So just to be clear, there are several parts of the Pacific Northwest that does not experience constant rain. I happen to live in one those areas. Western WA and Portland has that a lot but if you go south it’s not as bad. For the areas that do get a lot of rain, it’s often green which is nice.
We get plenty of mosquitoes! And trees. Armando would definitely see trees. We planted 63 arbor vitae when we moved here and around 7 other kinds. We did lose 3 maples to a wind storm though.
Ok - I missed the “concrete Jungle” part.
If I think about affordable non-humid cities…I would say
Minneapolis,
Some parts of upstate NYC (i.e. Buffalo/Albany)
hmmm - how about Phoenix? It’s hot but dry
TBH I think that Boston, Chicago, or Milwaukee would be ideal for the US. Minneapolis is a little too small and distant; it gets left off a lot of tours, and driving 6 hours to Chicago 20 times a year seems. . . taxing. Toronto would be nice, too. Downside is most of the ones I actually like are pretty fucking expensive to live in, and my skillset isn’t worth much :(
Minneapolis isn’t that affordable. (St. Paul, more so.)
Also, Milwaukee is much smaller and more distant than Minneapolis-St.Paul so wha?
This is a good call. Also, my brother in law is a dentist there, I’ll refer you, and they have a Bugerville.
This is true. Central Oregon is another great option, though that comes with snowy winters.
Milwaukee’s closer to Chicago, which I consider a “proper” city. Minneapolis is in the same vein as Raleigh in my head, just colder.
Milwaukee also happens to be where my best friend from high school and college moved to, which is an immediate, but not-previously stated, benefit :)
Lots of Oregon outside of Portland is very much not leftwing. You drive an hour east and you’re hitting the armed militia who held a national park refuge for a month.
Well Southern Oregon has a climate closer to Northern California. We don’t typically get snow but the mountains around the valley’s do. Our winters are cool and rainy, if we’re lucky, but that always overcast thing is not the entirety of the Pacific NW. It’s just the rule for a lot of the largest cities there. He’s not looking at the largest cities though.
Well it’s like many states, blue in the cities and red in rural.
Those people weren’t even local.
I have cousins who live in western Idaho, all teachers. I was very surprised when they described school problems that sounded very much like the ones we have here. Problems with a large percentage of the students not speaking English and being transitory. You don’t think of Idaho as having a huge Latino population, but it does.
There are still militias there. The local groups just didn’t get involved because they really didn’t have a reason to.
I was going to suggest New Mexico, too. Underrated, mild, and not Arizona.
With the exception of whatever you’re going to in Chicago and your friend in Milwaukee, I would reverse your list entirely. The Twin Cities area (Minneapolis/St. Paulis immense, has a fantastic hub airport that also hosts international flights, has a ton to do, tons of sports teams, and is considered quite a nice place to live.
No joke, it’s quite awesome. Don’t think of it as the Raleigh of the state, rather it’s the Charlotte AND Raleigh of the state, side by side.
amateurs
The problem with New Mexico is that you’ll have to deal with all the people asking to see your passport ;)
I worked 911 there some time ago. Crime was minimal in my experience. It’s a very hippie-town that is dominated by the University of Montana, which has improved recently, I’ve heard. If you lived in East Missoula or wanted to hang out with bikers and louts at the Testicle Festival or find some methies, then yeah, you might experience crime.
The weather there seemed mild to me. When it’s below freezing, it’s usually not humid, and there is no wind. I loved winters there; they were easier than any other place that I’ve lived in the American West, save Arizona now. Additionally, it’s at the intersection of five mountain ranges, and of course A River Runs Through It was filmed there, so it’s pretty all around.
If you’re into kayaking, you can play in the river at a man-made rapid.
Homelessness can be annoying downtown, I’ve heard, but I only saw that on the 911 side. The mild weather and liberal policies seem to allow homelessness a little bit more than places with harsher conditions.