
Ask HN: Good Hacker Cities - quellhorst
What cities are good for hackers that don't require a car? Being a hacker I can be anywhere, but I'm tired of driving across country in a car.<p>It would be nice to fly somewhere that has good public transit. Good connectivity, inexpensive cost of living, and good people.
======
c1sc0
Do you even need a fixed city these days? I've spent a lot of time on the
European high-speed train network lately and I've jokingly been thinking about
'setting up office' in the train. For some reason I'm very creative and
productive on trains.

You got wireless, snacks & drinks, relative quiet and if you take one of these
all-you-can-travel (Germany: Bahncard 100) deals you just bought yourself an
office in every German city for about 3500 euro / year. If you want first-
class it'll be 5900 euro.

~~~
quellhorst
That's part of my goal, I have a fixed address for things that require it.
Someone is at that address who can receipt/deposits of checks or handle
forwarding of any mail that needs my attention.

I doubt I could work on a train all the time. But I really could live almost
anywhere as long as I had a net connect.

------
macco
If outside the US would be an option, Berlin (Germany) Public transportation
is great (24/7), a lot of cultural activities, quite a view of web startups
there and in contrast to other big cities in Europe and the US, it very cheap.

~~~
FleursDuMal
Have you got any advice on the tax situation there for a self-employed
programmer/online marketer? I'm in the process of checking it out now, just
curious about a local perspective.

~~~
jk4930
The German tax system is said to be complicated, but if you keep your business
simple, it's usually not that much of a problem. The tax that will most
interest you is the income tax (as a natural person). There's a difference
between the tax rate and the effective tax you pay. You can see this at this
image (pink = effective):
<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/a/ac/EStTarif.PNG> If you run your
business as a freelancer, you will most often have no trouble with the tax
stuff.

If you want to incorporate we just got a reformed company law that gives us
the "Unternehmergesellschaft." It's like a LLC oder Ltd., you can start it
with 1 EUR and it's made esp. for startups. You have to accumulate 25% of your
profits until you reach 25,000 EUR and become a "real" limited liability comp.
(here GmbH). Foreigners can incorporate, too. Taxation is the
"Koerperschaftssteuer" (corporation tax) which is flat 15%, then you have the
local "Gewerbesteuer" (business tax) which (in Berlin) costs you also around
15%. Dividends are taxed flat with 25%. If you don't have good advisors you
pay a bit more taxes with a company than as a natural person alone, but you
have the limited liability, you can more easily hand out shares to investors,
have more possibilities with financing, a.s.o.

Some more info there: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Germany>

~~~
helveticaman
It's they took PGs advice...weird.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

"[5] A friend who started a company in Germany told me they do care about the
paperwork there, and that there's more of it. Which helps explain why there
are not more startups in Germany."

~~~
jk4930
We still have a lot of "rule compliance costs", esp. when a company has
employees, but you can hack this. In the worst case you just source this paper
work out. The problem is more that Germany lost its startup-mentality. The
last time we were a real startup country is 100 years ago.

~~~
beza1e1
In the times of the German Economic Miracle there must have been a great
startup-mentality here. That has been roughly 50 years ago.

And i'll throw Karlsruhe into the pot. It's called the internet capital of
Germany, has lots of companies (especially web companies) and one of the best
universities for computer science (and other technical fields). Living costs
are relativly low.

~~~
fbailey
I like Karlsruhe but I know nobody who calls Karlsruhe the internet capital of
Germany. That goes to Berlin,Hamburg and Munich

------
pg
Cambridge/Somerville, Berkeley/Oakland, SF, Portland. You can live well
without a car in Silicon Valley, though it's not a city. Maybe Austin, but
I've never been there, so can't say for sure. Maybe Boulder, if it's over your
threshold of urbanness.

