Home Crag - What would you choose?

[Meadows]

If I were a girl and wanted to do work other than construction I would chose St George Utah.

Another thing is Morman girls like it in the butt.

WHAT? This whole time I thought you were a girl - a Mormon girl.

[tomdarch]

Pretension DAB!!!!!!

Fair enough. After Meadows started by asking about 'cities' and people were suggesting St. George, I thought I would ask what she means by cities. Listen, I grew up in the city in Chicago (near Irving Park and LSD, just north of Wrigley), with family in Manhattan and friends in London. I went to school for a year in the burbs of Paris, and have visited cities from Berlin to Tokyo. I've got a certain perspective on what a city is - and St. George may be great, but it isn't a city.

Seattle and Boston have like half a million peeps and SF is under a mill. So we drop to a half a mill and Nashville, New Orleans, Minneapolis/St.Paul, or Memphis aren't "cities"?

Good points. Metro areas are mil+, but there's something different about places like Boston and SF. Nashville, NO, the Twin Cities, etc. are 'cities' by most definitions, but aren't near the top of the list when you talk about 'big cities of the world'. Maybe it's my own 'pretensions', but a lot of those places don't have the 'critical mass' or global connections that other places do. Now that I'm thinking about it, one of the main factors may be the production of media - film/TV, print, advertising, music, etc.

anti-tomdrachites- yikes, is this spit flying out of my computer?
i think that despite his word choice he was bringing up some valid (public transport) and not so valid points ("world class cultural scene"). i don't think he meant it to be snooty, more academic if you catch my drift.

No, I didn't mean to be snooty, but I see how I came off that way. My point is that there's a difference for a lot of people between 'cities' and 'cities' - for me it would be tough to live in, say. St. Louis or Denver. But for a lot of people it would be tough for them to live in the city in Chicago or London.

granted, in my mind, only really NY has the set-up in that definitition. every other city is a midget in comparison.

On one hand, I see what you mean. On the other, I think that NYC is mostly talk. On the point about the centers of media production, I think that lots of people move to NY to call themselves 'New Yorkers' and becuase there is a lot of TV, print and journalism based there, these transplants talk up how great NY is - after all they spent a hell of a lot of money to move/live there. (Here's snooty:) In reality, a huge part of the talent and technical folks on Broadway and in Hollywood are either from Chicago or learned their craft here. Chicago just doesn't spend enough time hyping itself like NY and LA do.

So Meadows was asking for advice, and my question is: What kind of city are you looking for?

[Meadows]

Tom, A city with good climbing nearby and full of opportunites - jobs, education, laid-back and also pretentious places to drink, sexual exhibitions. Major cities don't interest me.

BTW, I was joking on that last opportunity.

[mikeandbob]

I don't think you were joking Meadows. It is something you should take into account though, a freedom to express yourself in society or in the privacy of your bedroom with small furry animals.

[Ultra]

So if you live in ST. George. You get the best of both worlds. Las vegas is 90 minutes away and and it is undoubtedly an international destination. Las vegas's airport is second only to Chicago in take-offs and landings. If you take into account that Most of the Chicago flights ar connections (people just shuffling through-never actually leaving the airport) you would see that Vegas is even more of a destination than Chicago...Plus, look on any of the "haute coulture" fashion wear. Any company worth its salt will say London, Paris and Las Vegas.

The Great thing about ST. G. is that its not a suburb of Vegas. Its its own thing.(the actual city of Chicago is small in comparison with its outlying suburbs.

tomdarch I dare you to drink the water out of the Chicago river , even with a purifier. but I would drink the water out of the Virgin River (with a purifier, of course! 8) )

So in conclusion St. G. is a better place to live, work and climb than Chicago ever was.

[pigsteak]

meadows..I am hurt. I move to Lexington to be near you, and then you run to Indy..I am hurt..just hurt.

[tomdarch]

So if you live in ST. George. You get the best of both worlds. Las vegas is 90 minutes away and and it is undoubtedly an international destination. Las vegas's airport is second only to Chicago in take-offs and landings. If you take into account that Most of the Chicago flights ar connections (people just shuffling through-never actually leaving the airport) you would see that Vegas is even more of a destination than Chicago...Plus, look on any of the "haute coulture" fashion wear. Any company worth its salt will say London, Paris and Las Vegas.

