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I buddy of mine lives in a far northern suburb of Chicago. In fact, he's probably closer to Milwaukee than he is to Chicago. One evening when we were sitting around drinking some beer the conversation came around to comparing St. Louis to Chicago.
Being born and bred on the south side of Chicago, my buddy suffered from a bad case of, "We're bigger, therefore we're better" going on. He bragged about all of the cultural institutions that Chicago has and about the great sports history of the various Chicagoland sports teams. He even went on to bragging about how great the hot dogs were in Chicago.
That's when I asked him why he lived in Milwaukee rather than Chicago if Chicago were so great? He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face and denied living in Milwaukee....I conceded him the point, but asked him why he lived so far out from Chicago then?
He replied that he lived where he did because that was where he could afford to have the kind of house that he wanted. Fair enough!
I then pointed out to him that if he lived an equivalent distance out from St. Louis' downtown that he would be eligible to root for the Kansas City Royals! I also pointed out that for what he paid for his home that he could have had a home probably twice the size and within a 30 minute commute of downtown St. Louis.
He came back with the "Cow Town" defense. To which I responded, tell me something other than a basketball team that Chicago has that St. Louis doesn't?
He stumbled around for a while, reverted to the "cow town" defense and we moved on to a different conversation.
Well, to his defense, we were pretty drunk and Chicago is indeed a great city. I enjoy visiting it every chance that I get. There is something to be said for it's sheer size and vibrancy. But there is also something to be said for St. Louis here too.
While Chicago (or Boston or DC or NYC or any of the other larger more "east coast" cities) are bigger and have their unique qualities about them, they are all much more expensive to live in that what we here in St. Louis have.
I personally think that the "Cow Town" defense, as mentioned above, is pretty lame. St. Louis is in no way a cow town and anyone who says that is either drunk or an idiot (my buddy was both). I'll give you a couple of examples.....cultural institutions. Chicago has some great ones! But so does St. Louis. The St. Louis Symphony is one of the best in the country and while they did go through a rough period, they are more than on their way back.
The St. Louis Art Museum? Also world class!
Sports? True, no basketball, but we have every thing else.
So forth and so on...St. Louis can match up with just about any city. We may not not have a dozen gay sushi bars, but I'm sure that we have one or two? (Don't we?).
All at a cost of living that is considerably lower than these other cities. Plus, because of our location smack dab in the middle of the country, we are convenient to all three coasts!
So, what do you guys think? Am I right or wrong? What did my drunken Chicagoland buddy miss?
Now, you guys know I love my St. Louis, but if i'm answering honestly...
1. Public transit- St. Louis's (while slowly getting better) is beyond pitiful. It's very hard to live in this town sans car, whereas in Chicago many people do (and not just poor people!)
2. There is something to be said for lots of choices. St. Louis has a few good of any type of restaurant, but Chicago has a nearly uncountable number of restaurants. If you're the exploring type, you'll tire of St. Louis's offerings far sooner than Chicago.
3. This has nothing to do with St. Louis itself, but in Chicago it's not weird to live in the city. St. Louisians view of their city is ever so slowly changing, but there is still a long way to go.
4. Job opportunities. Depending on what you want to do, Chicago offers far more, especially entry-level, positions based on sheer size alone. There are far more fortune 500 companies in Chicago.
But there are things St. Louis has that Chicago does not including affordable housing, shorter commutes and one of the best urban parks in America. Chicago has nothing that can compare to Forest Park.
I've lived in St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee, among other places, and still spend time in all three, so I can speak to this topic somewhat. They all have many similarities and some differences.
The people who can't find the positives in all three simply don't spend time in those places and don't know them well enough to say so. All three have their challenges and negatives too.
Aragx6...you're right...aren't you always.....Public transportation does leave some things to be desired here in St. Louis, but from what I can tell, it's actually fairly functional. The light rail thing could be expanded and I think that the folks in St. Charles were shortsighted for voting it's expansion out there down, but from what I understand there are plans on the board to expand the system further.
By functional, the times that I've used it it was on time and took me where I wanted to go....I even once rode the bus from Wood River Illinois out to Oakville! It took awhile, but I only had to change buses once! Even in Chicago, the service gets a bit sketchy once you get out to the further burbs...from what I understand.
Regarding the restaurants....you're right to a certain extent...but past a certain point, the sheer size of Chicago or Boston or NYC does give it a leg up in gross numbers, but unless you're talking about a very specific subset of types of restaurants...such as say...Brazilian...I don't think that you could ever hit ALL the nice restaurants here in St. Louis enough to tire of them.
Regarding the "feeling weird" about living in the city thing. I grew up in the city having lived in North City, South City, Southwest City, Downtown, Dogtown, Soulard and Benton Park and I never felt weird...true, city living is finally getting more media play, but there are quite a few people who have always made the city their home and didn't feel weird about it at all!
