It was clever of them to stop just before he jumps.
I can grope women in elevators because I'm so rich there's no chance of prosecution?
It might have been tolerable if he'd had different facial hair.
3: You were hoping for an Old Testament prophet beard?
Was it here that I saw a ridiculous brochure advertising a luxury development with Steampunk people?
If they swapped the voice-over for a guy with an American accent, I'm sure they could show this at CPAC and get a standing ovation.
5: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2014_12_07.html#014251
I couldn't get the video to load or find it on the Telegraph's website.
Wouldn't load on my phone—Android—but I played it from a computer.
Clearly the bit in the elevator was a phantasy, judging from the narrative at that moment.
Sure, I'm NA, but this ad wouldn't bother me a bit.
I think we've all seen it, puked our outrage, and moved on to the next outrage.
I kind of like his shelf of ceramic tchotchkes. Granny chic!
It might have been tolerable if he'd had different facial hair.
I was sort of amused by thinking of this as some unintentional realism. Of course that guy wouldn't be attractive in real life. So, getting a rat-boy to play him = realism.
This (and a few other things I've read) suggest to me that British culture* has recently taken some cartoon version of what it is supposedly "American" in terms of relentless individualism and inexplicably adopted it with a gusto that's never been the case here. Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that the older stereotypically British culture was supposed to dismiss as unspeakably vulgar and overly striving?**
*known to me primarily from a few television serials, novels between 50 and 300 years old, and blog comments, so I'm an expert.
**the American version would never be this explicit, would show some kindly but tough silver hair executive with cute small preppy kids, dog, wife.
"Cartoon version" sounds strange coming from someone who lives in a place where they sell houses with machine gun walls and rotating car tables.
13: I looked at their prices, and it looks like the demographic they are targeting is younger than silver haired, married with kids. (Unless I've got a conversion factor badly wrong, they don't seem incredibly expensive.)
TRO may be right: I've clearly seen too much of this sort of shit, because I barely raised an eyebrow at this wanker.
(OT - bit happy, Kid A has an offer (i.e. yes, unless she screws up her exams in the summer) from Oxford.)
14 - your point is reasonable but that place was transcendently awesome. Also bought by the Minecraft guy, so hopefully it now has whole rooms just full of things you can smash with hammers.
the American version would never be this explicit, would show some kindly but tough silver hair executive with cute small preppy kids, dog, wife
Actually, the American version does both: it shows the kindly but tough silver hair executive with cute small preppy kids, dog, wife, but is every bit as explicit.
15 - going by the view, that was the One Commercial Street apartment (yuck) block, so £3-4m?
Isn't this the housing version of the recent Cadillac commercial of asshole capitalist saying you slackers take too much vacation when you're off for more than 2 weeks a year?
16: Congratulations. Miami University is great school.
re: 15
What 19 said. So, 6 million US. If that's not incredibly expensive to you ...
15: This is the building that pioneered Poor Doors, so there might be some less costly housing for the riff-raff.
This (and a few other things I've read) suggest to me that British culture* has recently taken some cartoon version of what it is supposedly "American" in terms of relentless individualism and inexplicably adopted it with a gusto that's never been the case here. Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that the older stereotypically British culture was supposed to dismiss as unspeakably vulgar and overly striving
Welcome to post-Thatcher Britain.
The British even copied the traditional American monument called Carhenge.
18, 20: The choice of Neal McDonough for that ad, given the role he was most well-known for at the time, still cracks me up.
13: you've got to think of the target audience. those properties are marketed at investors and very often sold off plan into the Gulf, the Far East, or Russia, to so-called mini-oligarchs (say, moderately corrupt officials). if they could offer vulgarity as an extra-cost option, they would and they'd get takers.
16: Congratulations to Kid A! We are supposed to hear from UNC this month, and from the rest in March.
19/22: Their website has an "apartment finder" that varied from £475,000-£4,750,000. I didn't know which building was the featured one, and obviously the unit shown was at the expensive end, but the low end of their apartments was about half the cost per square foot (880 sq ft, two bedrooms) than what I'd expect in DC in a moderately nice neighborhood. I have no idea about the high end, just was expecting all units to be above $1 m in a "luxury" building in London, since that's about what one might expect in DC for a 2-bedroom condo. I was meaning incredibly expensive based on big city prices in a very expensive city, not like, "Yeah, that's affordable."
Congrats to Kid A, good luck to apo.
13, 28: See this marketing video for a development going up just down the road from me.
It is weird that kids who were the age my kids are now when I started reading this blog are now applying to college.
13, 28. Yes, counter jumpers every last one of them. Not our sort of people at all, but one is obliged to be civil when they obtrude themselves.
Looked again, and the development on Commercial street is all 3/3 for £3 m. So, yes, that one is incredibly expensive. You're right.
30: It used to be that if you had a $1 million, you could get four houses in a great neighborhood. But that's getting harder these days.
Nice one. Kid A. Now all you have to do is survive Oxford!
Hooray for Kid A! If she works hard enough, perhaps she can star in a creepy video like this someday!
I assume that reading Gaudy Night is still the best preparation for going to Oxford.
Of course that isn't an expensive 3 bedroom flat. This is an expensive 3 bedroom flat.
Their website has an "apartment finder" that varied from £475,000-£4,750,000. I didn't know which building was the featured one, and obviously the unit shown was at the expensive end, but the low end of their apartments was about half the cost per square foot (880 sq ft, two bedrooms) than what I'd expect in DC in a moderately nice neighborhood. I have no idea about the high end, just was expecting all units to be above $1 m in a "luxury" building in London, since that's about what one might expect in DC for a 2-bedroom condo.
Average London house price is now about £520k. I suspect the cheapest ones aren't in moderately nice areas, or if they're nice, they're not at all central (by transport).
Apparently, according to a woman I was talking to who is sending her kid there, the trendiest college for UMC/rich fancy private school kids Westside LA is ... St Andrews in Scotland. I have no idea why this would be but apparently like 9 of her kids classmates are going there, not just for "study abroad" bu for their only university. I guess USC let in too many Mexicans.
Alternatively, if I had 17 million quid to spare, I'd cheerfully part with it not to have to live in this.
I have no idea why this would be
Guess where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met?
If anybody wants to be my neighbor, this house is still available.
It always seems to be like the cost, in GBP, of anything in the UK (or at least London) is about the same as the cost, in USD, of the same thing in the US, despite the exchange rate. And salaries, in GBP, in the UK always seem to be about a factor of 2 smaller than the corresponding salary would be in USD in the US. From this I can only conclude that no one in the UK can afford anything at all.
Apparently, according to a woman I was talking to who is sending her kid there, the trendiest college for UMC/rich fancy private school kids Westside LA is ... St Andrews in Scotland.I have no idea why this would be
Because Blair went there, maybe? It's very UMC/rich here too.
From this I can only conclude that no one in the UK London can afford anything at all.
45: The most contemporary home Pittsburgh has to offer
Tempting!
It was built in 1985, which seems about right. Nobody built anything here from the early 80s until about two years ago.
Unfortunately my dreams of moving to Pittsburgh were at least temporarily quashed.
Put it this way, I live in a not particularly well-regarded bit of west west London.* Some friends of ours bought a terrace house in the next street from us, which is a fixer-upper. Needs the roof done, floors done, central heating replaced, and a complete redecoration, which was basically 1 million US [700K UK], plus whatever it's going to cost them to do it up.
You could get a new build 2-bed flat around here for under 500,000 UK, though. Just about. And it's a reasonable enough place to live.
* keeping it vague: between Brentford and Southall
52: Next time you take the test, remember "redd up" means "clean up".
43: I hear their helicopter pilot program is top notch. And golfing opportunities abound, which of course is a necessity for white strivers.
52: Do you have any other updates? I'm assuming you'd have shared them if you did, but I may have just missed it.
$1 million would buy four quite good houses in our neighborhood, as good as ours or better, but if you only wanted two or three you could get really great ones.
I should note that the house in 45 is at least a half mile from the nearest bus route with frequent service.
45: I can't afford to be your neighbor. Does the tanning bed come with it, do you think? I wonder how much it costs to redecorate 5,000 sq feet that hasn't been altered since 1985.
53 is also why I wasn't thinking those prices were crazy for London. I expected totally stratospheric, not merely out of reach.
Why would you need to redecorate something done in 1985? Style hasn't changed since then.
This one is more reasonably priced. I suspect that you'd need to put at least $50K in it before it was nice.
The house in 61 is distinctly cheap by UK standards. Anywhere you had a chance of finding work it would be at least £200K.
47: Blair, I am afraid, went to Oxford, not St Andrew's.
That's what a nice house in the area would cost, roughly. But that is way up the hill past all the nicer houses.
