The city also balances refreshingly sleepy weekdays with buzzy weekends: On the first Friday of every month, the Portland Museum of Art opens to the public for free, and the numerous galleries throughout the Arts District take advantage of the bustle by putting on excellent exhibits of their own. The Portland of the East is also so far north as to basically be Canada-so while residents may need to withstand long but sports-filled winters, they'll ultimately be rewarded with utterly green summers, all within decent proximity to romantic, lighthouse-lined beaches and the only National Park in the Northeast. ![]() Maine’s take on the city feels like an older, denser concentration of cuteness, with brick buildings, cobblestone lanes, and gas lamps on the exteriors, but a modern design approach that keeps interiors current. Emma BanksĪpparently, if your city is called Portland, you have to cater to creatives no matter what coast you’re on. Plus, when all is said and done, that world-famous Washingtonian nature is even closer at hand than in Seattle: Here, Olympic National Park is basically your backyard. It’s also got its fair share of museums, both traditional ( Splash Gallery, Van Tuinen Art, The Mark Gallery) and unusual ( the Olympia Pinball Museum), as well as a smattering of solid breweries, which any trip to the Pacific Northwest should guarantee. Washington’s generally gloomy weather has inspired artists, gastronomes, and beautifully melancholic souls not just in the state’s biggest city, but in its capital as well just look to Rainy Day Records (name checks out!), zine stockist Last Word Books, or gothic music venue Cryptatropa Bar for proof. Enter the state capital of Olympia, just an hour away. Given the number of corporate behemoths-Amazon, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Microsoft, you name it-who’ve built their billion-dollar dragon lairs in and around Seattle, it should come as no surprise that normal people with normal salaries need an alternative. It's a place with a wealth of craft breweries, excellent restaurants, and endless opportunities to explore the desert landscape, whether you're seeing it from a trail, via kayak along the Rio Grande, or from the comfort of an aeronautical wonder at the world's largest hot air balloon festival, October's Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Albuquerque, the state’s biggest city, has made leaps in recent years toward being as diverse and cosmopolitan as you’d expect from a major US hub. If New Mexican cuisine doesn’t make you feel as though you’ve been transported to another country altogether, the city’s Pueblo Revival architecture and the striking Sandia Mountains will. Okay, maybe that's an overstatement, but try Frontier or Sadie’s and you won’t want to ever leave town again. When that spice hits, it might just send you into a creative euphoria. You know you’ve attained hero status when you can eat it three times a day: on some eggs for breakfast, a bowl of it at high noon, and a heavy dose for your burger at dinner. Next time the powers that be create a show based in the ABQ, they should seriously consider the addictive qualities of green chile as a plot device. As we all look toward what's next in the world, now's the perfect time to start plotting your next act. ![]() We looked for spots that fall on the full livability spectrum: artist communities a good dose of nature a food, art, beer, and/or music scene and a level of relative affordability that actually allows you to partake therein. ![]() This country is full of cities where writers, musicians, illustrators, makers, and tinkerers of all stripes can create and reside comfortably. Luckily, despite what the coastal elites and “Keep X Weird” crowds may have you believe, it's entirely possible to find creative fulfillment in places where the cost of living is a little more reasonable. But those days are long gone, as is the possibility of living in historically culture-rich places like New York, LA, San Francisco, Austin, and Portland where-unless you’re the second coming of Andy fucking Warhol-you’ll likely find the rent prices bafflingly, soul-crushingly high. ![]() Once upon a time, there was something poetic about the struggling artist.
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