Seattle Washington?

[LostAbbott]

I live in Seattle. Ballard actually. Housing is still expensive, our house came down in value about $100k, but has since started to move back up a little, this is probably seasonal as houses are worth between $30-$50k more in the spring and summer.

The politics is a horrible mess and getting worse, to the point that is actually affects normal people everyday, traffic is stupidly designed and a nightmare. The police out here are just there to harass you and hand out traffic tickets. If you have kids or are thinking of having kids, start saving now as the Seattle city school system is a joke. The east side is top notch however. Mass transit is the worst of any large city I have ever been to, so think bike or car.

There is great food, you can get excellent anything as long as you look enough, There is a level of food that is "good" that most tourists go to and come home talking about, to a Seattleite though that food is crap, if you look around and work at it you can find lots of Seattle "great" food, for anything from Mexican to Korean. Much of it as good as the country of origin.

Lots of great stuff to do outside, hiking, biking, sailing, fishing. You name it we have world class access to to it. Good Football, Soccer and ok Baseball. The UW mend basketball team has made it to the round of 32 or deeper the last three years in a row and they keep getting better, their games are a lot of fun, and remind me of NBA games when I was a kid, focused on the game and not some stupid t-shirt blimp.

Close to Canada, Vancouver and Victoria are both excellent cities to visit and you can purchase many nice things there that you cannot get here.

If she is looking at UW, it is a great school, As are some of the smaller schools in the area.

If you are looking to buy a house Seattle is broken into neighborhoods, much like NYC only smaller. For a house I would recommend Ballard, Magnolia, or West Seattle. They are all fairly quiet with great walking distance food and on the water. West Seattle is the cheapest as the commute can be difficult as there is really only one way in to Downtown from there.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask or PM me.

[markem]

You might want to post in the mossback herf thread a pointer to this thread. That's the herf thread for the greater Seattle/Tacoma area. I lived in Seattle in the 80s, so my info is too dated to be of much use.

Commuting via either bridge is major suckage, so if you can swing it, avoid it.