I expected totally stratospheric, not merely out of reach
Yeah, looking at some UK real estate sites just now, I was surprised how many places there were that were basically affordable, if not very nice. But London proper seems to be about three times the area of, say, San Francisco proper, so it makes sense that there would be more places far enough away from the city center that are less expensive.
47: Blair, I am afraid, went to Oxford, not St Andrew's.
Wait, really? Who am I thinking of then?
There is at least one Unfoggeder who went to St. Andrews. I have friends who used to teach there. For my subject, at least, it was/is pretty decent. No Oxford, though.*
* academically, speaking. It might be great from a student point of view.
67: One of his kids? Except that I thought his son went to Bristol?
And it has "5000 volumetric square feet of space", whatever that means.
Oh hey, should have refreshed. 71 to the house in 45.
11 made me laugh so that's a win.
This is, obvious statement warning, ever so vile. I was primed for rage anyway, between the extremely local (watching a DA be a callous bastard) and the Charlie Hebdo stuff. Rage rage ragey rage. Oh bleh and last night I finally read that New Yorker thing about the creepy family that sells Stradivaripodes (that's the universal complicated plural now right?) to people who jack off thinking about piles of money, so I just think humanity is fuckeder than usual this morning.
Pittsburgh has only two dimensions.
Let me retract 74.
Pittsburgh is so hilly, that even our measurement of area is three dimensional.
I'm trying to figure out if the place in 42 would be quite as awful without that furniture. But the furniture may be a natural extension of a design that looks pretty crappy (in a very contemporary, well-finished way).
76: All the rooms look so long and narrow. Not much to be done there.
The street view for 42 is a Rolex store. Funny.
(watching a DA be a callous bastard)
As in the top elected DA, or a minion?
On the OP: It would be a worthy location for shooting the J.G. Ballard High-Rise film that's in development.
71: Clearly, Pittsburgh realtors know their Grothendieck.
[£200K is] what a nice house in the area would cost, roughly.
I don't think that's quite right. $300k buys you quite a bit of house in any but the hottest neighborhoods. Frex, this house, for $270k, is in a lovely neighborhood, a couple blocks from regular bus service, a few blocks from a nice little neighborhood business district, 1 block from one of the city's 4 big parks. It's a little far from groceries for my tastes, but I'm spoiled on that front (
It really is beyond me why people do such dismal things to their kitchens.
I really can't parallel park well.
As in the top elected DA, or a minion?
A minion. Apparently it's just a thing here, he's known to be the worst kind of DA. Life outside the very kernel of the progressive bay area.
I could buy this place. It's on the wrong side of the river, but I'm not aware of that being a dangerous area.
There probably isn't a dead guy in the basement, if that's what you mean. It will probably go for four or five times that amount at auction.
Or I'm wrong and it is a dangerous area. I really don't go that way much.
The auction isn't for another week, so even if there is a dead guy surrounded by beetles, they'll probably have him gone by then.
Kid A thought about St Andrews. It is good for her subject (oudemia's) but a ridiculously awful journey (unless you have a helicopter) and then there's all the posh people to contend with.
... then there's all the posh people to contend with.
So on that basis she preferred Oxford?
Maybe I should recommend good old Lancaster U, which I attended for two terms. I was in Lonsdale College, which apparently had its digs taken over by Bowland and had to move to new buildings.
I never understood the word "damp" until I lived there.
90: Dormont is nice, and that's right next to a T stop. But the river issue is a big problem. Traditionally, Pittsburghers can't cross water, but we do make it up with our powers of immortality, mind control, and being able to turn into a cloud of bats.
Getting to work wouldn't be that bad, but it would probably add 20 minutes to my commute by transit (and much more than that if I had to drive). Non-work things that I usually drive to (e.g. Whole Foods, kid activities) would be the problem.
Pittsburghers can't cross water
Lies! I watched Perks of Being a Wallflower and now understand that you all routinely cross that one bridge and have moments of teenage transcendence to a glam rock soundtrack! (Or tunnel. Maybe it was a tunnel.)
The tunnel and bridge are connected.
102: In fact, I was assured by a proud Pittsburgher that Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city in the world. It doesn't, but regardless: bridges seem to be a feature there.
The particular bridge I cross most often has a second bridge underneath it to catch chunks of cement before they fall on the parkway.
Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city of the second class in Pennsylvania.
90 is in "Beechville", which isn't a place. A portmanteau of Beechview and Banksville, I suppose, but not an inspiring listing.
I've probably been in every one of Pittsburgh's 90 neighborhoods, but I'll confess there's only a half dozen I've ever considered living in. Probably another half dozen where I'd be tempted by a really sweet situation, but really, I'm in the most walkable part of the city* with mostly the best transit, so it would take a lot to turn my head.
*there are some others with nicer environs, but worse groceries, and no better overall amenities
Duck Hollow is great for cycling.
It doesn't
Really? Where are there more? I ask because, as far as I've been able to tell, it's a true factoid (it's a fairly new one, bandied about to facilitate the switch from Steel City to City of Bridges). I mean, it includes some pretty derisory bridges, but I haven't heard of anyplace with more.
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I'm on the verge of buying those tix to LA in mid-February. Please tell me that I can get from Palm Springs to LAX in less than 5 hours if I leave at 6 am on a Monday (that happens to be a Federal holiday, not that I expect decadent Southern Californians to care). On paper it's a 2 hour drive.
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109: Google search results -- 1st hit was PI but looking down through results I saw this --
Amsterdam is the city with the most bridges!! More than 1500
On paper it's a 2 hour drive.
Is the paper dated 1965?
The important thing here is the magnificent horribleness of the advertisement guy's facial hair. Has he no Jeeves to induce him to get rid of it?
His head hair is nice though. I always wanted hair that would slick straight back like that. I dunno, maybe the dramatic fight with his girlfriend is about his moustache. Maybe she's like "I too love our shelf of ceramic tchotchkes but I can bear your facial hair no more!" or something.
90 percent of people at st Andrew's, and indeed Oxford, are not really posh. And the remaining tenth shouldn't be enoughto put anyone off.
According to my Google search, Hamburg has 2300 bridges.
There are many reasons why Philadelphia is the greatest city in the history of the world, but probably the greatest is that the city is completely lacking in any sort of civic pride. The oldest bridge in the US is in Philly near where I grew up. I crossed over it every day to go to school. I found out it was the oldest bridge in the US from idly reading Wikipedia 20 years later. If that bridge was in Texas, they'd spend a week on it in every school in the state.
OK, thanks. Those are bigger cities, but the claim is absolute, and so.
FWIW, Hamburg is exactly 5X larger (by area), with 5.15 as many bridges. So it wins on that measure as well. I'll start correcting people.
The property ads in Celtic-Tiger-era Ireland were beyond parody.
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2010/08/31/belmayne-revisited-now-a-ghost-estate-but-then/
118: Why don't you tell people that "yunz" isn't a word while you're at it.
119: I thought you were exaggerating, but no.
110 - you'll be totally fine. Download the Waze App or use Google Maps with the same technology in the morning and it'll tell you just how long the drive will take when you want to leave.
110: Can you fly in/out of Ontario instead?
118: It's some consolation that Allegheny County beats Hamburg. And if you ignore the square km/miles conversion you can even claim they're the same size. And if you're even having this conversation with someone, one or the other of you is probably a few drinks in so that should be close enough.
119: Wow. If you Street View it, it isn't even that impressive. To my eye it's just a denser than average, more enclosed new Californian development.
St Andrew's has a really great Marxist historian. There may be more, but we had this one on a radio programme about Viking slavery. The only thing that bothered me about it was the lack of transport, and a suspicion that all the nice places to live in town have been bought by eurotrash. It's huge for minor European royalty.
I am considering buying a house four nasty, windswept, heavily trafficked miles from the railway station, but spacious and affordable and properly built. Dear Mineshaft, should I settle?
Königsberg has seven bridges.
Asilon, congrats to Kid A! Hooray!
I did study at St. Andrews though did not take a degree there; I'm not sure if I agree with ajay's statement. It felt more like 70% were normal and the rest were posh. But I might have been cataloguing the merely well-off with the posh.
I found the professors fantastic in my field and the coursework challenging if you did all the supplementary work and reading, but I wasn't overly impressed with my classmates, and I'm only of middling intellect myself.
Finally, I'm pretty sure a great deal of the CA private school interest in St. Andrews has everything to do with Kate & William, along with very active alumni/fundraising/recruitment groups.
I wonder if historians, even Marxist ones, who write about Viking slavery are accused of basically writing erotica. "Thorir gazed upon the bondswoman."
