ATL’s competition to crown the best city to practice law continues.
In the regional finals in the east and south, D.C. is dominating New York, and Dallas is doing away with Atlanta. Now it’s time for us to turn our sights westward.
This round’s bouts will determine which city in flyover country is the best for lawyers and will finally resolve the NoCal vs SoCal debate. Let’s get to it…
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Elie waxes poetic about the West Coast:
LOS ANGELES v. SAN FRANCISCO
California Love
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This post will hit your eyeballs like a slug to your chest. We are in the glorious state of California. The weather is beautiful, the budget is weathered, let’s find out who rules the west side.
L.A. is bigger and badder. They have New York salaries, but the rent is slightly cheaper than Manhattan. San Francisco lawyers also enjoy high salaries, but San Francisco is actually more expensive to live in than L.A. San Fran rates a 226 on the Consumer Price Index. And that number is dragged down because the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps Oakland into the S.F. region. That’s like looking at American educational achievement and including Mississippi. Accurate but unfair. L.A. has a 224 CPI, because there are some really cheap housing prices in Watts.
Okay fine, so the cities themselves are close in cost of living. So what? L.A. still has an edge because it’s much closer to God’s playground (a.k.a. Las Vegas).
I wish they all could be California girls
Look, they don’t write songs about girls from Wisconsin. Choosing between hotness in L.A. and hotness San Fran is like trying to find split ends in beautiful hair. But if you have to choose, remember that L.A. is populated by would-be actresses who end up doing odd jobs to make ends meet. And L.A. lawyers can afford to pay for the occasional … job. In SF you’ve got liberal hipster hotties. It’s a close thing, but I think you have to go with silicon breasts over silicon valleys.
Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice
And she said “we are all just prisoners here, of our own device”
If you are not a native Californian and you move there, you are chasing something. Fortune, fame, venture capital, whatever. But rest assured, California will assault your self esteem from every angle. California works just like an American high school: 95% of the people are unpopular, but the super majority envies the few stars of the system.
At least in San Francisco you can put your head far enough up your own ass that you can drown out the haters. “I spit on those (beautiful) CONFLICT diamonds and (so … soft) EVIL fur coat! I shall now smell my own farts.”
In L.A., there’s no escaping the younger, prettier, more powerful people all around you. Inevitably, constantly being on the wrong side of the velvet rope leads to heroine abuse:
And in the master’s chambers, They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives, But they just can’t kill the beast
My politics make me a natural lover of San Francisco. And dragons scare me.
Kash reflects on the Midwest:
CHICAGO v. ST. LOUIS/KANSAS CITY
I won’t make the mistake of betting against Chi-town again. I thought that Cleveland might be this tournament’s Cinderella, but I was wrong. Chicago destroyed Ohio’s finest.
In the last round, St. Louis/Kansas City did not face stiff competition either, in the form of Detroit. The Rust Belt just can’t compete with the I-70 stretch.
Can one city in the Prairie State hold its own against two cities in the Show-Me State? I think yes, but I’ve been wrong before.
Unfortunately, I’ve not visited any of the competitors in this final. But that will soon be remedied in the case of Chicago; I’ll be there in May for the InsideCounsel Superconference. That’s because Chicago is a destination city. I can’t think of a reason to visit St. Louis/Kansas City unless I had a Calvin Trillin-sized hankering for some barbecue.
Our commenters didn’t have much to say on behalf of STL/KC in the last round, maybe because they were in shock over the fact that attorneys in Detroit make so much more money than them. They are similarly disadvantaged in this match-up. Windy City attorneys are raking in $143K on average as opposed to $115K/$108K in STL/KC. Sure, sure, cost of living is lower in the latter, but CNN’s COLA Calculator suggests that attorneys in Kansas City are still getting screwed, relatively.
I see the Second City coming in first this round. But readers from the Puke State should feel free to disagree with me in the comments.
Earlier: 2010 ATL March Madness