Job Opportunities are a relative thing. My buddy is in IT and he does get paid a bit better for what he does there than what he would get paid here in St. Lou. But not that much. I do mortgages for part of my living and the wage difference for most types of jobs isn't that big. Yeah, Chicago might have more job openings, but that's counteracted by the fact that you have more people looking for those jobs too!
An example of the wage difference and how it relates to cost of living would be someone looking to relocate from here to a more expensive area. My girlfriend looked at this possibility about a year ago. She applied for a job outside of San Diego in her field and the job paid about $15,000 more per year than a similar position here in St. Louis. When we looked into housing costs it was over double for an equivalent home (and this was fairly far outside of San Diego!)
STLCardsBlues....Maybe it wasn't fair to put my thread in terms of "vs" because that does make it seem that one would emerge "better" than the other and this is kind of like comparing apples to oranges...they are different and their own thing unto themselves.
That said, when you compare standards of living between St. Louis and some of the larger cities that we compete with for population, business and image...St. Louis definately has some advantages.
One of the reasons that I wrote this post was because I've seen that a good number of people here in St. Louis actually buy into this whole "cow town" stuff. Specifically, I've seen it propagated in the Riverfront times by several of their columnists.
No, St. Louis isn't a New York, an LA or a DC, but would we want to be? Whatever your vice, it can generally be accommodated here in St. Louis. If it can't be, there's always Southwest Airlines! Living in St. Louis, with a nice house that I purchased for under $200,000 in a quiet safe neighborhood, I can afford the couple of hundred dollars that it costs me to fly to one of the coasts if I want to lay on the beach.
My buddy who lives in Chicago (and lives in a smaller house that costs him twice what mine did me - not to mention taxes that are triple what mine are) can't afford to jet off as frequently as I do. The funny thing is that I probably do more things in Chicago than he does! Usually it's me calling him and telling him to meet me at this cool bar!
Anyway, don't mean to be argumentative here, but I'll stand behind my thread...St. Louis isn't a cow town and in a lot of ways (not all) competes very well with any other city that you might care to compare it with! Thanks for the comments!
We may not not have a dozen gay sushi bars, but I'm sure that we have one or two? (Don't we?).
Now this bears some serious inquiries!. Please investigate, and report back!
Seriously, I get sooooooo tired of hearing this argument! Each city has its merits, and its drawbacks, its like beating a dead horse, just not worth the effort to debate.
St. Charles voting down metrolink was one of the stupidest things they've ever done, and it had far more to do with preserving their precious "safety" than anything else. They really believed (and still do I think) that metrolink would bring in unsavory characters who aim only to steal their cars and misuse their children. Very short-sighted indeed.
But while metolink is reliable, it will probably never be a point a to point b type of system. In Chicago you can leave your apartment, walk 3 blocks to an el station, and get dropped off near your destination. Most (but certainly not all) of the people who use Metrolink drive their car to a station.
Also what i mean about most people not wanting to live in the city: Only about 12-13% of the St. Louis metro area lives in the city, whereas about 28-29% of Chicago's metro population lives in the city limits. A significant difference, that does show, at least to a certain extent, that most people prefer the suburbs in St. Louis to the city. Real estate prices also reflect this in some situations.
And as far as jobs, I think it is very industry specific, to be sure, but as a very large city Chicago offers opportunities in just about every field (except perhaps farming!) whereas St. Louis won't do much for someone looking to get into something big-city specific like fashion design or magazine publishing or acting.
It's about a bazillion times cheaper to live in St. Louis; I'll definitely give you that. I could easily make 10-15% less in St. Louis and live the same as or better than Chicago.
Don't even get me started on the taxes in Chicago!!!
Bobster, you make a lot I great points that I always tend to bring up in these arguments. STL is a big city and nowhere close to a cowtown. There is no reason to compare ourselves to any other city. We are who we are!!!
Why would St. Charles vote down MetroLink? Wouldn't it make it easier for people to travel to and from the city?
Yes it would have made it easier to travel into the city, but you also have to remember who a lot of people who live in St. Charles are.
As blacks moved into areas of North County beginning in the 60s and 70s whites in th area started to flee. One of the major areas they fled to, especially during the 80s and 90s was due west of them, St. Charles.
Now not all of these people are racist (though some of them certainly are) but they see the decline of their old neighborhoods in North County and instead of blaming themselves for running at the first sign of diversity, they blame the blacks who moved into those neighborhoods.
A lot of people really believe that building metrolink would allow easy access for those people who they ran from in the first place to come in to their neighborhood and change it again.
Never mind that metrolink hasn't caused increased crime anywhere it's been built.
In short, a lot of people moved out to St. Charles for cheap real estate, but there's another group that moved there to get as far away from the nitty gritty realties of life as they possibly could, and they saw metrolink as connecting them to areas they didn't want to be "linked" to.
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