As a recent Chicago to Cleveland transplant who is missing home terribly, in more ways than I even thought possible, I have to disagree with a lot of the methods used to reach your scientific conclusions.
The lower cost of living is great, but it can be a bit deceptive. Certainly a home is less expensive, but if I were to buy in my neighborhood, I would have to try and find a place for my overnight guests to park since street parking overnight (2 to 6am) will get you a ticket. Or I guess I'd have to buy a giant piece of property and build a parking lot. Yes, it's a bazillion dollars in savings to buy a home here and not in Chicago, but something about all the little asinine rules and regulations just irks me.
Your only metric for measuring traffic woes appears to be the amount of time it adds to your commute. Yes, it takes forever and a day to drive anywhere in Chicago. However, you can take the El and read a book all the way home, which I did for years and it was just lovely. If you do have to drive, you can reasonably expect to arrive home with your car in one piece. In the two months I've lived in Cleveland, I've seen drivers swerve in and out of lanes on busy, packed streets, never so much as a flash of a signal. I've seen people driving with their hazards on as if they're 100% certain their junker will explode at any second and they just want to be sure you know. I've seen drivers turn right from the left lane, tearing across two right lanes of moving traffic to do so, laying on the horn all the way like, "HERE I COME!" When approaching a green traffic light, I keep my foot hovering over the brake since everyone and their mother seems to think it's A-OK to turn in front of oncoming traffic as long as you do it really fast and you think you can make it. The other day I had to lay on my horn for what felt like an hour to alert the driver in front of me that he was in the wrong lane: he had pulled out of a gas station and into the left lane of oncoming traffic and was headed straight for me, but was too busy staring at his phone to notice. He finally looked up and swerved out of the way, only about 4-feet from my bumper. Cars in Cleveland are in bad shape: they've got trash bags for windows, bumpers and license plates held on with duct tape, chasms of twisted metal in the sides, gaping holes in the floors, and these are the A-holes who rip around you to cut you off going 50 in a school zone, like they haven't yet figured out the correlation between the way they drive and the state of their trashed-out, taped-up vehicle. (Though maybe they'd notice if they weren't too busy tossing huge handfuls of trash out of their windows onto the street.) I'm paying a fortune for car insurance here, through the same company I've always used, and according to the company, it's due to the higher rate of smash-ups in this city. I balked at this at first, but now I keep a little tally in my head of all the fender benders, bumps, scrapes, and major accidents I see on my way to and from work. The lowest number I saw in one day was two. Two, in a 20-minute drive. I will say here and now that I fully predict one of these numbskulls to tear off my mirror or slam right into my driver's side door any day now, because they're screeching into their phone or playing Candy Crush on the road while they do risky, stupid maneuvers just to get one spot ahead of you on the road. Chicago driving sucks, sure, but at least most people are paying attention, and the cops seem to care if they're not. (You also mention that you don't have to fight for parking at the grocery store here, and I laughed out loud when I read that, because I went to the grocery store last week and had to park across the street in the hardware store lot because two people had smashed into each other's cars and proceeded to scream threats at each other, so the entire lot was blocked by cop cars, smoking smashed-up cars, and onlookers.)
Oh, and, that same weekend: my neighbor pulled out of her driveway and smacked into my friend's car, which was parked on the street. She got out, looked around for any witnesses, then hopped back in her SUV and took off.
But...traffic. Sure. Okay.
Finally, I take issue with your "creative class revival" comment, not because it's off base to describe the Chicago hipster foodie techie scene that way, but it's disingenuous to suggest that Cleveland is not also striving for that culture. I've been to so many brand new restaurants here, restaurants which are billed the same as those Chicago artisanal farm-to-table ingredient brunch places that are all over the place. The difference is that the Chicago market is pretty saturated, so to rise to the top, you've got to know what you're doing. Cleveland doesn't have a top to rise to yet, so when you go to a 5-star on Yelp taco joint and order a house margarita, you're definitely paying $10 for a Jose Cuervo mix with bottom shelf tequila, they just throw it in a mason jar and some guy hollers "Artisanal!" I ordered lunch via a restaurant's online ordering system the other day and then walked over to the address listed on their site to pick it up. Guess what?! It wasn't there. It has never been there, ever, in that empty parking lot of a strip mall. I called the number on the emailed receipt and they wanted to know how I got that phone number (their corporate line), and that address? I told them it all came from their website and their email, and they still had no idea how or why these things happened. They blamed it on Google and vowed to "figure out" how to change the info on their own website. SHEESH. I would have been happy to use the phone to place my order, and to ask someone who knew where they were actually located, but they were all "Look at us, we have ONLINE ORDERING now! Please try it!" So, let's not pretend that Cleveland isn't aiming for that creative class revival too. It's just failing.
Lots of things annoyed me about Chicago: the expense, the ridiculous taxes, the crowds, tourists, dibs on parking in the winter. However, Cleveland is still second rate in every way that I have found so far. The art museum is free, but it's small and boring (there are free days in Chicago by the way, and free passes to any cultural institution can be borrowed from any branch of the Chicago Public Library, to be used any day). Cheaper doesn't always mean better. Good services are also difficult to find here: so far I've been ripped off by a dog daycare, an auto detailer who wiped down my dashboard and charged me $108, and a pizza restaurant whose delivery guy dropped my pizza on the ground sideways and still tried to hand it to me at the door with the whole thing slopping out of the busted box.
