I've travelled quite a bit because of my previous IT Consulting job and I basically "lived" in one place for 6 months at a time. I've also spent time in Seattl

I've travelled quite a bit because of my previous IT Consulting job and I basically "lived" in one place for 6 months at a time. I've also spent time in Seattle and Denver so I'll explain those just so you can compare you vs. me. 1) Chicago - Born and raised here. It's what you expect from a Big midwestern city. We're nice, but will cut you off on the road without thinking twice. Summer is when we're the nicest and most outgoing, Winter is essentially a black hole where you keep in touch with your existing friends and stay in. But overall, I've met a lot of nice and supporting people in chicago. 2) New York / New Jersey - Lived here for a year. It's a different vibe all together. Of course there are a lot of nice people, but expectations for you to be on your own and figure it out on yourself is much bigger here. 3) Seattle - I forget which suburban city it was (maybe kirkland) where there are pedestrian crossing flags to cross 4 lane streets. If that doesn't tell you what kind of city seattle suburbs are, then I'm not sure what else I can tell you. Extremely nice people, can't merge on the highway for the live of them and the only place where everyone drives the speed limit normally. In the end, really nice people but Im not an outdoor person and the cloudiness was actually affecting me. 4) Denver - nice outdoor people. That's all I can really say. I enjoyed denver and the people were always nice to me. 5) SF - A hectic place where the cab drivers know more about technology startups than you do. A wide variety of people where people pay too much to live in a city. Overall, nice people though but esp in the tech community an expectation that you must be part of a growing tech company to be successful. 6) Austin - Man, I do love this place. I can't stand houston or Dallas. I would rather live in Alaska then live in houston or dallas (mainly because of city layout). But Austin is a very nice city with people who are willing to help you. They still have a little of a texas attitude that everything is bigger in texas but an extremely friendly city. If you can't find friendly people in austin you are doing something wrong. These texans are extremely nice and plus you have a lot of converts from other cities that came here for the tech. 7) Los Angeles - I haven't been there for too long, but if you are looking for friendly I'm going to say this isn't your place. The roads aren't friendly and it ruins the experience for me. 8) Manchester, UK - I spent 6 months here and people call it a "rough place", but I enjoyed every second of it. If you're american it makes everything that much easier. You stick out and people love talking to anyone with an american accent.