~~~
dnaquin
you pretty much need a car in Austin. best public transit in Texas, but that's
not saying much.

~~~
natrius
Austin is pretty bikeable, and there is (limited) car sharing for the few
times you actually need a car. The buses seem like they'd work well enough and
were fine the couple of times I used them, but biking is faster and more fun.

I think Dallas and Houston have Austin beat in terms of public transit. Dallas
has plenty of rail, Houston has some rail with a lot in the works, and Austin
has a commuter rail line that's about to open but doesn't actually get you
anywhere without transferring to a bus that will be stuck in traffic. There's
more to a good transit system than rail, but it's the best indicator I have
since I've only used Austin's system in Texas.

~~~
quellhorst
I have lived in Houston for years, that city is designed for having a car.
Drivers in big trucks and SUVs are very aggressive around cyclists and
pedestrians. A plus is that it was cheap to live there.

I did see a coworking place is located on 7th street in Austin for only
$350/month.

~~~
stcredzero
I'm thinking of moving my home base to Austin. And yes, Houston is definitely
designed for driving. Even "the cool shops near the university" district near
Rice U is essentially just a mall with streets running through it. Things are
way too spread out.

------
madmotive
Brighton, UK works fantastically for us. You can walk between most parts, most
tech businesses and coworking spaces are fairly central. There are regular
trains and buses to get out to Sussex University where there are a bunch more.
The community is very welcoming and there are events and user groups almost
every day of the week (<http://sussexdigital.com>). When you need big
customers and investors London is less than an hour away by train.

------
nostrademons
Boston/Cambridge. #2 tech hub (behind the Bay Area), and you don't need or
want a car in the city. Unlike in Silicon Valley, where you basically need a
car.

Neither is exactly inexpensive, though. The problem with living in a tech hub
is that tech people tend to make lots of money and bid the price of everything
up accordingly.

~~~
pingswept
I live next to Cambridge in Somerville; I moved here from Cambridge, before
that Palo Alto, and before that San Francisco, and before that, Oakland.

Real estate and rent in Cambridge is substantially cheaper (2x?) than anything
in Silicon Valley, and Somerville is even cheaper. Some of Somerville is
rough, sort of like Oakland, but areas of it (like Davis Square) have all the
benefits of Cambridge. Admittedly, you're a few subway stops (say, 5-10
minutes difference) further away from Boston.

The other major difference is the weather. If you don't like snow, living here
sucks. But, if you like the winter, I think Somerville is a win.

~~~
pingswept
Oh, also: the burritos here suck.

Let there be no mention of Anna's. La Costena FTW!

~~~
moss
Ah, the misery of looking for burritos in Boston. I moved here from the Bay
Area a couple of years ago. It's the best place I've ever lived, for all the
reasons you mention--but no burritos. And yeah, then people add insult to
injury by bringing up Anna's.

The most adequate burrito I've found around here was at Super Burrito in
Everett. Know of anything better?

~~~
KB
Chipotle has the best burritos I've tried in the Boston area. There's one in
Harvard square and another in Davis square(I think).

~~~
pingswept
Yes, there is a Chipotle in Davis Square, almost across from the Burren.

But the best burritos (in my opinion) are at Tacos Lupita on Elm Street. The
food is El Salvadorean; the burritos are delicious.

(El Pelon near Fenway was also quite good, until they burned down again.)

~~~
KB
A friend of mine frequents Taco Loco over in Somerville. I've never been, but
he seems to always be talking about how good the food is there.

------
csuper
Portland, OR - meets all your criteria except maybe cost of living. Though
that really depends on your standards. But the public transit is top notch, it
is also a great place if you like to commute by bicycle. Check it out...

~~~
BinaryPie
The problem with Portland, OR is that the tech sector is kind of weak in
comparison to other cities. I spent two and half years in portland working
full time and spent 6 months looking for a new job. I ended up moving.

Portland has decent public transit, its cheap to live there, and you can find
decent jobs. Although you may not find a wide variety of jobs that aren't
corporate. On that note I will say there are a couple startup incubators in
town but those jobs fill up quick.

I ended up moving to San Francisco. Great city. Expensive, but fantastic
public transit and tons of jobs.

