k. Your tax bill will be 8-9k.

nulladdr 8y ago

I've lived in the Denver metro (suburbs) for 7 years now and still love it. I moved here from a small city in the south. - Large and growing tech community. Every year, I see job postings from new companies in the area. Google, FB, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft all have sattelite offices. Plenty of options to choose from if you're in development, IT, finance, etc. Lots of non-profit organizations as well. Good universities in Boulder, Denver, Golden, Fort Collins. - Cost of living was certainly higher than my hometown, but much more reasonable than many coastal cities. Not sure how it compares to Chicago specifically. Housing and rents have been rising rapidly over the past few years. I've seen two bedroom appartments listed for around $1600 - $2200, but that's still a fraction of what we would have been paying in the bay area. - Purple state, if the local politics matter to you. Blue in Denver/Boulder, red in Colorado Springs, more or less purple in the suburbs. There's a pretty broad spectrum of people to connect with. There have been quite a few measures on our state ballot that passed that I've been happy with. - Traffic on I-25 and I-70 sucks during rush hour. It's a high growth area, so it seems to get worse every year. It's no worse than any other major metro area that I've visited though. Population density is quite low, so you often end up driving longer distances but with less congestion than you would have in many cities. - Lots of outdoor activities in the mountains (but weekend traffic on I-70 is attrocious because everyone does this)--skiing, hiking, camping, etc. Lots of music, art, cultural events, museums downtown. Lots of good concerts at Red Rocks. - There are large (and growing) populations of homeless people in Denver and Boulder. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as SF or NYC, but it has definitely been getting worse, especially as housing prices have risen. If you rent, it's easy to get kicked out for a missed payment. Heroin and opiate addiction is a problem throughout parts of the area. - There are major sporting events here (Broncos, Rockies), but I've never been interested in attending them. I hear tickets are hard to get. Shrug. - Weather is pretty nice, but it's quite dry. Forest fires can be a problem during the summers (mostly in the mountains), but that's the only kind of natural disaster that I've been worried about since I moved here. We can get a lot of snow during the winter, but the roads are well taken care of, and we get a lot of sunshine when it's not snowing. Makes for some excellent powdery ski conditions. - Major airport (DIA) with direct flights to most other major airports in the US, which is nice. It was built out of the way, northeast of Denver, but it's a large airport and traffic isn't bad on the express way (toll road). - Misc: Food and services usually seem pretty reasonable to me. Uber and Lyft are all over the place. No place is perfect, and it's all about tradeoffs... but life is good and I have no plans to leave Colorado any time soon.