A family member was on the faculty at St Andrews for a while. He grew up in Kirkcaldy, and at one point one of the other faculty, a German, apparently asked where in Scotland he'd acquired his accent, as you didn't really hear it that often. This was in the 80s.
I think that St Andrews has more of the stupid posh (i.e Wills and Kate) now that Oxbridge has smartened up - that was supposedly part of the narrative. Plus, you know, the Home of Golf and all that.
122: Thanks. I'll try to run it the Monday before as a test.
Oh, hey, electronic calendars/alerts. Done.
Wow, that really is pushing the limits of the douchecanoe's performance.
Can you fly in/out of Ontario instead?
Funny, the (now-)CA person we're meeting in PS suggested the same, but there's a well-timed and basically cheap nonstop into LA that no place can beat (actually, Ontario's 1-stops are much pricier than LAX's, and no nonstops). I just wish it was leaving a touch later.
There's an Ontario in California? That's confusing.
133 to 132. Not really--to the OP.
BTW, the ticket price decline over the past ~2 months has been thrilling. $818 apiece when first we looked*, down to $542. Still plenty of seats left, so I'll check daily from here on out.
*which was steep, but we could have lived with; in almost 11 years as parents, the only kid-free trips we've ever taken were to TX while I was working on H-G's house. This one is pure recreation (depending how you categorize a 100 mile bike ride).
135: They have a Pittsburg too. I keep double-checking to make sure I buy the right plane ticket.
Even more confusing, they have an Oakland and apparently it is even bigger than the regular Oakland.
138: Fortunately, the CA Pittsburg doesn't have its own airport, so you should be safe.
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Anyone interested in the apparent paradox I posted about in the Friday puzzler thread?
The apparently paradoxical nature of this problem is that the stranger can make a statement that every resident not only already knows is true, but knows that every other resident already knows it to be true, so that there is no apparent reason for anyone to expect anyone else's behavior to change as a result of the statement. And yet several days later the statement leads to several residents realizing the color of their own dots and committing suicide.
I think I have a decent explanation of how the apparent paradox gets resolved, but I'll hold off for a bit to give others a crack at it.
|>
135: You've never had the pleasure of visiting UC Riverside?
141: Having done this sort of problem before (there's a well-stated one on Terry Tao's blog with islanders and eye color): everyone knows it, and everyone knows everyone knows it, but not everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows it (possibly with N levels of meta). Until that out-of-town jagoff shows up.
as far as I've been able to tell, it's a true factoid (it's a fairly new one, bandied about to facilitate the switch from Steel City to City of Bridges).
Not that new. IIRC I heard it when I first went to Pittsburgh 25 years ago.
You couldn't have believed it. Otherwise, why would you have left?
This thread just gave me a good idea for a discussion topic.
What is the city, in the world, with the best combination of: [relatively] low housing costs+cultural sophistication and urbanity+good, available jobs for professionals?
In the US, I say Chicago or maybe Minneapolis. Not the cheapest, but incredible sophistication plus jobs plus semi-reasonable housing costs. Obviously Detroit or Binghamton or wherever may have even lower costs but the combined score is going to be lower than Chicago or Minneapolis.
For the world, I have no real idea. Limiting it to Europe, maybe it's ... Berlin? For the whole world ... Santiago, Chile?
The only person I know who lives in Berlin seems really grumpy about it.
Maybe Sao Paolo wins worldwide.
+u -o sorry Portuguese speakers.
Pittsburgh has to rank pretty high on that scale. And the Twin Cities should certainly be higher than Chicago, which has become a lot more expensive in the past two decades -- not that the Twin Cities haven't -- and isn't especially culturally interesting. Hmm, Austin still has a lot of relatively affordable places to live, and it's a great employment market, not to mention chock full of cultural amenities. Toronto is another great place to live -- certainly more cosmopolitan than any city, except New York and LA, in the United States -- and there are a bunch of neighborhoods that would be considered cheap by an urbanite in the US. Montreal, too, though the employment situation is pretty lousy there.
Sao Paulo's become much more expensive during the Brazil bubble, and it's not the greatest labor market.
The Toronto airport is so horrendous that Toronto loses points for it.
110: fewer than 5 hours, no question. Federal holiday should help a little, actually, although it would help more if you had to go through downtown where there are lots of public agencies.
Right now Google Maps estimates 3 hours. That sounds about right to me.
I covet your kitchen. Sorry, what were you saying about airports?
Pittsburgh's airport is nice, except the location. It's almost in Moon.
154 to 152, though I bet k-sky has a nice kitchen.
155: It's technically Moon Township, right? That's even cuter than just plain Moon.
I have a terrible kitchen and Los Angeles has a terrible airport.
Probably if you just crunched numbers Houston would be the number one pick in the US, but that seems to totally miss the urbanity/sophistication point of the exercise (and I like Houston).
Maybe Nashville? Or is that not a city?
I covet your kitchen.
Come hang out in it!
Well, maybe not this week as I still have Death Plague II: The Plague that Arrived Just as I Was Getting Over that Other Plague
It looks like Nashville has a population of ~650k. I think that's a city, but I live in a teeny, tiny town, so I'm not to be trusted.
161: I definitely will, but probably not til the thaw comes in June or whenever.
160: I know it has a Parthenon and all, but I am not convinced at all.
The one in Athens doesn't even have a fucking roof.
The one in Rome has a roof, but it's round.
Oh, the obvious answer is Denver, the United States's most underrated city: great labor market, totally reasonable housing costs, endless outdoor recreation, very good cultural amenities, etc. If you can stand the dry air, move there now.
Also, 300+ days of sunshine/year. Not as many bridges as Pittsburgh, though.
I haven't really hung out in Denver, and when I was there I magically failed to find any of the cultural amenities, but I did find it kind of... agoraphobia-inducing? I felt for some reason VERY EXTRA AWARE of how far I was from other, non-Denver stuff.
That's not a criticism of Denver, more just me wondering if anyone else has the same feeling.
It's not horribly far from the Nebraska panhandle.
This site seems like it would be helpful, if you rank for "local purchasing power index" (which shows relative purchasing power for an average wage in the city) and then do a gut check of ranking the cities aesthetically for sophistication. But it produces weird results, like Bern, Switzerland being a total value spot (???), Ann Arbor being the best place in the world, and LA being affordable for its residents (based on average wage) and more so than Chicago.
171: the wide open spaces of the Great Plains are pretty freaky for first-timers, yes. But you get used to it. And the mountains have lovely forests of pine and aspen. Also, 300+ days of sunshine/year!
It also suggests that it's a good idea to move to Jyvaskyla, Finland, which seems wrong because it would just be one long ongoing struggle to remember how to spell your address.
Jyvasklya totally does not look like that, liar.
176.last is faulty reasoning. You don't need to remember your own address. People send you little stickers with your address by way of passive-aggressive fund raising.
I really liked Denver when I lived there. Wonder what it's like now, 25 years later.
I've never been in at least half the major cities of this continent, probably more. No aversion, just nothing ever took me there.
Noes: Mexico, LA, SD, Denver, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Dallas, Houston, Charleston, Charlotte, Memphis, Baltimore, Louisville. Bunches of others. Only very briefly, airport or bus ride, in Miami, Nashville, numerous others. Not a traveler, I guess.
Graz, Austria, also looks pretty sweet, maybe even better than Jyvaskyla, Finland. Graz is a semi-legit city and rent looks cheapish with salaries high.
I'd rather live in Klagenfurt. What a great name to say!
I didn't go to Moon Township. I went much further.
What're we talking about with urbanity/sophistication? I'd think Houston would be basically on par with Minneapolis.
Preemptively to Natilo: shove it.
The site in 174 does seem off, but it's indexed to the cost of living in New York city vs. average wage in NYC, with that set at 100 and the numbers above that the percent "more" of stuff you can buy with an average wage.
So it says that people in Ann Arbor (who earn the average wage there) can buy 90% more stuff (housing, goods, services, whatever) than average wage-earners in NYC can; average wage earners in Bern, Switzerland (again, ?) can buy about 80% more stuff, Dallas or Atlanta about 60% more, and average wage-earners in LA can buy about 40% more stuff. There still seems something wrong about these numbers but if you blindly trust their numbers we should move to Bern or Atlanta or Dallas or Jyvaskyla or Graz or Red Hat, Canada.
I think what's wrong with the numbers is that "stuff" in a city includes things without a directly measurably value.
Like not being in Dallas or Red Hat.
Ann Arbor's pretty nice though, though not particularly sophisticated, and I like Atlanta. I'll give you Dallas and Red Hat. Bern and Graz and Jyvaskyla seem pretty OK.
I think I'd have liked Ann Arbor. I just got to Ohio State first. Anyway, never been.
