Chicago: They paved a fetid swamp/and put up a parking lot

xp Yeah. This will probably happen maybe August or so. My roommate Jess is moving out, and if he's going there's not really any reason for me to stay here. The landlord is awful — things have needed to be fixed for more than a year now and they still aren't — and I'm tired of hearing screeching tires and gang whistles at night.

How do you feel about Rogers Park? Rent is really cheap up there and w/ Loyola, you will probably be able to find folks looking for a roommate. Plus it's an easy, if long, commute to the Loop.

I want a new office chair.

It's not that long of a commute! You should move to Rogers Park. There are more hip young people in my immediate neighborhood than there were 6 years ago for sure.

If Jeff doesn't know where to get the best office chairs, then I don't know if anyone else will :-/

Yeah Rogers Park/Edgewater is exactly where I'm thinking about.

I won't have to commute to the Loop for much longer since I'll be doing my sales job full time, which is right by the North/Clybourne red line stop.

if you come up here to scope things out, lemme know. classes are over and i like to walk around.

:)

I'd actually just like an aeron for home. I love mine at work. Too expensive though. There needs to be another dot com crash so they can be found on the cheap again.

Aeron chairs are not easy to fart quietly into.

^ Crucial for a shared office setting.

Hi, Chicago. I'm having another of my regular "I've got to get out of here and live in a real city someday" fits, and your fair town, Seattle and Mnpls/StPaul always seem to push to the front of my mental queue.

Hi WmC. I like you. You banned the bad person from the trypophobia thread.

Where do you live now?

Chicago is awesome. Mpls/St. Paul are too cold. Seattle is the only other place besides Chicago I would consider living.

In conclusion, move here.

I have never been to SF, but it seems like a perfect place to live. Though very expensive.

You should move here and we can start a food truck.

I'd live in SF or Seattle. That's basically it for the US of A. I'd probably like Portland, but I've never been there to find out.

I'm in Mississippi. Family ties holding me here are hard to untangle. I keep saying "someday..."

I love cities. I love their energy, and feed off it. I've loved almost every minute I've spent in them. Some cities (NYC, Boston) get disqualified because of what I read about cost of living. I love San Francisco, but along with cost of living, there's the fact that California's state government is collectively crazy as a bedbug. Montreal and Amsterdam are wonderful, if their countries would have me.

LL, a food truck sounds like so much fun! A southern home-cooking food truck, a meat-and-three place on wheels.

IL state government is not much better, if at all.

Well, I lived in CA long enough (1998-2001) to experience their gridlock, and haven't experienced IL's yet.

TBH, state government is pretty much screwed everywhere.

real talk

Wouldn't want to live in Seattle, would want to live in Twin Citiez.

Yeah, I would love to live in San Fran but only if I were rich. Rent is nuts there.

Twin Cities are awesome, I had forgotten how great they are until I was there for a week

I actually think Mississippi's legislature does a decent job. I'm way to the left of Haley Barbour, but even I have to admit that he's far from the worst Republican governor in the country.

Got one Southern food truck already.

List of Movies in the Park for summer 2011

http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/docs/14ccb53a-8955-4128-aed8-f4a2ef6f4c38_document.pdf

Mac and cheese truck never comes down dearborn. Annoys me.

guys i saw the shortest show i have ever seen last night -- richard pinhas played for like 20 min? maybe? i thought it was just a first set, but then they started stacking the chairs and gathering equipment and i felt disappointed.

20 kinds of mac & cheese? We can do better than that! Where's the mustard greens, where's the cornbread, where's the sweet potatoes, where's the fried okra, where's the meat loaf? Seriously, I think my meat loaf is the best on the planet.

I think a food truck, appropriately painted and called The Meat Loaf, would be a hit.

Re: movies in the park. What a great list.

Please move to Chicago and cook that food for me. Thanks. xp

OK!

Twin Cities are nice, especially for walking around and biking, but I was always disappointed in the lack of "city" feel when I was living there. Felt like there should have been much more going on at any given time than there was. I would live here, New Orleans (except Jesse and Malortney and Matt will concur that I would melt away over the summer months), and that's about it. The lack of sun in Seattle would drive me to depression in short order. Sometimes I think I'd also consider Louisville and Madison and Nashville as smaller cities...but worry that I'd run into my same frustration as Minneapolis.

i.e. I was more bored than I thought I should be in Minneapolis.

I think I'm over my interest in NYC, though sometimes I wish I had lived there for at least a while. The only other city I would want to live in would be NOLA, but it feels so small, though the beauty and general fucking awesomeness make up for the smallness.

The West Coast is too far west.

I don't want to live anywhere else but in Chicago, at least not in the US. Maybe northern CA or PNW when I get old.

There are many cities/town I would live in, but I have low standards.

though, yeah, most America cities are pretty shitty.

And I guess I concur as to which cities are best -- Seattle, SF, etc. Both Portlands seem awesome too.

Yes, given that moving to another state would require dealing with some bullshit re: bar admissions, we're staying put. Unless one of us gets a mid-six figure job offer doing something awesome. Then I might reconsider.

But not if WmC is coming with meatloaf and mustard greens and fried okra.

Sigh. Food is about the only thing I miss about living in the south.

I think Jeff would like and be annoyed by Portland in equal measure.

If I had the right job or right something to do, I'd be happy in L.A., Toronto, back in the Twin Cities.

It's funny how my memories of Minneapolis/St. Paul are so different from reality. I remember it being a swirling megalopolis of skyscrapers, freeways, and hustle and bustle. Street View makes it clear that I was more easily impressed when I was 9 years old than I am today. Now I look at it and go - Where is all the STUFF???

I was up there weekend before last (my ma and pa were there for their 75th birthdays) and really loved it. Scale doesn't matter so much as quality--great design, great stuff, decent freeway system, good people.

seeing as most of my insane high school friends still live in the Twin Cities, I don't think I would ever be bored living there

Do they have a rail system?

They do. It's light rail.

it's also expanding; work is happening right now to connect downtown Minneapolis to downtown Saint Paul

one big lol I had trying to navigate around was how directions going anywhere always went back to an interstate highway; 20 years of Boston living has completely trained me away from even considering that to be an option

Having grown up in rural Nowheresville (ha iPhone auto-capitalized that) and lived in college towns and small, often boring cities as an adult, I have a pretty low tolerance for civic boredom.

Also, God help me, I really like you people (and ppl I know who do not post on ILX. I haven't been this satisfied with a peer group in like, maybe ever.

xp oh duh, I knew that and have actually ridden on it.