Here are my list of cities in no real order: San Francisco, CA Portland, OR
Seattle, WA Boston, MA New York City, NY

Check them out. If you like a few, spend at least a week exploring and getting
to know the city a little bit. Also try and go during the worst weather period
so you really know you can live there.

~~~
gcheong
I found the weather even at its worst is bearable, but I grew up in Astoria on
the coast. Winters are not very cold, snow is somewhat rare, but rain is a
given. And besides there's _so much_ to do there:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ4wAPL3saU> ;^).

------
zain
San Francisco is an excellent place for a hacker.

    
    
      1) Plenty of other hackers in close vicinity
      2) Lots of startups all over the city
      3) Excellent public transportation
      4) Awesome bike trails all over the place
    

Plus, you can walk into pretty much any coffee shop in SF and see at least one
or two techies coding away on their macbook :)

~~~
tptacek
Did you seriously just suggest that San Francisco has "excellent" public
transportation? Because, seriously, it doesn't: the Muni is one of the worst
large systems in the country, and a lower percentage of residents use it than
any comparable city.

What's worse, most people who work "in San Francisco" don't, and commuting to
south bay is untenable without a car (and even with the car, a good half of
the market is at least a 90 minute daily commute away from SOMA).

~~~
zain
It seems to be fashionable to rag on Muni these days, but after living in two
other urban cities, Muni is the best public transportation I've seen. It runs
practically everywhere and is quite affordable and prompt.

Muni cars run on clean electric lines, and their busses are now electric
hybrids. Each is outfitted with a GPS that updates boards at each stop to let
you know in real-time how long before the next bus arrives. They have a phone
number and a website that has this real-time info too. Hell, that website even
has an iPhone version!

It costs 45 bucks a month to go anywhere you want. It runs 24 hours a day with
plenty of frequency and services pretty much every inch of the city. What more
can you ask for?

Ever checked out Atlanta's MARTA system? The bus service is random and wait
times are often 30 minutes to 2 hours. Without a car, you're basically
screwed.

~~~
tptacek
Sounds awesome. Last experience I had with the Muni involved buses skipping
stops, lines being shut down with minimal notice, and busloads full of
sweatshop textile workers. Maybe it's improved since then. But news.google.com
doesn't think indicate that.

But then, GPS or no GPS, it's going to be hard to impress people from cities
with real public transit systems with a bus; there's nowhere in NYC or Chicago
you'd reasonably want to go that you can't get to on a train that runs every
5-15 minutes.

I agree with you, I wouldn't put Atlanta on my list of awesome public transit
cities either.

~~~
randallsquared
"and busloads full of sweatshop textile workers."

Wait... you're complaining that you have to share the bus with _other_ people
who can't afford a car? Perhaps you'd prefer two separate systems, so we can
reserve one for those who are just too cool to use cars? :/

~~~
tptacek
Getting rid of the sweatshops would do fine, thanks.

------
disambiguated
Bangkok - great food, good connectivity, close air-wise to Singapore/HK, low
cost-of-living, good overhead/underground trains, cheap taxis, tuk-tuks, and
motorcycle-taxis.

Plus, it's easy for even totally unattractive social misfits to obtain
intimate companionship, with no strings attached.

;>

------
mtw
montreal, canada. There's foulab.org (a hackerspace), also FreeHackers
meetups, lots of tech user groups (scheme/ruby/python/php...), one of the
cheapest cost of living in North America, great friendly people, culture too
(it's bilingual, active art scene). For connectivity, there's IleSansFil
around the city, which provides free wireless in bars and coffee shops

------
dangrover
I was enamored with Boston as a city until I moved to Palo Alto a couple weeks
ago. Already, I can't imagine ever moving back.

~~~
pingswept
I moved from Palo Alto to Cambridge in 2004. My rent decreased by $50, and the
size of my house doubled.

On the other hand, you're probably sitting outside in the sun eating a tasty
burrito.

~~~
dangrover
Go to Ana's in Davis Square or the MIT student center. Best burritos ever.