Sure, Chicago's expensive, but at least you get what you pay for. In Cleveland, you pay and you get whatever they want to give you.
Recent Comments
The lower cost of living is great, but it can be a bit deceptive. Certainly a home is less expensive, but if I were to buy in my neighborhood, I would have to try and find a place for my overnight guests to park since street parking overnight (2 to 6am) will get you a ticket. Or I guess I'd have to buy a giant piece of property and build a parking lot. Yes, it's a bazillion dollars in savings to buy a home here and not in Chicago, but something about all the little asinine rules and regulations just irks me.
Your only metric for measuring traffic woes appears to be the amount of time it adds to your commute. Yes, it takes forever and a day to drive anywhere in Chicago. However, you can take the El and read a book all the way home, which I did for years and it was just lovely. If you do have to drive, you can reasonably expect to arrive home with your car in one piece. In the two months I've lived in Cleveland, I've seen drivers swerve in and out of lanes on busy, packed streets, never so much as a flash of a signal. I've seen people driving with their hazards on as if they're 100% certain their junker will explode at any second and they just want to be sure you know. I've seen drivers turn right from the left lane, tearing across two right lanes of moving traffic to do so, laying on the horn all the way like, "HERE I COME!" When approaching a green traffic light, I keep my foot hovering over the brake since everyone and their mother seems to think it's A-OK to turn in front of oncoming traffic as long as you do it really fast and you think you can make it. The other day I had to lay on my horn for what felt like an hour to alert the driver in front of me that he was in the wrong lane: he had pulled out of a gas station and into the left lane of oncoming traffic and was headed straight for me, but was too busy staring at his phone to notice. He finally looked up and swerved out of the way, only about 4-feet from my bumper. Cars in Cleveland are in bad shape: they've got trash bags for windows, bumpers and license plates held on with duct tape, chasms of twisted metal in the sides, gaping holes in the floors, and these are the A-holes who rip around you to cut you off going 50 in a school zone, like they haven't yet figured out the correlation between the way they drive and the state of their trashed-out, taped-up vehicle. (Though maybe they'd notice if they weren't too busy tossing huge handfuls of trash out of their windows onto the street.) I'm paying a fortune for car insurance here, through the same company I've always used, and according to the company, it's due to the higher rate of smash-ups in this city. I balked at this at first, but now I keep a little tally in my head of all the fender benders, bumps, scrapes, and major accidents I see on my way to and from work. The lowest number I saw in one day was two. Two, in a 20-minute drive. I will say here and now that I fully predict one of these numbskulls to tear off my mirror or slam right into my driver's side door any day now, because they're screeching into their phone or playing Candy Crush on the road while they do risky, stupid maneuvers just to get one spot ahead of you on the road. Chicago driving sucks, sure, but at least most people are paying attention, and the cops seem to care if they're not. (You also mention that you don't have to fight for parking at the grocery store here, and I laughed out loud when I read that, because I went to the grocery store last week and had to park across the street in the hardware store lot because two people had smashed into each other's cars and proceeded to scream threats at each other, so the entire lot was blocked by cop cars, smoking smashed-up cars, and onlookers.)
Oh, and, that same weekend: my neighbor pulled out of her driveway and smacked into my friend's car, which was parked on the street. She got out, looked around for any witnesses, then hopped back in her SUV and took off.
But...traffic. Sure. Okay.
Finally, I take issue with your "creative class revival" comment, not because it's off base to describe the Chicago hipster foodie techie scene that way, but it's disingenuous to suggest that Cleveland is not also striving for that culture. I've been to so many brand new restaurants here, restaurants which are billed the same as those Chicago artisanal farm-to-table ingredient brunch places that are all over the place. The difference is that the Chicago market is pretty saturated, so to rise to the top, you've got to know what you're doing. Cleveland doesn't have a top to rise to yet, so when you go to a 5-star on Yelp taco joint and order a house margarita, you're definitely paying $10 for a Jose Cuervo mix with bottom shelf tequila, they just throw it in a mason jar and some guy hollers "Artisanal!" I ordered lunch via a restaurant's online ordering system the other day and then walked over to the address listed on their site to pick it up. Guess what?! It wasn't there. It has never been there, ever, in that empty parking lot of a strip mall. I called the number on the emailed receipt and they wanted to know how I got that phone number (their corporate line), and that address? I told them it all came from their website and their email, and they still had no idea how or why these things happened. They blamed it on Google and vowed to "figure out" how to change the info on their own website. SHEESH. I would have been happy to use the phone to place my order, and to ask someone who knew where they were actually located, but they were all "Look at us, we have ONLINE ORDERING now! Please try it!" So, let's not pretend that Cleveland isn't aiming for that creative class revival too. It's just failing.
Lots of things annoyed me about Chicago: the expense, the ridiculous taxes, the crowds, tourists, dibs on parking in the winter. However, Cleveland is still second rate in every way that I have found so far. The art museum is free, but it's small and boring (there are free days in Chicago by the way, and free passes to any cultural institution can be borrowed from any branch of the Chicago Public Library, to be used any day). Cheaper doesn't always mean better. Good services are also difficult to find here: so far I've been ripped off by a dog daycare, an auto detailer who wiped down my dashboard and charged me $108, and a pizza restaurant whose delivery guy dropped my pizza on the ground sideways and still tried to hand it to me at the door with the whole thing slopping out of the busted box.
Sure, Chicago's expensive, but at least you get what you pay for. In Cleveland, you pay and you get whatever they want to give you.