¿Best City to Live Shred in?

[QuantumBalance]

What are some top cities to live in? I'm assuming that a good shred scene is important to anyone that chooses to answer this question. Also, important things to me are comfortable weather, pollution levels, public transportation, cuisine, and atmosphere. Although, not everything can be perfect.

What are your oppinions?

What if some of us footbaggers chose to move to a certain place, to try and increase our population density in a certain area? I'm just throwing this out here.

[pips]

From my own experiences, I liked Montreal.

[shredzilla]

Everyone should move to San Diego, CA. It's around 70 degrees year-round! I love kicking outside.

[Mathochist]

My city smells bad. Some parts of New Orleans of course still stink because the recovery process is slow going, but that's not what I'm talking about. The French Quarter, the area least affected by the hurricane and flooding, has parts that have always been malodorous. Bourbon St. is usually crowded enough that you tend not to notice it there, but half a block off it the humid mugginess powered by a fierce southern sun strengthens the aromas of the trash that needs to be picked up and the spilled booze and urine that some drunk guy couldn't keep to himself.

The land is flat. The only topography to speak of is a manmade hill meant, but unable, to keep water out. Despite the flatness of the landscape, an attempt at level streets free of ubiquitous potholes is futile in the face of the fact that our land isn't so much dirt, but swamp, too watery. So the apparent solution to a pothole of filling it in only makes that spot heavier.

We used to swim in the lake that recently drowned us, but for 30+ years it's been too polluted.

Our charming streetcar line is only half operable again, and even before it was hardly practical public transportation.

The public education here is so embearassingly shoddy that anyone with any means sends their children to private school.



A veteran footbagger whom I have much respect for, recently asked me why we don't just give up and relocate, considering that global warming and coastal erosion seem likely to erase us eventually anyway. The question floored me. How do you do that? What nearby rural locale would welcome us, what with our 24 hour lifestyle and our colored working class?

Not that I would. I love my home.

There are more restaurants here per unit area than any other city I've obseved. A tourist asked me yesterday whether the TGIFridays in the French Quarter had reopened yet, and I wanted to hit him. Chain restaurants are ok and serve their purpose, but when that's all there is, they're always indicative of a boring area. No, the food here is rich and too spicy and our seafood rivals the northeast's, or it would if the two were even comparable.

More than the food, the music here makes the city the cultural mecca that it is. Jazz, in it's free form style, is the embodiment of the city's carefree, indulgent attitude. Likewise, blues is the voice of a people who are aware that they are in shitty conditions but love their lives and feel it's worth the ttroubles of that life to be in such a beautiful place. The music scene here is the backdrop for a nightlife that doesn't quit. I love to travel, but this "last call" you guys have is a dumb idea.

The shred scene here is budding. I'm not sure what kept it from thriving any sooner, but there's no reason not to have a huge scene here. Give me some time. In a few months I'll be hosting some modest events here. In a few years we will have a thriving, competitive, unique scene. It is one of my goals to host worlds here before I die.

In the mean time, you're all invited to come check us out. Come see the city's progress and support it with your tourism. Come check out the handful of serious shredders who will be the foundation of the lively footbag community to come. It's worth the trip.

[Maraxus]

San Diego is the best I've seen. Portland is growing quickly though, it will probably take my vote here in a couple years, it just doesn't have the awesome weather that SD does. People are just as cool though.

[slapdash21]

in my opinion Boston has everything except the footbaggers to play with

i wish there was a huge scene here, but im pretty sure its just me now (there was one other guy who played decent tiltless, but he dropped footbag in favor of parkour and frisbee...)
but boston has a reasonably efficient subway system that covers all the important locations, plenty of cool places to play around the city, a diverse culture, moderate temperatures in the summer (obviously the winter is a problem, but i have an incredible place to play inside anyway...), etc. just no footbaggers.

i wonder if there are more footbaggers on the east coast or on the west coast, because if number of baggers is a factor, there are a few major cities on the east coast that have strong cases. Chicago was real strong a year or so ago, and obviously still has good numbers of active kickers (some net, some freestyle, some 4-square , and obviously some all three)

and of course some european cities have strong footbag scenes, but the weather is often less moderate from what i understand.

yeah, montreal is a strong candidate i think.