All the mexican places around here (downtown at least) are hoity toity and
expensive.

~~~
mikhael
though palo alto sucks for mexican food, the best places in SF are far, far
above and beyond anything in boston -- anna's doesn't even care to compete.
try el farolito or el castillito. my favorite in the boston area is tacos
lupita, in somerville (it's where the people who work at anna's eat.)

~~~
ciscoriordan
I've eaten many a tasty burrito in Palo Alto -- try Antonio's Nut House on Cal
Ave.

Also some great burritos at La Bamba on Old Middlefield in MV. The new
location on Castro is pretty tasty too.

Anna's at MIT definitely holds its own though.

------
andrewhyde
I can't believe Boulder has not been mentioned.

Thriving tech community, really beautiful place and a great transit system.

I ride my bike 80% of the year.

<http://www.boulder.me> for more info (calendar there too).

~~~
bhb
I second Boulder. Yes, its certainly not a big city, but its got more than its
share of good restaurants and bars considering its relatively small
population. Beautiful weather for most of the year, nestled right into the
mountains. The startup community is stellar in my opinion. And yes, you can
ride your bike almost all the time and when you can't, the buses are easy to
use.

------
sachinag
Chicago has all that. But I wouldn't try to do a startup here - the
angel/VC/legal/accounting support structure is atrocious.

~~~
tptacek
Chicago's not a great place to get funding (we have JK&B and... nothing?), but
no place is good for funding in '09.

As for legal and accounting, I'm lost: why isn't Chicago the second best city
in the country for access to lawyers and accountants?

~~~
sachinag
There is a huge difference between startup lawyers and accountants and small
business lawyers and accountants. The ones here are all the second and think
they can do the first.

Having worked at a VC firm where a deal almost fell apart due to legal
oversight, this is a huge, huge hobbyhorse of mine.

~~~
tptacek
Chicago is a crappy place to start a company if you're hitching your wagon to
a VC deal. But VC is a crap shoot anyways. On the other hand, if you want to
run a business, Chicago legal and accounting is a win.

------
phyr3wall
You cant beat Los Angeles.

If you want great Metro Transit, this is it, and each city within LA has its
own metro line. like the blue bus in santa monica/venice. south bay transit in
the south bay.

Plus tons of employment opportunities in the IT field with great pay. i make
90K as a front end developer.

No doubt LA is the greatest

~~~
silencio
I rip my hair out at this. I live close enough to Century City that I can
generally walk to metro/santa monica/culver city lines if I can't take my car,
but to most places I want to go to it's horrid and ends up taking more time
and costing more as well. The only time I have never regretted taking a bus is
in the super early mornings when I have an entire bendy Metro Rapid bus to
myself all the way downtown, or when I can take the commuter express...both
usually to get to some destination near downtown.

You need to live in very specific areas to benefit from existing public
transit, and the inflexibility of the existing systems (and city sprawl) will
not make you happy in those occasional situations you need to go to some kinda
event that is way out of your way. Other than that, yes, maybe Metro itself is
pretty awesome. Also, I have to mention that the flyaway service is awesome
too, public transit from westwood to lax in the same time as a shuttle only
paying 1/4 of the price? Yay!

I wish car sharing were more popular in this area, but flexcar/zipcar sort of
fucked us over in that aspect.

~~~
psyklic
yeah, from my experience Metro usually takes twice as long as driving. It is
very cheap though ($1.25/ride).

------
cookiecaper
I was going to suggest Salt Lake City, and you don't absolutely need a car
here, but you're much better off with one. It meets all of your other criteria
finely, though. There's a very large group of IT companies here, especially in
Utah County, 15-30 miles south of Salt Lake. Predominantly, Novell (as well as
the SCO Group) and other things.

It's a relatively low-profile area, very clean, very safe, very nice people,
and modern infrastructure and appliances. A great place to live and work,
though I wouldn't want to raise children here.

------
jbrun
Montreal, Canada. If you don't mind the cold, you have great public transit
and bike lanes throughout the city. Not to mention amazing food, culture and
low cost of living.