142: no. I don't think they had any faculty in my field until about a year ago.
We're always close to the sky and slightly farther from space.
I feel like Chicago isn't being argued for strongly enough. Its only problem is it's a little too spread out.
Santiago is a nice place, but the problem is that its at the edge of the earth. Its a seven hour flight to Panama. I could do Bern.
195: ... he writes, from a taxi in interminable transit from O'Hare to Hyde Park.
195: and it has the worst weather ever: cold and windy as fuck winters, hot and humid as fuck summers. Also, it's impossible to get out of town. It takes forever, and the traffic is terrible. And then, once you do leave town, you're nowhere. Plus, housing is expensive if you want to live somewhere with decent public schools -- this may be true everywhere, I guess, except State College, PA -- and the people suck. Other than that, it's awesome!
Jyvaskyla probably has good public schools, especially for a town pronounced "Jive Ass Kyla."
169: A few years ago I got the impression that Denver was eminently livable, based mostly on walking around town and going to a restaurant with the kind of appealing vibe that made me think there was urbanity thereabouts. (Watch your back, Richard Florida, I'm comin for ya.) Also spending an hour and change inside the Tattered Cover.
Over Christmas I got the impression that Denver is a great place to live when my stepbrother-in-law's parents are out of town and my family can stay in their toy-stocked basement in Aurora. They have one of those giant FAO Schwartz Pianos you can dance on! And they live near a good sledding hill.
A problem with Denver is that they are way too close to New Mexico to have no understanding of green chile.
Seriously, Jyvaskyla, Finland looks like my paradise.
If you switch your pseudo to M/kko Kot/mäk/, I will find you and beat you to death with corn.
Really, T"R"O? Melodic doom/death metal? Kinda weak stuff.
When I die/I may not go to heaven/'cause I don't know if they let Halfords in/If they don't/just let me go to Finland/'cause Jyvaskyla's as close as I've hypothetically been
I keep telling you people, get up here while the getting is good. Same mountain access as Denver, same amount of sun, closer to Yellowstone and the other amazing parks, and like ten points lower on the CPI scale.
My sister (the one with batgirl) and her husband saw the light. He's a UX designer and a company up here just offered him around double what he's making in LA and they'll be shopping for houses at like a sixth of the price per square foot.
A problem with Denver is that they are way too close to New Mexico to have no understanding of green chile.
No place outside of New Mexico has any understanding of green chile. And Denver isn't particularly close to NM anyway.
But I agree that Denver probably does rank high by TRO's criteria. I'll also put in a plug for Philadelphia, which has remarkably low housing costs for a city of its size and urbanity.
Toronto is another great place to live -- certainly more cosmopolitan than any city, except New York and LA, in the United States -- and there are a bunch of neighborhoods that would be considered cheap by an urbanite in the US.
My Canada-inhabiting friends, a mix of Canadians and Americans, generally seem to hate Toronto. But some of the complaints sound to my US-inhabiting ears the way Canadian complaints about health insurance sound. Lots of people think Toronto's public transit is terrible, for instance. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it can't be worse than you get in a lot of American cities.
Also, what puts Jyvaskyla above, say Oulu or Turku? Helsinki's pretty nice too, but maybe too costly.
Even though I don't shop at them nearly as often as I should, past experience leads me to believe that I wouldn't want to live long term somewhere that didn't have a legitimate Chinese/Asian supermarket. This probably eliminates the Finnish cities.
Also, what puts Jyvaskyla above, say Oulu or Turku?
TRO and whatever weird website he's looking at, apparently.
That site ranks San Jose pretty high on the purchasing power index. Which probably reflects a high "average" wage, but makes me wonder what they mean by "average".
Chicago isn't being argued for strongly enough
It will someday offer visitors the chance to see both the Obama presidential library and the George Lucas museum?
||
I'm a bit drunk and decided to watch Conan The Barbarian. I'm like 40 minutes in and Conan/Schwarzenegger has already pulled out of a girl he's fucking to throw her in a fire and punched out a camel. This movie is even better than I remember.
|>
Now that I've actually looked at the site in 174, I see that Anchorage ranks weirdly high on purchasing power, I guess because wages are so high (it sure as hell isn't cheap). I would not nominate it as a strong contender by TRO's criteria overall.
From their methodology info:
To collect data Numbeo relies on user inputs and manually collected data from authoritative sources (websites of supermarkets, taxi company websites, governmental institutions, newspaper articles, other surveys, etc.)
||
Now Conan lured a creepy gay priest into the sagebrush to knock him out and take his outfit. Everyone should go re watch this movie.
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143: After reflection, I think that's probably right, which opens the door to the possibility that the stranger's statement does cause behavior to change. However, I think my own explanation (which I just posted to the other thread) is clearer about why, specifically, the stranger's statement causes the deductions to change.
The one in Rome has a roof, but it's round.
That's a Pantheon. Pantheons: Rome and Paris; Parthenons: Athens and Nashville. I think the Pantheons win by a whisker.
Christ, why can't anyone in this thread spell Jyväskylä? I suppose that a heavy metal musician would think that diaereses are purely decorative, but, fuck.
And it's pronounced You vesk oo lay in American, not Jive ass cooler.
But it produces weird results, like Bern, Switzerland being a total value spot (???)
Why is that weird? People in Bern on average earn quite a lot, the Swiss Franc is ridiculously strong (the central bank has had to intervene constantly over the last three years to stop it appreciating any further), and things in Bern, especially housing, don't cost all that much by Swiss standards.
And of course, given the methodology, it's not saying "you would be able to live affordably there". It's saying the people who do live there (and are paid in local currency for the prevailing job market) can afford more stuff there than people paid in local currency for the prevailing job market in other places.
Although I haven't lived there for 15 years, or so, I still think Glasgow is probably the nicest UK city to live in, if you don't mind rain. It's affordable, you are close to real countryside, there's a good arts and music scene, and the people aren't wankers.
227. I would say the same about Sheffield, which actually includes a bit of the Peak District National Park within the city limits. Excellent theatre and music scene. A bit short on good restaurants, although Marco Pierre White has recently opened a joint I haven't tried yet.
Another nauseating rich wankers' homes ad
Love the comment: "Was this made by Chris Morris for the new series of Brass Eye?"
No, I'm not queuing up for a table. Most of the best places to eat are out of town. The ones in town are OK, just not wildly exciting.
I really should be happier about my commute. Today it took me thirty minutes from front door to desk and cost $4, including the omelette I stopped for and the time it took to make it.
150: Toronto is cheap? It seems really expensive to me, comparable to New York and very reliant on cars for an urban area. I haven't spent a of time there, and my future-in-laws only say bad things, because they hate traffic and are anti-urban.
152: City Center is my favorite airport ever!
Montreal is better and more affordable, but there are no jobs, as Wafer said.
218: Conan is one of the less well recognized cinematic masterpieces. Also if you buy the special edition DVD you will find this utterly amazing clip where Arnold Schwarzenegger fails to get away from the dogs chasing him. Before youtube that clip alone was worth the price of owning the DVD.
Denver is pretty cool, but my skin would dry out. I love visiting to ski. Yay in 2 weeks!
I'd miss the ocean. A big lake would be tolerable. Rivers aren't quite the same.
234: Toronto, like Chicago, is huge and has lots and lots and lots of neighborhoods that are, by major metropolitan area standards, very inexpensive. On the other hand, there's no mortgage deduction, so it's more expensive than it seems. On the third hand, Canadians basically don't pay -- other than with taxes -- for higher education or health care. It's a mystery wrapped in riddle.
But yes, if you don't like cities, Toronto won't much appeal to you. And the traffic is bad, though nowhere near as bad as NYC, Chicago, or LA.
212: I'm told people in Toronto think that no other place is worth living in, and everyone else hates Toronto.
Toronto is about the same distance from me as Philly, but I've not been to Toronto. I don't have a passport, so I suppose I can't go.
239: If you listen to Canadians talk, they're always complaining about jobs without benefits. I always laugh.
Medical School is unregulated and expensive, so they have the same trouble getting primary care doctors in a lot of places.
my skin would dry out
This is a real thing, for sure. The air is also quite dirty, because of inversions. That said, there are relatively few Mormons living there overall -- in fact, the fundamentalists of various stripes are thoughtful enough to congregate in The Springs, which is convenient, as one can and should avoid the area entirely (except to hike) -- and the state isn't controlled by religious fanatics, so gswift should just stop with the "SLC is better than Denver" nonsense. That's a lie, straight up, though SLC is also a great place to live (albeit with even worse air than Denver, and, as previously noted, cult members in control of the state apparatus -- but hey, being a cop is pretty much like being in a cult, so I'm sure gswift fits right in).