That's true. When I walk out the door of my office building on to Oak Sreet or Michigan Avenue, lots the boutiques do include Las Vegas on their list of locations. But one big difference is that the companies may list a Las Vegas location, but they sure didn't originate there - they were created in places like London, Paris and Tokyo. As far as most of the outside world is concered, Las Vegas is just a big resort and mall - a great place to buy stuff, but not one where people are designing and creating new things or ideas. But as Las Vegas grows away from the strip, I'll bet that will start changing.

On the airport topic, I just did a quick search, and hey! there are direct flights from LAS to FRA (Frankfurt) a whole two times a week! And direct to NRT? Wow! Three times a week! Direct LAS to LHR? none, but there are 4x a week to LGW! Now that's a global hub! (Actually, I am surprised - I assumed that there would be a lot more flights to/from LAS) Yes, a lot (most?) of the people going into ORD and MDW are just changing planes, but the point is that living here, I can fly direct to a ton of places around the world. Not as many as from NY, but certainly more than out of LAS. (LAS may have ORD or MDW beat on direct to domestic locations - I wish there was an easy way to compare them.)

But my bigger point - which of these would you rather see:

http://www.lasvegasartmuseum.org/
or
http://www.artic.edu/aic/

http://www.lasvegasphilharmonic.com/
or
http://www.cso.org/

http://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/Find/parks_facilities.asp
or
http://www.millenniumpark.org/

http://www.liberace.org/museum.html
or
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/default.html (an amazing 'old school' museum)

?
or
http://www2.oprah.com/index.jhtml

LV does have Chicago beat on musicals, shows and strip clubs. Chicago doesn't have even one Cirque show running, compared with the 42 separate Cirque shows in Vegas!

The Great thing about ST. G. is that its not a suburb of Vegas. Its its own thing.(the actual city of Chicago is small in comparison with its outlying suburbs.

The city itself has a population of about 2.7 mil. The metro area has between 7 and 20 mil, depending on where you draw the boundaries. (The 20 mil includes Milwaukee, Rockford, Kankakee and most of N. Indiana and is more of a 'economics' concept of the metro area, rather than a 'sociological' one). While the city may only be about a third of the total population, it's still the center and hub of the metro area - it wasn't 'gutted' the way, say, Detroit was. Part of the problem of the current demographic trends is that immigrants are starting to bypass the city and move straight to the burbs, difusing their cultural and ecomomic impact.

tomdarch I dare you to drink the water out of the Chicago river , even with a purifier. but I would drink the water out of the Virgin River (with a purifier, of course! 8) )

Actually, growing up here, I'm sure I've ingested gallons of lake water. I've also eaten a fair amount of fish caught in the lake. While I would be careful about where along the river I pulled the water, I would drink a small amount of water from the river. (There are areas of the river that were sites of PCB dumping and such - it is fairly messed up.) I wonder if the purifier would even matter - maybe microorganisms cant survive the chemicals? I'd be a little careful about drinking from the Virgin - Utah has its fair share of problematic mining, chemical and nuclear industrual activities.

So in conclusion St. G. is a better place to live, work and climb than Chicago ever was.

My point was that while St. George may be a better place for you to live and work, it isn't a better place for everyone. But there is no doubt that it's a better place for climbing than Chicago - by a factor of thousands!

Sorry, Meadows, I'm just enjoying arguing! But seriously, have you considered Salt Lake? It's the least Mormon part of the state (which might be a bad thing if you were counting on some lez booty-luvin' ) It's within driving distance of endless rock, with a pretty hot economy, plus it's one of the best places in the world for skiing/boarding! Too bad it's short on the 'sexual exibitions' criteria

[Spragwa]

OMG. Ray, is that the record for longest post?

[ynot]

NAH That ones short. He must have got a finger cramp. He can go on for days.

[pawilkes]

Milwaukee and Rockford part of Chicago Metro?!?!? that is one of the dumbest things i have ever heard. how is a city that is 1-2 hours away accross miles of farmland part of a cities metro area? when i go to Kentucky from Madison, WI i actually drive 50 miles out of my way just to AVOID chicago and its damn traffic. i don't know how you can put up with that city, it makes me sick.
Meadows, my vote is still for St. George or Salt Lake!