The biggest problem I see with Chicago is that, for a metro of almost 10 million people, it's somewhat geographically simple and clique-y. The first question people around here ask you is "do you live in the city or the suburbs?" or "are you a northsider or a southsider?" People around here judge you by what neighborhood you live in, and there's a noticeable social chasm between the city and the suburbs, and even between the different city proper neighborhoods and the various suburban communities. Some women are small-minded about geography, I've had girls reject me because they thought a 45min drive was a "long distance relationship". The Chicago suburbs have a dearth of social opportunities/nightlife for young single people, and unfortunately I'm tied to my job/industry, which is mostly clustered deep into the suburbs. I sense there are some cute/quality girls who live in the burbs, but there's few ways to meet them let alone take them on creative dates in the burbs. Everyone seems to conjugate downtown. I drive/train into the city proper where all the fun stuff to do is 3-4 nights a week, but then a good chunk of the city-dwelling women give me this "that guy from the boring suburbs" attitude. The young yuppie transplants on the trendy northside are especially snobby and cliquish about this. If they don't own a car, forget about it, it'll be logistically near-impossible to date them anyways in that case. Overall, I think The Chi is still one of the better hubs in the USA to socialize and meet a variety of attractive women; the urban nightlife is pretty rockin', I'm breaking into the Latin/Salsa dance scene here, which is exciting, I've pulled some dates with attractive hispanic women, something I could never really do in California, but maybe that was just me back then. The Latin women over here are a bit better quality and people in general around Chi are a tad less full of themselves than other major US cities. There's also a booming Asian immigrant population around here and I'm continuing to get good responses from the asian wimminz and other ethnic types as well. But Chicago is still somewhat an old guard city that epitomizes some of the standard American stuff: neighborhood pride, zipcode snobbery, washed out suburbia, urban decay, gentrification, thug culture, sports pub/alcohol-fueled social life... Los Angeles is more douchey, San Francisco is more snooty, New York is more asshole, but Chicago is the hub of America, and perhaps no other city more perfectly reflects some of the core problems with the country in general.MattHanson1990 wrote: Chicago, IL has the most dysfunctional dating scene of perhaps any city in the US. The only options for nice guys are morbidly obese women (300+ lbs). Forget it if you're going after hot girls. The hot girls only go after guys with a luxury style mansion on Lake Michigan with luxury style yachts. And as of recently, the hot girls in Chicago fled from the suburbs into the city proper to go after actual bad boys - drug dealers, bank robbers, murderers, car thieves, gangsters, flash mobs, etc. Only one reason can support this. Especially in Chicago, the job market is in women's favor and now stacked against men. Women are getting paid more, companies are hiring more women and fewer men, men are getting cuts in their paychecks, laid off, and what not. Chicagoland girls are going for the breadstealers and not the breadwinners. In fact, the whole state of Illinois has the worst dating scene in America.
I had a friend who lived in NM for several months and more or less experienced what you're talking about. Albuquerque/Los Alamos are sausagefests, there's a serious shortage of single 20s/30s women, people are insular and it's hard to break into their cliques and get them to socialize/date an outsider. If you're a single man, it's a great state to visit if you're really into nature or southwestern culture, good for a long weekend trip and little else. Maybe a good place to settle if you're married and want to get away from hustle-n-bustle standard America.Albuquerque, NM is the most Americanized of the three medium-sized cities in the southwest. Especially non-Hispanic white girls are stuck up, and most of them, especially the 8s, 9s, and 10s, won't even befriend guys who are not in the top 10 percent or alpha males. UNM has a fairly large Greek life, and sorority girls are definitely the one who think they are Miss Universe.