243: Denver is a very Democratic place to be sure, and I agree that Colorado Springs should be avoided.
Aurora is absolutely horrifying sprawl.
There are some annoying state regulations in Colorado that thwart progressive local initiatives. My uncle was active in county government in Telluride before it turned into a glitzy place, and they developed affordable housing, where you buy the property, but there are restrictions on how much it can appreciate.
After they did it, the State outlawed the practice.
In addition to weather, we should also consider "will have water in 20 years," which is the main reason we stayed in Chicago and didn't move to Colorado, which I prefer in almost every way. Of course, my friends in Colorado think I sound like an insane prepper when I say that.
I think you're probably right and they're probably wrong. But I also think that Denver has pretty great water prospects, at least compared to the rest of the Front Range cities. Moreover, it seems like trying to game out environmental catastrophes is probably a mistake, though you won't ever see me moving to the Desert Southwest (sorry, teo).
We had an insane prepper run for mayor. He came in second, despite having moved to Israel before the election.
62.2 is the answer
When I was in highschool, it was very popular for boys--generally not girls for mysterious reasons--to go there for a year before college, if there college admissions results had been less than stellar.
first "there" should have been "St. Andrews"
Second "there" was obviously "their". I am so embarrassed that I made that mistake. Shudder.
My only recent Denver experience was basically driving past Aurora. So I came away with a perhaps misguided impression of Denver as a ticky-tacky shithole.
I'm surprised Austria doesn't do better on this list than it does. It puts Vienna just a hair about NYC for general affordability, which seems insane (especially when it puts it at 33 to NYC's 100 for rental costs, and 55 on consumer prices + rent). I wonder if maybe it's an artifact of how they're getting the income numbers, because Austrian "monthly" salaries are really 1/14th of annual salaries, not 1/12th.
That said, Vienna certainly doesn't get 300 days of sunshine a year.
Anyway, Denver better not fuck with the Platte. Some of us need that. Or, more precisely, have relatives who need the water.
This seems like scientific spitballing on the water issue, but it's pretty interesting. Chicago doesn't fare well, just because of how many people are sharing the available water.
Moreover, it seems like trying to game out environmental catastrophes is probably a mistake
No kidding. I bought a place in New England, thinking it would turn into the new Mid-Atlantic. Instead, the way the jet stream is shifting, its the one part of the world that seems to be getting colder.
Chicago doesn't fare well, just because of how many people are sharing the available water.
Available water? Did they not notice the ginormous freshwater lake out in the front yard?
When I was a kid, my siblings and I found about $30 floating in that lake. I assume there's a dead guy in there whose wallet the bills came from.
the ginormous freshwater lake
Also my thought when deciding to live here, but their point is that lots and lots of people get their water from that source, so it's not a lot of available water per person. Duluth, now, smaller city, bigger lake: you're all set.
because Austrian "monthly" salaries are really 1/14th of annual salaries, not 1/12th.
Austrians... bodybuilders... it all kind of makes sense.
I'm still thinking about taking up backpacking. I'm reading these ultralight backpacking sites for information, but I'm a little put-off by how much of a tool you look like holding "trekking poles." I don't think they're required, but it seems to be a thing.
If you are worried about how you look, you are not ready for the way of the backpack.
260: Hiking poles are in no way required. A quarter staff, on the other hand, is very handy both as a walking aid and for fighting bears.
260: I got them for Christmas from my wife. They do seem useful (of course I have done a boatload of hiking/backpacking without them but expect I will increasingly appreciate them in my pre-* and post-diabetic doatage). They are becoming ubiquitous. In my experience the biggest tool is the person who worries about looking like a tool when hiking or whatever.
*Doc appt tomorrow where will have to discuss how I have failed yet again to manage a weight control program through an entire year. Did pretty well through late October, and since then its been fucked. I guess this should have been in the obesity thread.
Yes, I would usually look for (or very occasionally remember to bring a hiking stick). The poles stab well.
264: You are incorrect. The person with the poles is the bigger tool.
I'm reading these ultralight backpacking sites for information,
You don't have to print off the whole site, you know.
No, the person who worries about how they look while backpacking/hiking is almost certainly a mannered dandy fuckhead whose worries about their appearance almost certainly manifest in a myriad of other societally harmful ways.
The definition of "tool" may be where the disagreement lies.
If you mean the nose hair, I started trimming that on request of others.
I hate equipment. And preparation. And planning of any sort. Ironically, I like hiking, but that limits me to hikes of a couple of hours.
269: Some would say a computer qualifies, but those are difficult to charge in the backcountry.
I was also in Denver over Christmas, and now plan to pay close attention to any job openings in the area.
If I have your field right, I didn't think there were jobs.
I kind of daydream about being the sort of person who hikes/backpacks --- I like walking long distances -- but I've kind of knocked it off the list of things that I'm ever going to get around to making a part of my life.
I already have a backpack. It's the one I used going around Europe in 1992. It seems to have held up, except in terms of fashion.
The one I used going around Europe in 1989 had the hip-belt-thing tear off about ten years ago. You clearly shopped better than I did.
275: I think that English rambling/ walking sounds like fun.
Yes, definitely. A vacation structured as walking all day from one bed and breakfast to another, and not mostly scrambling damply through wilderness, sounds awesome. That kind of thing seems logistically impossible here, and I don't actually know if my sense of the UK version is accurate, but it does sound great.
I don't use poles myself but a lot of people like them, especially people with creàky knees. You certainly don't need them for short and moderate hikes. If you are going to do many days on a trail, maybe.
279: A friend of mine in his early 70's recommended this tour group. He said that it was very economical.
Try this, or a bit of it. You can stay at ours for a night or two before you start.
Yes, definitely. A vacation structured as walking all day from one bed and breakfast to another, and not mostly scrambling damply through wilderness, sounds awesome. That kind of thing seems logistically impossible here, and I don't actually know if my sense of the UK version is accurate, but it does sound great.
There must be some national park trails where you can do that sort of thing. Maybe not between B&B, but between campsites and/or lodges.
By which I meant US national parks.
He'd been to the Isle Of Wight and gave me that link. Poking around the site they have a lot of options throughout Europe and not just walking, but cycling too.
285: That website has tours in North America. (Okay, now I will stop sounding like a shill for a company in which I have no financial interest.)
284,85 -- I like the hike to Granite Park Chalet. I've never stayed there, but maybe some out of town guest will talk me into a trip . . .
We met some Americans in Girona once who were cycling from Toulouse I think) to Malaga - a hell of a long way, but there were vans to carry all their stuff and they could ride if they wanted to miss a day. They were having the time of their lives.
On a conference call that will not end. Trying to decide if I can safely slip out or if I should pee out the window.
What's the mountain laurel situation? If there's one within range, I say go for it.
If by "mountain laurel" you mean "small apartment building", I'm set.
288: On the subject of out-of-town visitors, what's the skiing like for an advanced beginner--comfortable on greens, working on blues--groomed runs only, no bumps?
Also, I need trees. I freak out if it's not wide, and there's a cliff on my side.
293 -- You'd love Big Mountain. Much lower altitude than Colo, and way shorter lines. The trade-off in that you'll miss the pleasure of all that traffic from the airport in Denver to the skiing.
294: I get to see my favorite relatives, when I go to Colorado and have a free place to stay. The Rocky Mountain Super Pass Plus is cheap.
253 doesn't pass the smell test. Denver is less vulnerable than Raleigh, NC? Chicago is more vulnerable than Phoenix? Miami is one of the very most vulnerable cities in the US? Results like these are supposed to make you go back and figure out what went wrong with your methodology.
Miami is one of the very most vulnerable cities in the US?
I don't understand what is surprising about this.
Of course, I'd avoid Miami for other water-related reasons, anyway.
I was going to show my 10 & 12 yo nephews Conan the Barbarian but was disappointed that it wasn't on Netflix. No Road Warrior too.
297: I'm not saying Miami necessarily has perfect security of water availability, but it's absurd to think it should be anywhere close to the very bottom of the list. And Las Vegas ranks relatively highly (supposedly lower risk than Minneapolis, MN or Madison, WI)? This just doesn't even seem facially plausible.
Cleveland is also near the bottom of the list.
I think Miami would sit fairly low mostly because of the increasing problems with salt water contaminating their available freshwater supplies. (It's not the central point of this article from a while ago but it's pretty clear that that's going to be an issue relatively quickly.)
Miami is one of the very most vulnerable cities in the US?
As I understand it, one problem with Miami's water is that it is increasingly full of salt.
Now I'll be daydreaming about walking tour vacations. I wonder if I have any shot at all of talking Buck and the kids into anything of the kind.
