61–70 of 192 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure Boston or Detroit are particularly good examples of the two types of cities you're trying to illustrate
I'll admit not knowing much of anything about Detroit, but I'm not sure how Boston doesn't count as a relatively safe place for LGBT individuals.
I used to live in Nowhere, Florida, and would move back in a heartbeat, but from an employment standpoint it became too risky. Most places outside of The Usual Tech Hubs are one-horse towns when it comes to tech employment, major opportunity risk. If you're a software engineer and live in the Bay Area and suddenly lose your job, depending on the economy you're probably in for a 1-6 month job search at local companies…
I don't think the article is aimed at you or me. It's aimed at young people that want to be artists, musicians, writers, and so on. They don't need to be near tech hubs. He argues it is better for them to create their own new bohemian art communities than fight the high cost of living in NYC and SF.
That said, I think there's a case to be made for e.g. the Bronx that he ignores in favor of something like Poughkeepsie.
This jumped out at me: > “I’m trans, so I need to live somewhere progressive so I feel safe day-to-day and don’t feel like I’m going to get beat up for using the wrong restroom.” This is a pretty damn good reason to live somewhere like Seattle or Boston, and a pretty damn good reason not to live somewhere like (edit:) North Carolina or Tennessee or Georgia. The reality is that many of us are limited by not wanting to…
The people who will inevitably say things like "this is just oversensitivity" or "it's an exaggeration to act like a whole city is outside your comfort zone" are either unbelievably thick-skinned or simply live in a relatively insulated, homogenous environment. I'm a straight white married upper-middle-class man and there are decidedly places I feel very uncomfortable in the country (I am thinking of highly conservat…
That feeling may or may not be an accurate representation of actual danger.
This jumped out at me: > “I’m trans, so I need to live somewhere progressive so I feel safe day-to-day and don’t feel like I’m going to get beat up for using the wrong restroom.” This is a pretty damn good reason to live somewhere like Seattle or Boston, and a pretty damn good reason not to live somewhere like (edit:) North Carolina or Tennessee or Georgia. The reality is that many of us are limited by not wanting to…
Have you actually spent time in Raleigh or Atlanta? The idea that trans people are getting murdered in the street is just not correct. I'm gay and I've spent a lot of fun nights in Boise, Idaho because a gay friend of mine lives there with her wife. We always have a blast. She has a great career in Boise and I don't think she's experienced more homophobia there than when she lived in New York City. (I know she had at…
This view ignores the benefits of the large cities. The rents are high for a reason. You want to go there. And not just for the cultural opportunities. Most people want good jobs. You can't have everyone starting startups, or working remotely. To put it another way, almost everything important and interesting you do will require other people.
It shows two things I think:
(1) The Internet has yet to replicate anything close to the "bandwidth" of in-person interaction.
(2) Capital for virtually any endeavor is geographically concentrated and the Internet does not seem to have changed that much.
I definitely understand the need for a progressive city -- I grew up in the midwest in a place that was decidedly not. But Paul Graham gave a talk about how Pittsburgh could be the next startup city [1]. And price factors in for both artists and entrepreneurs. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html
The real monopoly SF has is its investor ecosystem. There's talent everywhere.
I wonder if equity/SAFE crowdfunding (e.g. WeFunder) will help geographically decentralize tech?
Many New York artists talk about NYC as if it was cheap but it is simply not true. There is no other place in the US that concentrates so many different types of people. Patti Smith, David Byrne etc all benefitted from there being billionaires, millionaires, celebrities, thespians, high profile doctors, lawyers, and more than a century of civic dedication to arts and culture. There is a shared communal love and suppo…
I think you make a good point that 'cheap' is very relative to your means and access, and the LES may not have been cheap for _everyone_ even in the 80s. Definitely important to remember. But I'm inclined to believe Smith that it was cheap for her and people like her in a way present-day NYC isn't, for similar people today. I guess we could try to look up rent statistics over time etc. > if you want that in NY now yo…
Large parts of the southern Bronx are served by subway and still affordable. The have relatively bad crime stats and you may feel out of place but all that was true in the LES in the 80s too. And even if there aren't great commuting options to the financial district or midtown, you don't necessarily need to be in quick commuting distance to take advantage of the proximity to the cultural institutions. It's still going to be far easier for your indie band to get booked into some west village bar if you are based out of some far corner of the Bronx than if you are based out of Cincinnati. And if you develop your own artsy section of the Bronx the millionaires that want to feel cool can take uber up there.
All that said, the Bronx runs into the whole "gentrification" debate in a way that I don't think some of these other towns across the rust belt do. I get the sense that in at least some of these cities everyone, or almost everyone, is happy to get any kind of population influx.
This jumped out at me: > “I’m trans, so I need to live somewhere progressive so I feel safe day-to-day and don’t feel like I’m going to get beat up for using the wrong restroom.” This is a pretty damn good reason to live somewhere like Seattle or Boston, and a pretty damn good reason not to live somewhere like (edit:) North Carolina or Tennessee or Georgia. The reality is that many of us are limited by not wanting to…
I love the sentiment. Silicon Valley and NYC became what they are because of people hacking on things in garages / shitty apartments. Now those shitty apartments cost $2,000/month. The equivalent of those places, where things like Apple started, isn't Silicon Valley and NYC. It's places like Detroit. Or wherever people doing cool things decide to move and congregate. Then again, it is still possible to live cheaply i…
Detroit is an actual city with deep history. It may be in decline, but it still seems like to have more going on, or at least the potential to have more going on, than small towns. There's likely a lot of other second- or even third-tier cities that are overlooked, but are still more interesting to live in than a town in "Northeast Ohio." Austin, Portland, Boulder are becoming the new NY/SF because of the process of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're a software engineer and live in the Bay Area and suddenly lose your job, depending on the economy you're probably in for a 1-6 month job search at local companies That long? Funny that we're always hearing about how difficult it is for tech companies to find software engineers. In any case, OP is expressly not talking about getting a job at a tech company -- he's talking about doing something interesting wi…
>I presume this means getting a 9-5 at a laundromat in Ohio and working on open source projects in your spare time. This doesn't sound like it'd be any more conducive to productivity on side-projects than a 9-5 at a tech job. Consuming 8 hours of the work day is bad for productivity no matter what. Also, nthing the sentiment that tech hiring is screwed up. I highly doubt that companies are having a hard time finding…
Well, yeah. But it's way more authentic.