------
maryrosecook
If you're willing to not confine yourself to the US, London is great for cheap
public transport. On average, the cost of living is quite high: housing and
nights out are expensive. However, if you're clever, you can actually subsist
on a low amount of money: eat at home, live in a small flat outside central
London etc.

~~~
puzzle-out
London does not have cheap public transport, at least compared to other
European cities, but then again it is getting more bike friendly - but make
sure you invest in a some waterproofs.

------
theantidote
I'm gonna go ahead and add DC to the mix. It has 3 airports, an excellent
metro and bus system, Verizon FIOS, relatively cheap out in the exburbs or
apartments in formerly sketchy neighborhoods, and great proximity to NYC.

The only issues are the lack of people and VCs. You can always do contract
work for the government though!

~~~
lallysingh
Another point for DC. Don't forget it's a great place to start a business if
you want a way in to have the gov't or DoD be a customer.

SBIR programs are available, which are almost free $$ (you dev a product they
need, they'll help pay for its development, and then buy lots of them from
you). $70k instead of millions, but they don't take any part of your company
in return.

There are apartments by metro stations, but you also have ZipCars
<http://zipcar.com> which you rent by the hour ($9.25/hr weekday in DC, $11/hr
weekday in NYC).

I grew up in DC, and now live in NY. If you prefer a suburban life, go DC. If
you like the city, NY. One benefit of both places to The Valley is the gender
ratio here -- slightly biased for more single educated women than men. I've
heard the valley's a sausage party. Although I've heard really good things
about LA in this dept.

Another point for Boulder Colorado, some friends enjoyed the tech startup
culture there, too.

------
dualogy
Exotic developing countries for the win!

I'm still having a hard time "getting" the whole "hacker city" question, which
comes up every now and then and always ends up with SV / SF / CA as the only
reasonable options.

If you're plannign on hacking away most of the time, possibly even
bootstrapping product development, you need:

1\. transport -- so-so is already good enough, you're not meant to be out and
about all the time 2\. connectivity -- so-so is already good enough, you're
not meant to be online all the time (since most of the time, its not research
you're doing but distractions like HN) 3\. inexpensive cost of living -- thats
what really matters unless you made it big already! But then SV / SF / CA is a
no-go. 4\. "good" people -- they exist everywhere, just like the "bad" ones

Originally from Berlin (which is pretty friggin cool for a German city), I
almost exclusively live as an Expat in Cairo, Egypt now, to combine
drastically lowered costs with perpetual sunshine.

I highly recommend it. There's a small and very nice expat scene here, not
much of a "hacker" scene. Well, it depends. I gather, like in other emerging
economies, there's hundreds of thousands of people here in this 20 million
metropolitan area who happily "hack" away on C++, C#, Java, basic web stuff.
They just don't care much about Web 2.0 or Hacker News, Macs or even the whole
"GNU hacker ethic" etc. They're "just" into programming (but then, isn't that
"pure" interest more what we're looking for anyway?...) Sure, they all use
pirated commercial rather than open source software and sure, many of them
often work on outsourcing gigs found at rentacoder, but: it's not like there
are no "hackers" here.

I don't need a huge social scene since I wanna get stuff done, not talk about
it and I don't need a VC or angel scene since the only money I will ever take
is that of paying customers. I don't trade futures, particularly not my own.
Granted, I'll keep my German passport for setting up the formal company there
at some point and I'll keep my German health insurance, too. I'll keep my
German consulting clients and I'll keep paying taxes to the German state. But
we're talking about locations to _live-and-work_ here...

Now, what else do we have in store. A hugely different culture and a strongly
religious one but if you don't speak the language, you don't get most of it
anyway. It's a different pace of life that's fascinating to watch. Crackling
infrastructure, although hey my ADSL has been up uninterruptedly for a couple
of days now! Transport: depends. There's a vast oversupply of Really Cheap
Taxis here, more than making up for the relative lack of a public transport
system. Basically you can get wherever you want 24/7 at minimal costs. But I
prefer biking which gets you through the perpetual jams more quickly and also
that's the only exercise I get so I keep riding it. Get a mountain bike
though, to cope not with mountains but with dirt and the quality of roads and
pavements.