I would be willing to buy the Miami point if the rest of the list made any sense at all, but since it doesn't, I'm not inclined to give much credence to that somewhat surprising result. Again my surprise was not that it is considered at risk, but that it was considered so highly at risk to be second only to San Antonio.
In the paper they call out Miami as a special case. (And Denver seems to be the city that got the biggest "boost" from their method compared to standard runoff models.
In contrast, only one urban area, Miami, FL, trended in the opposite
direction. Miami is considered to be at low risk of water
scarcity using the runoff-based method, but at high risk when
hydraulic components are included. This unique case reflects
the importance of storage--while Miami experiences high
local runoff and recharge, the accessible aquifer storage volume
is small relative to the urban demand. This source is able
to sustain the needs of Miami due to rapid aquifer recharge;
however, the small storage volume suggests that there is little
room for growth or fluctuations in supplies without potential
environmental repercussions.
No Road Warrior too.
Check again; I think it may be one of the Jan 1st additions.
The only city larger than Pittsburgh that does better for water is St. Louis (which I assume does well because you can simply drink the air 5 months of the year).
Based on the experience(s) of my Austrian relatives, I don't think housing is remotely affordable, largely for reasons that Yglesias is always complaining about in the US.
I pretty much agree with urple about the study, but I haven't looked at the paper itself. Maybe there's a way to make sense of Phoenix over Chicago. Regardless, it's worth thinking about the massive water needs of a place like Chicago in relation to what feels like, but isn't, an infinite source of freshwater on its doorstep.
All I'm saying is if Chicago runs out of water, we're all fucked.
Lake Michigan is very shallow for its surface area, and it's not the shallowest. AIMHWHB, the main channel where the ships go is only about 500 feet on average, which means that the ship you can see from a Chicago high rise or office building, while it may look like En Barque sur L'Ocean, would if you stood it on end on the bottom stick about half way out of the water. A puddle really. Spill water on your kitchen floor, in the shape of Lake Michigan and the depth of your spill, to scale, would be deeper.
what feels like, but isn't, an infinite source of freshwater on its doorstep.
Remember, though, that there are four more Great Lakes right there for the taking should it be necessary. I'm sure the Chicagoland Militia could overpower the other cities making claims.
I was considering--in an idle dreamer, not a crazy prepper, way--the coming battle between Illinois and the combined forces of Minnesota/Wisconsin for control of Lake Superior. Those Northerners are a hardy peoples, but we have more people, less respect for rules, and a greater propensity for violence.
You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you will join us
As we grind the Michiganders beneath our hob-nailed boots and plunder Zingerman's
Oh, and are we so sure Denver counts as affordable (in the city)? My sister bought there in '99 and then again in '04, and there was significant appreciation from one to the other. Boulder is a different market, obvs., but is insanely not-affordable.
I like Denver well enough, but wouldn't live there unless the alternatives were pretty awful. I don't ski, I don't mind sub-Miami levels of humidity, and I find the city to feel too spread out/sprawly. ISTM that the walkable bits are a few pockets, not nearly the norm.
307. Too late for showing to the nephews. They're back in Florida now. We watched the decidedly inferior Death Race 2000 instead which had way more boobies than I remember being in it than when they showed it on local NYC area TV in the 80s.
The UP has the highest concentration of Finnish Americans, close to Alaska's. Last time a giant, ruthless country tried to roll over a proportionate number of Finns, it didn't turn out well for them.
I think that war would last about as long as it took WI to say "You know, we'll need resources if you invade us and these beer factories don't have to remain in operation."
317 That made me laugh. Thanks. They certainly think so.
Denver counts as affordable
Fair point. I just looked again, and prices are significantly up from when were house-hunting there a few years ago. Especially per square foot, inside the city proper isn't really "cheap" by most measures. And I think you're right that once you get outside the various something-something Park neighborhoods in the city itself, it's sprawly and not charming. Boulder is fabulous, if you don't mind the very rich hippie-dippie vibe, but the prices are almost Bay Area nutso.
"a hardy peoples"?
They are not one people: they are Norwegian and Swedish and German and many other things, but they are a unit--a unit united in keeping us from the water that is rightfully ours. A hardy, intransigent, death-deserving peoples.
Not that I desire to have them killed--they'll be needed to clear the Hiawatha National Forest and dig the trench that will connect Lake Superior to Lake Michigan.
Their hardiness should help with that.
From each according to his abilities, as we say in Illinois.
"At this very moment the liberal agenda conspires to undermine God's Word and is drafting law to allow homosexuals to adopt children," the leaflet warns, urging voters to contact their representatives.
I think my personal fun ranking is
1. sodomy
2. undermining God's word
3. adopting children
but I'm admittedly being pretty selfish and could see any other version working too.
the trench that will connect Lake Superior to Lake Michigan
And the St. Mary's River in Sault Ste. Marie is what, exactly?
Especially if it's a valuable thing they need.
St. Mary's River in Sault Ste. Marie is what, exactly?
1) Not big enough.
2) Not on Lake Michigan.
Maybe the Chicago River could be re-reversed and we could start stealing water from the Mississippi.
Re-reversal has been seriously proposed. Were the Chicago River to flow into the Lake, there would be some increase in lake water. But the main reason would be to isolate the St. Lawrence system from the Mississippi system. No worries about the poop: the Sanitary Canal can be linked to the Des Plaines fairly easily. Sludge is actually carried underneath McCormick Blvd in a pipe from the treat plant at Howard Street now.
Payback to Milwaukee for putting their poop in the lake.
you won't ever see me moving to the Desert Southwest (sorry, teo)
No problem; more water for me! (Well, not me personally right now, but people like me.)
Actually, yes, me personally right now, but I'm leaving in a few hours.
Just be sure to pee before you go.
people like me
If the Jews take Albuquerque's water, they're going to deserve what they get.
and the state isn't controlled by religious fanatics, so gswift should just stop with the "SLC is better than Denver" nonsense. That's a lie, straight up
You're on crack. Maybe if money is no object, but few of us are in that class. I guess it's going to depend on what metrics you're looking at but a lot of people come out to these areas specifically for the outdoor scene and on that front everything Denver does, we do better at a fraction of the cost and time. No contest. Denver almost certainly has a bigger and better nightlife but at least for me that sure isn't going to override other considerations. And is anyone's state legislature not under the control of crazy people these days? Ours are just a particular flavor but the state is better run than a lot of others and the unemployment here is extremely low.
No, see, VW said he wasn't going to move here.
2) Not on Lake Michigan.
Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are the same lake, just one with a very narrow part in the middle.
Amateur-level uninformed gaming out of water supply issues 20 years in the future in order to make location decisions right now seems ... nuts, like some kind of vaguely left-leaning version of being a gold-hoarding Glen Beck fan. I'm sure it makes sense for you, though! Chicago is so unambiguously great, I don't get the Wafe's hatred. Personally prefer it to NYC.
From CCarp's descriptions Montana sounds pretty good.
346: It depends. Large parts of the Southwest quite possible totally fucked and but it's definitely not as obvious what the outlook is in CA and the Rockies.
Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are the same lake
I was actually aware of this, and waiting for someone to mention it, so that I could know who to hate the most.
As with all of my opinions, my hatred of Chicago is based on proprietary algorithms, which are based on science.
A hardy, intransigent, death-deserving peoples.
And resilient as fuck. At the exact same time the whining wussies of Chicago were going down in history for their little conflagration, at least 5 times as many were killed up along the Michigan/Wisconsin line and took it stoically.
Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are the same lake, just one with a very narrow partlarge peninsula in the middle.
348: the whole urban West -- non-Pacific Northwest division -- is fucked, water-wise. It's just a question of when, exactly, the ravening hordes will descend. That said, I think, other than maybe the Desert Southwest, the timescales are outside of our lifetimes, by which time there may be technological fixes for the water issue and/or other environmental catastrophes will have done in the species, so whatevs.
351: Ogged hated me the most first, bounder.
355: The species being doomed is highly overrated and continuing mentions of the same should be taken as a sign of advanced syphilis. Billions of individuals of the species are at risk as are significant parts of the assocaited ecosystem, but some will survive to disrupt again I have no doubt.
20 years in the future in order to make location decisions right now seems ... nuts
It might be! But some informed people certainly seem worried about water and drought in the West, so it seems worth considering.
355 -- it depends so much on where specifically you are and what (a) the specific existing infrastructure is and (b) what the costs of moving new water in will be, even putting aside the difficulty of specific climate predictions, that I think it's a fool's game for all but pretty extreme cases. Don't think of moving to a place that is (a) poor (b) full of vacation homes that people will up and leave and (c) relies largely on a local groundwater aquifer and hasn't built up other infrastructure. But we're not talking about any of that here, we're talking about moving to actual major cities, and for that decision unless you are really *specifically* knowledgeable basing your decision on a vague sense of possible water shortage on a 20-30 year time horizon is pretty nuts.
