2NorthAmerican4You

Spoken like a true West Coast native.

I've been there twice, only once by choice, and I think about Seattle more than Chicago.

Hell I think about Gary Indiana more than Chicago.

Everybody that leaves Chicago can't stop thinking about it.

Honestly me too. I think a big part of it is cultural. With LA you have Hollywood, skate culture, and a music scene that dominated the last 3 decades or so, etc, and NYC, well, it's NYC. For a while Chicago was the center of the jazz world when jazz was the mainstream, but that was probably over a hundred years ago. I hear Chicago's nice, but that's basically all I hear, I really don't know what goes on over there these days compared to a lot of other American cities.

It's not a city though. More a collection of suburbs.

I did a business trip there once. One of the few places I really didn't enjoy. Maybe it was the area I was in since I found out there was a run down strip club a few doors down from the hotel, getting dinner was like a few miles away but that was 3 hours in traffic. I think I was in far north west corner of Houston.

If it's any comfort, it's the first city this random dork on the other side of the world thought of.

...for a given value of "great". It's the only city I've visited that somehow manages to be a long distance away from itself.

hey you're definitely one of the ones rotating in and out

It definitely goes NYC, LA, Chicago, SF.

DC doesn't get on there because DC is a one-trick pony. It's the seat of power for the federal government, at which point you may as well be saying that Sacramento makes top three major cities in California. NYC, LA, and Chicago have the first, second, and third-most populous MSAs (DC is 7th) and have a lot going for them individually.

Unlike the San Francisco Bay Area, its CSA with Baltimore etc. that makes it #3 lacks a coherent identity and presence. DC is still populous and does that one trick really well (and has value as a tourist attraction), so it is fighting with DFW for the fifth spot, imo, but probably goes somewhere below it just because unlike in many national capitals (Paris, Moscow, Jakarta, etc.), an outsize chunk of people who live there do so just to work for/around the government.

feels like its going by kinda date. New York was the first major city, then chicago, then LA but LA population wise overtook chicago. Its kinda funny because texas's major metros combined would surpass new york but then again you start combining cali and you get the same. Both states though are as big as several average sized states combined land wise. Personally I think NY and chicago are kinda special because they are the only ones for their state. Like if your in the state and you say your are going to take a trip to the city you would know what they mean.

Anything to waste Americans' time rather than caring about the Epstein files

That city is basically the definition of urban sprawl. It is slightly larger than the size of Connecticut. I have to explain to people that when you cross Houston during normal/low traffic times, it can take over two hours without stopping to get from one side to the other, highway the whole time.

Was looking for this comment. People are really saying Houston before Philadelphia