>It exists. But it's viewed as houses in the middle of a cornfield or a decaying steel town, no decent jobs, no culture, lousy weather, etc.

Who views it that way? People who have never been there and also know nothing about it? People who have never left California?

I don't actually think anyone -- statistically speaking -- from California views Chicago that way. There is a stereotype of Californians which feels unusually pernicious which I see a lot on HN, generally either from people who have never been to the Bay Area or feel they "escaped" the Bay Area and take every opportunity to tell people that they bought an 8000 square foot mansion for $100K, pay $7.99 a month for 100Gbps internet service, and so on.

I kid, but seriously, many of us have actually been to other cities across the United States and the world and have appreciation for them. There are many places I would be happy in besides the SF Bay Area. I would be able to find friends and good microbreweries and good craft coffee, cocktail bars, interesting cheap restaurants, interesting expensive restaurants, museums, nature hikes, the whole shebang. Some of my absolute favorite examples of each of those are outside the SF Bay Area! It's simply that so far, I haven't found a metro area (at least in the US) that can combine a similar concentration of such places with a comparable climate, tech job market, and markedly cheaper cost of living.

Boston has the combination of yankee hospitality and New Jersey charm, just substitute rotaries for “no left turns”.

It’s also an old place with weird enclaves unknown to outsiders. You may find your lovely townhome is adjacent to a superfund site.

Tech scene in Boston is really huge. It’s a bit less “Facebook for cats” than Silicon Valley and tends to be more stuff that needs the big brains from MIT and the like. Moderna is a great example.

Pharma/biotech is particularly big but look at a magazine like Tech Review and there's a lot of diversity.

In addition to the weather (which really isn't that bad), part of it is I think that a lot of people with SV companies tend to think of tech as "what SV companies do" which naturally leads to them seeing less "tech" in other places. (Though there are sizable outposts of quite a few West coast employers at this point in addition to the home-grown ones.

Tech actually in the city was almost non-existent for a long time. Hence the Route 128 computer companies. But that's shifted a fair bit again over the past 20 years.