Denver is great. Most of the people I know there are petroleum engineers living in the absolute worst of the sprawly suburbs, though.
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes
Further to 359, among the actual for-real "don'ts" for "where should I live in 20 years" should also be moving to a place in the West where the economy is predominantly based on water-intensive agriculture. Don't do that. But that's not Denver, and I don't think most of us are looking to relocate to El Centro by choice.
the whole urban West -- non-Pacific Northwest division -- is fucked, water-wise.
That's not apparent at all. The Sierras and Southwest might be undergoing a drought currently, but those conditions have not translated to the entire West. Check out the snowpack levels. And it played that way last winter as well. CA and down south got screwed but we were close to average and loads of the Rockies areas were way above average.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/basinswe.html
I like the argument in 343.last: our crazies are more efficient administrators than your crazies. Fair enough.
People in Montana have been fighting over water for well more than a century. I've enjoyed the cases I've had at the Water Court: move here, hire me!
We do a lot more cultural stuff here than we did in DC, because it's just so convenient.
The trick, though, is to find a way to entice money that is currently out of state to come to our pockets.
347 -- Big Mountain is great, and the views of Glacier from the top (from which you can get down on blues) is spectacular. We're going to meet family at Big Sky in a couple of weeks. I don't know that mountain as well, and it's way more resort-y than our usual spot, but I think there's a lot of low blue skiing there as well.
363: Phoenix, though, is clearly a disaster water-wise--unless they want to be more Tucson-like.
The make the not-trains run on time.
367: Even a melting clock is right twice a day.
The make the not-trains run on time.
Probably more that here then people think.
Pittsburgh light rail: 26.2 miles of rail and a daily ridership of 29,100.
SLC light rail: 44.8 miles of rail and a daily ridership of 68,100.
I hesitate to concede anything to the gswift SLC booster club, but a relative who moved there from Ann Arbor absolutely loves it.
Given that ridership should scale roughly like miles squared, SLC seems relatively enthusiastic but perhaps unfocussed.
We don't have real trains. They're more street cars that took on airs.
Also, we have way, way more bus riders.
I really like SLC. It's just not as nice as Denver. So says my algorithm.
According to this and this we have more bus ridership than UTA has total ridership. But yes, our light rail network is very pathetic and only really serves one side of town. (And an easy, free way to get to the stadiums from Dawntawn...that only cost half a billion.)
To give you an idea of exactly how pathetic it is, the wiki page for the Port Authority breaks out all ridership by type. Light-rail is only about five times incline ridership, and that's just a tourist attraction that carries very few people and only goes to one neighborhood.
Seriously, gswift, SLC is totally great. And it's definitely more affordable than Denver, particularly if you want to live in a nice, urban neighborhood. But it's nowhere near as culturally interesting -- though I'll grant you that that its outdoor amenities are in some ways just as nice or maybe nicer -- and though you might like your efficient government, made up of hyper-efficient cult-members, those fuckers are super alienating to normal people (read: Jews).
normal people (read: Jews)
Wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
Having twice as much light rail as Pittsburgh is still practically the least light rail you can possibly have.
380: Still way more than, say, Anchorage or Albuquerque, though.
Anyway, I happen to be flying over Utah right now. The mountains look nice.
I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here.
I actually just saw that movie for the first time on this vacation. It's a good movie, although I still think Woody Allen is a creep.
Well, then you've covered your bases.
But it's nowhere near as culturally interesting
Yeah, if you're looking to have a real art scene and such that's definitely lacking here. I'm not much of a gallery goer though so I don't notice that void. The symphony is good but I've only been a couple times.
those fuckers are super alienating to normal people (read: Jews).
You're just bitter I'm going to baptize you after you die and that a Dershowitz is being outed as a lover of underage poon.
I'm starting to really envy people who can decide to live where they want to. The thought that someone can just decide they like Salt Lake City and, like, move there, without having to convince a bunch of assholes that they and their significant other are the two best people anywhere at what they do.... It just sounds so nice.
387: you get your summers off. Or "off," at least. Either way, spend that time wherever you want. Really, here's some free advice from one of your limping elders: maximize the upsides of our line of work, or the downsides will kill you, because the demands on your time will only increase as you get deeper into your career.
and that a Dershowitz is being outed as a lover of underage poon
Until now, my Schadenfreude had obscured my "bad for the Jews" reflex.
I was just following my reflexes.
Dershowitz has been a shonda for de goyim for so long now that I think we can just add this to the list.
It may not reflect badly on Jews. That scandal is really as much Epstein as Dershowitz.
If I do take up hiking, my unrelated search for "Pocket Ranger" proved useful.
you get your summers off. Or "off," at least. Either way, spend that time wherever you want. Really, here's some free advice from one of your limping elders: maximize the upsides of our line of work
Word. My wife having her summers off is awesome. It's looking increasingly likely that I'm going to be able to take over the family cabin up in the Sierras and we just might start spending most of June up there and still have time for our other summer trips to Yellowstone and such.
Not that what essear says isn't true: it completely sucks not to be able to choose where you live. Theoretically, I'm in pretty good shape professionally, and I still can't just say, "Oh, I'd like to live in San Luis Obispo, thanks."
397: Oh, totally. I'm kind of surprised there's more applicants than jobs in your profession because I don't know how anyone would put up with that shit. My wife and I like where we're at but if we decided to relocate it probably wouldn't be very hard for both of us to get new gigs in the same general area.
I still can't just say, "Oh, I'd like to live in San Luis Obispo, thanks."
Of all of the places you could choose, *that's* the one you go with?
You perplex me, Wafer.
SLO was more appealing to live in than I thought it would be when I spent a day there on a family trip a couple years back.
I actually just saw that movie for the first time on this vacation.
Wait, what? I feel like these worst must have some meaning other than the literal.
I could definitely live in SLO for as long as it took me to try everything on the Big Sky Cafe menu plus another 40 times just showing up and having the beignets.
400: sure. It's still surprising for it to be the first place that springs to mind.
401: I've still never seen it.
Light-rail is only about five times incline ridership, and that's just a tourist attraction that carries very few people and only goes to one neighborhood.
How boring a name is incline? What's wrong with funicular? Or at least hill train, if you're going to be all literal?
399: I don't know, the algorithms lead me where they lead me. Take it up with science if you have a problem.
More seriously, here's the calculation:
1) I don't especially want to live in a big city these days.
2) I don't want to live in the country.
3) For a variety of reasons -- weather, beaches, mountains, great food, access to cities if I want urbanity, road and mountain biking -- I love the Central Coast more than anywhere else on this continent.
4) I like middle-class people, and it's still possible to be middle-class (sort of, kind of) in SLO. It's not a vacation community (unlike, say, Pacific Grove, which is another lovely place).
If you have a better idea, let me know.
I mean, we came here because of 1, 2, and 4 (the fact that public school teachers can and do live in this community is a huge big deal to us, not to mention that the school kids all wear clothes from Target and The Gap rather than from boutiques). Add to that, there's a reasonably good university here that can pay me (Cal Poly can't), and our aging parents are driving distance away, and we've got a winner. Again, though, if there's a better place that meets all of these criteria, please let me know. It's possible -- though very unlikely, because science -- that my algorithms need adjusting.
Good morning! Obviously the answer is Pittsburgh, but I think your algorithms even knew that.
Only the fancy kids wear clothes from The Gap here. But at least two of the people on my street are public school teachers.
Pittsburgh is the one true answer, but there's no school there that can/will pay me.
If it makes you feel better, nobody pays me very much.
Also, the air pollution isn't entirely gone. Apparently, it only takes one coke oven.
Pittsburgh has lots of problems: too urban, the Stillers and Pirates (I'm fine with the Pens), and it's way too fucking gray. But it's still the best of all possible worlds for us. Alas, we can't live there, because I'm not willing to commute two hours in each direction. Actually, I really can't commute two hours in each direction for limp-related reasons.
"412 gets it exactly right" gets it exactly right. Because, 412.
Too fucking gray indeed. I have a Stockholm syndrome-like relationship with the weather. (I suppose I might also get weather Stockholm syndrome if I were in actual Stockholm, too.) But it absolutely shines when the sun is out.
The sun makes me squint and sweat. I'm fine with the gray. Too cold this week, but I don't mind the gray.
I think I'll be adding another place to my "Fucking [city]" list today. Never before have I shown up for a job interview and found so few people on my schedule to meet with me. Couldn't they at least pretend to take me seriously?
