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Author Topic: Finding a city  (Read 17471 times)

Offline Mark G

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Re: Re: Finding a city
« Reply #45 on: September 26, 2012, 03:29:21 pm »
Mark, we had looked @ Oak Park as a potential good spot. What do you think of it?
Oak Park is really nice. Close to the L lines and Metra. Lots of really nice older homes. Used to be pricey, not so sure anymore. I'd say we're at the bottom of the home price curve right now, so worth exploring. You might have a tough time finding bigger lots, but there's some out there.

If you're looking at suburbs, pull up a map of the Metra lines and explore those with stops that are just outside the city. That's probably your best bet. I have friends who left the city for Des Plaines, River Grove, etc. that are very happy.
Mark Gres

Offline garc_mall

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #46 on: September 26, 2012, 07:40:56 pm »
Ok, gotta put my plug in for the PNW. On the tech thing, we win hands down. Nowhere else in the country has the tech scene we have (not even silicon valley). I think we match up pretty well on beer as well, but I am biased. We have to have the most homebrew clubs per capita though... I have 4 homebrew clubs within 30mins of my house that all poured at NHC this year.

The one major issue the Seattle area has is the lack of commuter train coverage. We have one light rail that goes from downtown to the airport, and they are supposedly working on a train to downtown Bellevue, but that is in like 2017. For as progressive as we think we are, we are way behind on public transportation. If you are looking at decent housing prices and space (for chickens and bees), I would recommend somewhere up further north, in south Snohomish county. They have better prices and lower taxes, but are a bit further out of the way.

also, our housing prices are rather high here as well.

Offline thebigbaker

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #47 on: September 26, 2012, 07:59:27 pm »
The one major issue the Seattle area has is the lack of commuter train coverage. We have one light rail that goes from downtown to the airport, and they are supposedly working on a train to downtown Bellevue, but that is in like 2017. For as progressive as we think we are, we are way behind on public transportation.

Reminds me of the "Super Train" in the movie "Singles." ;D
Jeremy Baker

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Offline nateo

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #48 on: September 26, 2012, 08:09:24 pm »
Denver has a pretty extensive light rail system, and over 300 miles of dedicated-use bike/pedestrian trails.
In der Kürze liegt die Würze.

Offline punatic

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #49 on: September 26, 2012, 09:53:25 pm »
In a tropical rain forest, on the flank of an erupting volcano, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is very nice.   8)
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Offline tschmidlin

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #50 on: September 26, 2012, 10:41:45 pm »
I think the PNW misses on a few of your criteria, but it's where I'm staying for now and the future.

Redmond is nice, I highly recommend it.  We have chickens (2 are laying, the other two are getting close), and both Seattle and Portland allow chickens in the city.  It's not cheapest place to live, but on the other hand people in your industry are well compensated.  The main thing you would want to do is to get a house on the bus lines - the buses on the east side are very good, clean, and on time.  There is plenty of diversity, the kind of diversity depends on where you live.  Redmond is very Microsoft heavy as you can imagine, so the diversity runs towards highly educated foreigners.  Good education for the kids in the Lake Washington School District, plus UW is great and there are several other schools your wife could check out.

We meet your temperature desires, but fail on the sun and thunderstorms.  We have a lot of cloudy days (something like 300 cloudy/partly cloudy days per year) and thunderstorms are rare (I only hear thunder a couple of times per year).

Great beer scene, and it's not too hard to start a brewery considering Mic Sager just did it and I know a few other people who have or are in the process of doing so.  Whatever hurdles there are, there are plenty of people around to help you navigate them, including the Washington Brewers Guild.

Let me know if you decide to head this way.  I have a bunch of Microsoft neighbors who are happy to turn in resumes, and my wife does IT PM consulting and has contacts at a lot of the consulting companies in the area.
Tom Schmidlin

Offline phillamb168

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #51 on: September 27, 2012, 02:18:37 am »
Tom, my background is in the LAMP stack, so mostly web stuff. I believe MSFT is still C/C#/Visual C etc, so I'm not sure if they'd be able to accept my resume (stellar though as it is  ::) )

Kyle, thanks for the super description of Indy. My wife really liked what you had to say.

I personally am a fan of mountains and outdoors-y things, so Ft Collins sounds fun. Plus NORAD! However... Those fires looked pretty scary this year.

Also Asheville sounds nice... We have a coffee table book of American landmarks, and the Blue Ridge Mountains are in there, really breathtaking stuff. Plus I'd have an "easy" time of doing the Appalachian trail later when the boys are bigger.
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Offline jrlooney

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #52 on: September 27, 2012, 05:09:48 am »
Tom, my background is in the LAMP stack, so mostly web stuff. I believe MSFT is still C/C#/Visual C etc, so I'm not sure if they'd be able to accept my resume (stellar though as it is  ::) )

Kyle, thanks for the super description of Indy. My wife really liked what you had to say.

I personally am a fan of mountains and outdoors-y things, so Ft Collins sounds fun. Plus NORAD! However... Those fires looked pretty scary this year.

