I still to this day argue that by a significant margin, the best thing about living in Vegas was the everything goes 24-hour lifestyle where you can literally do or eat anything you want 24/365.

Just so long as you ignore the colossal waste of water and other resources needed to run a city in the middle of a desert with no real reason to exist.

The water gets recycled, eventually.

I wouldn't argue against that being the best thing Vegas has going for it.

Cheap housing, cheap decent food options, access to all-you-can-eat-entertainment, relative proximity to SoCal/beach all factor in as well. But the Summer is miserable (IMO) and the people here just don't give a crap about life, so it can be pretty draining to live in Vegas as well.

I'm in Vegas. A lot of people here are passionate about their community and their personal projects. I'm not sure what you're talking abou the "not giving a crap about life." Just browse our Meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/cities/us/nv/las_vegas/ If you missed those kinds of people then maybe there was a problem with the way you approached Vegas.

Where in Vegas do you live/shop/drive?

I just moved downtown actually. I work here, I hang out here, etc. My commute is like 3 minutes in a car. A nice 30 min walk if I want.

Not maybe.

In my case, definitely.

Thanks for the clarification.

>...and the people here just don't give a crap about life

Yes and to finish my OP thought, I would argue that this was without a doubt the worse of it as well.

What do you mean "Don't give a crap about life"?

I mean I grew up in Southern California. Now I live in Vegas. I go to the grocery store and I have to be on full alert to make sure I don't hit some random pedestrian who decides for the fifth time in the day to play Russian roulette by stepping into the middle of the street to cross without even looking up to see if anyone is noticing. At the grocery store, people are walking around like zombies in pajamas that they seem to have been wearing for the past three days straight. I leave the grocery store and load up my car, then I push my empty cart to the cart collection bin. When I get back to my car someone else is loading up their car, with their cart behind my car. I get in my car and wait to finish and when they do, they leave their cart behind my car and drive away. Not to mention the very sad sacks who spend all their time and money in the casinos.

The people here are poor, and my perception is that they don't have much hope and/or desire to affect any kind of change in their life. They just seem not to give a crap.

I don't live in a nice part of town, and I suppose it could just be culture shock for me personally having moved from Irvine to Not-Summerlin, Vegas, but that's my perception.

Yes for sure someone like you should head to Summerlin.

Everything closing at 9PM is pretty much par for the course here in Vancouver, another city with the skyrocketing cost-of-living thing going on. I wonder if there's a correlation. Maybe everyone is rich enough to pay delivery services or maids or something to get their shopping done while they're at work, so there's no demand for 24-hour businesses?

Then again, another thing with Vancouver (that I think I've heard said a bit about SF, but less-so) is that there's no night life. The bars close at midnight. (Actually, you can't even get a license to operate a "bar" here; you have to build a sit-down restaurant in order to serve alcohol.) I wonder if the correlation is actually between this sort of Victorian-era teetotaling "healthy living" sensibility, and the sort of generalized NIMBYism that prevents highrises from deflating housing pressure.

It might also be that for restaurants and retail the employees have been so completely priced out of living in the area that many of them have a 2+ hour commute with all the limitations that entails (quitting time determined by transit availability, etc.).

A major factor in this is that the transit services largely die off at 1am in Vancouver. So for any workers at stores or restaurants they simply can't afford to go home after a certain point. The late night bus service is not good enough, take for example the N19. It is full of all the bar kids at 1am. You don't want to take that bus unless you're drunk.

I think you're onto something with the Victorian "healthy living" bit. There is some hypocrisy as well: the way Vancouverites talk down about alcohol drinkers or tobacco smokers all the time but meanwhile promote the pot trade and never talk about the rampant heroin problem in that city.

Sounds like they're not too different from us Californians after all.

BART really doesn't run late enough (Caltrain to the South Bay as well) to support suburbanites coming into SF to drink at night.

Vancouver anecdote; bars are not night life. I visited for two weeks and discovered a local music festival (music waste), befriended random folks at parks (parks were everywhere, and people actually used them!). East Van seemed to have a lively night life on par with SF/LA, people hosting live bands in their loft, avant-garde burlesque theater, house parties etc. It sounded like there was a lively festival scene in BC too, and not just electronic, stuff like the Peppermill Festival http://www.peppermillrecords.com/. Quantity of cultural hubs in Van might not be as expansive as other major cities, but the quality certainly sprouts up. That city seems more suited for people who enjoy nature though.

Really sad to hear that Vancouver and San Francisco are plagued by real estate siphoning out all the potential of what those cities could be. Feudalism seems to be a trend everywhere though.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-14/millennial...

They have the parties at home in east van because it is impossible to get a permit and/or a suitable venue for most events. There are very few venues for hosting parties and virtually no practice areas for bands. I've been to a number of events that were held in death-trap condemned buildings. I've even been locked in one illegally because someone called an ambulance and they didn't want to "blow their cover" so nobody could enter or exit for 30min while my friend waited outside in a back alley. Much prefer other cities where I can just go to a normal bar and not deal with entrapment issues.

Vancouver parks close for the night, usually at dusk or 10pm

I think that reasonable (For the employees) grocery hours are more of a Canadian thing, rather then a skyrocketing cost-of-living one. Businesses in Victoria, Kamloops, etc close up around the same time.

Err, well, bars which hold a primary liquor license in Vancouver can operate until 2 AM. Many do, but after 1:00 AM a majority of the night life leaves and you're left with a couple of awesome regulars, someone passed out on a table who you have to help get home, and staff from other restaurants which close earlier.

All the great things that Vancouver has to offer happen in the day or afternoon. The only thing I'm sad about is the Jazz Cellar closing down. RIP Ross Taggart.

Where are you going? Seriously. Put a little effort in.

This is one of the strangest things about the Bay for sure. It is like a stereotype of a sleepy little town this way. I stay in Oakland now, and there is one cafe (within bike riding distance for me) that is open to midnight.

Safeway is open near 24/7, some close at ~midnight, but that's pretty good. There are also tons of little convenience stores/bodegas that stay open relatively late.

That said, nightlife closing at 2AM is a plus and a minus. I kind of like there being a defined end to the evening, I'd rather not stay out too too late and this way I don't have to be the party pooper :)

Since you're on HN I assume you're doing some kind of software or technical work. What's the market like for that in WV. My family's from Man, a little dot in Logan county.

The market is complete crap. I'm back for what was supposed to be temporary, plan was to go to Dallas, but I have attachments here so don't want to go.

I've spent 8 months looking for a technical position. The only interviews I've managed to get are in Roanoke/Blacksburg, VA. Every interview I've had (not many because the market is dry), either drastically undercuts my experience (one company tried to write down my experience below the length of my last job) or otherwise offers a very meager salary, 30-50% lower than even the cost of living adjusted figure from my last job where I was living SoMa.

Also due to infrastructure, and partially the company who marked down my experience because they don't consider remote experience, I'm no longer interested in remote positions.

Where in WV?

I can't find food after 10pm.

Lewisburg, it means getting fast food or going to a tavern, but the choices are more than I had in the peninsula.

Morgantown also has late hours in my experience, though you might have to walk to High St.

The Irish Pub?

That's one of them, though the food after 10 is a little more iffy. Sometimes there's pizza and bread from the bakery brought over for the pub's patrons.

I'm there fairly frequently.

The Asylum serves regular bar food til about 11 I think. Still later than what I was seeing in SF.

Since you know of it, if you're ever around and would like to grab a pint feel frre to send me an email at [email protected]

Greetings from another WV refugee. Austin by way of Elkview. I have tons of relatives from Greenbrier County.