What city are we?

A number of my friends have recently taken the "What city are you?" quiz on Facebook. If they are persuaded by the results, I will soon know a lot of people living in Seattle. I have yet to take the quiz, but Toby and I have been asking our own questions to each other about where we can envision ourselves living. We're not pulling up anchor anytime soon, but when I see us five years from now, I imagine us calling someplace other than Los Angeles home. The question is: where?

Of course we like to think of ourselves moving back to Frederick, but given that we don't know if that will even be possible, we've tried to imagine other places we might like to call home. Ideally, we'd like to live near our families. Realistically, we will need to find somewhere with a thriving tech community. There are a lot of places where I know we'd be perfectly happy - like Boston, MA or Takoma Park, MD - but when we are throwing practicality aside and just imagining our lives in different places, we picture a city that's small enough to feel like home but large enough for a dynamic downtown. It is somewhere near or nestled in the mountains. The city's citizens feel connected to and are active in the local politics, lending to a strong sense of community. A vibe that's progressive and outdoorsy with a touch of artsy is always nice too. And of course, the public schools should be excellent - or at least decent.

Here are the cities we've discussed:

- Asheville, NC
- Boulder, CO
- Burlington, VT
- Charlottesville, VA
- Flagstaff, AZ
- Frederick, MD
- Northhampton, MA
- Portland, ME
- Portland, OR

This weekend, we added another city to the list.

We spent the weekend with friends in Pismo Beach, California. Pismo Beach is not making the list anytime soon. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's vying for the top spot in a list of "Most redneck places in the United States". There's probably a lot of competition for spots on that list. But I think that you can safely know you are in a redneck town if the beach is covered with people riding ATVs and more than one of them is flying the confederate flag. The town gets extra redneck points for people doing that even though they are nowhere near the southeastern United States. We had been unaware of the ATV factor when we rented the house, so needless to say, on Saturday morning, we hightailed out of there pretty quickly.

We headed to San Luis Obispo county, to Montana de Oro, a state park named after the golden wildflowers covering the hills. We spent the morning hiking through fields of flowers, climbing down sandy cliffs, and looking at hermit crabs in the tidal pools. After a picnic on the beach, we hiked back to the cars and within a few minutes' drive, we found ourselves in a small city with beautiful mountain views, tree-lined streets and a vibrant downtown. We bumped into a Children's Festival by the creek and sat on the grass to watch "mad scientists" explode balloons and to listen to live kids' music. After a day in the sun, we were soon all feeling a little thirsty and walked to a restaurant with a patio overlooking the creek where we enjoyed a couple of rounds of beers and pretended that our kids' weren't mixing rice, salt and sugar into their ginger ales. As our kids terrorized the restaurant at their separate kids' table (love the separate table), we toasted a wonderful weekend and decided that we should all move to San Luis Obispo. We were sort of joking, but it's a city that would be hard not to love. I'm adding it to the list.

So I'm wondering: what is your criteria for a great place to live? What cities are on your list? Are we overlooking anyplace?