Seattle...pretty strong crew...lots of rain though.

[acxel22]

Paris because the crew is so friendly and unified

[david]

Bethlehem! We have a bookstore! Eat that city slickers!

The town is so sick Jesus lived here.

[C-Fan]

I think Portland is a top choice. Good public transportation, young, active shred scene.

Montreal is great in summer, but it sounds like the shred scene there is kinda deteriorating, and the winter lasts 7+ painful months.

NYC has awesome public transportation, and the shred scene looks to be growing.

[HG]

santa cruz.

[sen]

I gotta vote for Santa Cruz too.

After reading through their "Sessions" thread it seems like an awesome scene to live in!

[funklovesfootbag]

San Diego is pretty nice but I think it's too crowded now. The traffic there is much worse than Santa Cruz....

Plus we have a bigger scene

Next year will be even bigger.

[Jeremy]

Hobart is my favourite city in Australia. If it had more than one solid player I would probably live here my whole life.

It is good shred weather - hardly ever gets above 25 C and in winter is usually around 10 - 15 C. It's very close to some great forests/evironment so the air is clean and beautiful and it's the most progressive city in Australia - at the last state election the greens candidate here won the most amount of votes. It's also the second cheapest city to live in in Australia and has a growing tourist market which means lots of high quality gourmet food and drink. The public transport is fairly average but you can walk almost everwhere and because of the size and low traffic a taxi always costs less than $20.

Also the Salamanca market is the biggest weekly market in Australia with sometimes 5,000 plus people there and there are always people playing hackysack and other cool things going on.

[Dat]

Seems like Europe is the best place to be a footbagger, with larger scenes and better public transportation. My guess is either Wroclaw, Poland or Helsinki, Finland.

[sile]

what about switzerland? australia?

[Canthraxsoldier]

I've never been out of Australia, so I can only comment on that

Melbourne probably has the best shred scene at the moment.

Even though there's no shred scene...Canberra really is an under-rated city. Except in winter. it's really cold. But I've had a lot of fun living here.

Sydney is alright, but things get expensive, the city is way too big and the public transport can usually be described as "terrible"

Brisbane is really hot in summer. It would probably be nice in winter.

Perth is pretty nice, but lacks a shred scene.

Generally I think other cities in the world would be much better for shred action, and probably for living...though Australia is very nice, with good beaches and such.

Once I do some travel around the world I'll have a much better answer to this question!

[Zeke]

important things to me are comfortable weather, pollution levels, public transportation, cuisine, and atmosphere. Although, not everything can be perfect.

Ah, Chicago. Of the things mentioned, I guess our strength is the number of players in the city and it's surrounding suburbs. Add to that the abundance of hackers that you can find on most highschool and college campuses or during the free music and food festivals. The shred scene is growing again due largely to FtB, the young talent in the newly formed Palatine club and Shawn Boyle in the south burbs. The resident BAP member, Scott Davidson regularly throws 2 events a year, New Years Jam being the biggest and most fun IMO.

Net is kept alive in the area by the 2 members of the IFL, Scott Hansen and Corey Current who still play once or twice a week in the west suburb of Wheaton. They came to the CIC b-day jam and said they were willing to come into the city to set some pick-up games a few times a month. The twins, Josh and Jake Raye have a net set and bring it out occasionaly to sessions. I'm more than happy to join a game, even if it's just to volley over the net.

4-square is big enough to have it's own scene here, I think. At the center of it is Lane Tech highschool. They play squares at least 4 times a week during school and I usualy set up sessions on the weekends throughout the warmer months.

I think the food here is awesome, pretty much any ethnic cuisine you can think of for a decent price can be found in the diverse neighbohoods in the city. Transportation is ok. You can pretty much get anywhere in the city with the various bus and train lines. Waiting can be frustrating though.

