Reply to Anyone move from Chicago to DMV and regret it?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was raised in Chicago, went to college in California, and then my adult life has always orbited DC. My mother still lives in Chicago, as do my mother's side of the family, so I go back, usually at Christmas time. I've always said Chicago is the best city in the world for three months out of the year. I do think that Chicago is a healthier environment for kids and families in terms of the people and mindset, since it's less type A with the exception of the North Shore and the Gold Coast. The Type A-ness of parents in the North Shore and the Gold Coast are just like here. Summers in the Midwest (particularly on lakes in Minnesota and northern Wisconsin) are criminally underrated by those who are not from the Midwest, and DC doesn't have anything similar to a Michigan/Wisconsin (some say the Eastern Shore or Ocean City/Rehoboth, but no). On the other hand, Chicago can be brutally cold and gray from October to Mother's Day, and some people cannot deal with it. For singles in their 20s and early 30s, it's on average a Big 10 school but just continued - it's less artsy than New York or intellectual than DC. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. Once you have kids, the differences kind of iron themselves out it seems.

In the same vein, Chicago is probably more conservative than DC socially, but on the same level politically. I vote reliably Democratic but I'm much more of a Clinton or a Biden Democrat than a Bernie Democrat. I see a similar phenomenon in Chicagoans I know where they are on average more in line with the Bidens of the world than the Bernies.

My impression is that DCPS and charters are on average better than CPS, but my college experience was that my suburban public high school prepared me far better than suburban public high schools in the DMV (MV?) prepared my classmates.

Also Chicago in terms of area is much bigger than DC. All of the District of Columbia can be fit into the Chicagoan North Side (Chicago River to Howard Ave, North Fork to the Lake), and that's something people quickly forget. Chicago's roads with the Kennedy, Edens, Eisenhower, Stevenson, Dan Ryan, and Bishop Ford are much better for getting around than DC's highway system. It takes me the same amount of time to get from 16th Street Heights to Downtown as it does to get me from Elmhurst (similar in feel to 16th Street Heights) to the Loop, although Elmhurst is 18 miles away from the Loop whereas 16th Street Heights is 5 miles away from Metro Center.

If you can deal with the grayness for eight months out of the year, I would gravitate to Chicago, but I cannot, so I'm here![/quote]

+1 to all this.

Another Chicagoan stuck in DC. [/quote]

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