I'm starting to really envy people who can decide to live where they want to. The thought that someone can just decide they like Salt Lake City and, like, move there, without having to convince a bunch of assholes that they and their significant other are the two best people anywhere at what they do.... It just sounds so nice.
I think really very few people can do this, unless you have basically an entry-level job in retail or food service that you could just pick up at the new location, or you're a self-employed consultant who can work long-distance, etc. I certainly couldn't just up and go to SLC. I mean, I could start searching for jobs in SLC, and with luck find one within some reasonable period of time, but that still involves convincing a bunch of assholes that I'm the best person anywhere at what I do (and my wife would have to do the same with a separate set of assholes! It's not even the same assholes!). Given job market realities maybe that job search would be more likely to ultimately be successful for me than it would for you, so if I had my heart set on SLC maybe it's more likely that I could ultimately end up there, but the idea that I could just up and move there is crazy. And I don't think I'm atypical. And I can't even go spend the summer there.
411: I think that you are more likely to find a university in Pitts urge that would pay a history professor than in San Luis Obispo.
I want to find someone who will psy me to live on the Adriatic coast for a while.
It's not even the same assholes!
The assholes are interconnected on a fundamental level.
I really feel like I was born on the wrong continent.
Pitts urge
Laydeez! Best autocorrect in a while.
The assholes are interconnected on a fundamental level.
421: you did choose to make a major move earlier. My sense is that it's harder to make that move out of a state once you get established in your field.
Maybe tax lawyers can telecommute?
425: was definitely autocorrect and not a typo.
I want to find someone who will psy me to live on the Adriatic coast for a while.
Now that's a whole new way to telecommute.
so if I had my heart set on SLC maybe it's more likely that I could ultimately end up there
Uh, yeah, bro. Yes, you have to apply and interview and all that, but it's in fact quite likely that you could find a job as an attorney in Salt Lake City if you had to move there for some reason. It might not be exactly the job you want, but you could find something. The chances that an academic would see a job listed in their narrow area of specialization during the time they were searching, let alone get that job from among however many candidates, is so much lower than your chances that we're really talking about a qualitative difference.
I kind of feel like I should speak up for Cincy as being as far as I can tell exactly like Pittsburgh but not in Pittsburgh. Except we got rid of our inclines long ago, alas.
Too much of Cincinnati is Kentucky.
Is 420 in reference to the same place as 197? If so the weather might have had something to do with it.
432: See if I ever invite YOU to a meetup, Hick!
Not enough of Cincinnati is in Kentucky?
Essear, your two-body job search fills me with dread for my next year. It won't be as bad, since neither of us is a fancy academic, but still, two bodies in very similar fields. Also, what 433 said. CPS still hasn't reopened, possibly folks are doing childcare.
I think 430 is unrealistically optimistic. If I had to move to SLC, could I likely find some sort of hourly contract work as an attorney? Yeah, probably. But that's a long way from not exactly the job I would want. And finding anything more than that would be a crapshoot. (Not necessarily impossible, but not at all guaranteed.)
Now, if I could stay here and take time to look for a job in SLC, probably something suitable would eventually come up. But I would expect the timeline to be a year or more. Oh, and I also have a spouse, who would be doing the same thing. And there's no place that would hire the two of us together, so there would be real coordination problems.
435: I don't know. I am happy being on the side of the river I'm on, though obviously it has its downsides. Both do. I was just being mean for no good reason. I don't have much hometown or homestate pride, but the girls are from here and deserve to stay close to their families.
That's funny. I lived in SLO for two years and drove away without a backwards glance. It might be different to be there with a family, but as a graduate student, I found everyone entirely preoccupied by the fact that they lived in SLO. It was hard to make friends if your allegiance to living there wasn't one thousand percent. (Also, everyone is underemployed and willing to be underemployed if it means they can stay. So services are awesome, if you don't mind knowing that the clerk has several degrees.)
It just now occurred to me that I've worn the same pair of pants (trousers, for the Britishly inclined) every day this week. The vast amount of salt crushed on the cuff was the thing that got me thinking. Anyway, I probably couldn't do that someplace fancy like SLC or Cincinnati.
438: It's only relatively recently that I got to the point where I've lived longer in Pennsylvania than Ohio. The old prejudices wear off slowly.
439 is so true! Today is casual Friday, so I wore blue jeans instead of the black ones I wore the rest of the week.
We have to pay $1 to wear jeans on Friday. Then, if somebody has a relative die, we use the money to send flowers.
420: this happened to me here. Other than members of the search, the department head, and the dean, nobody met with me outside of my job talk. It was totally weird. Then they offered me the job.
I think 430 is unrealistically optimistic
Let's take the evidence from the blog. CCarp decided he wanted to live in Montana again. So he did. Unf decided he wanted to live in the Bay Area. So he did. Then he decided he'd like to move back and be close to family. So he did. Now ask any of the academics here whether "Let's live in [the place we really want]" is a conversation they can seriously entertain.
444: They didn't even schedule a meeting with the dean, and the department head is only coming to lunch. It seems... not good. Although for my current job, absolutely no one at all met with me. I was already a postdoc there, so it was a little different, plus it's the least well-organized department on the planet.
But I would expect the timeline to be a year or more.
Hahahahaha.
I'm sort of an academic. At least, I work at universities. I've been the trailing spouse and boy was it ever a pain to find jobs.
Also, what 433 said. CPS still hasn't reopened, possibly folks are doing childcare.
This seems very plausible. Also if Chicago is in the same general virus zone as here, a decent percentage of people probably have disgusting colds.
446: no meeting with the dean could mean the dean is away. And so many departments are the most disorganized departments in the world. Regardless, what will be will be. At least you're not a lawyer looking to move to Salt Lake City, because that would be the world's most impossible situation.
I've never met our dean. This department is so big that I'm not sure if the department chair would even recognize me.
My sister is an engineer, early-to-mid career with about five years of experience. She decided she wanted to move back to Pittsburgh, and so she looked around for jobs for four months, and found one that is suitable, and now she is moving.
For me, an early-to-mid career academic, to do the same, I have to hope that there's a position in my area at one of the handful of universities there next October, hope that the position also wants an early-to-mid career academic, and then hope that out of 400 applicants I make the cut, which I won't, because, you see, I have five years' experience, which means there is something wrong with me (and to be clear, by most measures, I'm an academic success story.)
SLC is pretty great, although I'm completely over the inversion at the moment.
I grew up outside of SLO, before it was as nice as it is, and oh boy is that area a wonderful place to live. Plus, as the residents will tell you constantly, it's the happiest town in America according to some study or another. That being said, I've really only experienced as a kid, a teen, and as an occasional adult visitor - but all of my parents & friends seem to have a great time, too.
Essear, good luck!
Stupid MS Word wants me to write "Please advice". The fuckers.
Let's take the evidence from the blog. CCarp decided he wanted to live in Montana again. So he did. Unf decided he wanted to live in the Bay Area. So he did. Then he decided he'd like to move back and be close to family. So he did.
And actual lawyers who comment on this very blog have made the exact move we're talking about. LizSpigot came here from the Bay Area.
I'm guessing that 1/3 of the people saying "SLO" here mean "San Luis Obispo", and 2/3 mean "Salt Lake City".
Urple! Don't you currently live and work in a different city than you did when you started commenting here?
I think CCarp is unusual.
I have a friend who got a job as a Cla/ss/ics professor at a university in Texas. Her husband had been a management consultant and then wrote and did the stay-at-home Dad thing.
Then he went to UT Austin for law school. They're happy in Houston. She got really lucky and got tenure. I asked at one point whether they would consider moving to North Carolina, I think, if an offer from a better school came along. He said, essentially, that it was really hard for a lawyer to uproot and start over.
Maybe that's only compared to consultants, but, at least in his area of practice, moving out of Texas would not have been easy.
458 made me laugh, as a fan of both Salt Lake Orchestra and San, Luis, and Palmer.
457: yes, but it required a big step backwards professionally and still took over a year. Which was sort of my point.
Ah, you came up with good names; I couldn't so went maximum cryptic.
Finally watched the video, and there are two things that I'm surprised nobody noted:
1. He's sitting in that Huey Newton wicker chair in the nightclub daydream.
2. He has a fifteen year old Nokia brick phone.
The first one, sure, but weird/gross. That second one, though--huh? That doesn't fit with that lifestyle in the slightest, and don't tell me that it's retro-cool among that set. Until I saw what must be The Shard at the end of the video, I wasn't entirely sure this was meant to be set in the current day.
I have read elsewhere that the association of that chair for UKians is different.
Thanks, that makes a lot more sense. And is still gross, but at least in character.