It all depends on your individual priorities. Mine were and are: climate, cost
structures, cheap flight availability to mainland Europe (to Berlin from here:
4 hours and EUR 140!), peace and stability, low crime level and a certain
basic safety. Smog, Islam, dust, pollution, noise and crowdedness I can live
with, these aren't so high on my list of priorities.

I guess it's about making the trade-off that fits you personally. And I guess
the equivalent for a US person would be some minor, warm Latin American
country within cheap-flights reach that also is or is being kept peaceful.

~~~
gaius
That's pretty sweet. I'd love to do that in Sharm el-Sheik :-) Cheap flights
to and from the UK and everyone speaks English and there must be plenty of
hacker-divers...

~~~
dualogy
I'm sure there are a few! Get in touch if you head over here for a combined
hacking-holiday or sth!

------
jayp
Champaign/Urbana, IL. Cheap cost of living. Lots of good engineering students
on tap. Great community. Great bus service, especially around campus town. Get
from any point A to any point B in town in less than 10 minutes. Plenty of
events (athletics, theatre, parties, etc.) due to being a university town.

Negatives...corn fields galore. And flatness. And long winters.

(This is not a joke. But most will think that it is.)

~~~
tptacek
And, what, 2 places to work if you need to eat?

Forget Champaign. Go to Ann Arbor, MI. You have all the same benefits as
Champaign --- a walkable/bikeable city, a huge reservoir of engineering
talent, a reasonable cost of living --- but you also have Detroit Metro if you
need to pick up freelancing work. Detroit Metro has plenty of BigCo employers
outside the big 3.

I lived in A2 for 4 years, and while I think Chicago is a better place to
start a company, I have lots of good things to say about the place. I have
almost nothing good to say about Champaign, which is a bleak, depressing place
vindicated only by its proximity to Chicago.

~~~
jayp
You can just beg for good.

On a more serious note, I am not basing my opinion on employer choices...even
though I argue that there are plenty.

~~~
tptacek
Name 4.

~~~
jayp
Intel, Yahoo, Qualcomm, Byte Mobile, Riverbed, Rigerglass, Australian
Semiconductor (Motorola spin off), Amdocs, NCSA, Pattern Insight (UIUC
research startup), Cazoodle (UIUC research startup), tons of other start ups
(Snap and Buy, oneLLama, etc.), at the Univeristy of Illinois itself in IT or
research programmer positions.

This is just off the top of my head.

Anyway, I do not want to enter a piss fight with you. I like C-U. If you
don't, great. No one is forcing you to live here. I was merely suggesting it.

~~~
tptacek
Neither Intel, nor Yahoo, nor Qualcomm appear to be hiring FTE's in Champaign
(although I found an Intel temp position). Obviously, I didn't look very hard
though.

I don't doubt that there's a small constellation of UIUC-affiliated tech
startups around Champaign, though the same thing exists in A2, in Austin, and
in RTP. The benefit of A2 over Champaign is that you are almost guaranteed
freelance (or FTE) work outside the school. I don't think Champaign is a safe
career choice compared to A2, RTP, or even Pittsburgh.

Sorry, it's a message board, I didn't mean to piss at you.

------
nandemo
You didn't specify the country so: Tokyo.

Rent is expensive, though.

~~~
gravitycop
_Tokyo. Rent is expensive, though._

...Per square foot. However, Tokyo has micro-apartments available, right? 60
sqft?

~~~
nandemo
60 sq ft... 5.5 sq m? Well, probably yes. 15~20 sq m studios are common.

If you're willing to share an apartment (having your own bedroom), you could
get by with about U$600 in central Tokyo, and as low as U$400 in the suburbs.

------
talleyrand
New Orleans! You can get around just fine without a car, great people, and
good times.

------
andrewljohnson
I live in a cabin in Truckee, and I only use a car to go camping and to get
groceries.

------
ken
I know many people here in Seattle who don't have cars (and others with
Zipcar, if you only need it on occasion). I have a car, but I only drive it
every couple weeks, at most, and I would certainly get along fine without it.

