District vs. District

It is difficult to decide which neighborhood to live in Seattle. Each neighborhood has its charms and benefits, so this is one of the harder decisions for me. The way I am working around it is picking apartments to look at in my top three neighborhood choices. This way the choice is made for me, and the year-long lease says I get to deal with whatever cons there may be while enjoying the pros.

Downtown
There are a million things to do downtown. It is crazy, it is fun, it is busy. It is the heart of everything. The only down side is the scariness aspect, the crimes and whatnot that are more prevalent there. But walk scores for just about every place I am looking at are at least in the high 90s. And, it really should go without saying that it's closest to the coolest library in the galaxy.

U-District
The proximity to the university is a nice benefit; both the husbandero (hyah!) and I would like to get jobs at UW to take cheap classes. Furthermore, the U-District has some of my favorite restaurants, and Wallingford is the first neighborhood I stayed in when I visited Seattle, so the atmosphere has a familiarity to me. Walk scores hit 100 in this neighborhood. My favorite book shop is here. There is still crime, but obviously it is a bit tamer than downtown.

Capitol Hill
I love this neighborhood. Cool shops, cool restaurants, and tons to do. There is the Richard Hugo House, at which I hope to take writing classes. There is a scrabble group, (at the same bar where there are 'L Word' watching parties [my guilty pleasure]), so the sense of community and having plenty to do here definitely goes up. Walk scores are good, and it is tame enough.

Obviously the decision is a difficult one to make, ergo, at the end of May we are making a pilgrimage to tour apartments and make our choice then. It will be based mostly on the apartment, since any neighborhood would be fine for us. As I've said before, I am sort of pulling for Capitol Hill and the husbandero (hyah!) is pulling for the U-DIstrict. However, the awesome, utopianesque metro system opens up all the neighborhoods for exciting adventures!