Seriously, I hear you on the no snow and ice thing, but I’d reconsider that part of it. You want lively, fun, great music scene, very liberal, open minded, literate, diverse, big horror scene, get out of Milwaukee and come just a bit west to the Twin Cities. I’ve been all over the country and this is the coolest place I can imagine to live…big and lively, but not TOO big (not overcrowded, pushy and dirty like bigger cities). Yeah, it gets cold ocassionally, but w/ global warming, we haven’t really had more than one bad winter in the past decade. And if you live in an apartment, no shovelling.
When I graduated college, I wanted to move somewhere warm, it was my biggest concern. I grew up in way northern Minnesota which had NOTHING to do, and where it got to be 40 below for a solid 2 week span every winter, sometimes w/ 100 below windchills and 2 feet of snow. I moved to the Cities, and literally, I could be doing something fun and interesting every night of the week, I like the people, I like the way the city is set up, I’ve even taken vacations where I didn’t leave town there’s so much to see and do here. The winters are generally just really bad a day or two here and there, and for the most part there’s plenty to do inside so you barely have to leave your house. Heck, the best thing would be to get a townhome w/ an attached garage and a homeowner’s association that does the shoveling and grass cutting for you, then you don’t even have to go outside in the winter. You can even get your groceries delivered if you want and there’s covered parking just about anywhere you’d want to go. The cities have skyways, and besides, it’s nice to have a “little” snow around the holidays, just to kind of break up the scenery. Plus we’d be neighbors!