As for the weather, it's definately not like Cali or Florida... we get a little bit of everything, occasionally in it's extreme forms. As for pollution, well, we are a big freaking city... I'll leave it at that.

[krawallier]

come on guys.. it is so obvious! .... BERLIN!

big scene, great city, cheap to live, best parties, lots of stuff to do... ask anybody who's been here

[Asmus]

I was just waiting on somebody to say that..

Ive been to the city. Awesome city.

And think about the players there?

[Moxie]

Chicago is a great shred city. So many summer events, so many awesome people to kick with, so many fun crazy times. It is easier to live there (compared to SC) financially.

The Santa Cruz scene is slowly growing. No, it's actually growing pretty fast. There is a fair number of newer kickers so whenever we've had sessions recently it's been 4+. There are a TON of great things about Santa Cruz, including the (amazing) natural beauty, the shred, the culture, the variety of things to do and people of different incomes all living in the same area. I could go on about the good things, but you probably already know a lot of them. The main bad things about Santa Cruz are the cost of living being SO high, it's fairly hard to find a good job here, and it's hard to find a good place to live (you're competing with those damn college students). Oh yeah, and since it's a tourist town, the traffic in the summer is HORRIBLE. Stupid tourists supporting our economy.

Weather is usually pretty stable in the summer, usually foggy in the morning but it burns off by the afternoon. Winter is the "rainy season" here, it's just cold and it rains. There is a pretty good selection of types of food you can buy to make for yourself, lots of heath food stores. Not a lot of ethnic food stores, but there are ethnic restaurants. In general the restaurants in SC are pretty expensive for my standards, but the food is almost always worth it. Santa Cruz is a biking community, and a lot of people take the bus. I'm thankful for that since the traffic is already bad. If people didn't use public transportation it would be so bad.

From the ever-reliable internet:

The influx of workers from Silicon Valley, in combination with growing enrollment at the university, has caused growing traffic problems and a high cost of housing; Santa Cruz is regularly listed among the five most expensive housing markets in the United States.

·Housing costs in Santa Cruz County are not only among the most expensive, but are also among the least affordable in the nation

·Last year, 51% of all county households paid half their income on housing

·Of county residents earning less than $35,000, 70% pay half of their income on housing

· There is a wide wage disparity in Santa Cruz County between men and women: men earn $46,291 and women earn $33,514 for comparable work

· Studies show that to be self-sufficient in Santa Cruz County, a family of three needs an hourly wage between $21.84 - $28.51 per hour (California’s minimum wage rate is $6.75 per hour)

Sperling’s Best Places Guide now ranks Santa Cruz as one of the most stressed-out cities in the nation. It was ranked 13th of 114 medium sized metropolitan areas to the surprise of those living in the midst of the stress-center. Some of the supporting statistics quoted were:

* Average one-way commuter time: 27.8 compare to the average 22 minutes
* Ranks close to the top for “troublesome mental health”
* Unemployment rate: 6.1 compared to average of 5.4
(EDD reports the figure is actually 7.5 categorized as labor force group / seeking employment. I think it may be considerably higher)
* Violent crimes per capita: slightly above average (See this post)
* Divorce rate: 11 % compared to an average 10%
* High suicide rate: 11.8 per 100,000

Additional statistics report:

* Salary averages: 15% (or more) lower than San Jose 40 miles away (CA EDD)
* Rated the 2nd most expensive place to live in the nation (Community Assessment)
* 64.7 percent of residents spend more than half their salary on housing

What if some of us footbaggers chose to move to a certain place, to try and increase our population density in a certain area? I'm just throwing this out here.

I've thought about trying to get a lot of people to move to SC. I've come to the conclusion that this is NOT the right town for that, because we'd have a lot of poor footbag players. It sounds like a broken record, but if you don't already have a LOT of money saved up and you have a solid way to earn income, don't move to Santa Cruz. I think the exception to that is students who get money from scholarships or whose parents pay for them. I know way too many smart, capable people who are good with money who are still living paycheck to paycheck and having hard times with it.