I have lived all over the US and love Boston (old burbs like Winchester, Lexington, Belmont, Nahant, Marblehead). Small city feel but with the amenities and schools of sophisticated metropolis. Ocean within half and hour and mountains within a couple of hours. Major airport, great medical care, traffic isn't too bad and good public transit system. Great people, intelligent and most pretty nice and down to earth, not pretetious and a llt of keeping up with the Jones (which is found in more provincial places). Feels like a European city in many ways. Housing is pretty crazy but renting is a bargain here. San Fran is another great city but too big and too expensive and the people are a little bit pretentious, not as down to earth as New Englanders.
I read once about a research study that was done to find out what were the common factors that produced excellent public education systems. Turned out the highest correlation was proximity to the Canadian border. With places to live, my distinctly unscientific research has revealed the highest correlation to be the concentration of venomous snakes, nasty insects and man eating reptiles. Tahoe, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, etc, one wrong step and a rattler is hanging on your arm or a gator has your leg or your foot is covered with fire ants. Interestingly, if you eliminate the low to no tax metric, the snake, gaotr and insect threat abates considerably, and one can enjoy life in relative safety in San Diego, Santa Barbara or North Carolina. Even suburban Boston, although that would fail my weather criterion.
I live in Sacramento and I wanted to move to Vegas, as it turns out I am staying here. We are building a house and the region is expected to gain population both from LA and the Bay Area at which point we sell out and move maybe back east. Sacto has a luxury of being the capital of CA without some of the problems of CA. Very family oriented and quite affordable for real estate still..... 1) Tahoe is 1.5 hours 2) Vine country Napa (1+ hours) 3) SF is 1.5 hours 4) Ocean (Stinson Beach is 1.5+ hours) The only downside is the shitty job market and traffic but I am not sure that it is sooo much better elsewhere....
Places that I have lived and the postive/negatives Houston Cheap Housing. You can get 4000+ sq ft house in a good neighboorhood for 300K easy. If you decide to venture into nearby Galveston County, it is even less. No state income taxes. Plenty of Sports. We've got Football, Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey. Its just that they are all not that good. Exception being the Astros. Very Diverse ethnically. Bad Polution and the occasional chemical plant explosion. Bad Traffic. Seems worse than LA. Terrible Weather Complete dependency on a car. For being the 4th largest city in the US, it has a complete lack of culture. Galveston Really Really Cheap! You get to live on an Island that thinks its New Orleans. Really Scary at night. Los Angeles Way too expensive. Think about $500k for tiny home in a decent neighborhood. If you can even find it. A lot of nightlife. Lots of places to party. Good Music Scene Easy access to the beach, the mountains, Mexico, Las Vegas, etc Great weather Very Diverse culturally. Great food. Snobby attitude from people in entertainment industry. It is a hard city to live in because of the high cost of living and the materialistc attitude of some of the residents. Pasadena, CA Older neighborhood in the LA Area. Definately its own city. Does not feel like a suburb of LA. Very expensive. Nice homes are 1 million. Very easy access to LA. Has a great policeforce. The riots swerved around Pasadena. Good resturants. Crummy schools. Very easy to walk around. Has a great downtown Plenty of local cultural activities. A quality place to live if you can afford it. Santa Barbara, CA Beautiuful and Historic. Really really expensive. 3 hours out from LA, so you are a bit isolated. It is a decent sized city though with a university, sothere are things to do there. Austin Not as cheap as it used to be. You can still find some great deals. Major University town, so there is always a party. Fairly good sized, these days, around 1 million. Well kept up city. Lots of outdoor activites As metioned before, THE BEST MUSIC SCENE IN THE USA! Really, a place for people under 40. San Antonio Cheap to live there Growing Economy The Spurs! (though I hate them personally, Borring!) great Mexican Food. Big Latin Culture. Not that much to do there. Feels isolated though from the rest of the world.
Henderson is a nice place in LV, deffinitely the place to be as the 'burb...apartments are more than LV but I think they are worth it.....(my friends from Bay Area retired there).. But the best place I have EVER lived in the USA was Seattle. Austin is distant second.... I lived in (tri state) NYC, Bay Area(SF), Colorado(C Springs), Austin, TX, Chicago, Ohio(Cleveland, Cinci) and Sacramento
I moved here to Henderson/Las Vegas this past summer. I'm single, 40's and looking to get out. It's not a town I would want to live in for long. Great palce to visit though. It's really hard to meet women here. If you're younger, there are tons of late nite clubs down on the Strip, but I'm past that stage in my life. This is a tourist town built for tourists. The new houses here are all north of $300K and have a backyard the size of a pool table.....I'm not kidding!. It's ridiculous. After reading some of the post here, I am thinking of visiting Santa Barabara, Tahoe, or even Chicago. I would like to be in a town with other traders and a good ratio of attractive single women to men. I found an interesting report on best cities for relocating singles. Here's the link. Las Vegas rates near the bottom. http://www.primacy.com/news/Best Singles 05 SS.pdf