Also Asheville sounds nice... We have a coffee table book of American landmarks, and the Blue Ridge Mountains are in there, really breathtaking stuff. Plus I'd have an "easy" time of doing the Appalachian trail later when the boys are bigger.

Hi Phil,
I live in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina. We used to live in Durham (which we loved) but recently moved to Cary (sorta between Raleigh and Durham). Durham is a great town, but does have some bad parts to it (you will read about those if you do much searching). But we never had any issue and really loved it there - great baseball, great restaurants, great breweries.

In general, we're about 3.5 hours from Asheville, but we're also only 2 hours from the beach!  Raleigh is a fairly good sized city but we're also only 4.5 hrs from Washington DC and about the same to Atlanta.

I also do web-based software engineering. Because of the Research Triangle Park here, we have a TON of tech companies. IBM, Cisco to name a couple big ones, but there are so many smaller-ish web companies here. Dice.com currently shows 1061 job listings for the Raleigh area. http://www.rtp.org/about-rtp/rtp-companies

We also have a lot of universities (Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State to name just the largest ones).  http://www.researchtriangle.org/assets/education/universities-colleges

The housing market here is strong and has been pretty strong throughout the slump the rest of the nation has felt.

For outdoorsy stuff, I traded rock-climbing for kayaking when we moved here from Tennessee. Lots of rivers and lakes for kayaking. Also a good bit of hiking - though mostly flat terrain.  If you want mountains and a more "outdoorsy" vibe from the town/city in general, Asheville is the way to go. I just don't know what you would find in terms of a job there.

For Craft Beer, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 production breweries within 25 miles and many many more that are just in NC (70 I think now!). 

Let me know if I can help you with any specific info about the area.

Raleigh/Durham (Cary, Wake Forest and Garner are in surrounding area)
http://www.visitraleigh.com/index
http://www.durham-nc.com/

RTP
http://www.rtp.org/
http://www.researchtriangle.org/

Breweries
http://www.ncbeer.org/brewery-map/
« Last Edit: September 27, 2012, 05:17:49 am by jrlooney »

Offline csu007

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #53 on: September 27, 2012, 12:33:26 pm »
I agree with everybody posting about the Denver/front range area. There are many great breweries/pubs/cultural places within walking distance or short trip on the public transport. In the greater metro area there many up in coming "hip" neighborhoods. The weather is overall pretty nice, in the winter most of the metro area does not get that "much" snow, the summers can be hot but that is what the mountains are for. as for flying to Europe- from DIA to the east coast it's 3-4hrs (depending on the city) and then about 6-8 hrs to Europe.
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Offline tschmidlin

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #54 on: September 27, 2012, 10:50:03 pm »
Tom, my background is in the LAMP stack, so mostly web stuff. I believe MSFT is still C/C#/Visual C etc, so I'm not sure if they'd be able to accept my resume (stellar though as it is  ::) )

Good point :)  Then again, Microsoft isn't the only game in town, my wife knows gainfully employed people in the area with your skills.  And of course, we have plenty of hiking, mountains, and other outdoorsy stuff, plus the lakes and Puget sound, plus rainforests and high desert.  And volcanoes.

There are so many gret places in the US I think you have a lot of options - good luck narrowing them down.
Tom Schmidlin

Offline garc_mall

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #55 on: September 27, 2012, 11:54:50 pm »
Ok, gotta put my plug in for the PNW. On the tech thing, we win hands down. Nowhere else in the country has the tech scene we have (not even silicon valley).

Tom, my background is in the LAMP stack, so mostly web stuff. I believe MSFT is still C/C#/Visual C etc, so I'm not sure if they'd be able to accept my resume (stellar though as it is  ::) )

OK, so I don't speak y'all's language, but I did say we have tech all over the place. MSFT, Google, Facebook, Zynga, and thats just the big players. There are a LOT of smaller players and start ups that could use the web type thing. I was looking at recruiting in this area, so I have done a bit of looking at the IT field.

Offline tschmidlin

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #56 on: September 28, 2012, 09:41:56 am »
OK, so I don't speak y'all's language, but I did say we have tech all over the place. MSFT, Google, Facebook, Zynga, and thats just the big players. There are a LOT of smaller players and start ups that could use the web type thing. I was looking at recruiting in this area, so I have done a bit of looking at the IT field.
You left out Amazon.  Among others :)
Tom Schmidlin

Offline denny

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #57 on: September 28, 2012, 09:48:46 am »
Don't come to the PNW.  You won't like it.

These are not the droids you're looking for.......
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Offline nateo

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #58 on: September 28, 2012, 09:59:02 am »
Don't come to the PNW.  You won't like it.

These are not the droids you're looking for.......

Let's all move to Noti!
In der Kürze liegt die Würze.

Offline denny

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Re: Finding a city
« Reply #59 on: September 28, 2012, 10:18:00 am »
Don't come to the PNW.  You won't like it.

These are not the droids you're looking for.......

Let's all move to Noti!

It's too small for everybody!  ;)
Life begins at 60.....1.060, that is!

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The best, sharpest, funniest, weirdest and most knowledgable minds in home brewing contribute on the AHA forum. - Alewyfe

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell