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Originally Posted by Пятхъдесят Шест
Obviously, they just don't like Omaha.
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He's big on college towns. I happen to agree.
Omaha ranked highly on Money magazine's list last year (in the top ten, I think, for larger cities).
Sperling is competent, although the Gainesville, FL, thing irks me a bit. And that's not because Charlottesville fell to number seventeen on his list. When Charlottesville was ranked number one in his first book (2004), it was the worst thing that could have happened for this town.
Gainesville is a cool college town with lots to do and is affordable; still I wouldn't want to live in Florida. If forced, I would pick Jacksonville on the Atlantic a little further north. In Jacksonville, the Einstein a Go Go was (it's closed down now) a block away from the beach. I can dig that. Some other club is there now. Virgina Beach, for instance, has a boardwalk-ish atmosphere, but all those clubs suck.
NYC is a wonderful place to visit, but it's not feasible to live there unless you're loaded. And, as I've maintained before, although NYC has some fo the world's greatest museums and galleries, Central Park and so on, there is very little to do there that's affordable and fun. There is really no music scene except for the occasional Brooklyner show and Greenwich Village/Alphabet City/SoHo area is dead as a doornail. It's all a tourist-trappy, cheese-laden, yuppie-haven now. Case in point: something's definitely wrong when the hip place to be is the Tower Records by NYU or some place like Joe's Pub. And please spare me any rap about Kim's or Bleecker Street. All those street vendors they allow that sell the bootlegged shit are quite the smelly eyesore too. They do have Conan and Letterman there though; there's something for free to do if you want to stand around all day hoping to be let in, that is.
As much as my fantasy would be to be a New York artist, I still would prefer to move to Chicago if forced to choose. Chicago has all the great things New York City does, only there's actually several thriving music scenes and more to do overall. It's also a hell of a lot more affordable to live there, and the people, in general, are cooler.
I cannot speak for this new edition (it's probably good though), but the first one is a fun read and is very well-written. It's too bad it brought a curse upon the town I live though.