~~~
potatolicious
Any others care to chime in about Seattle? I'll be moving there in a few
months and would like to know how it stacks up as a hacker city.

Last time I was there I was left with the impression that it's a pretty boring
city with a lot of health-conscious people... so I guess that's 1 for 2?

The downtown area was a lot quieter than most, and unlike most cities I've
been to didn't seem to have a lot of the food and arts that most downtowns
do...

~~~
ken
I guess "pretty boring" depends entirely on what you're looking for. There's
plenty going on here, and many things I do can't be found together anywhere
else (except maybe SF). So if you like French food and Broadway musicals, NYC
is obviously better, but if you like rock climbing and Japanese art, Seattle
is hard to beat.

While many other cities are certainly bigger and busier, Seattle has more of
what is interesting to me. (Classic selection bias: obviously somebody living
here by choice would feel that way!)

If you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to try to answer.

------
thingie
Europe (every city) ;-)

~~~
c1sc0
Yes for the public transport. No for the hacker 'connectivity': not all cities
are created equal in Europe; there are huge differences in cost of living and
'cost of entrepreneurship' (taxes & regulations).

------
russell
How about telecommuting from where you are/want to be? Are any of those of you
hiring willing to engage telecommuters?

------
laut
In general I don't like public transit. But in many places you can get around
without neither public transport nor your own car. Walking, bicycles, taxis,
planes.

------
jdavid
Milwaukee!

It's a laidback city between Madison, WI (super liberal) and Chicago ( liberal
), and Milwaukee is a nice mix in between, which i would label progressive.

Milwaukee has a great place called <http://bucketworks.org> which is a
"fitness club for the brain," but to those of you that know about CoWorking,
Petcha Kutcha, and <http://BarcampMilwaukee.com>, you will find
<http://bucketworks.org> to be your second home. Its a shared technology and
art space where all of the MKE hackers and innovators hangout and mix things
up.

WE-Energies allows You to choose to buy renewable only energy for a higher
price. ($.12KWh vs $.07KWh) There are co-op gocers, and the city is really
walkable and buss-able.

Good cheep and hip places to live in Milwaukee are Menomenoy Valley, 5th Ward,
Bayview, Riverwest, where you can rent a room for $400-$700 a month.

There are a ton of microbreweries, and if you know the difference between
pasteurized filtered macros, and unpasteurized unfiltered micros, you will
love Milwaukee. There are a few great places to visit like Centraal, Transfer,
and Palm Tavern. On Friday at 4pm go to Lakefront Brewery for a brewery tour,
fish fry and polka. In the sumer every ethnicity is celebrated, each with
their own festival. There is always something to do. The new thing in MKE is
to have over 300 beers to choose from, YES I SAID 300, so you can sample just
about any bier in the world.

Most of Milwaukee is bussable, bikeable, or walkable. The city has Bike
Holidays and is considering buying 700 bikes that could be rented to go
between any two bike racks.

Its also one of the few areas in the US that has school vouchers so your kids
can go anywhere.

The cafe's are AWESOME, every cafe has wifi, although many use WEBBeams so you
get 2 hours free with your coffee, or for 20-30$ a month you get unlimited
access at any cafe. You can totally avoid any coffee chains in Milwaukee, we
have SO MANY INDEPENDENT COFFEE shops its great. We even have one on the lake.
Much of the coffee in Milwaukee is from Altera, and is fair trade.

Since I was there for 10 years, I put a lot of Time into building the tech
culture. I can introduce to almost anyone you might need to grow your
business/ code base in Milwaukee.

We have an active investment community.

<http://wistechnology.com/>

<http://www.wisconsintechnologycouncil.com/>

<http://goldenangels.angelgroups.net/>

<http://www.siliconpastures.com/>

<http://www.kegonsapartners.com/>

<http://govsbizplancontest.com/>

Check out <http://urbanmilwaukee.com/> for more info.

If you want to get connected to people in milwaukee just email me:
jdavid.net@gmail.com

I have heard that if you like SF or Seattle you would like Milwaukee, and if
you need a metropolis every now and then, Chicago is a 2hour train ride away.

------
time_management
New York has a lot of incredible people, and our public transportation is
probably the best in the country. However, the cost of living in New York
truly sucks. If you lose your job, you're fucked. Housing costs are kept very
high by three factors: (1) rent control, which leaves a lot of upper-middle-
class, well-connected people in an arrangement that is superior to ownership
(they pay 1960s rents, which is less than maintenance) costs and therefore
never leave, keeping about half the good housing locked-up (2) Wall Street,
and (3) indulgent parents who willingly drop $4k/month for their unpaid
marketing intern progeny to have the "Manhattan experience" in their 20s. The
latter two of those are threatened by the economic situation, and rent control
is supposed to be phased out if the vacancy rate reaches 5%, ending the state
of "housing emergency" that New York has been in since the 1940s, although I'm
not optimistic about that one coming around.

~~~
lsemel
NY has developed fairly large tech community over the last few years. Go to
any Tech Meetup, and around 500 people show up. If you want to live cheaply,
most people opt for Brooklyn, where a many of the startups now have their
offices.

------
lv_
Manila - Very Cheap, lots of Tech talent. You def dont need a car and you
shouldn't if you value your sanity.

------
ajkirwin
Philadelphia :D

~~~
Rod
_Philthydelphia_ is inexpensive indeed, but only because no sane person would
ever want to live there.

I vote for Portland, OR.

~~~
Riley
I'm a sane person that's happy to live in the middle of Philly. It's a great
city, even though it's got some downsides. I never understand people that have
such a totally negative view of the city. I much prefer living here overall,
versus my experience in NYC and Boston.

~~~
Rod
I know people who live in Philly and love it. They're sane, I think. There's
no accounting for taste, after all.

I have been in Philly only some 48 hours or so, but my first impressions were
quite negative. I saw way too many homeless people, way too much trash on the
streets, and even walking in the so-called _nice_ areas of downtown Philly
after dark I was afraid I was gonna get shot any minute.

Honest question: what are the good things about Philly? Seriously.

~~~
Riley
Off the top of my head: It's the 6th largest city in the US, and it's the
birthplace of the country (lots of culture and history). Most of the buildings
are well over 100 years old (great architecture and craftsmanship is
commonplace). Real estate prices are super reasonable, and property taxes are
basically nothing (most houses are less than $1000/year). Public
transportation is everywhere. Parking and traffic are much better than the NYC
and Boston metro areas. Crime is almost entirely isolated to bad areas of
town. There's a huge amount of independently owned local businesses. And
there's hardly any chain restaurants. The locally owned restaurants and bars
are awesome. There's about a half dozen world-class micro-breweries in the
area. I can walk to two of them. There's grocery stores, dozens of shops and
good restaurants within walking distance of most areas. But if you want to
drive somewhere - NYC is two hours away, the Pocono Mountains are two hours
(lots of state parks and skiing), Atlantic City is close by, and there's some
good beaches (for the east coast) within two hours. The city provides free
wifi in lots of places around town. There's all the nightlife and live music
you could want here. And most everything is really reasonably priced. The
people here do seem to litter a bit too much, and they can come across as rude
at first. But I've found most people to be genuinely straightforward and
refreshingly honest compared to other areas. I've lived all over the US, and I
think Philly is one of the most well-rounded and underrated cities. It's very
much like NYC in the late 80's/early 90's.

------
Allocator2008
I currently live in Austin, and quit driving a year or so ago. Car I had was
old and just wasn't worth the hassle. Good bus system in town. Only if you
work in the suburbs do you need a car. I use the bus nearly every day, other
than if I am working from home on a particular day. I am a little ambivalent
about getting another car. Lot of money involved which I could better spend on
things like iPods.

